Three Hours After Marriage was a restoration comedy, written in 1717 as a collaboration between John Gay, Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot. It premiered in 1717 and among its satirical targets were Richard Blackmore.
It received seven sell-out performances, then a record for the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and influenced The Author's Farce. Critical reception was less friendly. Charles Johnson, in the preface to the published version of his The Sultaness called Three Hours "Long-labour'd Nonsense" and it was also attacked in Leonard Welsted's 1717 Palaemon to Caelia, or, The Triumvirate and in the Poetical Register by Giles Jacob, who stated that it included scenes that "trespass on Female Modesty"[1]. This view of the play as obscene became the majority view, meaning it then remained unperformed until 1996, when Richard Cottrell directed a Royal Shakespeare Company production at the Swan Theatre. This won the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Set Designer for Tim Goodchild. It was revived again in 2008 at the Union Theatre in a production by Blanche McIntyre.
Scientist Jacob Bronowski cites the play in episode 7 of the 1973 BBC television documentary series The Ascent of Man[2], which deals with the discoveries of Newton and Einstein: "By the time Newton was in his seventies, England under the Georges was pre-occupied with money, with politics, and with scandal in the coffee houses. Nimble businessmen floated companies, to exploit fictitious inventions. Writers poked fun at scientists, in part from spite, and in part for political motives, because Newton was a big wig in the government establishment. The group of Tories, who later helped John Gay to satirise the government in The Beggar’s Opera, also helped him, in 1717, to write a play Three Hours After Marriage. There the butt of the satire is a pompous ageing scientist, under the name of Dr. Fossil.”