Ay, now the plot thickens very much upon us.

This line is associated with George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687), a Restoration courtier and satirist who wrote the comedy The Rehearsal, first performed in 1671. The play is a burlesque of the “heroic drama” then fashionable on the English stage and, more broadly, a send-up of theatrical bombast and contrived plotting. The phrase is spoken in a meta-theatrical context: characters comment on the mechanics of the drama as it unfolds, parodying the way playwrights artificially escalate complications to sustain suspense. The line helped popularize the now-common idiom “the plot thickens.”

“The plot thickens” has become a stock phrase for a story growing more complicated, but in Buckingham’s satirical setting it is knowingly comic. The speaker treats narrative complexity as something to be dialed up on command—“very much upon us”—as if the audience should admire the sheer density of twists rather than their plausibility. The line therefore works on two levels: within the mock-play it announces escalating intrigue, while in the frame of The Rehearsal it ridicules writers who mistake convolution for dramatic power. Its afterlife as a serious idiom is an ironic reversal of its original purpose: a jab at formulaic dramaturgy.