Thomas Southerne, or Southern, b. at Oxmanton, co. of Dublin, 1660; was admitted a student at Trinity College, Dublin, 1676; entered the Middle Temple, London, 1678, but cultivated dramatic literature in preference to law, and became a popular writer of plays; served a short time in the army, where he attained the rank of captain, and after his retirement continued his literary pursuits,—which were successful both in point of profit (by one play he cleared £700) and as an introduction to the best company (Dryden, Pope, Gray, &c.) of his day. He is said to have died “the oldest and the richest of his dramatic brethren.” This would make him neither a Methuselah nor a Crœsus. He died May 26, 1746, in his 86th year. A collection of his plays was published Lon., 1713, 2 vols. 12mo; again, 1721, 2 vols. 12mo; and a better one, under the following title, “Plays written by Thomas Southern, Esq., now first collected, with an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author,” 1774, 3 vols. 12mo.

Personal

  An Author of whom I can give no further Account, than that he has two Plays in print.

  We have old Mr. Southern, at a Gentleman’s house a little way off, who often comes to see us; he is now seventy-seven years old, and has almost wholly lost his memory; but is as agreeable as an old man can be, at least, I persuade myself so when I look at him, and think of Isabella and Oroonoko.

  Mr. Southern died on the 26th of May, in the year 1746, in the 86th year of his age; the latter part of which he spent in a peaceful serenity, having by his commission as a soldier, and the profits of his dramatic works, acquired a handsome fortune; and being an exact œconomist, he improved what fortune he gained, to the best advantage: He enjoyed the longest life of all our poets, and died the richest of them, a very few excepted.

  I remember him a grave and reserved old gentleman. He lived near Covent Garden, and used to frequent the evening prayers there [at St. Paul’s Church], always neat and decently dressed, commonly in black, with his silver sword and silver locks; but latterly he seemed to reside in Westminster.

  One of those dramatic writers who, without much genius, succeeded in obtaining a considerable name, and justly, by dint of genuine feeling for common nature. He began in Dryden’s time, who knew and respected his talents, was known and respected by Pope, and lived to enjoy a similar regard from Gray.

  He was a perfect gentleman; he did not lounge away his days or nights in coffee-houses or taverns, but after labor cultivated friendship in home circles, where virtue and modest mirth sat at the hearth…. He kept the even tenor of his way, owing no man anything; never allowing his nights to be the marrer of his mornings; and at six-and-eighty carrying a bright eye, a steady hand, a clear head, and a warm heart wherewith to calmly meet and make surrender of all to the Inevitable Angel.

General

  In this [“Oroonoko”] piece Mr. Southern has touched the tender passions with so much skill, that it will perhaps be injurious to his memory to say of him, that he is second to Otway. Besides the tender and delicate strokes of passion, there are many shining and manly sentiments in “Oroonoko;” and one of the greatest genius’s of the present age, has often observed, that in the most celebrated play of Shakespear, so many striking thoughts, and such a glow of animated poetry cannot be furnished. This play is so often acted, and admired, that any illustration of its beauties here, would be entirely superfluous.

  The repulsive qualities of some of those characters, joined to the little which has been allotted for the heroine to perform, have been obstacles to the attraction of this [“Oroonoko”] drama, and it is seldom acted. Yet, some years past, Mr. Pope, in his very first appearance upon any stage, encountered, and triumphantly overcame, all impediments to the favourable reception of “Oroonoko;” and made the play so impressive, by his talents in the representation of that character, that for many nights it drew to the theatre a crowded audience…. If any defect can be attributed to Southern in the tragic fable, either of this play or of “Isabella,” it is, that in the one, his first male character wants importance, and in the other, his principal female. Still, in both plays, he makes his tale, a tale of wo, though only a single personage becomes the object of deep concern.

  Southern’s “Fatal Discovery,” latterly represented under the name of “Isabella,” is almost as familiar to the lovers of our theatre as “Venice Preserved” itself; and for the same reason,—that, whenever an actress of great tragic powers arises, the part of Isabella is as fitted to exhibit them as that of Belvidera. The choice and conduct of the story are, however, Southern’s chief merits; for there is little vigor in the language, though it is natural, and free from the usual faults of his age. A similar character may be given to his other tragedy, “Oroonoko;” in which Southern deserves the praise of having, first of any English writer, denounced the traffic in slaves, and the cruelties of their West-Indian bondage. The moral feeling is high in this tragedy, and it has sometimes been acted with a certain success; but the execution is not that of a superior dramatist.

  There is not a little of nature and pathos in Southerne.

  Neither the thoughts nor the style of his tragedies rise above the common-place.

  The flimsy liveliness of his former comedies failed him in “Money’s the Mistress,” which is trash too stupid to have forced its way to the stage, except for his previous dramatic reputation.

  The pathetic plot of this play [“Fatal Marriage”], which is founded on Mrs. Behn’s novel of “The Nun, or the Fair Vow-Breaker,” may be described as a dramatic treatment of the motive familiar to modern readers from Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden” and a larger number of other narrative or dramatic versions than it would be worth while to enumerate. After continuing to command popular favour during the life-time of its author, this tragedy was in 1757 revived by Garrick with great success; nor can we wonder that it should have suited the highly-sentimental tastes of this later age. Yet it would be unjust to Southerne, and it would obscure the continuity in the history of the English seventeenth-century drama, which, however partial and imperfect, should not be overlooked, were we to ignore the remnant of Elisabethan intensity noticeable in the passage, where the thought transiently occurs to Isabella of murdering her first husband on his unexpected return, and in the scene of her lapse into madness.

  Southerne was a very smart man of business, and he was the first dramatist in England who contrived to make a fortune out of play-writing. He became justly distinguished as a tragic poet. He rebelled against the rant and fustian of the heroic playwrights, and modelled himself upon Otway, whose tenderness is successfully reflected in his scenes, though with some exaggeration. His blank verse runs easily, and owes something to a respectful study of Shakespeare; but we recognise that it is in the process of fossilising into the dead dramatic verse of the succeeding century. Southerne’s best plays were produced when the Orange dramatists had completely come to the front, and he answers as a tragic writer to Congreve as a comic one, but with less talent…. His comedies are very weak, and strained beyond the custom of the age with cynical indecency.

  Congreve’s one tragedy is more often consulted to see what is the context which Johnson praised so highly than for any other reason. Few need go farther. Southerne’s two masterpieces, “The Fatal Marriage” and “Oroonoko,” are perhaps more unknown still, despite the traditional fame of great actresses in Isabella and Imoinda, the constant references in contemporary and rather later literature to both, and the jokes made on the unlucky second title of “The Fatal Marriage.” They have much less elegance of diction than the work of either Rowe or Congreve, but much greater tragic quality; being, in fact, Otway a little further prosed.