Striving to demonstrate the usefulness of the stage, these
avowed reformers produced essentially domestic tragedies, by treating
such problems as filial obedience and marital fidelity in terms of
orthodox theology. The argument that the stage can be an adjunct of
the pulpit is widespread, and appears most explicitly in Hill's preface
to his _Fatal Extravagance_ (1721), sometimes regarded as the first
middle-class tragedy in the eighteenth century, and in Lillo's
dedication to _George Barnwell_ (1731). The line from these obscure
dramatists at the turn of the century to Lillo is direct and clear. Of
these forgotten plays we can note here only _Fatal Friendship_ (1698)
by Mrs. Catherine Trotter whom John Hughes hailed as "the first of
stage-reformers"

(_To the Author of Fatal Friendship, a Tragedy_), an unquestionably
domestic tragedy inculcating a theological "lesson". To this play,
which was acted with "great applause" (_Biographica Dramatica_,
107), Aaron Hill was, I am convinced, considerably indebted for his
_Fatal Extravagance_, which is, in turn, one of the sources of _The
Gamester_.

In the early eighteenth century, then, there is clearly discernible a
two-fold tendency toward middle-class tragedy which reaches its fullest
expression in Lillo: the desire to lower the social level of the
characters in order to make the tragedy more moving; and the desire to
defend the stage by demonstrating its religious and moral utility. In
his prologue to _The Fair Penitent_ (l703), Rowe gave expression to the
first: the "fate of kings and empires", he argues, is too remote to
engage our feelings, for "we ne'er can pity that we ne'er can share";
therefore he offers "a melancholy tale of private woes". In his
prologue, Lillo repeats this idea, but in his dedication he shows
himself primarily concerned with the second tendency. Specifically
challenging those "who deny the lawfulness of the stage", he argues
that "the more extensively useful the moral of any tragedy is, the more
excellent that piece must be of its kind"; the generality of mankind is
more liable to vice than are kings; therefore "plays founded on moral
tales in private life may be of admirable use... by stifling vice in its
first principles". Dramatists who were concerned only or primarily with
the first of these tendencies (the emotional effect), produced domestic
or pseudo-domestic tragedies in the manner of Otway and Rowe. But those
who stressed the second (m