Thomas Otway. Thomas Otway

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Thomas Otway - Thomas Otway


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for the sake of his agreeable social qualities, but who, while they helped him to get rid of his money in many foolish ways, left him in the lurch when he needed them most. The young Earl of Plymouth, however, a natural son of the king, and a college friend, did befriend him. His premature death at Tangier, aged twenty-two, was a serious loss to Otway.

      The dramatist's earliest play was Alcibiades, first printed in 1675. It is a poor production, though there are scenes in it of distinct promise. Don Carlos appeared in the year after, and won extraordinary favour, partly owing to the patronage of Rochester, who dropped an author as soon as he acquired, by merit or popularity, some independent standing, fancying that his own literary dictatorship might be thereby imperilled. Thus he had dropped Dryden, taken up Elkanah Settle, the "City poet," dropped him, and elevated Crowne. But Crowne's Calisto becoming too popular for the malignant wit, he transferred his patronage to Otway. In 1677 Otway produced two translations from the French, Titus and Berenice, from Racine, and The Cheats of Scapin, from Molière. All these were rhyming, so-called "heroic" plays, our playwrights herein following the French example. But Dryden, in the Prologue to Aurungzebe, having announced that he would henceforth abandon the use of rhyme in tragedy, other writers soon followed his lead. The success of Don Carlos was the occasion of a coolness between Otway and Dryden, who, with the proverbial amiability of literary rivals, said some sharp things about one another; but we have seen how generously Dryden afterwards gave Otway his due meed of praise. To this period, says Thornton, we may probably assign a duel between Otway and Settle ("Doeg"), in which Settle is said to have misbehaved.

      It was like Rochester to reproach him on this score—the man who showed the white feather to Lord Mulgrave, and made lackeys cudgel Dryden in Rose Alley. But Otway gave him as good as he got in the "Poet's Complaint." The matter is explained in the Epilogue to Caius Marius, which he produced in 1680, having written most of it in camp abroad. It is a barefaced, and indeed avowed plagiarism from Romeo and Juliet, though one or two scenes are his own, and have some merit. Marius, at all events, was a rather more dignified representative of Shaftesbury than old Antonio in Venice Preserved. This play occupied the place of Romeo and Juliet on our stage for seventy years. With a more avowed party motive he likewise published in the same year "The Poet's Complaint of his Muse." When we think of "Absalom and Achitophel," the contrast is woeful indeed. All Otway's poems are bad, except the Epistle to Duke, his friend. The blunted insipidity of his conventional diction is worthy of Pope's followers. Before leaving England he had written his first comedy, Friendship in Fashion, which appeared in 1678.

      In the year 1680 Otway's second great play, The Orphan, appeared. Voltaire attacked it furiously, and will allow no merit to le tendre Otway. Tenderness anywhere was not likely to find favour with the tigre-singe, whose fascinating wit was of an icy brilliance. But Jeremy Collier also attacked the play on other grounds, in his "Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage." Mrs. Barry has recorded that in the character of Monimia she could never pronounce the words "Poor Castalio!" without tears. May she not have been thinking of another Castalio? Let us believe it! Ah! if only Mrs. Barry had been the Belvidera of her poet's dream, she might have saved him from his evil genius, from his selfish patrons, and from himself.

      In 1681 Otway produced The Soldier's Fortune, a comedy which contains allusions to his own adventures abroad, and is the only contemporary play not dedicated to a person of quality, being dedicated to Bentley, the publisher. Depressed by his hopeless passion, "alternately elevated with promises and dejected by scorn and neglect, caressed for his wit, despised for his poverty, and exposed to all those attendant ills, which a generous spirit feels more acutely than actual privation, neglect, wrongs real and imaginary, the altered eye of friends," we can hardly wonder at the gloomy tone which he assumed in the Epilogue to this play. Can we not picture him with those large, limpid, wistful eyes looking for the face he most wanted among the crowds, preoccupied or listless, that passed in the gathering twilight of that afternoon, which he mentions in the last of those letters to Mrs. Barry, lingering among strange faces of promenaders under the trees of the gay Mall, looking long for her who never came, never fulfilled her promise to meet him? This seems to have been the turning point in Otway's career. Failing in this last attempt to win his lady's love, and sinking under accumulated debt, he, like how many others, surrendered himself to those habits of inebriety, which insidiously promised him consolation. And yet his creative powers were maturing daily, for his greatest work, Venice Preserved, was brought upon the stage in 1682.

      Since Otway's plays were well received, it may seem strange that he should have remained so poor. But, in the first place, he was evidently one of those generous, reckless good fellows like "Goldy," and Sheridan, who spend all they have, and more too. And, in the second place, the profits of the playhouse were very small. Theatrical amusements were not the general resort of the people—a serious disadvantage, as Scott observes, to the art, as well as to the purse, of the playwright. Religious scruples still withheld many, as in Commonwealth days; and others were kept away by the indecency then in vogue. The most popular play did not remain long on the boards. In Otway's time, moreover, an author had only one benefit from the representation, which was on the third night. Southerne was the first to have two benefits, and it was not until 1729 that the profits of three representations became the right of the author. Gildon says that Otway got a hundred pounds a piece for The Orphan and Venice Preserved, while old Jacob Tonson bought the copyright of Venice Preserved for fifteen pounds. The poet was sometimes in such straits that he had to pawn his third day for fifty pounds. He could not have made much by his few prologues and occasional poems.

      Otway's last play was a comedy called The Atheist, a continuation of The Soldier's Fortune, represented in 1683, or the following year, at the Theatre Royal by the united companies, who had amalgamated in 1682, and removed to Drury Lane. Charles II. died in February, 1685, and Otway thereupon published a poem called "Windsor Castle," in which he praised the


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