OTWAY.--The first writer to be mentioned in this field, is Thomas Otway (born in 1651, died in 1685). He led an irregular and wretched life, and died, it is said, from being choked by a roll of bread which, after great want, he was eating too ravenously.
His style is extravagant, his pathos too exacting, and his delineation of the passions sensational and overwrought. He produced in his earlier career _Alcibiades_ and _Don Carlos_, and, later, _The Orphan_, and _The Soldier's Fortune_. But the piece by which his fame was secured is _Venice Preserved_, which, based upon history, is fictional in its details. The original story is found in the Abbé de St. Real's _Histoire de la Conjuration du Marquis de Bedamar_, or the account of a Spanish conspiracy in which the marquis, who was ambassador, took part. It is still put upon the stage, with the omission, however, of the licentious comic portions found in the original play.
NICHOLAS ROWE, who was born in 1673, a man of fortune and a government official, produced seven tragedies, of which _The Fair Penitent_, _Lady Jane Grey_, and _Jane Shore_ are the best. His description of the lover, in the first, has become a current phrase: "That haughty, gallant, gay Lothario,"--the prototype of false lovers since. The plots are too broad, but the moral of these tragedies is in most cases good.
In _Jane Shore_, he has followed the history of the royal mistress, and has given a moral lesson of great efficacy.
NATHANIEL LEE, 1657-1692: was a man of dissolute life, for some time insane, and met his death in a drunken brawl. Of his ten tragedies, the best are _The Rival Queens_, and _Theodosius, or The Force of Love_. The rival queens of Alexander the Great--Roxana and Statira--figure in the first, which is still presented upon the stage. It has been called, with just critical point, "A great and glorious flight of a bold but frenzied imagination, having as much absurdity as sublimity, and as much extravagance as passion; the poet, the genius, the scholar are everywhere visible."
THOMAS SOUTHERN, 1659-1746: wrote _Isabella, or The Fatal Marriage_, and _Oronooko_. In the latter, although yielding to the corrupt taste of the time in his comic parts, he causes his captive Indian prince to teach that period a lesson by his pure and noble love for Imoinda. Oronooko is a prince taken by the English at Surinam and carried captive to England.