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
Fair Em Greene; but since Greene ridicules the play's author and parodies two lines from the closing scene in his 1591 pamphlet "Farewell to Folly", this attribution also seems unsound. "Fair Em" has a clear relationship with one of Greene's plays, "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay;" it seems most likely that the author of "Fair Em" borrowed from Greene. Since Greene's play is thought to date to c. 1589, "Fair Em" would have to have originated between that date and the publication of "Farewell to Folly" in 1591. This span of 1589–91 conforms to the dating based on the Lord Strange connection,