The Wild Gallant

The Wild Gallant is a Restoration comedy written by John Dryden. It was Dryden’s earliest play, and written in prose, not verse; it was premiered on the stage by the King’s Company at their Vere Street theatre, formerly Gibbon’s Tennis Court, on February 5, 1663. (The play’s opening scene features astrologers drawing horoscopes on the play’s fortunes for that date.) As Dryden himself stated in his Preface, it was “the first attempt I made in Dramatique Poetry.”