INTRODUCTION


This reprint of Edward Moore's _The Gamester_ makes available to
students of eighteenth century literature a play which, whatever its
intrinsic merits, is historically important both as a vehicle for a
century of great actors and as a contribution to the development of
middle-class tragedy which had considerable influence on the Continent.
_The Gamester_ was first presented at the Drury Lane Theatre February 7,
1753 with Garrick in the leading role, and ran for ten successive
nights. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century it remained a popular
stock piece--John Philip Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Barry, the Keans,
Macready, and others having distinguished themselves in it--and in
America from 1754 to 1875 it enjoyed even more performances than in
England. (J.H. Caskey, _The Life and Works of Edward Moore_, 96-99).
Moore's middle-class tragedy is the only really successful attempt
to follow Lillo's decisive break with tradition in England in the
eighteenth century. His background, like Lillo's, was humble, religious,
and mercantile. The son of a dissenting pastor, Moore received his early
education in dissenters' academies, and then served an apprenticeship to
a London linen-draper. After a few years in Ireland as an agent for a
merchant, Moore returned to London to join a partnership in the linen
trade. The partnership was soon dissolved, and Moore turned to letters
for a livelihood. Among his works are _Fables for the Female Sex_ (1744)
which went through three editions, _The Foundling_ (1748), a successful
comedy, and _Gil Blas_ (1751), an unsuccessful comedy. In 1753, with
encouragement and some assistance from Garrick, he produced _The
Gamester_, upon which his reputation as a writer depends.