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tragedy and the heroic drama as well as comedy, but is best remembered for his creation of the chief character in Sir Courtly Nice, or It cannot Be (1685). Sir Charles Sedley, of the circle of the King, is strongest in Bellamira, or The Mistress (1687), founded on the Eunuchus of Terence and giving a coarsely realistic picture of the pleasure of the day. Mrs. Aphra Behn has to her credit the humanitarian story Oroonoko. In her writing for the stage, however, she plundered right and left and catered to the coarsest taste of the time, being represented by The Amorous Prince (1671) and The City Heiress (1682).

54. Nathaniel Lee. We turn now to tragedy. Very different from the writers just mentioned, but contemporary with them and with Dryden in his second period, was Nathaniel Lee (1653-1692). The son of a clergyman, Lee attended Cambridge, where he was graduated B. A. in 1668, and later went to London, where he became an actor. He was a good reader, but he did not achieve success on the stage; and his later years were sad, as he was afflicted with insanity and is said to have died in the snow while on his way home from a tavern. His occasional collaboration with Dryden has been remarked; but his works also include Nero, Emperour of Rome (1675), Sophonisba, or Hannibal's Overthrow (1676), Gloriana, or The Court of Augustus Caesar (1676), The Rival Queens, or The Death of Alexander the Great (1677), Mithridates (1678), Theodosius, or The Force of Love (1680), Caesar Borgia (1680), Lucius Junius Brutus, Father of his Country (1681), The Princess of Cleve (1681), Constan tine the Great (1684), and The Massacre of Paris (1690, but written some years before). These titles give some idea, but only a very faint idea, of Lee's preference for

semi-historical and grandiloquent themes and settings. In his own day and to another generation he was known primarily for his rant. In The Rival Queens the main theme is the jealousy between Roxana, Alexander's first wife, and his second wife, Statira. Mithridates, in its introduction of the ghosts of the sons of Mithridates, suggests the Elizabethans; and Caesar Borgia strangles the heroine on the stage. With all of his extravagance, however-his glare and gewgaw and noise-Lee very frequently exhibits the mark of a genuine poet. He knew not the springs of simple emotion; but he could often thrill his audience even if he could not touch its heart, and there was sufficient vitality in some of his plays to keep them on the stage until the middle of the next century. Betterton appeared in his work to advantage, and years afterwards Charles Kemble and Kean revived The Rival Queens with success.

Along with Lee may be mentioned John Banks, a writer whose work was more or less melodramatic and who constantly suggests the influence of Lee. The Rival Kings (1677) owes much to The Rival Queens, and a representative later production, Cyrus the Great, or The Tragedy of Love (1696), is full of rant and sensationalism. With other such plays, however, as The Unhappy Favorite (1682), dealing with the Earl of Essex, and The 'Albion Queens (1704), dealing with Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots, Banks entered the field of English history and won a popular success.

55. Thomas Otway.-Thomas Otway (1652-1685) was of more truly tragic quality than Lee and after Dryden the foremost figure in the drama of the age. There are in fact those who insist that his strongest tragedies are not

surpassed by anything in their period. It is hardly too much to say that Otway was an Elizabethan born out of his time. Partly educated at Winchester and at Christ Church, Oxford, he appeared on the stage without success; early sought the notice of Rochester, with whom he soon quarreled; made some translations and adaptations from the French, and plundered Shakespeare. For some years he nourished a hopeless passion for Mrs. Barry, the celebrated actress of the day, who seems to have inspired his best work; and at one time he was rescued from want by the Duchess of Portsmouth. In his earlier years he cultivated rhymed tragedy, and with Don Carlos (1676), based on a French romance, won considerable popular favor. Otway's reputation, however, rests upon his two strong tragedies, The Orphan (1680) and Venice Preserved (1682). The Orphan is a domestic play. Two brothers, Castalio and Polydore, are in love with Monimia, their father's ward. Castalio secretly contracts himself to her in marriage; but Polydore, overhearing their plans for meeting and ignorant of the tie that binds them, contrives to supplant his brother. Castalio is repulsed and spends the night in curses upon womankind. When the full truth bursts upon all the next day, Polydore provokes a quarrel' in which he deliberately permits himself to be stabbed by his brother, Castalio commits suicide, and Monimia takes poison. This plot demands considerable credulity; nevertheless in its simple emotion and the cumulative effect of its tragedy The Orphan must remain a noteworthy production. Perhaps even more powerful, at least in its fourth act, is Venice Preserved. An underplot, which might have been dispensed with, caricatures Shaftesbury under the name of Antonio. The main plot, however, advances rapidly and

with unfaltering interest. "Pierre, a sort of Brutus with the high Roman courage, leads Jaffier to join the conspiracy against Venice. Belvidera, Jaffier's wife, persuades her husband to save her father and the senate by revealing the plot. The action unfolds in masterly scenes, where Pierre confronts his friend with his falseness, and where Jaffier, conquered by his wife, melts into love, and yields to her desire to save her father and the state. On the scaffold, Jaffier is to pay the penalty of his vacillation, but stabs both himself and Pierre. The apparition of the ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre and Belvidera's madness and death strongly suggest the Elizabethans." 15 Both The Orphan and Venice Preserved show Otway's emphasis on a single strong theme and his command of the resources of pity. In an artificial age he appealed to simple human emotion, and while he had not a broad conception of character or a strong sense of comedy, he succeeded by using effectively the gifts that he had.

15 Nettleton, 102.

CHAPTER VIII

LATE RESTORATION DRAMA AND THE RISE OF DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES

56. Elements of the Transition.-Important in the history of the English Drama was the decade 1690-1700. Charles II was dead, James II in exile, and a Whig king, William of Orange, had recently come to the throne. The significance to the drama of these simple historical events can hardly be overestimated. Some taste for heroic plays or society comedy might still prevail; but already way was being made for a drama more democratic and with more emphasis on common emotion. Dryden was still living; but he bade farewell to the stage in 1693, and by this year also such popular playwrights as Otway and Lee had passed from the scene. Restoration comedy had not yet run its course, and in fact was still to receive its finest expression in Congreve; but the plays of this brilliant dramatist were all written within the decade. By 1700, whatever the reason, he too had ceased to write, and the day of society comedy was over. The age of Queen 'Anne boasted of its classic theory and style; but Addison's only drama was a tour de force, and Steele was, consciously or not, one of the foremost exponents of sentimentalism and-whiggism. Important as ever was the religious question, and one heard much at the time of occasional conformity." The Tories were yet to make one last stand and close the War of the Spanish Succes

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