SOURCE: Lund-Baer, Kerstin. “Introduction” and “Summary and Conclusion.” In The Orphan: Tragic Form in Thomas Otway, pp. 3-6; 103-08. Stockholm: Uppsala University, 1980.

In the following excerpts, Lund-Baer argues that The Orphan cannot be understood without a grounding in contemporary events and social trends and that the play's thematic concerns were creatively constructed to express Otway's views on the moral order.

“It is not written with much comprehension of thought or elegance of expression.”¹ The quotation is from Lives of The English Poets and the words are those of Samuel Johnson whose verdict on Thomas Otway's tragedy The Orphan (1680) seems to have coloured most critics' views concerning this play. Thus, William Hazlitt admitted that Otway had “susceptibility of feeling and warmth of genius” but “not equal depth of thought or loftiness of imagination.”² Roden Noel has a similar comment on The Orphan. In The Best Plays of the Old...