theatre away from the court and toward the town. Dickens introduced "the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell" into his novel Great Expectations. It was dismissed as a "nauseous sermon" by Charles Lamb, though much admired by Lillo's contemporaries Samuel Richardson and Colley Cibber, who acted in the original production of the play. Lillo revived the genre of play referred to as domestic tragedy (or bourgeois tragedy). Even though the Jacobean stage had flirted with merchant and artisan plays in the past (with, for example, Thomas Dekker and Thomas Heywood), The London Merchant was a significant change in theatre, and in tragedy in particular. Instead of dealing with heroes from classical literature or the Bible, presented with spectacle and grand stage effects, his subjects concerned everyday people, such as his audience, the theater-going middle classes, and his tragedies were conducted on the intimate scale of households, rather than kingdoms. Lillo was concerned that plays be morally correct and in keeping with Christian values. In 1734 he produced a patriotic masque, Britannia and Batavia, for the royal wedding of Anne, the Princess Royal, to William IV of Orange-Nassau. His next play was The Christian Hero (1735), a retelling of the story of Skanderbeg. Later years Later in the decade, Lillo wrote Fatal Curiosity (1737) and Marina (1738). He based Marina on the play Pericles by William Shakespeare. His last play, Elmerick, or Justice Triumphant, was performed posthumously in 1740. Lillo adapted the anonymous Elizabethan play Arden of Feversham, which was posthumously performed, first in 1759. It was based on the life of Alice Arden. In his own day, his later plays, other than Merchant, were only moderate successes, and after his death old style tragedies and comedies continued to dominate the stage. All of Lillo's plays were produced in London, and only three of them produced any profit. Lillo died at age 48, in 1739, in Rotherhithe, London. Notes References External links Article on Lillo by Dr. Fields (1999) with bibliography Profile of Lillo List of Lillo's works 1691 births 1739 deaths English dramatists and playwrights People from the City of London Writers from London English male dramatists and playwrights