Dryden had died in 1700, and Congreve produced his last important play in that year. Wycherley, though still living, had long ceased to write, but Farquhar and Vanbrugh were busy about this time with their best work. Of other dramatists who were then writing there are none more important than Rowe, Dennis, Cibber, Gildon, D'Urfey, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Centlivre. The licentiousness of the Restoration plays had been fully equalled by the coarseness of many of those written under William III.; and at the end of the seventeenth century a determined protest had been made by men who realised the evil effect of what was acted for the amusement of the people. Jeremy Collier, a nonjuring clergyman, led the attack by publishing, in 1698, _A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage_. Collier was intemperate, and there were numerous replies; but his main position was not shaken. In the meantime proclamations were issued against the acting of anything immoral or irreligious, and a Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded, which was soon followed by similar societies in various parts of the country. In October, 1701, Steele, who says that he was "a great admirer" of Collier's work, arranged with Christopher Rich, of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, for the production of his comedy, _The Funeral, or Grief à-la-Mode_, as soon as they could conveniently.[2] The play was acted shortly afterwards, and it was printed in December. In the prologue Steele said that he knew he had numerous friends present, and that they would show it, "and for the fellow-soldier save the poet." The very frankness of this half-serious appeal shows that the play did not need artificial support, and Cibber says that it met with "more than expected success." It is very sprightly, but Steele did not omit, by the legitimate use of satire, to attack the mockery of grief by his ridicule of the undertaker, and the mockery of justice in the person of Puzzle, the lawyer. As in all his writings, he shows, by the characters of Lady Sharlot and Lady Harriot, the respect he felt for true women. "He was," says Thackeray, in words which are certainly true of Steele's immediate predecessors, "the first of our writers who really seemed to admire and respect them." The contrast between virtue and vice, to the advantage of the former--an object which had not usually been aimed at by the preceding writers of comedies--was furnished by the character of Lady Brumpton, the widow, whose husband was not really dead. The description of her schemes, and her conversations with her woman Tattleaid and her lady friends, are admirable, and were not forgotten by Sheridan when writing the _School for Scandal_. Tattleaid says to the widow, "I warrant you, madam, I'll manage 'em all; and indeed, madam, the men are really very silly creatures, 'tis no such hard matter. They rulers! They governors! I warrant you, indeed!" Whereupon