Thomas Otway, born on 3 March 1652 and buried on 16 April 1685 after his death in London on 14 April, lived only thirty-three years, yet he secured a place among the most affecting dramatists of Restoration England. In an age remembered for its polished wit, sexual comedy, heroic rhetoric, and political quarrels, Otway brought a distinctive intensity to the public stage. His finest plays, above all The Orphan and Ven…
“I love You, I dote on You; Desire makes me mad, when I am near You; and Despair, when I am from You.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
John Webster, born around 1580 and probably dead by about 1632, occupies a singular place in English Renaissance drama. He is remembered above all as the author of The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, tragedies whose violent plots, dense imagery, and moral unease have made them enduring fixtures of the theatrical canon. Yet the familiar image of Webster as a solitary poet of skulls, stranglings, poison, and corr…
“A great part of the grace of this, I confess, lay in action; yet can no action ever be gracious, where the decency of the language, and ingenious structure of the scene, arrive not to make up a perfect harmony.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
