Sir William Davenant (or D'Avenant), dramatist and theater manager, poet and courtier, is a link between the older Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and the new Restoration drama. From his innovations improving the platform stage our modern playhouse is derived; he refined the genre of the heroic drama with the accompanying themes of love and honor; by tradition he first brought women onto the English stage; and his dramas influenced those of the next several generations, particularly John Dryden's. If he is remembered only for his "adaptations" of Shakespeare we do him disservice.

Davenant was born in Oxford in late February 1606, the son of John Davenant, vinter and proprietor of the Crown Tavern, who at his death was mayor of Oxford, and Jane Shepherd Davenant. William Shakespeare, who lodged at the Crown "once a year," according to John Aubrey, may have been his godfather and, according to subsequent gossip...