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THOMAS
OTWAY, the rival of Dryden, was the son of the Rev. Humphrey
Otway, rector of Woolbeding; and was born at Trotten in West
Sussex, in 1651. He was educated at Winchester College and at
Christ Church, Oxford, which he quitted without a degree at the
age of eighteen. We may adopt the words of Samuel Johnson, in
his Lives of the Poets: "Of Thomas Otway, one of
the first names in the English drama, little is known; nor is
there any part of that little which his biographer can take pleasure
in relating." After trying the stage as an actor, he produced
his play of Alcibiades at the age of 24, and devoted himself
to the drama, becoming a favourite companion of dissolute wits,
at the time when, as Johnson says, "men of wit received
no favours from the great but to share their riots." He
received some assistance from the Earl of Plymouth, a natural
son of Charles II, from whom he obtained a cornetcy in a regiment
of cavalry. His short life was passed amidst squalid poverty
and cruel disappointments. He died at the age of 34, in an obscure
house in Tower-Hill, where he was said to be hiding from his
creditors--according to tradition, choked with the bread which
charity had given to satisfy his hunger.
His principal dramas are Venice Preserved
(1682), and an earlier work, the Orphan (1680). Otway
has now lost all credit, and would hardly be remembered at all
but for the extreme sterility and affectation of English drama
between the age of Shakespeare
and that of Goldsmith.
However--Dryden, so greatly
superior to Otway in poetic resource, and Congreve
so superior in wit, have neither of them pictures of such exquisite
tenderness as a few of Otway's best, such as in the characters
of Monimia and Belvidera. It has been said that "the love-scenes
between Jaffier and Belvidera are unparalleled by anything in
our later drama." Taine thinks that he belongs by force
of imagination to the dramatists of the 16the century, and he
reminds us of Ford
and Webster.
Venice Preserved, however tedious and overstrained to
us now, kept the stage for 100 years. "It was more frequently
represented," says Hallam, "than any tragedy after
those of Shakespeare." "It is the work of a man not
attentive to decency, nor zealous for virtue; but of one who
conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by consulting nature
in his own breast" (Johnson). In this he shows some of the
quality of Metastasio
and of Richardson, enough to redeem from oblivion his pitiful
life and much else of coarse and stupid work.
This article was originally
published in The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: MacMillan & Co., 1920.
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