r), is wooed by the
wealthy Roquelaure, although she is secretly married to Gramont, who is
also too poor to support a wife. Belgard, afraid that Gramont will make
love to Felicia (that is, to his own secret wife), persuades him--in
order that his best friend, Castalio, may be released from a debtor's
prison--bigamously to many Lamira, a wealthy widow. But Castalio is in
love with Lamira, and is driven to frenzy by Gramont's illegal marriage.
It all depends upon income in a manner comically untragical. The quarrel
between the friends in the fifth act is an effective piece of
stage-craft, but the action is spoiled by a ridiculous general butchery
at the close of all. However, the audience was charmed, and even "the
stubbornest could scarce deny their Tears."

_Fatal Friendship_ was played at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre, and no doubt
it was Congreve who brought Miss Trotter over from Drury Lane. His warm
friendship for her had unquestionably a great deal to do with her
success and with the jealousy of her rivals. A letter exists in which
the great dramatist acknowledges, in 1697, the congratulations of his
young admirer, and it breathes an eager cordiality. Congreve requested
Betterton to present him to Catharine Trotter, and his partiality for
her company is mentioned by several writers. The spiteful author of _The
Female Wits_ insinuates that Congreve made the looking-over of
Catharine's scenes "his pretence for daily visits." Another satirist, in
1698, describes Congreve sitting very gravely with his hat over his
eyes, "together with the two she-things called Poetesses which write for
his house," half-hidden from the public in a little side-box. Farquhar,
too, seeing the celebrated writer of _Fatal Friendship_ in the theatre
on the third night of the performance of his _Love and a Bottle_, had
"his passions wrought so high" by a sight of the beautiful author that
he wrote her a letter in which he called her "one of the fairest of the
sex, and the best judge." If Catharine Trotter, as the cynosure of
delicacy, at the age of nineteen, sat through _Love and a Bottle_
without a blush, even _her_ standard of decency was not very exacting.
But in all this rough, coarse world of wit her reputation never suffered
a rebuff.

Encouraged by so much public and private attention, our young dramatist
continued to work with energy and conscientiousness. But her efforts
were forestalled by an event, or rather a condition of the nationa