SOURCE: Marshall, Geoffrey. “The Coherence of The Orphan.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 11 (1969): 931-43.

In the following essay, Marshall proposes that confusion concerning the cohesiveness of The Orphan can be remedied if one views the tragedy as a plea for plain and direct communication between people and a warning about the frequency and magnitude of errors when they speak artfully and ambiguously.

While Thomas Otway's The Orphan (1680) has a place in literary history (due mostly to a century and a half of popularity on stage), the play has seemed puzzling and unsatisfying to most literary historians. Even Dr. Johnson, writing when the play was a staple of the repertoire, seems to have very mixed feelings about it: “Of this play little new can easily be said. It is a domestic tragedy drawn from middle life. Its whole power is upon the affections; for it is not written...