LILLO, GEORGE (1693-1739), English dramatist, son of a Dutch jeweller, was born in London on Feb. 4, 1693. He was brought up to his father's trade and was for many years a partner in the business. His first piece, Silvia, or the Country Burial, was a ballad opera produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in Nov. 1730. On June 22, 1731, his domestic tragedy, The Merchant, renamed later The London Merchant, or the History of George Barnwell, was produced by Theophilus Cibber and his company at Drury Lane. The piece is founded on "An excellent ballad of George Barnwell, an apprentice of London who . . . thrice robbed his master, and murdered his uncle in Ludlow." Lillo went back to the Elizabethan domestic drama of passion of which the Yorkshire Tragedy is a type. Scoffing critics called it, with reason, a "New gate tragedy," but it was regularly acted for many years at holiday seasons for the moral benefit of the apprentices. The last act contained a scene, generally omitted on the London stage, in which the gallows actually figured. In 1734 Lillo celebrated the
marriage of the Princess Anne with William IV. of Orange in Britannia and Batavia, a masque. His other dramas were : The Christian Hero (1735), Fatal Curiosity (1736), an adaptation of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, with the title Marina (1738) and Elmer ick, or Justice Triumphant (1740). Lillo died on Sept. 3, He left an unfinished version of Arden of Feversham, which was completed by Dr. John Hoadly and produced in 1759. Lillo has a certain cosmopolitan importance, for the influence of George Barnwell can be traced in the sentimental drama of both France and Germany.