SOURCE: Tracy, Clarence. “The Stage and the Green-Room,” “The Hillarian Circle,” and “Apogee.” In The Artificial Bastard: A Biography of Richard Savage, pp. 38-103. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953.

In the following essays, Tracy discusses Savage's dramatic career, examines his relationships with his friends and enemies, relates events surrounding Savage's trial for murder, and analyzes his two greatest poems, “The Bastard” and “The Wanderer.”

The Stage and the Green-room

Savage's private life before 1716 is largely unknown to us, but at this time we begin to see him in a setting of acquaintances and friends. The first of these was a Mrs. Lucy Rodd Price, a grass widow living in chambers in Gray's Inn, where, we are told, she “often took upon her to act as a Counsellor at Law.”¹ She had been separated from her husband on grounds of adultery twenty-five years earlier. Since the separation, her husband...