In the Restoration Theatre the theme of consanguinity was originally dealt with no less than three times by Dryden: comically, in _The Spanish Friar_ (1681), when Lorenzo—after all the love-brokerage of pursy Father Dominic—discovers Elvira to be his sister: tragically, in _Don Sebastian_ (1690), when Sebastian and Almeyda are separated by the disclosures of old Alvarez: sentimentally and romantically, in _Love Triumphant_ (1693-4), when Alphonso wins Victoria whom he has long loved, even whilst she was supposed to be his sister. Otway it will be remembered turns the pathetic catastrophe of _The Orphan_ (1680), upon a deceit which produces similar though unhappy circumstances. In 1679, _Oedipus_, a joint production of Dryden and Lee, was brought out with great success at the Duke’s Theatre, Dorset Gardens. Unhallowed and incestuous passions again form the plot of _The Fatal Discovery; or, Love in Ruins_ (4to, 1698), produced at Drury Lane, a play seemingly derived from _Bandello, Part II_, Novel 35, which coincides with the thirtieth tale of the _Heptameron_. In various forms, however, this legend is to be found in the literature of all countries, and a cognate tradition is even attached to certain districts. _Innocence Distress’d; or, The Royal Penitents_, a tragedy by Robert Gould (ob. 1709), never performed but published by subscription (8vo, 1737), for the benefit of his daughter Hannah, is based on the same story. Gould’s work is weak and insipid. Later in the eighteenth century we have Horace Walpole’s _The Mysterious Mother_ (8vo, 1768), an unacted drama of extraordinary power and undissipated gloom on the same terrible theme; whilst Shelley’s _The Centi_, published in 1819, which the poet most emphatically intended for the boards, remains a masterpiece of supreme genius. Wagner in _Die Walküre_ shows the irresistible passion of Siegmund and Sieglinde, brother and sister, from whose union sprang the mighty hero Siegfried; and in _Gengangere_ (Ghosts), 1881, Ibsen threw, by the sickly craving of the fibreless Oswald Alving for Regina, a lurid light across that awesome tragedy of shadows, Nemesis, and blank despair. THEATRICAL HISTORY.