Otway, THOMAS, one of the greatest masters of English tragedy, of whose life, says Dr Johnson, '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, 1652, son of the rector of Woolbeding in that county, and entered Christ Church, Oxford, as a gentleman-commoner in 1669. He was a brilliant and impulsive youth—'charming his face was, charming was his verse,' says Dryden, but his life throughout was darkened by the shadow of misfortune. He made a wretched failure as an actor in Aphra Behn's Fore'd Marriage in 1671, declined the church, and left the university without a degree in 1672, and next year obtained a cornetcy in a troop of horse. A year later he was settled in London, and had a tame and conventional tragedy, Aleibiades, accepted at the Duke's Theatre, which was managed first by Davenant, then by Betterton. In it the beautiful Mrs Barry made her first appearance, and with her the hapless poet quickly fell in love. In 1676 Betterton accepted Don Carlos, a good tragedy in rhyme, nervous and full of pathos, dedicated to the Duke of York. Its plot, like that of his greatest play, he owed to the Abbé St-Réal. The year after Otway translated Racine's Titus and Berenice, as well as Molière's Cheats of Scapin. The intrigue between Rochester and Mrs Barry now became more than he could bear, and through the influence of the Earl of Plymouth, a college friend, and one of the king's bastards, he received a cornet's commission again, and went a-soldiering to Flanders. It proved a complete fiasco, and he soon came back to his infatuation, miserable and unpaid, a butt for Rochester in his poor and spiteful Session of the Poets. In 1678 he had produced a poor comedy, Friendship in Fashion; in 1679 another, The Soldier's Fortune, full of touches of autobiographic detail. He was ever improvident and dissipated, and his affairs by this time had become desperate, but the death of his rival in 1680 seems to have nerved him to make a brave effort to shake off his burden of debt. That year yielded two tragedies, and his one important poem, The Poet's Complaint of his Muse, a rough, but firmly drawn satirical portrait of himself and his principal enemies, Rochester, Shadwell, and Settle. Of the plays, the first was The Orphan, a tragedy in blank verse, marred by many faults in plot besides its radical indecency, but stamped throughout with power and sovereign pathos, over whose central figure, Monimia, says Mr Gosse, perhaps more tears have been shed than over any other stage-heroine. The other was The History and Fall of Caius Marius, confessedly a kind of cento from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, with touches from Julius Cæsar. The year 1682 saw his greatest work, Venice Preserved, or a Plot Discovered, a noble masterpiece of tragic passion, admirably constructed, its heroine Belvidera a delightful creation of almost the highest order of dramatic genius. The only blot upon its perfection is the comic passages, which M. Taine alone among critics finds Shakespearian. Otway's mistress was now at the height of her fame, and in the parts of Monimia and Belvidera had taken the town by storm. Six letters of his to her are extant, written apparently about 1682, which tell us the touching story of his faith and of her cruelty, how she played with his passion for seven years, and at last broke his heart. From this time he sinks out of sight, drowned in dissipation, debt, and misery. He reappears again in 1684 with The Atheist, a feeble comedy, and, on the death of Charles II. in February 1685, with Windsor Castle, a poem addressed to the new king. But his claims were neglected, and he wore out the ruins of his wasted life in abject misery in a sponging-house or tavern on Tower Hill. Here he died, April 14, 1685, choked, it is said, after a long fast, with a piece of bread, which he had rushed in the eagerness of hunger to buy with a guinea given him by a passing stranger from whom he had begged a shilling.
In 1719 a badly edited tragedy, Heroick Friendship, was published as his, and Mr Gosse thinks that, imperfect as the execution is, the plot and ideas are characteristic of Otway. The best edition of his works is still that by Thornton (3 vols. 1813). Otway owed much to Corneille, and was long popular in France, despite the severe and unjust judgment of Voltaire. His life recalls the tragic history of Marlowe, just as his greatest play reminds a reader of Othello. Strong without bombast, its exquisite love-scenes between Jaffier and
Belvidera tender without weakness, 'it is simply,' says Mr Gosse, 'the greatest tragic drama between Shakespeare and Shelley. Out of the dead waste of the Restoration, with all its bustling talent and vain show, this one solitary work of supreme genius arose unexpected and unimitated.'
See Johnson's Lives, Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature (vol. ii. 1875), Edmund Gosse's excellent essay in Seventeenth Century Studies (1883), and the Hon. Roden Noel's edition in 'Mermaid' series (1888).