SOURCE: Dodds, John Wendell. “Conclusion.” In Thomas Southerne Dramatist, pp. 204-19. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1933.

In the following essay, Dodds examines Southerne's place in the history of English drama.

In him the poets' Nestor ye defend! Great Otway's peer, and greater Dryden's friend. 

—Prologue to Money the Mistress

Thomas Southerne emerges from a candid appraisal of his life and work with a greater importance in the history of the English theatre than he has hitherto been granted by the critics who have touched him only in passing. … [The] esteem in which the poet's work was held by his contemporaries, as well as the unexpectedly long and continuous stage history of his two best plays, would alone support such an estimate. Moreover, his most effective work bears the test of a close critical scrutiny. This is not to say that such an examination reveals in Southerne unsuspected...