OTWAY, Thomas, an eminent tragic poet, was the son of Mr Humphrey Otway, rector of Woolbeding, in Sussex, and was born at Trottin, in that county, on the 3d of March 1651. He received the rudiments of his education at Winchester school, and in 1669 was entered a commoner of Christ-Church; but, from whatever cause, he left the university without a degree, and proceeded to London, where he commenced player. In 1672, he made his first appearance on the stage in the character of the king in the Forced Marriage, though with indifferent success, and soon found that he was not likely to gain much reputation as an actor. This inability to shine on the stage Otway shared with Shakspeare and Jonson, as he likewise shared some of their excellencies. It seems reasonable to expect, indeed, that a great dramatic poet should without difficulty become a great actor; that he who can feel might also express; that the man who can excite passion should be able to exhibit readily its external modes and indications. But experience has fully proved that, whatever be the affinity of these powers, one of them may be possessed in a great degree by a person who has very little of the other; and that they either depend on different faculties, or a different use of the same faculty. The actor must possess a pliancy of mien, a flexibility of countenance, and a variety of intonation, in which the poet may easily be supposed deficient; or the attention of each may have been differently employed, the poet considering thought and the player action, the one watching the heart and the other contemplating the expression of the countenance.

Otway, however, though sensible of his inability to attract notice as an actor, felt conscious of possessing powers which qualified him for becoming a dramatic author; and, under this impression, his very first attempt was made in the highest department of the art. His tragedy of Alcibiades was acted at the Theatre Royal in 1675, though with what measure of success we are not informed. The story is taken from Nepos and Plutarch; but in certain points he departs from history in order to accommodate the character[7:16:671] of his hero to the effect which he wished to produce. Don Carlos, another tragedy in heroic verse, founded on St Real’s novel of the same name, and the Spanish chronicles of the life of Philip 1I., was performed in 1676, and appears to have succeeded much better than any other of his plays. For many years indeed it was more applauded and followed than either Venice Preserved or The Orphan; and it is even asserted that it was played for thirty nights together, though this may reasonably be doubted. At any rate, it was very successful, and brought more money than any preceding tragedy.^[1. This circumstance is coarsely alluded to by Rochester in the Session of the Poets : Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell’s dear zany, And swears, for heroics he writes best of any; Don Carlos his pockets so amply had filled, That his mange was quite cur’d, and his lice were all kill’d. ] In 1677, Otway produced Titus and Berenice, a piece in three acts, translated with alterations from Racine; and also The Cheats of Scapin, a farce partly taken from Molière; which were acted together with considerable success, the custom of annexing farces to plays having about that time been introduced. His comedy of Friendship in Fashion, which appeared in 1678, had also some success, though it seems doubtful whether the author was at this time in London, as he certainly went abroad during the year 1677.

The occasion of his going abroad will be immediately explained. Johnson, however, in introducing this circumstance, observes: “Want of morals, or of decency, did not in those days exclude any man from the company of the wealthy and the gay, if he brought with him any powers of entertainment; and Otway is said to have been at this time a favourite companion of the dissolute wits. But as he who desires no virtue in his companion has no virtue in himself, those whom Otway frequented had no purpose of doing more for him than to pay his reckoning. They desired only to drink and laugh; their fondness was without benevolence, and their familiarity without friendship.” Men of wit received at that time no favour from the great except that of sharing their riots, from which they were dismissed again to their own narrow circumstances; and thus they languished in poverty without support, and often without resource. But some exception must, nevertheless, be made. The Earl of Plymouth, a natural son of the king, procured Otway a cornet’s commission in some troops which were then, 1677, destined for Flanders. But the poet did not prosper in his military capacity. The society of dissolute wits had but ill qualified him for submitting to the restraints of discipline, or observing that regularity which the laws of the service required; and hence, having left his commission behind him, he returned to London, where he resumed his dramatic labours.

In 1680, he produced Cuius Marius, a tragedy, which had some success, probably from the circumstance of the author having availed himself of the excitement that then prevailed about the Popish Plot; and, in the dissensions of Marius and Sylla, endeavoured to shadow forth the proceedings of the factions in the reign of Charles I. But a higher degree of fame awaited him from his next tragedy, The Orphan, which appeared the same year. This, as Johnson observes, is one of the few pieces which have kept possession of the stage, and pleased through all the vicissitudes of dramatic taste and fashion. It is a domestic tragedy, drawn from middle life, and its whole power is upon the affections. The Soldier’s Fortune, and its second part, The Atheist, produced respectively in 1681 and 1684, were both successful, being far better suited to the manners of that age than to those of the present. The incidents and characters may, for the most part, be traced to other plays, and neither is in any respect worthy of the genius which, in 1682, gave to dramatic literature Venice Preserved, a tragedy, the fame of which, like that of The Orphan, is secure against all the caprices of taste and fashion, whilst it displays still higher powers of poetry and of expression. The striking passages are familiar to all, and its faults as well as its excellencies seem to have been rightly appreciated by the public. It is, in fact, the production of a man not very attentive to decency, nor over zealous for virtue, but of one who conceived forcibly, and drew originally by consulting nature in his own breast. Besides the plays already mentioned, he wrote the miscellaneous poems inserted in Johnson’s series of the poets; and he translated from the French a History of the Triumvirate.

