SOURCE: Munns, Jessica. “‘The Dark Disorders of a Divided State’: Otway and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.” Comparative Drama 19, no. 4 (winter 1985-86): 347-62.

In the following essay, Munns shows how Otway portrays authority figures as repressive tyrants, focusing especially on The History and Fall of Caius Marius.

Thomas Otway's sixth play, The History and Fall of Caius Marius: A Tragedy (Dorset Garden, Autumn 1679), is cast in the form of a Roman history and traces the violent contest between Caius Marius and Sylla (sic) for the war consulship against Mithridates. His Roman materials are drawn from Plutarch's lives of Gaius Marius and Sulla into which are woven scenes from Romeo and Juliet dealing with the forbidden love of Marius jr., son of Caius Marius, for Lavinia, daughter of Metellus, one of the leaders of Sylla's faction. Otway's combination of Plutarch and Shakespeare has tended to strike critics as so odd...