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
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