Come, child, let us kiss - hang dull, silly wooing;
'Tis time, like our betters, we two should be doing,
Kind Fate still assigns, as a custom that's common,
To the mistress the master, the man to the woman.
                    Paul Motteux

   Sensual pleasure, gentle, violent or comic, is the theme of this anthology of seventeenth-century erotic writing. Restoration Bawdy brings vividly to life a 'masquerading age'. The book draws on high and low culture, and includes courtly poems and works by Rochester, Sedley and Etheridge, as well as broadside ballads, doggerel from almanacs and songs from plays. A number of the pieces have only previously been available in research libraries. The result is a lively social panorama of Restoration England and a cheerfully amoral celebration of the pleasures of the flesh.

Table of Contents

  INDEX OF AUTHORS,

ANONYMOUS WORKS,

PRINTED MISCELLANIES

AND MANUSCRIPTS

Anacreon Done into English 1683

  Antidote against Melancholy 1661

Aubrey, John

Ayres, Philip

Behn, Aphra

Bourne, Reuben

  Bristol Drollery , 1674

Broadsides

Chetham MS Mun. A.4.14.

Crowne, John

  Cupid's Posies , 1674

Davenant, Sir William

Dryden, John

Duffett, Thomas

D'Urfey, Tom

Dyce MS 43.

Etherege, Sir George

  Flora's Vagaries , 1670

Harleian MS 6914.

  John and his Mistress , c.1680

Jordan, Thomas

Leanerd, John

Lee, Nathaniel

Le Neve, Oliver

  Love's Masterpiece , 1683

  Merry Dialogue between Tom the

Tailor and his Maid Joan , 1684

  Merry Drollery Complete , 1691

Milton, John

Motteux, Peter

  New Academy of Compliments , 1671

  New Help to Discourse , 1669

  New London Drollery , 1687

  Nuage Venales , 1686

Payne, Henry Nevil

  Penkethman's Jests , 1721

  Poor Robin, A Prognostication , 1675

  Poor Robin's Almanack , 1687

Powell, George

Radcliffe, Alexander

Rawlins, Thomas

Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of

 Royal Library, Stockholm,

MS Vu 69.

  Secret Sinners, The, c. 1686

Sedley, Sir Charles

Settle, Elkanah

Shadwell, Thomas

Stapylton, Robert

Taubman, Matthew

  Westminster Drollery , 1671

Wilson, John

  Windsor Drollery , 1672

  Wit and Mirth , 1682

  Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge

Melancholy , 1699-1700

  Wit at a Venture , 1674

  Wit's Cabinet , c. 1700

  Works of Rochester, Roscommon and Dorset 1718