It is impossible, of course, to review here all the factors involved in
the development of middle-class tragedy in England in the eighteenth
century. However, certain aspects of that movement which concern Moore's
immediate predecessors and which have not been adequately recognized
might be mentioned briefly. Aside from Elizabethan and Jacobean attempts
to give tragic expression to everyday human experience, historians have
noted the efforts of Otway, Southerne, and Rowe to lower the social
level of tragedy; but in this period middle-class problems and
sentiments and domestic situations appear in numerous tragedies,
long-since forgotten, which in form, setting, and social level present
no startling deviations from traditional standards. Little or no
attention has been given to some of these obscure dramatists who in the
midst of the Collier controversy attempted to illustrate in tragedy the
arguments advanced in the third part of John Dennis's _The Usefulness of
the Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion_
(1698). Striving to demonstrate the usefulness of the stage, these
avowed reformers produced essentially domestic tragedies, by treating
such problems as filial obedience and marital fidelity in terms of
orthodox theology. The argument that the stage can be an adjunct of
the pulpit is widespread, and appears most explicitly in Hill's preface
to his _Fatal Extravagance_ (1721), sometimes regarded as the first
middle-class tragedy in the eighteenth century, and in Lillo's
dedication to _George Barnwell_ (1731). The line from these obscure
dramatists at the turn of the century to Lillo is direct and clear. Of
these forgotten plays we can note here only _Fatal Friendship_ (1698)
by Mrs. Catherine Trotter whom John Hughes hailed as "the first of
stage-reformers"

(_To the Author of Fatal Friendship, a Tragedy_), an unquestionably
domestic tragedy inculcating a theological "lesson". To this play,