The Bourgeois Revaluation of Tragedy

Abstract

This chapter continues the argument begun in the Introduction, proposing a revised, reparative approach to the earliest bourgeois tragedies. It focuses especially on George Lillo’s landmark drama, The London Merchant (1731), and examines its unique re-interpretation of neoclassical theories of tragedy and poetic decorum. This chapter narrates its debut alongside burlesques and satires on the middle and lower sorts by Edward Ravenscroft, John Gay, William Hogarth, Henry Fielding, and John Kelly, making a case for Lillo’s radical valorization of ordinary life and a new aesthetic of identification. Its argument thereby describes the beginnings of a new appreciation for the trials of these social ranks in the era’s art, and offers a substantive reading of the text and its paratextual apparatus in light of this shift.