_The City Bride_ does not conform to the dominant type of Restoration comedy, but it belongs to a thriving tradition. Domestic comedy, in adaptations from the Elizabethans, had been staged at intervals for twenty years before _The City Bride_ appeared, and the type was of course destined to supplant gay comedy in the near future. Harris was not, therefore, going against the taste of the town; on the contrary he was regularly guided by contemporary taste and practice. His stage is less crowded: he amalgamated the four gallants of _A Cure for a Cuckold_ in the person of Mr. Spruce, at the expense of a dramatic scene (I, ii, 31-125); and he ended the sub-plot with the fourth act instead of bringing its persons into the final scene, with some loss of liveliness and a concomitant gain in unity of effect. He modernized his dialogue entirely, bringing up to date the usage and allusions of his original, and restraining the richness of its metaphor by removing the figures altogether or by substituting others more familiar. He omitted a good deal of bawdry, especially in Act II, scene ii. All these changes have parallels in other Restoration adaptations. Again, the songs and dances, which are all of Harris's composition, reflect the demand of the Restoration audience for excitement, variety, novelty, in their dramatic fare. When in Act III, scene i, Harris meets this demand by making Bonvile bare his breast to Friendly's sword, and Friendly a little later grovel at Bonvile's feet for pardon, we may condemn the new business as bathetic; but when in Act IV, scene i, he substitutes for Webster's emaciated jokes the bustle of drawers, the sound of the bar bell, and healths all around, we can only applaud the change. We must also commend Harris for supplying a consistent and relatively believable motivation for the main action. In both _A Cure for a Cuckold_ and _The City Bride_, Clare (Clara) begins the action by giving her suitor, Lessingham (Friendly), a cryptic message: he is to determine who his best friend is and kill him. In _A Cure for a Cuckold_, it is never made clear whether the victim should have been Bonvile or Clare herself (she apparently intended to trick Lessingham into poisoning her). This uncertainty has only recently been noticed by students of the drama, who have been forced to emend the text at IV, ii, 165 (see Lucas's note on the passage). Harris's solution is simpler. He will have nothing to do with either murder or suicide. Clara explains to Friendly that the best friend of a lover is love itself.