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Jordg LilloEnglish playwright
Date of Birth: 04.02.1693
Country:  Great Britain |
Content:
Biography of George Lillo
George Lillo, an English playwright, was born on February 4, 1693 in London. He was born into a family of a Flemish jeweler who was married to an Englishwoman. Little is known about Lillo's life except that he learned his father's trade and associated himself with the middle-class merchants.
Early Works
Lillo's first play, the sentimental "ballad opera" Sylvia, or The Country Burial (1730), did not foreshadow his innovative role as the pioneer of bourgeois drama in prose. In this play, Lillo departed from the principles of classicism, which limited tragedy to great worldly events, and instead told a simple and touching story of temptation, downfall, and death of a London apprentice.
Notable Works
In his most significant play, The London Merchant, or the History of George Barnwell (1731), Lillo continued to break the conventions of classicism and narrated, in a prose style, the poignant story of a London apprentice's temptation, fall, and demise. The play took place in a similar social milieu as Lillo's previous work.
Lillo also wrote Fatal Curiosity (1736), another significant play written in blank verse, which drew inspiration from a popular book on murders at the time. His other plays, such as Britannia and Batavia (1734), The Christian Hero (1735), Marina (1738), and Elmerick, or Justice Triumphant (1740), were of lesser importance.
