The Rehearsal was a satirical play aimed specifically at John Dryden and generally at the sententious and overly ambitious theatre of the Restoration tragedy.
The play was first staged on 7 December 1671 at the Theatre Royal, and published anonymously in 1672, but it is certainly by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and others.
Several people have been suggested as collaborators, including Samuel Butler of Hudibras fame, Martin Clifford, and Thomas Sprat, a Royal Society founder and later Bishop of Rochester.
There, Dryden scolds his fellow dramatists for having immoral heroes and low sentiments, and he proposes a new type of theatre, the heroic drama.
In The Rehearsal, a director/author attempts to put on a new play, and he lectures his actors and critics with impossible and absurd instructions on the importance of what they are doing.
(Dryden would not forget the satire, and he made Buckingham into the figure of Zimri in his Absalom and Achitophel.)
However, for readers and viewers what was most delightful was the way that Buckingham effectively punctures the puffed up bombast of Dryden's plays.
By taking Dryden's own words out of context and pasting them together, Buckingham disrupts whatever emotions that might have gone with them originally and exposes their inherent absurdity.
Whether The Rehearsal or the she-tragedy made popular by the acting of Elizabeth Barry did it, there was a turn away from the Classical heroes of Dryden's heroic drama.
To some degree, the parodic form of a play-within-a-play goes back to Shakespeare's satire of pantomime plays in A Midsummer Night's Dream and forward to the contemporary Mel Brooks film (and later stage musical) The Producers.
Eighteenth-century editions of The Rehearsal contained a Key that identified the Restoration plays to which Buckingham and his collaborators allude in their work.
Johnson and Smith, who has just come to the city from the country, meet by chance and begin talking about the new plays that are currently being shown.
The author and director of a new play, Bayes, appears and introduces his production to the two men, boasting about the greatness of his work.
Lacking inspiration for original material, Bayes steals all of his ideas from different epics and plays of the time, as well as classical authors such as Seneca and Pliny.
When the three men arrive at the rehearsal stage, the actors are seen struggling to understand how they should portray their roles.
Johnson spurs Bayes on, because he wants to see the foolishness of the play and to irritate his close friend Smith.
One proposed prologue or perhaps epilogue of Bayes’ play features the characters Thunder and Lightning, who threaten the audience.
The egotistical playwright justifies the whispering on the grounds that they're politicians and not supposed to talk about matters of state.
They begin speaking of the whispering between the usher and the physician which Smith once again questions, as the kings were not present in the previous scene.
Yet another new actor comes out as Prince Pretty-man and immediately falls asleep, allegedly as a symptom of his love for Cloris.
A woman actress enters, supposedly Prince Pretty-man's love interest, whom he describes as "a blazing comet."
Discussion continues to include Bayes' approval of such devices as "songs, ghosts, and dances," as a way of filling the theatre seats.
Scene 2 of the play includes 3 major plot developments: the mysterious death, the fisherman/prince conundrum, and the boots/love affair.
Bayes expects his audience to already know that the Prince was a foundling raised as a son by the fisherman, information that was not given during the earlier scenes of the play.
Bayes has created her brother as well, Drawcansir, a fierce warrior-hero in the play who "frights his mistress, snubs up kings, baffles Armies, and does what he will, without regard to good manners, justice or numbers."
(4.1) Act IV Scene I begins with Bayes’ reading of a letter that he wrote from Lardella as her final words, to be written to her cousin, the King.
This final note is a ridiculous metaphor comparing herself to a "humble bee" forever to buzz around in the after-life, essentially haunting the king for the rest of his life.
To add to the ridiculous scene, Pallas presents a lance full of wine, a pie in her helmet, and a buckler made of cheese.
He snatches the usurper's bowls of wine, threatening anyone who would try to prevent him: "Who e'er to gulp one drop of this dares think I'l stare away his very pow'r to drink.
Johnson wonders why the scene is suddenly all in verse in comparison to the rest of the play and Bayes's responds that the subject is too lofty for prose.