Such had been the conditions surrounding the drama and in the drama itself before the reformation began. When one comes to look at the stage and the audiences, one finds very little indication of change at first. In 1682 there seems to have been objection to _London Cuckolds_ on the ground of indecency, and Ravenscroft in the prologue to _Dame Dobson_ (1682) claims to have complied with the objections which had been raised by making his own play dull and civil. In 1684 appeared Southerne’s first comedy, _The Disappointment_, which he calls a “play,” and in this we have the serious treatment of the marriage relations and the preservation of a wife’s chastity. Throughout, Southerne’s tendency was towards morality. In 1696 there begins a real and easily discernible movement towards the moral treatment of dramatic themes. _The She Gallants_ (1696) was so offensive to the ladies that it had to be withdrawn; in _She Ventures and He Wins_ (1696) the man who would carry on an amour with a married woman is exposed and tricked and made the butt; and in Mrs. Manley’s _The Lost Lover_ (1696) there is the noticeable introduction of a virtuous wife. In 1697, the epilogue to _Boadicea_, a tragedy, tells us that “Once only smutty jests could please the town, But now (Heav’n help our trade) they’ll not go down.” Waterhouse[71] finds traces of sentimentality in Vanbrugh’s _Aesop_, which appeared the same year. Then in 1698 matters were brought to a head by Collier, and we find Congreve’s _Double Dealer_ advertised to be acted “with several expressions omitted,” while in _The Way of the World_ (1700) his muse is somewhat more chaste. _The Provoked Wife_ was altered, probably in 1706, so that the clergy might not seem to be attacked. From this time on the changed attitude was increasingly manifest in the new plays, though the old were still acted with little or no change. In _The State of the Case Restated_[72] it is contended that the royal patent to the Drury Lane Theatre was given to Sir Richard Steele for the purpose of correcting the abuses of the theatre, but that Sir Richard had not done this; in fact that