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
She-tragedy She-tragedy The term she-tragedy, also known as ""pathetic tragedy"" refers to a vogue in the late 17th and early 18th centuries for tragic plays focused on the sufferings of a woman, sometimes innocent and virtuous but often a woman who has committed some sort of sexual sin. Prominent she-tragedies include Thomas Otway's "The Orphan" (1680), John Banks' "Virtue Betrayed, or, Anna Bullen" (1682), Thomas Southerne's "The Fatal Marriage" (1694) and Nicholas Rowe's "The Fair Penitent" (1703) and "Lady Jane Grey" (1715). Rowe was the first to use the term "she-tragedy," in 1714. When English drama was reborn in 1660 with