OTWAY F THOMAS OTWAY, one of the first names in the 1 English drama', little is known 2; nor is there any part of that little which his biographer can take pleasure in relating. He was born at Trottin 3 in Sussex, March 3, 1651, the son 2 of Mr. Humphry Otway, rector of Woolbedding. From Winchester-school, where he was educated, he was entered in 1669 a commoner of Christ-church, but left the university without a degree; whether for want of money, or from impatience of academical restraint, or mere eagerness to mingle with the world is not known. It seems likely that he was in hope of being busy and con- 3 spicuous; for he went to London and commenced player 5, 'Johnson always appeared not to be sufficiently sensible of the merit of Otway.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 21. ? Johnson has apparently drawn on Biog. Brit. Supplement, p. 137, for Otway's Life. The poet, in the Dedication of Venice Preserved, says: -'A steady faith and loyalty to my Prince was all the inheritance my father left me.' He describes himself in his Poet's Complaint (Eng. Poets, xv. 178): 'I am a wretch of honest race; My parents not obscure, nor high in titles were, They left me heir to no disgrace. The pledge of marriage-vows was Alone I liv'd, their much lov'd fonded The sages that instructed me in arts A writer in Gent. Mag. 1745, p. 99, says:-'His person was of the middle size, inclinable to fatness. He had a thoughtful, speaking eye, and that was all.' 3 Trotton. The river Arun runs by it. 'Wild Arun too has heard thy strains, And Echo, 'midst my native plains, Been sooth'd by Pity's lute. There first the wren thy myrtles shed On gentlest Otway's infant head, To him thy cell was shown.' COLLINS, Ode to Pity, Eng. Poets, lviii. 15. Ath. Oxon. iv. 168. He matriculated on May 27, 1669, aged 17, but left Oxford in 1672, without a degree. Dict. Nat. Biog. 5 'The world was wide, but whither should I go? I whose blooming hopes all wither'd were, Who'd little fortune, and a deal of care? To Britain's great metropolis I stray'd, Where Fortune's general game is play'd.' Eng. Poets, xv. 179. but found himself unable to gain any reputation on the stage1. This kind of inability he shared with Shakespeare and Jonson, as he shared likewise some of their excellencies. It seems reasonable to expect that a great dramatick poet should without difficulty become a great actor; that he who can feel could express; that he who can excite passion should exhibit with great readiness its external modes: but since experience has fully proved that of those powers, whatever be their affinity, one may be possessed in a great degree by him who has very little of the other, it must be allowed that they depend upon different faculties or on different use of the same faculty; that the actor must have a pliancy of mien, a flexibility of countenance, and a variety of tones, which the poet may be easily supposed to want; or that the attention of the poet and the player have been differently employed-the one has been considering thought, and the other action; one has watched the heart, and the other contemplated the face. 5 Though he could not gain much notice as a player, he felt in himself such powers as might qualify for a dramatick author; and in 1675, his twenty-fifth year, produced Alcibiades, a tragedy; whether from the Alcibiade of Palaprat I have not means to enquire. Langbain, the great detector of plagiarism, is silent 3. 6 2 In 1677 he published Titus and Berenice, translated from Racine, with The Cheats of Scapin from Molière 5, and in 1678 Friendship in Fashion, a comedy, which, whatever might be its ''In The Jealous Bridegroom by Mrs. Bhen [Behn], Mr. Otway having an inclination to turn actor, Mrs. Bhen gave him the King in the play for a probation part; but he being not used to the stage, the full house put him to such a sweat and tremendous agony, being dasht, spoilt him for an actor.' DOWNES, Roscius Anglicanus, 1789, p. 43. 2 In Les Euvres de Palaprat, 1697, Alcibiade is not included. Neither is it mentioned in his life in Nouv. Biog. gén. Voltaire says of Brueys: 'La petite comédie du Grondeur, supérieure à toutes les farces de Molière, et celle de L'Avocat Patelin, . . . le feront connaître tant qu'il y aura en France un théâtre. Palaprat l'aida dans ces deux jolies pièces.' Euvres, xvii. 58. 3 In his Account of the English Dramatic Poets. See post, DRYDEN, 25, 29, 92. 'Rapin,' which is found in the first and third editions of the Lives, must be a slip of Johnson's pen for Racine. Otway's play is taken from that poet's Bérénice, which was brought out in 1670—the same year as Corneille's Tite et Bérénice. 5 This play, with the farce, being perfectly well acted had good success.' Roscius Anglicanus, p. 48. first reception', was, upon its revival at Drury-lane in 1749, hissed off the stage for immorality and obscenity 2. Want of morals or of decency did not in those days exclude 7 any man from the company of the wealthy and the gay if he brought with him any powers of entertainment; and Otway is said to have been at this time a favourite companion of the dissolute wits3. But, as he who desires no virtue in his companion has no virtue in himself, those whom Otway frequented had no purpose of doing more for him than to pay his reckoning. They desired only to drink and laugh; their fondness was without benevolence, and their familiarity without friendship. Men of wit, says one of Otway's biographers, received at that time no favour from the Great but to share their riots; 'from which they were dismissed again to their own narrow circumstances. Thus they languished in poverty without the support of innocence *.' to you, is that of a very smart, pleasant, 'conceited fellow, and a good mimic.' Garrick Corres. i. 55. 3 'I miss'd the brave and wise, and in On every sort of vanity I fed. Bullies of o'er-grown bulks and Gamesters, half wits and spendthrifts (such as think Mischievous midnight frolics, bred by drink, Are gallantry and wit, Because to their lewd understandings fit) Were those wherewith two years at 'From whence they were to return to their own narrow circumstances with the loss of their modesty and virtue. Thus they languished in poverty without the support of innocence. Otway's Works, 1712, Pref. In Johnson's Works, vii. 174, 'imminence,' which, though it gives no sense, is the reading of both the first and third editions [1783], is changed into 'eminence.' Both are clearly misprints for 'innocence.' Savage suffered from the same treatment as Otway. Post, SAVAGE, 97. 