Moral Vision in the Drama of Thomas Otway
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MORAL VISION IN THE DRAMA OF THOMAS OTWAY By JOHN DAVID WALKER A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCIL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE KEQIHEEMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA June, 1967 ..i^.l^lVERSITY OF FLORIDA 3 1262 08552 4071 PR^ACE What Is known about Thomas Otway extends but a short distance beyond his artistic achievements. Records of his life are sparse, and other than his date and place of birth (3 March, 1652, Milland in the parish of Trotton, Sussex); his matriculation at Winchester College and (1668) and Oxford (1669) ; his military service in Flanders (1678) ; his death (14 April, 1685), little else has been uncovered. Scholars, however, have taken Otway's The Poet's Complaint of his Muse (1680) as being autobiographical, and without any objective sources to corrobo- rate the "facts" of the poem, have "constructed" from it a biography, disregarding the transformation which may occur to a poet's history when 2 subjected to the pressures of an artistic mold. Though there are no extant manuscripts written by Otway, biograph- ers have assumed that six letters published in 1697 in a volume entitled Familiar Letters by the Earl of Rochester . And several other Persons of Honour and Quality and "signed" with Otway's name are genuine. The letters bear no superscription, yet biographers uncritically have accepted a statement made in 1713 by the original publishers of the See J. C. Ghosh, The Works of Thomas Otway (Oxford, 1932), I, 6-29, All quotations from Otway's works are taken from this edition. 2 The practice is common to all who have commented on Otway's life. See particularly Roswell Gray Ham, Otway eind Lee : Biography from a Baroque Age (New Haven, 1931). 11 : 3 "letters" that they were addressed to Mrs. Barry. Since they were impassioned love letters, there was thus concocted a story of Otway's "pathetic" and "unrealized" passion for the actress, which in turn was read into Otway's tragedies. Bonamy Dobr^e, for instance, referring to the "letters," declares that Mrs. Barry "kept the unfortunate Otway in a Ktftte of suspense which drove him to dlBtractlon. This wan the central experience which determined his outlook and his mentality; it made him the poet he was, though in destroying the man it may have stifled a still greater poet. ... A victim of unrequited love, he palpably relied upon the expression of the tortures of love for his most poignant scenes." Roswell Ham goes even further: "[Otway's] plays are unusually distinct: the hero, forever the man Otway; the heroine, the transfigured image of the woman he loved." Such is the legend that has grown from mere supposition and unfounded rumor, and that has biased generations of readers who find in Otway's tragedies only the mirror of "poor Otway's" hopeless love. Until more facts about Otway's life history are discovered, any biographical approach to his writing is hazardous and misleading. It is equally hazardous to read Otway's tragedies in the light of the See Ghosh, I, 13-14. In fact, the "statement" by the original publishers Is made in an advertisement at the end of volume I of Nathaniel Lee's works (1713) and repeated in the 1734 edition of his works Familiar Letters, writ by John late Earl of Rochester , to the honourable Henry Savile . Esqr.; and other Persons of Honour and Quality: With Love-Letters by the Ingenious Mr. Thomas Otway , to that excellent Actress Mrs. Barry. ^Restoration Tragedy (Oxford, 1929), pp. 139-140. Otway and Lee , p. 85. til an Interpretation of playhouse. As Aline Mackenzie Taylor points out, "effeminate," "cowardly," Castallo as "Ineffectual," or of Jaffeir as more often than "indulgent," or of Pierre as an "intrepid" villain is Charles Kemble, not the effect produced by the actin| of Betterton, the effect produced George Frederick Cook, or John Philip Kemble~not Taylor is unwilling to from a close reading of the plays. ^ Yet even meaning, attempting rely solely on the text for understanding Otway's interpretations. Her inclina- to mediate between the text and actors' perhaps more than for tion, however, is towards the stage: "for Otway reality of his other dramatists of equal caliber is it true that the lively action'— plays lies not in the printed text, but in 'the soul of the stage." Yet in the actors who bodied forth his characters on away Dryden's estimate of where the "reality" of a play lies takes us The Spanish from the playhouse and into the text; in his Dedication to audience, so Friar (1681), he writes, "as it is my ambition to please my lasting and it is my ambition to be read: that