Thomas Otway

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Standard Name: Otway, Thomas

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Aphra Behn
AB was intimate with the writers' and artists' circles of her day. She befriended Thomas Otway , and allowed him to act in her first play, when he was an insecure youth of nineteen. She...
Intertextuality and Influence Margaret Holford
The dedication relates how a masculine natal Genius visited the new-born poet, making her mother half-afraid of that aspect strange and wild, / As with immortal hand he touch'd th'unconscious child! The mother does not...
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Maria Mackenzie
The title-page quotes lines from Thomas Otway about a massacre of children by soldiers; chapter one quotes Milton on the torments of a bad conscience. The story is set in the tenth and eleventh centuries...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Thomas
The title alludes to the pronouncement in the Bible that the labourer is worthy of his hire. Thomas chooses a title-page quotation from Cibber , reinforces the theatrical and period note with lines from Otway
Occupation Anna Eliza Bray
Anna Eliza Kempe (later AEB ) was advertised as making her acting debut in the role of Belvidera (in Thomas Otway 's Venice Preserv'd) at the BathTheatre .
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908.
Bray, Anna Eliza. Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray. Editor Kempe, John A., Chapman and Hall, 1884.
125-6
Reception Aphra Behn
It ran for six nights, making it a success, and giving its author (according to custom) the entire theatre profits on the third and sixth nights. The young and nervous actor Thomas Otway had a...
Textual Features Mary Pix
The dedication mentions the Countess's experience of travel, and of suffering with her husband. The two widows of the play are differentiated as they are a good and a bad mother. Several motifs familiar from...
Textual Features Catharine Trotter
CT 's dedication sets out her own literary and dramatic models: Shakespeare , Dryden , Otway , and Nathaniel Lee .
Clark, Constance. Three Augustan Women Playwrights. Peter Lang, 1986.
87
The play, set in late fifteenth-century France, concerns royal marriage. Charles VIII
Textual Production Eglinton Wallace
The full title reads A Supplement to The conduct of the King of Prussia &c. investigated; Observations upon the present state of English politics; and a plan for altering the mode of carrying on the...
Textual Production Mrs Showes
The title-page bears a quotation from Thomas Otway .
Textual Production Aphra Behn
Thomas Otway contributed the prologue.
Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Poets. Editor Lonsdale, Roger, Clarendon Press, 2006.
2: 257n3
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Susanna Blamire
SB 's imaginative sympathy with the poor and uneducated, shown in many of her poems, is vividly present in We've hed sec a Durdum, a ventriloquized report of local festivities which include low-life entertainments...
Wealth and Poverty Aphra Behn
Despite her own endemic poverty, AB lent Otway , who was near death and too poor to eat, £5.
Mendelson, Sara Heller. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Harvester Press, 1987.
152, 175

Timeline

24 January 1671
Jean Racine 's Bérénice, first produced on stage the previous year, was published.
About 9 February 1682
Thomas Otway 's she-tragedyVenice Preserved had its first performance.
3 December 1716
The new Prince of Wales requested a special performance of Otway 's Venice Preserved including the Nicky Nacky scenes, which it had become usual to cut.
12 August 1752
Justice John Fielding defined the crime of apprentices caught putting on an unlicensed play as mere unlawful assembly; they got off with a reprimand.

Texts

John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, Thomas Otway, and Katherine Philips. Familiar Letters. Samuel Briscoe, 1697.