Though his career as a playwright began during the Caroline period, Thomas Killigrew is best remembered for his role in Restoration theater. A favorite of Charles II, he and Sir William Davenant secured royal patents to establish rival theater...

In the excerpt below, Summers surveys Killigrew's life, his work as a dramatist, and his activities as a theatrical manager.

In the following chapter from his full-length study of Killigrew, Harbage considers several of the playwright's late works as “closet dramas,” pieces that were meant to be read rather than performed. Indeed, the critic judges them impossible to stage.

In the following essay, Visser argues that the revisions that Killigrew inscribed in the 1664 folio edition of his plays were made to accommodate the newly emerging type of venues, and asserts that the “great interest” of the folio “lies in the relationship it demonstrates between the private playhouses of the early Caroline period, and the public theatres of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century.”