SOURCE: Jason, Philip K. “The Distinction of Otway and Betterton.” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 2, no. 1 (summer 1987): 6-18.

In this essay, Jason proposes that the working relationship between Thomas Otway and the actor Thomas Betterton influenced the writing of Otway's successful Don Carlos.

Human destinies are often imagined as the conjunction of the traits of individuals with circumstance: men and moments. We understand the works of our intellectuals and artists to be both willed and inevitable, inspired and shaped by conditions. Often we find an even more complex amalgam of forces in which human destinies are intertwined and individuals become for one another a significant part of the web of circumstance. One talent and set of inclinations is whetted against another. In such cases, artworks are the product of not only the talent and the times, but also the driving influence of another talent. In collaborative arts, like...