PRINCIPAL TYPES OF TRAGEDY - SHE-TRAGEDY
She-tragedy denotes a tragic subgenre that rose to prominence in England in the mid-1690s. The playwright and laureate Nicholas Rowe who coined the term in 1714 is widely regarded as its finest exponent. His plays The Fair Penitent (1703) and The Tragedy of Jane Shore (1714) are considered as some of the best representative pieces in the cannon. Other noteworthy instances include Thomas Southerne’s The Fatal Marriage or The Innocent Adultery (1694) and Mary Pix’s Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperor of the Turks (1696). Though she-tragedy formally sufficed as a distinct dramatic form only by the close of the 18 th century, its antecedence could be traced back to the early 1680s and the so called pathetic plays that enjoyed brief popularity at the time. Of noteworthy significance in this regard are the plays The Orphan (1680) by Thomas Otway and Virtue Betray or Anna Bullen (1682) by John Banks, both of which are invariably recognized as forerunners of she-traged...