Hill at the request of Theo. Cibber almost new wrote the whole, and the last act was entirely his in conduct, sentiment and diction.” In reality, The Insolvent is The Fatal Dowry over again, altered to tragicomedy, and with the names of the characters changed. The first two Acts of Hill’s play proceed much after the manner of its prototype, with close parallels in language. From thenceforward, however, the action diverges. The bride, Amelia, resists the further attentions of her former sweetheart. They are none the less observed and suspected by her husband’s friend, who speaks of the matter to both her father and her lord. The former promises to observe her with watchful eye; Chalons, the husband, is at first resentful of the imputation, but presently yields to his friend’s advice, that he pretend a two-days’ journey, from which he will return unexpectedly. During his absence, his wife’s maid introduces the lover into her mistress’ chamber while Amelia sleeps. There Chalons surprises him kneeling beside the bed, and kills him. Amelia stabs herself, but the confession of her maid reveals her innocence, and her wound is pronounced not mortal.

It has been suggested (Biographia Dramatica, II, 228—quoted by Phelan, p. 59, and Schwarz, p. 74) that in Hill’s Zara (adaptation of the Zaire of Voltaire), also, Nerestan’s voluntary return to captivity in order to end that of his friends, whom he lacked the means to ransom with gold, was suggested by the behavior of Charalois; but this can be no more than a coincidence, as it here but reproduces what is in the French original.

 A long interval, and finally, in the dawn of the twentieth century, there appeared the next and latest recrudescence of The Fatal Dowry. This was Der Graf von Charolais, ein Trauerspiel, by Richard Beer-Hofmann, disciple of the Neo-Romantic School or Vienna Decadents, a coterie built about the leadership of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Beer-Hofmann’s play—a five-Act tragedy in blank verse—was produced for the first time at the Neue Theatre, Berlin, on December 24, 1904, and was received with considerable acclaim. Unlike Rowe, he gives full credit to his source, from which he has drawn no less extensively than the author of The Fair Penitent. Unlike Rowe, he goes back to the old dramatists in the matter of construction, placing upon the stage once more the episode of the unburied corpse and the noble son; he even outdoes The Fatal Dowry in this respect, by allowing the first half of his plot three Acts instead of two, with only two Acts for the amour and its tragic consequences. In his hands the hero again becomes the central figure; in fact, the three principal versions of this donnee suggest by 

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