OTWAY 



OUDINOT 



663 



hail a tame and conventional tragedy, Alcibiacles, 

 accepted at the Duke's Theatre, which was managed 

 first by Davenant, then by Betterton. In it the 

 beautiful Mrs Barry made her first appearance, 

 and with her the hapless poet quickly fell in love. 

 In 1676 Betterton accepted Don Carlos, a good 

 tragedy in rhyme, nervous and full of pathos, 

 dedicated to the Duke of York. Its plot, like that 

 of his greatest play, he owed to the Abbe St-Real. 

 The year after Otway translated Racine's Titus 

 and Berenice, as well as Mnliere's Cheatt of Seafin. 

 The intrigue between Rochester and Mrs Barry 

 now l>ecaine more than he could bear, and through 

 the influence of the Earl of Plymouth, a college 

 friend, and one of the king's bastards, he received a 

 cornet's commission again, and went a-soldiering to 

 Flanders. It proved a complete fiasco, and he soon 

 came back to his infatuation, miserable and unpaid, 

 a butt for Rochester in his poor and spiteful .SV.w'ow 

 of the Poets. In 1678 he had produced a poor 

 comedy, Friendship in Fashion; in 1679 another, 

 The Soldier's Fortune, full of touches of auto- 

 biographic detail. He was ever improvident and 

 dissipated, and his affairs by this time had l>ecome 

 desperate, but the death of his rival in 1680 seems 

 to have nerved him to make a brave effort to shake 

 olf his burden of debt. That year yielded two 

 tragedies, ami his one important poem, The Poet's 

 Complaint of his Hfnxe, a rough, but firmly drawn 

 satirical portrait of himself and his principal 

 enemies, Rochester, Shadwell, and Settle. Of the 

 plays, the first was The Orphan, a tragedy in blank 

 verse, marred by many faults in pint besides its 

 radical indelicacy, but stamped throughout with 

 |io\v(;r and sovereign pathos, over whose central 

 figure, Monimia, says Mr Gosse, perhaps more 

 tears have been shed than over any other stage- 

 heroine. The other was The History and Fall of 

 Cains Muring, confessedly a kind of cento from 

 Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, with touches from 

 Julius (.'ifxar. The year 1682 saw his greatest 

 work, I'm ii-f Preserved, or a Plot Iiixrun-retf, a 

 noble masterpiece of tragic passion, admirably con- 

 structed, its heroine Bidvidera a delightful creation 

 of almost the highest order of dramatic genius. 

 The only blot upon its perfection is the comic 

 passages, whioh M. Taine alone among critics finds 

 Shakespearian. Otway's mistress was now at the 

 height of her fame, and in the parts of Monimia 

 and Belvidera had taken the town by storm. Six 

 letters of his to her are extant, written apparently 

 aliout 1682, which tell us the touching story of his 

 faith and of her cruelty, how she played with liis 

 passion for seven years, and at last broke his heart. 

 From this time he sinks out of sight, drowned in 

 dissipation, debt, and misery. He reappears again 

 in 1084 with The Atheist, a feeble comedy, and, on 

 the death of Charles II. in February 1685, with 

 Windsor Castle, a poem addressed to the new king. 

 But his claims were neglected, and he wore out the 

 ruins of his wasted life in abject misery in a spong- 

 ing-hoiise or tavern on Tower Hill, rfere he died, 

 April 14, HSS."), choked, it is said, after a long fast, 

 with a piece of bread, which he had rushed in the 

 eagerness of hunger to buy with a guinea given him 

 by a passing stranger from whom he had liegged a 

 Billing, 



In 1719 a badly edited tragedy, Heroiek Friend- 

 ihip, was published as his, and Mr Gosse thinks 

 that, imperfect as the execution is, the plot and 

 ideas are characteristic of Otway. The best edition 

 of his works is still that bv Thornton (Svols. 1813). 

