The New International Encyclopædia/Southerne, Thomas

SOUTHERNE, sŭTH′ẽrn, Thomas (1660-1746). An English playwright. He was born in Ireland, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Entered at the Middle Temple in London, he abandoned law to write for the stage, his first play being The Loyal Brother, or the Persian Prince (1682). His two best known pieces are the tragedies of The Fatal Marriage (1694), which was afterwards revised by Garrick, and Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1696), founded on a novel of the time and remarkable as including one of the earliest English condemnations of the slave trade.