The work of Thomas Southerne has for long been neglected, though Garrick, by making excisions and modifications, restored part of it to the stage. Southerne was born before the Restoration (1660), and lived to see the last effort of the Stuart cause crushed in 1746. Born in Dublin, he went to Oxford, neglected the law, gave his first play in 1682, paid court to the Duke of York, got a commission in the Duke of Berwick's regiment, and wrote, in 1687, a play, not acted till 1721, in which he satirized Mary, the daughter of James II. Dryden doubled, in Southerne's case, the price of a prologue, raising it from £5 to £10, but Southerne raised the gains of authors, getting £700 for a single piece, while Dryden never received more than £100. Southerne's new comedies were popular after the Revolution of 1688. The plot of his "Innocent Adultery" (dear to Lydia Languish) was taken from a novel, by Mrs. Aphra Behn—the play, in 1758, was revived by Garrick;—from Mrs. Behn also Southerne dramatized "Oroonoko, or the Loyal Slave". This piece, with the licentious comic scenes removed, was revived in 1759, and a new age saw how Southerne
"Touch'd their fathers' hearts with gen'rous woe,
And taught their mothers' youthful eyes to flow,"
though
"With ribald mirth he stained his sacred page".
In 1725, the poetic fire of Southerne died out in "Money the Mistress". The author was liked by everybody, even by Pope, known to all as "honest Tom," and addressed by the Earl of Orrery in a letter as "My Dear Old Man". Southerne did not affect the development of the stage, and the better part of his "Oroonoko" is due to Mrs. Behn: people who laughed at the sub-plot were easily amused.
Of Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718) space suffices only for the statement that he was made Poet Laureate under George I., edited Shakespeare, and wrote "Jane Shore," "in imitation of Shakespeare's style". Here is a sample of the imitation:—
"If poor, weak woman swerve from Virtue's rule,
If strongly charmed she leave the thorny way,
And in the softer paths of pleasure stray,
Ruin ensues, reproach and endless shame,
And one false step entirely damns her fame."
The blank verse too is remote from the Shakespearean.
The stage (like the world after the death of Donne's Miss Drury) continued to exist after the death of Steele. Young and Johnson, Thomson and John Home wrote tragedies, and acting comedies abounded, but we do not find comedies that live and give pleasure in the reading till we come to Goldsmith and Sheridan.