She-tragedy

In the 1670s and 1680s, a gradual shift occurred from heroic to pathetic tragedy, where the subject was love and domestic concerns, even though the main characters might be public figures.

After the phenomenal success of Elizabeth Barry in moving the audience to tears in the role of Monimia in Otway's The Orphan, she-tragedy became the dominant form of pathetic tragedy and remained highly popular for nearly half a century.

Unlike the other popular new genre, horror, the she-tragedy did not depend on violence and gore to become the spectacle of the heroine but rather used the physical suffering that was inflicted on the blameless female victims.

Evidences of ravished womanhood such as disheveled hair, disordered clothing, and phallic dagger were trademark of Restoration rape and prominent in she-tragedy.

[6] Playwrights would utilize other ill fortune such as the loss of a husband or child and a single mother's struggle to raise her children as another means of causing hardship in the heroine's life.

In a scene Monimia is accompanied by a page who states to her "Madam, Indeed I'd serve you with my soul; But n the morning when you call me to you As by your bed I stand and tell you stories, I am asham'd to see your swelling Breasts, It makes me blush, they are so very white."

It is speculated that this change was at least partially due to the influence of the Puritans, who "took offence"[10] at men cross-dressing to play women, something that was seen as going against the biblical Book of Deuteronomy (22:5).

Other possible explanations for the great interest in she-tragedy are the popularity of Mary II, who often ruled alone in the 1690s while her husband William III was on the Continent, and the publication of The Spectator, the first periodical aimed at women.

Elizabeth Howe has argued that the most important explanation for the shift in taste was the emergence of tragic actresses whose popularity made it unavoidable for dramatists to create major roles for them.

With the conjunction of the playwright "master of pathos" Thomas Otway and the great tragedienne Elizabeth Barry in The Orphan, the focus shifted decisively from hero to heroine.