Lackitt _menage_ were dished up as a short slap-bang
farce by themselves with, curiously enough, two or three scenes _in
extenso_ from Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_ (III, iii, and V, ii). This
hotch potch entitled _The Sexes Mis-match'd; or, A New Way to get a
Husband_ is printed in _The Strollers' Pacquet open'd_. (12mo, 1741.) On
1 December, 1759, there was brought out at Drury Lane a most insipid
alteration of _Oroonoko_ by Dr. Hawkesworth, who omitted all Southerne's
lighter fare and inserted serious nonsense of his own. Garrick was the
Oroonoko and Mrs. Cibber Imoinda. Although Hawkesworth's version was not
tolerated, the underplot was none the less pruned in later productions
to such an extent that it perforce lost nearly all its pristine wit and
fun. There is another adaption of Southerne: '_Oroonoko_ altered from
the original play . . . to which the editor has added near six hundred
lines in place of the comic scenes, together with an addition of two new
characters, intended for one of the theatres.' (8vo, 1760.) The two new
characters are Maria, sister to the Lieutenant-Governor and contracted
to Blandford, and one Heartwell; both thoroughly tiresome individuals.
In the same year Frank Gentleman, a provincial actor, produced his idea
of _Oroonoko_ 'as it was acted at Edinburgh.' (12mo, 1760.) There is yet
a fourth bastard: _The Prince of Angola_, by one J. Ferriar, 'a tragedy
altered from the play of _Oroonoko_ and adapted to the circumstances of
the present times.'[4] (Manchester, 1788.) It must be confessed that all
this tinkering with an original, which does not require from any point
of view the slightest alteration or omission, is most uncalled for,
crude, and unsuccessful.

In 1698 William Walker, a lad nineteen years old, the son of a wealthy
Barbadoes planter, wrote in three weeks a tragedy entitled _Victorious
Love_ (4to, 1698), which is confessedly a close imitation of Southerne's
theme. It was produced at Drury Lane in June, 1698, with the author
himself as Dafila, a youth, and young Mrs. Cross as the heroine Zaraida,
'an European Shipwrack'd an Infant at Gualata'. Possibly Verbruggen
acted Barnagasso, the captive king who corresponds to Oroonoko. The
scene is laid in the Banze, or Palace of Tombut, whose Emperor, Jamoan,
is Barnagasso's rival in Zaraida's love. There is a villain, Zanhaga,
who after various more or less successful iniquities, poisons the
Emperor; whereon hero and heroine are happily u