For all its wit and cleverness, such blemishes would, without trenchant cutting, have been more than sufficient to prohibit it from any actual performance, and, indeed, _Thomaso_ may be better described as a dramatic romance than a comedy intended for the boards. Clumsy and gargantuan speeches, which few actors could have even memorized, and none would have ventured to utter on the stage, abound in every scene. This lack of technical acumen (unless, as may well be the case, Killigrew wrote much of these plays without any thought of presentation) is more than surprising in an author so intimately connected with the theatre and, after the Restoration, himself manager of the King’s Company. Nor is _Thomaso_ without its patent plagiarisms. Doubtless no small part is simply autobiographical adventuring, but, beside many a reminiscence of the later Jacobeans, Killigrew has conveyed entire passages and lyrics wholesale without attempt at disguise. Thus the song, ‘Come hither, you that love,’ Act ii, Scene 3, is from Fletcher’s _Captain_, Act iv, the scene in Lelia’s chamber. Again, the procedure and orations of Lopus the mountebank are but the flimsiest alterations of _Volpone_, Act ii, Scene I, nor could Killigrew change Jonson for anything but the worse. He has even gone so far as to name his quack’s spouse Celia, a distinct echo of Corvino’s wife. In dealing with these two plays Mrs. Behn has done a great deal more than merely fit the pieces for the stage. Almost wholly rewriting them, she has infused into the torpid dialogue no small portion of wit and vivacity, whilst the characters, prone to devolve into little better than prosy and wooden marionettes, with only too apparent wires, are given life, vigour movement, individuality and being. In fact she has made the whole completely and essentially her own. In some cases the same names are retained. We find Phillipo, Sancho, Angelica Bianca, Lucetta, Callis, in Killigrew. But as Willmore is a different thing altogether to Thomaso, so Ned Blunt is an 5 infinitely more entertaining figure than his prototype Edwardo. Amongst other details Killigrew, oddly and stupidly enough, gives his English gentlemen foreign names:—Thomaso, Ferdinando, Rogero, Harrigo*. This jar is duly corrected in _The Rover_.