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This fourth instalment of the lecture series on the history of the major genres in English literature is going to provide a survey of the development of English Drama from the Seventeenth Century to the present. The course will trace the changing fates of the genre, highlighting heydays - such as the Restoration Comedy and Comedy of Manners of the long eighteenth century, the Irish Literary Renaissance or the re-orientation after 1956 - while not forgetting phases of comparative stagnation - e.g. in the mid-seventeenth and nineteenth century. William Congreve, John Gay, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett are among the numerous dramatists to be discussed. The final weeks of the term will be reserved for trends and developments since the 1990s.