stantly made Rowe Clerk of Presentations. Death cut short his career at the early age of forty-four (1718). His old school-fellow and friend, Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, read the funeral services at Rowe's burial in Westminster Abbey. Pope wrote an epitaph which appears now in two versions.

All accounts of Rowe speak of his personal charm, his vivacity, and his genial, gay mood of comradeship. Spence tells us that Pope considered him the most delightful companion to spend a week with in Windsor Forest because of his unfailing high spirits. He read aloud famously, as Mrs. Oldfield testified in saying that it was the best part of her dramatic education to hear Rowe read her part in one of his plays. Rowe was an accomplished scholar, well acquainted with the classics, with French, Italian, and Spanish literature, and was a translator of distinguished merit. His translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, published a year after his death, is held to be of worth to-day. In consideration of this translation, Rowe's widow was granted a pension by the King. Rowe wrote occasional verse commemorative of the events of the day, odes, addresses to the King at New Year's, verses upon the sickness and recovery of Sir Robert Walpole, and some epilogues and prologues. As editor in 1709 of the first edition of Shakespeare after the folios, Rowe's work is of great importance. (Vide Introduction, p. xliv.) He was the friend of all the prominent eighteenth century literary men, and enjoyed great esteem for his talents.

Introduction

THE interest of Nicholas Rowe to-day lies chiefly in his connection with the renaissance of Shakespeare in the eighteenth century. As a dramatist, he was regarded by his contemporaries as the probable successor of Dryden; though posterity has not confirmed this opinion, Rowe has had a singularly long vogue on the stage, partly, perhaps, because it was his initial good luck that the important rôles in many of his plays should be associated with the most illustrious names among English actors. The tradition of the great parts created by Betterton, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mrs. Barry was passed on to Garrick, to Mrs. Siddons, to Macready and Kean. It was still memorable in the first quarter of the nineteenth century when Jane Shore offered challenge to aspiring young actors who wished to test their prowess by appearing in rôles in which great predecessors had won their laurels. Amazing proof of the vitality of the play in public interest is found in its steady repetition year after year in the century following Rowe's death. Indeed, down to 1880, when Genevieve Ward again played the leading rôle, performances of Jane Shore are within the memory of many who recall the power which the part had over audiences. A close rival was The Fair Penitent, in which Goethe acted in a German adaptation. In the last cen

tury, history records performances of The Fair Penitent, "the favorite drama of the town," in which Edward, Duke of York, and Lady Stanhope took the leading rôles in the "private theatre " on Downing Street. Dr. Johnson's praise is typical of the general attitude toward this

play: "there is scarcely any work of any poet so interesting by the fable and so delightful in the language." Both Jane Shore and The Fair Penitent were translated into French and republished up to 1825. It is worth while to examine plays which have held so many generations of theatregoers as The Fair Penitent and Jane Shore, especially when these plays are the most typical embodiment of eighteenth century theories of the drama. In them we can see reflected as in a mirror those habits of thought and feeling and expression in art form which mark the dramatic achievement of the Augustan age. To students of the drama, therefore, these plays must always have a significance and interest which is independent of their intrinsic merit as literature.

Though Rowe was an ardent admirer of the Elizabethans, his love for them did not breed any fine under

1 The following are selected titles from A Catalogue of the Library of N. Rowe, late Poet Laureate to His Majesty. which will be sold the 26th of August, 1719. (The British Museum Collection & Pamphlets.)

standing of their purpose and temper; he was conditioned necessarily by the literary ideals of his own age. Both The Fair Penitent and Jane Shore are eighteenth century versions of Elizabethan dramatic methods. Rowe, as we know, planned an edition of Massinger, with the probable intention of doing for him what he did so successfully for Shakespeare. He got no further than taking the plot of The Fair Penitent from Massinger and Field's The Fatal Dowry. The difference between Massinger's play and Rowe's well illustrates the change in the drama from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century in the greater insistence on regularity of plot; but this regularity of plot seems to be purchased at the cost of vitality of treatment. Both plays have roughly the same characters, the same relationships among them, and the same general course of events, but Rowe greatly simplifies the action by beginning his play at what is the close of Massinger's second act. The Fatal Dowry opens with a scene of real dramatic pathos. Young Charalois (Rowe's Altamont), overwhelmed with grief that his father's body must, on account of debts, remain unburied, petitions the judges for clemency. When he sees them first, he is dumb under the stress of his feeling, but finally with deep eloquence recounts the services of his father, who, as Marshal of France, lost life and fortune in defence of the state. When he offers himself, as a last resort, to the creditors for the release of his father's body, the pure filial devotion of the youth is exhibited with sustained power. This "golden precedent in a son" so moves the hearts of the judges that one among them offers the needed money to Charalois and gives him at the same time his daughter's hand in marriage. With the Elizabethan love of spectacle and incident, Massinger introduces the funeral scene of the dead Marshal of France: Charalois, the son, at