The Fair Penitent
Fair Penitent, The,a tragedy in blank verse by N. Rowe , produced 1703 .
The plot of the play is that of Massinger and Field's The Fatal Dowry , shortened and somewhat modified at the end. Charalois becomes Altamont; Beaumelle, Calista; Rochford, Sciolto; Romont, Horatio; and Novall, Lothario. The play was extremely successful and was constantly revived until the early 19th cent. The ‘haughty, gallant, gay Lothario’ has become proverbial, and was a model on which Richardson drew Lovelace in Clarissa . In revivals of the play Garrick acted Lothario, and subsequently Mrs Siddons , Calista. Dr Johnson said of it that ‘there is scarcely any work of any poet at once so interesting by the fable, and so delightful by the language.’ He observes, however, with reference to the title of the play, that Calista ‘may be reasonably suspected of feeling pain from detection rather than from guilt’.
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