Thomas Otway

It is the year 1680. Beaugard and Courtine return to London from wars abroad - empty handed and disenchanted. Beaugard hits on a brilliant scheme to improve their fortunes. Clarinda, unhappily married to the aged, infatuated Sir Davey Dunce, concocts a plan to reverse her fortunes. And Sir Jolly Jump, one of the great portraits of wayward sexuality, sets about helping the lovers, thereby enhancing his fortunes... Otway's restoration comedy is brutally, hilariously modern - but the undertow of deep sensuality suggests it is a missing link between Much Ado About Nothing and Oscar Wilde. "The Soldiers' Fortune" opens at the Young Vic Theatre, London in December 2006.

The Regents Restoration Drama series provides soundly edited texts, in modern spelling, of the significant plays of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Each text is based on a fresh collation of the early authoritative editions. The textual notes record all substantive departures from the edition used as the copy-text. Variant substantive readings among contemporary editions are listed. Historical background, stage history, and literary and cultural information are included.