The term she-tragedy, also known as pathetic tragedy[1] refers to a vogue in the late 17th and early 18th centuries for tragic plays focused on the sufferings of a woman, sometimes innocent and virtuous but often a woman who had committed some sort of sexual sin.[2] Prominent she-tragedies include Thomas Otway's The Orphan (1680), John Banks' Virtue Betrayed, or, Anna Bullen (1682), Thomas Southerne's The Fatal Marriage (1694), Mary Pix's Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperor of the Turks and Nicholas Rowe's The Fair Penitent (1703) and Lady Jane Grey (1715). Rowe was the first to use the term "she-tragedy," in 1714.
- ^ The Ravishing Restoration: Aphra Behn, Violence, and Comedy By Ann Marie Stewart
- ^ Canfield, J. Douglas (2001). The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Drama. Broadview Press. ISBN 9781551112701.