The Fair Penitent appears earlier in "Don Quixote" by Cervantes. In this story Lothario is urged by his lifelong friend Anselmo to attempt to seduce his wife in order to test her faithfulness. At first most unwilling he eventually enters into the scheme with skill and success. This earlier Lothario is a successful seducer. Malcolm Goldstein edited "The Fair Penitent" for a modern edition in 1969. Critics, both traditional and modern, have debated whether Calista is actually "penitent" for her infidelity. The Fair Penitent The Fair Penitent is Nicholas Rowe's stage adaptation of the tragedy "The Fatal Dowry," the Philip Massinger and Nathan
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