But Otway’s career was destined to be a short one. He died before completing his thirty-fourth year, on the 14th of April 1685, in a manner which has been variously represented; but, according to every account, in circumstances of the deepest distress. “Having,” says Johnson, “been compelled by his necessities to contract debts, and hunted, as is supposed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a public-house on Tower Hill, where he is said to have died of want; or, as is related by one of his biographers, by swallowing, after a long fast, a piece of bread which charity had supplied. He went out, as is reported, almost naked, in the rage of hunger, and finding a gentleman in a neighbouring coffee-house, asked him for a shilling. The gentleman gave him a guinea, and Otway going away bought a roll, and was choked with the first mouthful. All this, I hope,” adds Johnson, “is not true; and there is this ground of better hope, that Pope, who lived near enough to be well informed, relates, in Spence’s Memorials, that he died of fever caught by violent pursuit of a thief who had robbed one of his friends. But that indigence, and its concomitants, sorrow and despondency, pressed hard upon him, has never been denied, whatever immediate cause might bring him to the grave.” Pope’s account of Otway’s death was first related by Warton in the notes to his Essay on that poet; and it differs in several particulars from the version of it given by Johnson. It would appear that an intimate friend of Otway’s having been murdered in the street, the poet pursued the murderer on foot as far as Dover, where he was seized with a fever, occasioned by the fatigue, which afterwards carried him to his grave in London. By this account the robber is a murderer; and as Warton was more correct in stating facts than Johnson, it is probable that he relates the story exactly as he heard it. But it may nevertheless be traced to Spence, who, it seems, was informed by Dennis, the critic, that Otway had a friend, named Blakiston, who was shot in the street; that the murderer having fled towards Dover, Otway pursued him; and that, on his return, having drunk water when violently heated, he caught the fever which caused his death. Dennis, however, in the preface to his Observations on Pope’s Translation of Homer, 1717, 8vo, says merely that Otway died in an alehouse; a statement which is not inconsistent with the preceding account, as, in point of fact, he generally lived in one. As to the story of the guinea and the loaf, it rests upon no sufficient authority, and may probably have been introduced to heighten the picture of the poet’s distress, about which, unfortunately, there can be no doubt whatever. Some, however, are inclined to think that both accounts might be true. But this cannot be, for the supposition of Otway having died of fever, occasioned by fatigue, or by drinking cold water when violently heated, is [7:16:672] altogether inconsistent with the story of his running half naked into the street in the rage of hunger, and being choked with the first mouthful of the bread purchased with the money that had been charitably given him. No one ever heard or knew of a patient in high fever being seized with raging hunger, and greedily devouring the first morsel of bread he could procure. The idea is altogether absurd.

When Otway first began to rise in reputation, Dryden spoke slightingly of his performances; but afterwards, when The Orphan and Venice Preserved had established his fame, fully acknowledged their merits. “To express the .passions which are seated in the heart by outward signs,” says he in his preface to Dufresnoy, “is one great precept of the painters, and very difficult to perform. In poetry the very same passions and motions of the mind are to be .expressed; and in this consists the principal difficulty, as well as the excellency, of that art. This, says Dufresnoy, is the gift of Jupiter; and, to speak in the same heathen language, we call it the gift of our Apollo, not to be obtained by pains or study, if we are not born to it. For the motions which are studied are never so natural as 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. I will not defend every thing in his Venice Preserved ; but I must bear this testimony to his memory, that the passions are truly touched in it, though perhaps there is somewhat to be desired both in the grounds of them, and in the height and elegancy of the expression. But nature is there, which is the greatest beauty.” This is high, and, at the same time, discriminating praise. Otway’s power consisted in moving the passions and touching the heart. All the fountains of feeling were at his command, and he could throw them open at his pleasure. His mastery over the emotions as well as the passions of the soul was unrivalled. But he had not much cultivated versification, nor replenished his mind with general knowledge; and hence his numbers are sometimes harsh, and his allusions neither rich, varied, nor striking. “Nature,” however, “is there,” and her presence atones for every deficiency.

It appears that Otway, when he died, had about him the copy of a tragedy which he had sold for a trifle to Bentley the bookseller. An advertisement which appeared in L’Estrange’s Observator for the 27th November and the 4th December 1686, in which a reward is offered to any person who “can give notice in whose hands the copy lies,” leaves no doubt whatever of the fact. The play in question, however, seems to have been irrecoverably lost; for the tragedy entitled Heroic Friendship, which was printed in 1719, and attributed to Otway, is evidently no production of bis. It never was acted, nor deserved to be acted. (a.) Otway, Cape, a high and rocky promontory upon the south coast of New Holland. Long. 143. 29. E. Lat. 38. 51. S.