Thomas Otway. Thomas Otway
whereas the former belongs especially to the particular event or crisis. In the former species I have allowed that Otway is not rich. We look in vain for the poetry of Hamlet, of brooding, irresolute, melancholy; for the poetry of Lorenzo, that of music; or Portia, which is that of mercy; for any lovely words like those of Perdita, the very breath and symphony of flowers; for any accents like those of heart-stricken Aspatia, in her swan-song of desertion; or visionary anthem of Helen's ideal beauty, as in Marlowe. No Claudio out of Shakespeare has uttered a final word concerning physical death equal to this: "To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot"; no Cæsar has fixed for us the visible tokens of a born conspirator; no Jaques summed for us the seasons of human life. Nor are these mere "purple patches"; far from it, they are of the seamless garment's very warp and woof.
But, if we consider, we shall find that much of the poetry we love best in that earlier drama is the poetry of movement or supreme event; and this we do find in Otway, as the passages which I have already quoted, or mentioned, are sufficient to prove. We do find in him poetry parallel to that of mad Lear's heart-quaking utterance in presence of Cordelia, which commences—
Pray do not mock me;
I am a very foolish fond old man,
and ends—
Do not laugh at me;
For as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
or to her answer—
And so I am, I am!
She has some cause to be angry with him, but her sisters none, he says; and she answers "No cause! no cause!" That, which is, perhaps, the finest passage in all literature, has not one metaphor, one trope, one "precious" phrase; but any old injured madman might speak just so. When poor, laughable, dissolute old Falstaff, dying, "babbles o' green fields"; when Lear at the last apostrophises his dead Cordelia—
Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never! * * *
Pray you, undo this button. Thank you, sir! * * *
Do you see this? Look on her—look—her lips—
we can hardly bear to hear them. It is so much finer, because so much truer to nature than when those ingeniously poetical ladies, entreating the sepulture of their best beloved, urge that they are "rinsing their holy begging in their eyes." But Tourneur's Castiza takes our breath away when she adjures the trusted and reverenced mother, who has suffered her own better nature to be warped and darkened, and invites her daughter to suffer moral degradation, in the words—
Mother, come from that poisonous woman there!
It is a gleam of heavenly light blinding us out of the gloom. And when the Duchess of Malfi in her last struggle entreats—
I pray thee look thou givest my little boy
Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl
Say her prayers ere she sleep. Now what you please
[Pg xxxvii]
we are reminded of the equally touching words of Belvidera about her child, and the last words of dying Monimia:
When I am laid low in the grave, and quite forgotten,
May'st thou be happy in a fairer bride!
But none can ever love thee like Monimia. * * *
I'm here; who calls me? Methought I heard a voice
Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains
When all his little flock's at feed before him * * *
How my head swims. 'Tis very dark. Good night.
It is true that the poet, since he takes the liberty to translate into verse men's ordinary language, may also interpret and mould his story, together with the speech it may involve, artistically, according to his own genius. But then the turn of thought, of feeling and of phraseology must have verisimilitude, that is to say, must seem related, not only to the event as it might appear to the poet personally, but as it ought to appear to him when he has imagined himself into the character and circumstances represented. Thus the strange figure made use of by Jaffier in addressing Pierre, who is about to be tortured on the rack, is felt to be absolutely fitting. For anger, despair, remorse, will sometimes burst forth in hyperbole. Wisdom is justified of her children.
And now perhaps we may hardly be surprised to hear the consenting voice of great authorities place Otway very high among the masters of English tragedy. Dryden, though, when "fearing a rival near the throne," he had called Otway "a barren illiterate man," said afterwards: "The motions which are studied are never so natural as[Pg xxxviii] those which break out in the height of a real passion. Mr. Otway possessed this part as thoroughly as any of the ancients or moderns." And again:
Charming his face and charming was his verse.
Addison says: "Otway has followed nature in the language of his tragedy, and therefore shines in the passionate parts more than any of our English poets." Goldsmith again: "The English language owes very little to Otway, though next to Shakespeare the greatest genius England has ever produced in tragedy." Then let us remember the beautiful lines of Collins:
But wherefore need I wander wide
To old Ilissus' distant side,
Deserted stream and mute!
Wild Arun too has heard thy strains,
And echo 'midst my native plains
Been soothed by Pity's lute.
There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's infant head,
To him thy cell was shown,
And while he sung the female heart,
With youth's soft notes unspoiled by art,
Thy turtles mixed their own.
And Coleridge, musing upon "mighty poets in their misery dead," in his "Monody on the death of Chatterton" sang:
Is this the land of song-ennobled line?
Is this the land where genius ne'er in vain
Poured forth his lofty strain?
Ah me, yet Spenser, gentlest bard divine,
Beneath chill disappointment's shade
His weary limbs in lonely anguish laid,
And o'er her darling dead,
Pity, hopeless, hung her head;
While 'mid the pelting of that merciless storm
Sunk to the cold earth Otway's famished form.
Respecting Otway's scenes of passionate affection, Sir Walter Scott says that they "rival and sometimes excel those of Shakespeare; more tears have been shed probably for the sorrows of Belvidera and Monimia than for those of Juliet and Desdemona."
Thomas Otway[3] was born March 3rd, 1651, at Trotton near Midhurst in Sussex, and was the only son of the Rev. Humphrey Otway, Rector of Wolbeding in the same county. He was educated at Wickeham School, Winchester, and at eighteen was entered a commoner of Christ Church College, Oxford, early in 1669. He does not display much learning, and probably did not study very hard, but preferred amusing himself with his friends, among whom was young Lord Falkland. He had been intended for the Church; but the death of his father, who, as he tells us, "left him no other patrimony than his faith and loyalty," probably obliged him to leave Oxford without taking a degree. In 1671 he went to London to seek his fortune there. At the theatre in Dorset Garden, Salisbury Court, all Otway's plays, except the last, were performed by the Duke of York's company; and here Otway himself made his first and only appearance as an actor, taking the part of the King in Mrs. Behn's Forced Marriage. This attempt was eminently unsuccessful. He seems now to have cultivated the society of men of rank and fashion, who tolerated him as a boon