Rowe had, in his "Tamerlane," thundered, after the manner of Dryden: had tried to be as pathetic as Otway, and had employed some of the bombast of Lee. But he lacked strength to make either of the heroes of that resonant tragedy vigorous. In devoting himself, henceforth, to illustrate the woes and weaknesses of heroines, he discovered where his real powers lay; and Calista is one of the most successful of his portraitures. There is gross and unavowed plagiarism from Massinger's "Fatal Dowry," but there is a greater purity of sentiment in Rowe, who leaves, however, much room for improvement in that respect, by his successors. Richardson saw this, when he made of his Lovelace a somewhat purified Lothario. Rowe, however, notwithstanding the weak point in his Fair Penitent, who is more angry at being found out, than sorry for what has happened, has been eminently successful; for all the sympathy of the audience is freely rendered to Calista. The tragedy may still be called an acting play, though it has lost something of the popularity it retained during the last century, when even Edward, Duke of York, and Lady Stanhope, enacted Lothario and Calista, in the once famous "private theatre" in Downing Street. Johnson's criticism is all praise, as regards both fable and treatment. The style is purely English, as might be expected of a writer who said of Dryden, that—
"Backed by his friends, th' invader brought along
A crew of foreign words into our tongue,
To ruin and enslave our free-born English song.
Still, the prevailing faction propped his throne,
And to four volumes let his plays run on."
Shakspeare, in name, at least, re-appears more frequently on the stage during the Drury Lane season of 1703-4, when "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Timon of Athens," "Richard III.," the "Tempest," and "Titus Andronicus," were performed.[80] These, however, were the "improved" editions of the poets. The novelties were, the "Lying Lover," by Steele; "Love, the Leveller;" and the "Albion Queens." It was the season in which great Anne fruitlessly forbade the presence of vizard-masks in the pit, and of gallants on the stage; recommended cleanliness of speech, and denounced the shabby people who occasionally tried to evade the money-takers.[81] Steele, in his play, attempted to support one of the good objects which the Queen had in view; but in striving to be pure, after his idea of purity, and to be moral, after a loose idea of morality, he failed altogether in wit, humour, and invention. He thought to prove himself a good churchman, he said, even in so small a matter as a comedy; and in his character of comic poet, "I have been," he says, "a martyr and confessor for the church, for this play was damned for its piety." This is as broad an untruth as anything uttered by the "Lying Lover" himself, who, when he does express a mawkish sentiment after he has killed a man in his liquor, can only be held to be "a liar," as before. Steele was condemned for stupidity in a piece, the only ray of humour in which pierces through the dirty, noisy, drunken throng of gallows birds in Newgate. That Steele seriously intended his play to be the beginning of an era of "new comedy," is, however, certain. In the prologue, it was said of the author—
"He aims to make the coming action move
On the tried laws of Friendship and of Love.