I am sure is the more which are the nobler design: for the propriety of thoughts and words, vehemence the hidden beauties of a play are but confusedly judged in the where the of action: all things are there beheld, as in a hasty motion, •I 8 objects only glide before the eye, and disappear. Dryden's premise that the ultimate meaning of a play lies in its text and not its staging underlies the kind of analysis of Otway's The Orphan and Next to Shakespeare ; Otway's Venice Preserv'd and Their History on the London Stage (Durham, 1950), pp. 6-7. ^Ibid., p. 7. Saintsbury ^The Works of John Dryden . ed. Walter Scott and George (Edinburgh, 1883), VI, 408-409. Iv tragedies which I attempt In this critical study. I have not hesitated to take from Otway's Intellectual milieu that which casts light on the . meaning of his drama, but primarily the text of his plays Is the central concern. And as one would expect In a dramatic career that lasted only eight years, It becomes Increasingly apparent that a central theme occupied Ocway'a artistic endeavors, a theme which gives coherence and unity to his tragic vision. Briefly stated, the theme Is the paradox of ' man's nature. At first, the theme Is expressed In terms of dualities which oppose one another within man and which pull him In opposite directions. Later, In The Orphan and, particularly. In Venice Preserv'd, the dualities are Imaged as alloys which both bless and damn each human being. In a very real sense, Otway's theme of man's paradoxical nature Is akin to the medieval vision of man as the nodal point of creation. In whom the animal and the angelic meet. But seldom have writers before or after Otway delineated, with such telling effect, the results upon man's existence of a nature which, like a whlpsaw, pulls him between two dif- ferent worlds. I am grateful to my typists, Marlon Hanscom and, especially, Althea Benjamin, who produced the final typescript of the dissertation. I wish also to acknowledge a large debt to Robert Kalroey, John Fischer, and Earl Ramsey, whose commitment to the Immense statements neo-classical literature makes acts as a spur to my own efforts. Particularly I wish to thank John Fischer for helping in a variety of ways to complete the necessary forms in applying for the degree. My committee, who read this dissertation at various stages of its development, offered valuable counsel. But the debt which looms greater than all others is that which at I owe Aubrey Williams, who directed the dissertation and who urged every stage of its writing a more precise and thoughtful statement. Ab in teaching the scholar's craft, like Pope, he also nurtures the man within the critic, and for that I ait grateful. Finally, after all the "Years foil 'wing Years," there still is Nona, and for that too I am grateful. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I 1 CHAPTER II 26 CHAPTER III 76 CHAPTER IV 115 CHAPTER V 158 LIST OF WORKS CITED 212 CHAPTER I Thomas Otway's first play, an heroic tragedy entitled Alclblades , was staged at the Duke's Theater, apparently In late September, 1675. Unfavorably criticized at Its first performance. Ignored by later scholars, the play was not a particularly auspicious start to a dramatic career which, though spanning only eight years, was to place 2 Otway among the foremost of English dramatists. Yet if one may judge by the inscription from Horace on the play's title page - Laudetur ab 3 his Culpetur ab illis - the initial critical response of the Restora- tion audience was at least mixed. Otway in fact claimed in the Preface to his second play, Don Carlos , that against "the objections some people may make" about Alclblades , he was "satisfy 'd" that he "had the greatest party of men of wit and sense on [his] side," a party which Included the Earl of Rochester, "the King, and his Royal Highness." In the same Preface, Otway implies that the objection which some J. C. Ghosh, ed. The Works of Thomas Otway (Oxford, 1932), I, 39. See The London Stage . 1660-1800 , ed. William Van Lennep (Carbondale, 1965), I, pt. I, 239. 2 Otway's last play. The Atheist , was acted not later than July, 1683 (The London Stage , I, 320). Ghosh describes Alclblades as a poor example of heroic drama, bearing "every trace of the Immature hand" (I, 39); Edmund Gosse dismisses it as a "mawkish piece of rhyming rant" (Leaves and Fruit (London, 1927), p. 97). ^Satires . Bk. 1, 11, 1. 11. | *Gho8h, I, 173-174. In his audience levelled at the play was aimed at his nonhlstorlcal characterization of an historical person: "...I found my self Father of a Dramatique birth, which I call'd Alclblades ; but I might without offence to any person in the Play, as well have call'd it Nebuchadnezzar.