The witty farce of the "Rehearsal" is said to have been meditated by its authors (for it was the work of several hands) so early as a year or two after the Restoration, when Sir William Davenant's operas and tragedies were the favourite exhibitions. The ostensible author was the witty George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham whose dissipation was marked with shades of the darkest profligacy. He lived an unprincipled statesman, a fickle projector, a wavering friend, a steady enemy; and died a bankrupt, an outcast, and a proverb. The Duke was unequal to that masculine satire, which depends for edge and vigour upon the conception and expression of the author.[6] But he appears to have possessed considerable powers of discerning what was ludicrous, and enough of subordinate humour to achieve an imitation of colloquial peculiarities, or a parody upon remarkable passages of poetry,--talents differing as widely from real wit as mimicry does from true comic action. Besides, Buckingham, as a man of fashion and a courtier, was master of the _persiflage_, or jargon, of the day, so essentially useful as the medium of conveying light humour. He early distinguished himself as an opponent of the rhyming plays. Those of the Howards, of Davenant, and others, the first which appeared after the Reformation, experienced his opposition. At the representation of the "United Kingdoms," by the Honourable Edward Howard, a brother of Sir Robert, the Duke's active share in damning the piece was so far resented by the author and his friends that he narrowly escaped sanguinary proofs of their displeasure.[7] This specimen of irritation did not prevent his meditating an attack upon the whole body of modern dramatists; in which he had the assistance of several wits, who either respected the ancient drama, or condemned the modern style, or were willing to make common cause with a Duke against a poet-laureate. These were, the witty author of Hudibras, who, while himself starving,[8] amused his misery by ridiculing his contemporaries; Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, then Buckingham's chaplain; and Martin Clifford, afterwards Master of the Charter-House the author of a very scurrilous criticism upon some of Dryden's plays, to be mentioned hereafter. By the joint efforts of this coalition, the "Rehearsal" was produced; a lively piece, which continues to please, although the plays which it parodies are no longer read or acted, and although the zest of the personal satire which it contains has evaporated in the lapse of time. This attack on the reigning taste was long threatened ere it was made; and the precise quarter to be assailed was varied more than once. Prior says, that Buckingham suspended his attack till he was certain that the Earl of Dorset would not "rehearse on him again." The principal character was termed, in the original sketch, Bilboa, a name expressing a traveller and soldier, under which Sir Robert Howard, or Sir William