The Gamester

Gamester, The

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gamester (1753), by Edward
Moore This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Gamester (1753)
Author: Edward Moore
Commentator: Charles H. Peake Phillip R. Wikelund
Release Date: July 12, 2005 [EBook #16267]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
GAMESTER (1753) ***

Produced by David Starner, Louise Hope and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Series Five:
Drama
No. 1
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

With an Introduction by Charles H. Peake
and
a Bibliographical Note by Philip R. Wikelund
The Augustan Reprint Society July, 1948 _Price: 75 cents_
* * * * *
GENERAL EDITORS RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan
EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_
H. T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_
ASSISTANT EDITOR W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of
Washington BENJAMIN BOYCE, University of Nebraska LOUIS I.
BREDVOLD University of Michigan CLEANTH BROOKS, Yale
University JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University ARTHUR
FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago SAMUEL H. MONK, University
of Minnesota ERNEST MOSSNER, University of Texas JAMES
SUTHERLAND, _Queen Mary College, London_
Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author by Edwards Brothers, Inc.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. 1948
* * * * *

INTRODUCTION
This reprint of Edward Moore's The Gamester makes available to
students of eighteenth century literature a play which, whatever its
intrinsic merits, is historically important both as a vehicle for a century
of great actors and as a contribution to the development of middle-class
tragedy which had considerable influence on the Continent. The
Gamester was first presented at the Drury Lane Theatre February 7,

1753 with Garrick in the leading role, and ran for ten successive nights.
Up to the middle of the nineteenth century it remained a popular stock
piece--John Philip Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Barry, the Keans,
Macready, and others having distinguished themselves in it--and in
America from 1754 to 1875 it enjoyed even more performances than in
England. (J.H. Caskey, The Life and Works of Edward Moore, 96-99).
Moore's middle-class tragedy is the only really successful attempt to
follow Lillo's decisive break with tradition in England in the eighteenth
century. His background, like Lillo's, was humble, religious, and
mercantile. The son of a dissenting pastor, Moore received his early
education in dissenters' academies, and then served an apprenticeship to
a London linen-draper. After a few years in Ireland as an agent for a
merchant, Moore returned to London to join a partnership in the linen
trade. The partnership was soon dissolved, and Moore turned to letters
for a livelihood. Among his works are Fables for the Female Sex (1744)
which went through three editions, The Foundling (1748), a successful
comedy, and Gil Blas (1751), an unsuccessful comedy. In 1753, with
encouragement and some assistance from Garrick, he produced The
Gamester, upon which his reputation as a writer depends.
It is impossible, of course, to review here all the factors involved in the
development of middle-class tragedy in England in the eighteenth
century. However, certain aspects of that movement which concern
Moore's immediate predecessors and which have not been adequately
recognized might be mentioned briefly. Aside from Elizabethan and
Jacobean attempts to give tragic expression to everyday human
experience, historians have noted the efforts of Otway, Southerne, and
Rowe to lower the social level of tragedy; but in this period
middle-class problems and sentiments and domestic situations appear
in numerous tragedies, long-since forgotten, which in form, setting, and
social level present no startling deviations from traditional standards.
Little or no attention has been given to some of these obscure
dramatists who in the midst of the Collier controversy attempted to
illustrate in tragedy the arguments advanced in the third part of John
Dennis's _The Usefulness of the Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, to
Government, and to Religion_ (1698). 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