Thomas Otway
Thomas Otway | |
---|---|
Trotton, Sussex, England | |
Died | 14 April 1685 | (aged 33)
Burial place | St Clement Danes |
Nationality | English |
Occupation | Dramatist |
Years active | 1672–1685 |
Known for | Venice Preserv'd |
Thomas Otway (3 March 1652 – 14 April 1685) was an
Life
Otway was born at
The muse he had fallen in love with was Elizabeth Barry, who played many of the leading parts in his plays. Six letters to her survive, the last of them referring to a broken appointment in the Mall. She seems to have flirted with Otway, but had no intention of permanently offending Rochester, her lover. In 1678, driven to desperation, Otway obtained a commission through Charles, Earl of Plymouth, a natural son of Charles II, in a regiment serving in the Netherlands. The English troops were disbanded in 1679, but were left to find their way home as best they could. They were paid with depreciated paper, and Otway arrived in London late in the year, ragged and dirty, a circumstance utilized by Elkanah Settle in his Sessions of the Poets.[6]
Upon his return, he apparently ceased to struggle against his poverty and misfortunes. At one point in attempts to make money, he tutored the son of famed Restoration actress
Writing career
In 1675
In 1677 Betterton produced two adaptations from the French by Otway, Titus and Berenice (from Racine's Bérénice), and The Cheats of Scapin (from Molière's Scapin the Schemer). These were printed together, with a dedication to Rochester. In 1678 he produced an original comedy, Friendship in Fashion, which was very successful.[8]
In February 1680, the first of Otway's two tragic masterpieces, The Orphan, or The Unhappy Marriage, was produced at the Dorset Garden, with Mrs. Barry playing the part of Monimia. Written in blank verse, modeled upon Shakespeare, its success was due to Otway's mastery of tragic pathos found in the characters of Castalio and Monimia. The History and Fall of Caius Marius, produced in 1679 and first printed in 1680, is a curious grafting of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on the story of Marius as related in Plutarch's Lives.[6] Caius Marius was incredibly popular during its time, outperforming Romeo and Juliet for at least seventy years following its initial release.[9]
In 1680, Otway also published The Poets Complaint of his Muse, or A Satyr against Libells, in which he retaliated against his literary enemies and critics. An indifferent comedy, The Soldier's Fortune (1681), was followed in February 1682 by
"Poland, Poland! Had it been thy Lot,
T'have heard in time of this Venetian Plot;
Thou surely chosen hadst one King from thence,
And honour'd them as thou hast England since."
The allusion is to rumours current at the time that Shaftesbury had planned to make himself King of Poland. Because of this, and the silver pipe John Locke had inserted into him to drain an abscess, he was popularly referred to as "Count Tapski".[citation needed]
Venice Preserv'd also contains an allusion to Rochester's famous deathbed conversion, as reported in Gilbert Burnet's Some Passages of the Life and Death of.. Rochester (1680). The conversion was doubted by many, and Otway is obviously skeptical, for when Pierre is on the scaffold, attended by a priest, he is made to say the following to his executioner (Act V, scene ii): "Captain, I'd have hereafter / This fellow write no Lies of my Conversion."
The play won instant success. It was translated into almost every European language, and even Dryden said of it: "Nature is there, which is the greatest beauty."[6]
The Orphan and Venice Preserved remained stock pieces on the stage until the 19th century, and the leading actresses of the period played Monimia and Belvidera.[6] His last and most obscure play is The Atheist (1684), although many see it as a way to cash in on his previous comic success with The Soldier's Fortune, some see it not as a weak sequel but as a "brilliant experiment."[10] One of the aims of the play is to show what happens after the wedding as sentimental conclusion in plays of the period through the figures of Courtine and Sylvia. The bleakness of their relations taint those of Beauregard and Porcia. The complexity of the plot, some of which derives from the "Invisible Mistress," the first interpolated story in Paul Scarron's Roman comique,[11] speak of the maze of human life, a meaningless world left for the audience to decipher. One or two prefaces, and two posthumous pieces, a poem, Windsor Castle (1685), a panegyric of Charles II, and a History of the Triumvirates (1686), translated from the French, complete the list of Otway's works. A tragedy entitled Heroick Friendship was printed in 1686 as Otway's work, but the ascription is unlikely.[6]
The Works of Mr. Thomas Otway with some account of his life and writings, published in 1712, was followed by other editions (1722, 1757, 1768, 1812). Through the 19th century the standard edition was that by T. Thornton (1813).[6]
Notes
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- ^ Gosse, Edmund (1914). "Thomas Otway". Seventeenth Century Studies. Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 299–342.
- ^ Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, 1779-1781, Oxford University Press 1961. Johnson calls it "Trottin"
- ^ "Woolbedding" in Johnson
- ^ a b Chisholm 1911, p. 376.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Chisholm 1911, p. 377.
- ^ The same story is given in Johnson's account
- ^ Chisholm 1911, pp. 376–377.
- ^ "Romeo and Juliet - About the Play - Stage History". Royal Shakespeare Company.
- ^ Robert D. Hume, "Otway and the Comic Muse" Studies in Philology 73 (1976) pp. 87-116
- ^ Jessica Munns, Restoration politics and drama: the plays of Thomas Otway, 1675-1683, University of Delaware Press, 1995, p. 33
References
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Otway, Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 376–377. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
External links
- Media related to Thomas Otway at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by or about Thomas Otway at Wikisource
- Quotations related to Thomas Otway at Wikiquote
- Works by Thomas Otway at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Thomas Otway at Faded Page (Canada)
- Works by or about Thomas Otway at Internet Archive