ges tend
to be dismissed as tiresome and gratuitous moralizing and the plot
is often regarded as empty melodrama or the representation of some
ambiguous 'fate'. It is in this deliberate theological rationalization
of his materials that Hill owes most to Mrs. Trotter's domestic tragedy
and that he differs significantly from Moore.

As with Hill and Lillo, Moore's desire to write a play with an
extensively useful 'moral' led him to middle-class realism and prose.
To attack the widespread fashion of gaming which he regarded as a "vice",
Moore attempted to present "a natural picture" in language adapted "to
the capacities and feelings of every part of the audience" (Preface,
1756). That he should have treated this social problem tragically is to
be explained, perhaps, by his sources and by his religious background.
He justified the "horror of its catastrophe" on the grounds that "so
prevailing and destructive a vice as Gaming" warranted it. _The
Gamester_ has been justly credited with superior dramatic qualities in
comparison with Hill's _Fatal Extravagance,_, but we might perhaps note
briefly certain aspects of the two plays which reflect changes in the
intellectual background. In both plays theological ideas are involved
in the treatment of the fall of the hero, partially in Moore's play,
completely In Hill's. Not recognizing ideas common to early eighteenth
century sermons, the modern reader may perhaps puzzle over the steadily
increasing moral paralysis and despondency in Moore's hero, Beverly.
Vice, preached the divines, beclouds the reason, leaving it
progressively incapable of controlling the passions:

Follies, if uncontroul'd, of every kind,
Grow into passions, and subdue the mind. (V, 4)

Further each commission of sin causes progressive loss of grace, without
which man cannot act rightly. In prison Beverly is incapable of prayer
("I cannot pray--Despair has laid his iron hand upon me, and seal'd me
for perdition..."). However, a benevolent deity touches him with the
finger of grace, enabling him to repent ("I wish'd for ease, a moment's
ease, that cool repentance and contrition might soften vengeance"). He
can now pray for mercy and in his dying moments is vouchsafed assurance
of forgiveness ("Yet Heaven is gracious--I ask'd for hope, as the bright
presage of forgiveness, and like a light, blazing thro' darkness, it
came and chear'd me...").

In this aspect Moore is working along the lines laid down by Hi