It is a good example of the bourgeois tragedy or domestic drama, which Diderot was so eager to see introduced on to the French stage.

The infatuation of Beverley, the tears and virtue of Mrs.Beverley, the prudence of Charlotte and the sage devotion of her lover, the sympathetic remorse of Bates, and even the desperation of Stukely, made up a picture of domestic misery and moral sentiment with which Diderot was sure to fall in love.

Lillo's _George Barnwell_, with its direct and urgent moral, was a still greater favourite, and Diderot compared the scene between Maria and Barnwell in prison to the despair of the _Philocletes_ of Sophocles, as the hero is heard shrieking at the mouth of his cavern;[271] just as a more modern critic has thought Lillo's other play, _The Fatal Curiosity_, worthy of comparison with the _Oedipus Tyrannus_.
Diderot's feeling for Shakespeare seems to have been what we might have anticipated from the whole cast of his temperament.

One of the scenes which delighted him most was that moment of awe, when Lady Macbeth silently advances down the stage with her eyes closed, and imitates the action of washing her hands, as wondering that "the old man should have so much blood in him." "I know nothing," he exclaims, "so pathetic in discourse as that woman's silence and the movement of her hands.

What an image of remorse!"[272] It was not to be expected that Diderot should indulge in those undiscriminating superlatives about Shakespeare which are common in Shakespeare's country.