or Sir Fopling Flutter_.

TRAGEDY.

The domain of tragedy, although perhaps not so attractive to the English
people as comedy, was still sufficiently so to invite the attention of the
literati. The excitement which is produced by exaggerated scenes of
distress and death has always had a charm for the multitude; and although
the principal tragedies of this period are based upon heroic stories, many
of them of classic origin, the genius of the writer displayed itself in
applying these to his own times, and in introducing that "touch of nature"
which "makes the whole world kin." Human sympathy is based upon a
community of suffering, and the sorrows of one age are similar to those of
another. Besides, tragedy served, in the period of which we are speaking,
to give variety and contrast to what would otherwise have been the gay
monotony of the comic muse.

OTWAY.--The first writer to be mentioned in this field, is Thomas Otway
(born in 1651, died in 1685). He led an irregular and wretched life, and
died, it is said, from being choked by a roll of bread which, after great
want, he was eating too ravenously.

His style is extravagant, his pathos too exacting, and his delineation of
the passions sensational and overwrought. He produced in his earlier
career _Alcibiades_ and _Don Carlos_, and, later, _The Orphan_, and _The
Soldier's Fortune_. But the piece by which his fame was secured is _Venice
Preserved_, which, based upon history, is fictional in its details. The
original story is found in the Abbe de St. Real's _Histoire de la
Conjuration du Marquis de Bedamar_, or the account of a Spanish conspiracy
in which the marquis, who was ambassador, took part. It is still put upon
the stage, with the omission, however, of the licentious comic portions
found in the original play.

NICHOLAS ROWE, who was born in 1673, a man of fortune and a government
official, produced seven tragedies, of which _The Fair Penitent_, _Lady
Jane Grey_, and _Jane Shore_ are the best. His description of the lover,
in the first, has become a current phrase: "That haughty, gallant, gay
Lothario,"--the prototype of false lovers since. The plots are too broad,
but the moral of these tragedies is in most cases good.

In _Jane Shore_, he has followed the history of the royal mistress, and
has given a moral lesson of great efficacy.

NATHANIEL LEE, 1657-1692: was a man of dissolute life, for some time
insane, and met his death in a drunken bra