Nicholas Rowe

Nicholas Rowe , 1674-1718, English dramatist. An ardent Whig, he was able to gain various government posts during the course of his life. In 1715 he became poet laureate. His first two plays, The Ambitious Stepmother (1700) and Tamerlane (1701), established his reputation as a popular playwright. Soon afterward he wrote his best plays, The Fair Penitent (1703) and Jane Shore (1714); both are stories of men's cruelty to women that prefigure the domestic tragedies popular later in the 18th cent. Rowe is also well known for his edition of Shakespeare (1709), which supplied valuable textual and biographical data and divided the plays into acts and scenes.

Bibliography: See J. Canfield, Nicholas Rowe and Christian Tragedy (1977)

Rowe, Nicholas (1674–1718), English dramatist, one of the few of the Augustan age to display any real dramatic power. Of his seven tragedies the early ones, The Ambitious Step-Mother (1700) and Tamerlane (1701), in which Betterton was outstanding in the title-role, were written in a somewhat frigid neo-classical style. His later masterpieces, however, which include The Fair Penitent (1703), based on Massinger's The Fatal Dowry, and The Tragedy of Jane Shore (1714), have genuinely moving and poetic passages, and both were frequently revived, Mrs Siddons being particularly admired in the leading roles.