The dramatist tends to the elaboration of stock themes, dealing with the pursuit of illicit pleasure, assignations, and love intrigues. The typical story might be stated as follows: a young man is entangled with one or more women, a widow, the wife of an elderly or foolish husband, or a mistress whom he is keeping or who is keeping him, and while he is carrying on these intrigues he falls in love with the virtuous young woman he eventually wins. Sometimes his mistresses object to his marrying some one else, sometimes they do not, and in the latter case the opposing force is centered in a rapacious guardian or some other complicating person or circumstance. There are usually many minor love affairs, sometimes legitimate, sometimes not, and usually so complicated that it is difficult to keep the various threads separate. Collier did no injustice when he said that “the stage poets make their principal persons vicious and reward them at the end of the play.” The love is mere sensuality. There is tacit acknowledgment that the men will be untrue to their wives and a fear on the part of the husbands that their wives will cuckold them.[68] This fear is not because of any moral scruples, but is merely because of the ridicule that cuckoldom brought on the husband. The treatment is frankly gross, licentious, cynical. In a sense this treatment is highly realistic; to this extent, that it is a general reflection of the standards and manners of the life of the court. The fashions are contemporary, the manners and morals are those of the upper classes. The playwrights confine themselves to a limited section of but a part of the people. Social and religious institutions are treated so as to make them ridiculous and contemptible. That any other treatment would have been difficult is seen by considering the relationship existing between the theatre and the court. The theatre had its authority for existence directly from the court, one theatre receiving its license from the King, the other from the Duke of York, while the companies of actors were known as the King’s or the Duke’s servants.[69] These licenses were moreover revocable at the pleasure of those who gave them. Controversies and differences within the theatre were often settled personally by the King or Duke, and Charles is said to have suggested subjects to the dramatists in many instances. With so direct and personal a relation, anything other than compliance with the taste of the court could result in nothing but the downfall of the theatre. The theatre’s very life depended on its selection and presentation of themes that would satisfy and reflect the taste of the most morally degraded court that England has ever had.