oral and religious utility), seeking practical
themes of widespread applicability, quite logically moved toward genuine
middle-class tragedy. Thus Hill's _Fatal Extravagance_ is concerned with
the "vice" of gambling; while Charles Johnson's _Caelia, or The Perjur'd
Lover_ (1732) attacks fashionable libertinism of the day, telling the
story which Richardson was later to retell in seven ponderous volumes.
In _Caelia_ the religious rationalization of the tragic action is
subdued, Johnson apparently preferring to stress the social and moral
aspects of his subject, and to this end he resolutely refused to
expunge or modify the boldly realistic brothel scenes, against which
a fastidious audience had protested.

A comparison of _The Gamester_ with its predecessor, _Fatal
Extravagance_, reflects certain developments in the intellectual
background of the first half of the eighteenth century. Hill anticipated
Lillo in repeating Rowe's argument for lowering the social level of
tragedy and in stating vigorously his desire to defend the stage by
demonstrating its religious and moral utility. An admirer of Dennis's
critical writings, Hill repeats Dennis's argument that the stage can
affect those whom the pulpit falls to reach, and he offers his play
as proof that "sound and useful instruction may be drawn from the
_Theatre_", challenging the enemies of the stage to test his play "by
the rules of religion and virtue" (Preface). Taking a "hint", as he
says, from _A Yorkshire Tragedy_, Hill endeavored to show the "private
sorrows" that result from gaming.

At the opening of the play, the hero, having gambled away his fortune,
faces poverty. His friend who signed his bond is in jail and a kindly
uncle has failed to secure the needed relief. In a fit of passion
growing out of despair, the hero kills the villainous creditor, and
decides to poison his (the hero's) wife and children, and then stab
himself. In his dying moments he learns that the uncle has substituted
a harmless cordial for the poison and that a long-lost brother has died
leaving him a fortune. This bare outline gives no indication of Hill's
careful theological rationalization of character and plot which he
promised in his preface. Hill incorporated in his play the teachings of
orthodox divines; there is nothing 'revolutionary' in his analytical
presentation of human nature. The theological significance of Hill's
play has not, to my knowledge, been recognized; thematic passa