THE NEW SCIENCE AND COMEDY 101 



ture." These are some of the chance fragments blown about by 

 the wind of literary allusion. They reveal merely the extent to 

 which scientific activities had entered into the familiar thought of 

 literary men. Presumably they would be understood by the read 

 ers or hearers without footnotes, such as Shadwell found necessary 

 in The Lancashire Witches. Gradually the new scientific ideas 

 were making their way into the minds of men, but outworn beliefs 

 were still "pensioned in dotage" for literary purposes. 



This study of the representation of new science in comedy has 

 revealed a fact, which might have been deduced a priori, that the / / 

 same material has been used over and over again. The writers of ' 

 comedy would not be expected to become thorough students of 

 science; if they had, their satire would doubtless not have been 

 written, for then they would have understood more clearly the 

 splendid work that was being done and they would have appre 

 ciated mope fully the sterling character of the leaders in scientific 

 thought. If, then, their knowledge was not deep, it might be ex 

 pected that they would use the most obvious sources. What are 

 they? 



It has been shown that the Royal Society was the centre of 

 scientific interest in England. Everyone seemed to understand the 

 references to Gresham College where this society had its beginning 

 and where it continued for many years. Its official organ was the 

 Philosophical Transactions, which was put on sale at many of the 

 bookshops in London. Here, then, was one obvious source of knowl 

 edge for the wits. It was to this source that Thomas Shadwell went 

 for. almost all of his material, practically all of his allusions and ' 

 a good part of his phraseology may be traced to the reports of ^^ 

 experiments in the Transactions, just preceding the presentation of 

 his comedy, The Virtuoso. For example, on respiration, see Swam- 

 merdam's letter Oct. 26, 1667, and the experiment of Robert Hooke, 

 Oct. 24, 1667; on the transfusion of blood, see the report for May 

 6, 1667, and the experiment of Drs. Lower and King at the Arun- 

 del House, Nov. 16, 1666, for spiders, a discussion by I. Wray, 

 "On Spiders" 1668, for tarantulas, review of S. W. Senguerdius 's 

 "de tarantula," 1668, Phil. Trans, vol. Ill, p. 660; on eels in vine 

 gar, see the letter from Leeuwenhoek, dated Delft, April 21, 1676; 