 Otway owed much to Corneille, and was long 

 popular in France, despite the severe and unjust 



Judgment of Voltaire. His life recalls the tragic 

 listory of Marlowe, just as his greatest play 

 reminds a reader of Othello. Strong without bom- 

 bast, its exquisite love-scenes between Jaffier and 



Belvidera tender without weakness, ' it is simply,' 

 says Mr Gosse, ' the greatest tragic drama between 

 Shakespeare and Shelley. Out of the dead waste 

 of the Restoration, with all its bustling talent and 

 vain show, this one solitary work of supreme genius 

 arose unexpected and unimitated.' 



See Johnson's Lives, Ward's History of English Dra- 

 matic Literature (vol. ii. 1875), Edmund Gosse's excel- 

 lent essay in Seventeenth Century Studies (1883), and the 

 Uon. Koden Noel's edition in ' Mermaid ' series ( 1888 ). 



Oliabain is a crystalline glucoside separated 

 from the wood and roots of Carissa shimperi, a 

 plant growing on the east coast of Africa. It is 

 intensely poisonous, a twelfth of a grain being 

 sufficient to kill a rabbit. It acts upon the heart 

 in the same way that digitalis does, and has been 

 employed in medicine as a substitute for digitalis, 

 and also to lessen the violence of the paroxysms in 

 hooping-cough. The Somalis make an extract of 

 the wood ami roots for an arrow-poison. 



Oubliette (Fr., 'place of forgetfulness'), a 

 dungeon in which persons condemned to perpetual 

 imprisonment were confined especially a perfectly 

 dark underground dungeon into which the pris- 

 oners were let down from aliove by ropes. 



Olldriiarde (Audenarde), a town of Belgium, 

 on the Scheldt, 37 miles W. of Brussels. It has a 

 fine flamboyant Gothic town-hall (1535) and two 

 interesting churches. Margaret of I'arnia was 

 boni here. Pop. 5864. In "1706 Oudenarde was 

 taken by Marlborough ; and an attempt made by 

 the French to retake it brought on the famous 

 battle of Oudenarde, the third of Marlborougli's 

 four great victories, which was gained, on the llth 

 July 1708, with the aid of Prince Eugene, over a 

 French army under the Duke of Burgundy and 

 Marshal Villars. 



Olldll. or AWADH, a province of British India, 

 separated on the north from Nepal by the lower 

 ranges of the Himalaya, whence it gradually slopes, 

 a great plain watered by the Gumti, Gogra, and 

 Rapti rivers, to the Ganges. Area, 24,246 sq. in. 

 Formerly an independent cliief-comniissionership, 

 it is now administered by the lieutenant-governor 

 of the North-west Provinces (q.v.). Pop. (1881) 

 11,387,741; (1891) 12,650,831 (522 to the sq. in.). 

 The bulk of the inhabitants are Hindus, though 

 the dominant native race for centuries has been 

 Mohammedan. The Brahmans are the most 

 numerous class, about one-eighth of the whole 

 population. The principal towns are Lucknow 

 (the capital), Faizabad, Bahraich, Shahabad, Rai 

 Bareli, Ajodhya. Oudh is believed to have been 

 one of the oldest seats of Aryan civilisation in 

 India. After being the centre of a long native 

 Hindu dynasty it was subjugated by the ruler 

 of Kanauj, and in 1194 was made subject to 

 the Mussulman empire of Delhi. In 1732-43 it 

 became virtually an independent state, and the 

 dynasty of the Nawabs lasted until the annexa- 

 tion of the province by the British in 1856. Dur- 

 ing the mutiny of 1857 Oudh was one of the 

 centres of rebellion and the scene of highly dramatic 

 events. The city of Oudh or AJODHYA has been 

 treated of under the second title. 



Oiulinot. CHARLES NICOLAS, Duke of Reggio 

 and Marshal of France, was born at Bar-le-1 >uc, 

 Meuse, 25th April 1767. At the age of seventeen 

 he entered the army, and in the revolutionary wars 

 distinguished himself in various actions with the 

 Prussians and Austrians. In 1805 he obtained the 

 Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and about 

 the same time received the command of ten bat- 

 talions of the reserve, afterwards famous as the 

 'grenadiers Oudinot. ' At the head of this corps 

 he did good service in the Austrian campaign. He 

 was present at Austerlitz and Jena, gained the 



