The Conscious Lovers

The Conscious Lovers deals with the trials and tribulations of its penniless heroine Indiana. The discovery that she is an heiress affords the necessary happy resolution. Sir Richard Steele, bent on reforming comedy for didactic purposes, produced The Conscious Lovers (1722) and provided the English stage with an occasion when the audience at a comedy could derive its chief pleasure not from laughing but from weeping. Edited and introduction by William-Alan Landes.