author
active 1672-1710 Henry Neville Payne
d. 1709
A Restoration playwright whose surviving work mixes stage drama with a life touched by political intrigue, he moved from writing tragedies and comedies to becoming entangled in late 17th-century Catholic and Jacobite causes.
1 Audiobook
The Fatal Jealousie (1673)
by active 1672-1710 Henry Neville Payne
About the author
Active in the later 17th century, Henry Neville Payne is chiefly remembered as a dramatist of the Restoration stage. He is credited with plays including The Fatal Jealousy, The Morning Ramble, and The Siege of Constantinople, works associated with the Duke's Theatre and the lively theatrical world of the 1670s.
After his period as a playwright, Payne became involved in political agitation connected with the Roman Catholic cause in Scotland and England. Sources describe him as taking part in the Montgomery Plot, and he is also noted for having been tortured in Edinburgh in December 1690, often identified as the last legal use of torture in Scotland.
Even basic details about his life are uncertain, including the exact year of his death, which is often given as around 1709 or 1710. That uncertainty gives his career an added air of mystery: he survives in literary history both as a dramatist and as a figure caught up in the dangerous politics of his age.