SOURCE: Hughes, Derek. “Otway's The Orphan: An Interpretation.” Durham University Journal 75, no. 2 (June 1983): 45-54.

In the following essay, Hughes argues against critics who find the design and plot of The Orphan to be disjointed, insisting that Otway skillfully created a work of deep psychological complexity and thematic unity.

The problem of The Orphan (1680) is familiar. The play claims our attention through its historical importance and promptly forfeits it through its apparent ineptitude of design, since its action proceeds entirely from what most readers deem a singularly motiveless deception: Castalio's tragic yet seemingly pointless concealment of his marriage to Monimia.¹ Recent studies have shown that The Orphan possesses at least a coherence of symbolism—that Acasto's illusory Eden succumbs to the corruption of man's fallen nature and that the idealized Nature of the rural retreat degenerates into the Nature of Hobbes.² But we are still left with the question...