Nicholas Rowe (writer) said to have suggested to Samuel Richardson the character of Clarissa Harlowe, as Lothario suggested Lovelace. Samuel Johnson noted of "The Fair Penitent" that, "The story is domestic, and therefore easily received by the imagination, and assimilated to common life; the diction is exquisitely harmonious, and soft or spritely as occasion requires." In 1704, Rowe tried his hand at comedy, producing "The Biter" at Lincoln's Inn Fields, which was unsuccessful, and Rowe returned to tragedy in "Ulysses" (1706). According to Johnson, this play was to share the fate of many such plays based on mythological heroes, as, "We have been
Restoration literature pathetic tragedy. Elizabeth Howe has argued that the most important explanation for the shift in taste was the emergence of tragic actresses whose popularity made it unavoidable for dramatists to create major roles for them. With the conjunction of the playwright "master of pathos" Thomas Otway and the great tragedienne Elizabeth Barry in "The Orphan", the focus shifted from hero to heroine. Prominent she-tragedies include John Banks's "Virtue Betrayed, or, Anna Bullen" (1682) (about the execution of Anne Boleyn), Thomas Southerne's "The Fatal Marriage" (1694), and Nicholas Rowe's "The Fair Penitent" (1703) and "Lady Jane Grey", 1715. While she-tragedies were