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VOL. 1.

THOMAS OTWAY.

( 211 )

OTWAY.

1651-1685.

Born at Trotton, in Sussex - Educated at Winchester and Oxford — Fails as an Actor-Great Success as a Dramatist - Serves as a Cornet in the English Army in Flanders His Poverty and tragic End- Buried in

St. Clement's Danes His Works and Character.

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OF THOMAS OTWAY, one of the first names in the English drama, little is known; nor is there any part of that little which his biographer can take pleasure in relating.

He was born at Trotton, in Sussex, March 3, 1651-2, the son of Mr. Humphrey Otway, rector of Woolbeding.1 From Winchester-school, where he was educated, he was entered, in 1669, a commoner of Christ Church [Oxford]; but left the university without a degree, whether for want of money, or from impatience of academical restraint, or mere eagerness to mingle with the world, is not known.

It seems likely that he was in hope of being busy and conspicuous; for he went to London, and commenced player, but found himself unable to gain any reputation on the stage."

This kind of inability he shared with Shakespeare and Jonson, as he shared likewise some of their excellences. It seems reasonable to expect that a great dramatic poet should without difficulty become a great actor; that he who can feel, could

He was at the time of his son's birth curate of Trotton. After the Restoration he became rector of the adjoining parish of Woolbeding, and died in 1670. -Dallaway's Sussex, i. 221.

2 Note. In this play ['The Jealous Bridegroom,' by Mrs. Behn] Mr. Otway the poet having an inclination to turn actor, Mrs. Behn gave him the King in the play for a probation part; but he being not used to the stage, the full house put him to such a sweat and tremendous agony, being dash't, spoilt him for an actor. Mr. Nat Lee had the same fate in acting Duncan in 'Macbeth,' ruin'd him for an actor too.-DOWNES: Roscius Anglicanus, 12mo., 1708, p. 34.

express; that he who can excite passion, should exhibit with great readiness its external modes: but, since experience has fully proved that of those powers, whatever be their affinity, one may be possessed in a great degree by him who has very little of the other, it must be allowed that they depend upon different faculties, or on different use of the same faculty; that the actor must have a pliancy of mien, a flexibility of countenance, and a variety of tones, which the poet may be easily supposed to want; or that the attention of the poet and the player have been differently employed; the one has been considering thought, and the other action-one has watched the heart, and the other contemplated the face.

Though he could not gain much notice as a player, he felt in himself such powers as might qualify for a dramatic author; and in 1675, his twenty-fifth year, produced Alcibiades,' a tragedy; whether from the Alcibiade` of Palaprat, I have not means to inquire. Langbaine, the great detector of plagiarism, is silent.

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In 1677 he published Titus and Berenice' [a tragedy], translated from Rapin, with the Cheats of Scapin' [a farce], from Molière; and in 1678 Friendship in Fashion,' a comedy, which, whatever might be its first reception, was, upon its revival at Drury Lane in 1749, hissed off the stage for immorality and obscenity.

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Want of morals or of decency did not in those days exclude any man from the company of the wealthy and the gay, if he brought with him any powers of entertainment; and Otway is said to have been at this time a favourite companion of the dissolute wits. But as he who desires no virtue in his companion has no virtue in himself, those whom Otway frequented had no purpose of doing more for him than to pay his reckoning. They

3 Palaprat wrote no play of this name. The Alcibiade' of Campistron was not brought upon the French stage till Dec. 1685.

This play [Titus and Berenice], with the farce, being perfectly well acted, had good success.--DowNES: Roscius Anglicans, 12mo., 1708.

5 This [Friendship in Fashion] is a very diverting play, and was acted with general applause.-Langhrine, ed. 1691, p. 398.

622nd January, 1749-50,

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desired only to drink and laugh; their fondness was without benevolence, and their familiarity without friendship. Men of wit, says one of Otway's biographers, received at that time no favour from the great but to share their riots, from which they were dismissed again to their own narrow circumstances. Thus they languished in poverty without the support of innocence.

Some exception, however, must be made. The Earl of Plymouth, one of King Charles's natural sons, procured for him a cornet's commission in some troops then sent into Flanders. But Otway did not prosper in his military character, for he soon left his commission behind him, whatever was the reason, and came back to London in extreme indigence, which Rochester mentions with merciless insolence in the Session of the Poets:'

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"Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell's dear zany,
And swears for heroics he writes best of any;

Don Carlos his pockets so amply had fill'd,

That his mange was quite cured, and his lice were all kill'd.

But Apollo had seen his face on the stage,

And prudently did not think fit to engage

The scum of a play-house, for the prop of an age."

Don Carlos,' from which he is represented as having received so much benefit, was played in 1676. It appears by the lampoon to have had great success, and is said to have been played thirty nights together. This, however, it is reasonable to doubt, as so long a continuance of one play upon the stage is a very wide deviation from the practice of that time, when the ardour for theatrical entertainments was not yet diffused through the whole people, and the audience, consisting nearly of the same persons, could be drawn together only by variety.

7 Johnson copies the writer in Cibber's Lives,' ii. 335. 'Don Carlos' was Otway's "Second Play." "All the parts," says Downes, the prompter at the Duke's theatre when it was brought out, "being admirably acted, it lasted successively ten days:"—he adds, that "it got more money than any preceding modern tragedy."

Mr. Betterton observed to me many years ago that 'Don Carlos' succeeded much better than either Venice Preserved' or 'The Orphan,' and was infinitely more applauded and followed for many years.-Barton Booth to Aaron Hill, June 19, 1732.

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