SOURCE: Hume, Robert D. “Otway and the Comic Muse.” Studies in Philology 73, no. 1 (January 1976): 87-116.

In the following essay, Hume rejects scholarly opinion that Otway's comedies are badly written and profane, arguing that they are in no way more risqué than those of his contemporaries. Hume contends that Otway's comedies are actually scathing satires on society and should be viewed separate from the “light comedies” of the era.

We now think of Otway as a writer of tragedies. The domestic simplicity of The Orphan (1680) is often praised, while the flaming passions and harrowing pathos of Venice Preserv'd still have some power to move us. Articles on Otway's pathos, politics, religion, and tragic vision abound. Yet he did write some comedies, and about these there has been a conspiracy of silence. In his own age, Otway was considered a comic writer of some importance. Even the splenetic author of...