8 Some exception however must be made. The Earl of Plymouth', one of King Charles's natural sons, procured for him a cornet's commission in some troops then sent into Flanders. But Otway did not prosper in his military character; for he soon left his commission behind him, whatever was the reason, and came back to London in extreme indigence, which Rochester mentions with merciless insolence in the Session of the Poets 3: 'Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell's dear zany, And swears for heroicks he writes best of any; Don Carlos his pockets so amply had fill'd, That his mange was quite cured, and his lice were all kill'd. But Apollo had seen his face on the stage, And prudently did not think fit to engage The scum of a play-house, for the prop of an age.' 9 Don Carlos, from which he is represented as having received so much benefit, was played in 1675. It appears, by the Lampoon, to have had great success, and is said to have been played thirty nights together. This however it is reasonable to doubt, as so long a continuance of one play upon the stage is a very wide deviation from the practice of that time; when the ardour for theatrical entertainments was not yet diffused through the whole people, and the audience, consisting nearly of the same persons, could be drawn together only by variety *. 'He was carousing one day with Lord Pl-th, and then starving a month in low company at an alehouse on Tower Hill.' Gent. Mag. 1745, p. 99. The earl died, without heir, in 1680. Courthope's Hist. Peerage, 1857, p. 385. " He mentions his being 'cashiered' in the Epilogue to Caius Marius, and continues: 'Therefore, when he received that This play came forth, in hopes his To help a poor disbanded soldier Davies's Dram. Misc. iii. 193. 3 The title of his poem is A Trial of the Poets for the Bays, Eng. Poets, xv. 41. Otway, in his Poet's Complaint, attacks ' that blundering sot Who a late Session of the Poets wrote.' He describes the writer as one who ....for old shoes and scraps repeats old plays.' Ib. p. 184. Rochester is probably described in the next lines :'Then next there follow'd, to make up the throng, Lord Lampoon and Monsieur Song.' He had been Otway's patron. See the Preface to Don Carlos and the Dedication of Titus and Berenice, quoted in Malone's Dryden, i. 122. Rochester turned on Dryden as he turned on Otway. Post, DRYDEN, 62. For an earlier Session of the Poets, see ante, COWLEY, 41. 4All the parts being admirably acted it lasted successively ten days; it got more money than any preceding modern tragedy.' Roscius Anglicanus, p. 46. The Orphan was exhibited in 1680. This is one of the few 10 plays that keep possession of the stage, and has pleased for almost a century through all the vicissitudes of dramatick fashion. Of this play nothing new can easily be said. It is a domestick tragedy drawn from middle life. Its whole power is upon the affections, for it is not written with much comprehension of thought or elegance of expression. But if the heart is interested, many other beauties may be wanting, yet not be missed 2. The same year produced The History and Fall of Caius 11 Marius; much of which is borrowed from the Romeo and Juliet of Shakespeare 3. In 1683 was published the first, and next year the second, parts 12 of The Soldier's Fortune, two comedies now forgotten; and in 16855 his last and greatest dramatick work, Venice preserved, a tragedy, which still continues to be one of the favourites of the publick, notwithstanding the want of morality in the original design', and the despicable scenes of vile comedy with which he Macready acted in it in 1811. Macready's Reminiscences, i. 53. 2 'Mrs. Barry told me that she never pronounced those three words in The Orphan, "Ah! poor Castalio,” without teares.' GILDON, Complete Art of Poetry, 1718, i. 290. Voltaire, after condemning the play as revolting, continues:-L'auteur dédie sa pièce à la duchesse de Cleveland; avec la même naïveté qu'il a écrit sa tragédie, il félicite Icette dame d'avoir eu deux enfans de Charles II.' Euvres, xlii. 149. 3 Langbaine however said that 'it is accounted among the best of Shakespeare's plays.' Dram. Poets, p. 462. In 1676 The Soldier's Fortune, and Durfey's Fond Husband, 'took extraordinary well, and being perfectly acted got the company great reputation and profit.' Roscius Anglicanus, p. 46. The former was printed in 1681. The second part was entitled The Atheist, or The Second Part of the Soldier's Fortune. Jacob's Poet. Reg. i. 196. 5 It was printed in 1682. It, The Orphan, and Southerne's Fatal Marriage' took above all the modern plays that succeeded [till 1706].' Roscius Anglicanus, p. 48. In Brit. Mus. Cata. there are twenty-three editions of Venice Preserved in English, four in French, two in Dutch, and one in German, Italian, and Russian: Tonson paid £15 for the copyright. Davies's Dram. Misc. iii. 268. 6 Langbaine instances the characters of Marius Junior, and Lavinia the Nurse, and Sulpitius; which last is carried on to the end of the play, though Mr. Dryden says in his Postscript to Granada [post, DRYDEN, 49; Works, iv. 239] "that Shakespeare said himself that he was forced to kill Mercutio in the third act to prevent being killed by him." Dram. Poets, p. 397. 9 'March 1, 1661-2. Romeo and Juliet is a play of itself the worst that ever I heard.' PEPYS, Diary, i. 330. For nearly eighty years it lay neglected by the actors, till Garrick brought it out in 1748, with the catastrophe rendered more affecting. Writers and Readers, by G. B. Hill, p. 62. 7 'It has been observed that Otway has founded his tragedy on so wrong a plot that the greatest characters in it are those of rebels and traitors.' ADDISON, The Spectator, No. 39. Addison adds that 'the sounding of the clock in Venice Preserved makes the hearts of the whole audience |