John Home

John Home (born Sept. 21, 1722, Leith, Scot.—died Sept. 5, 1808, Merchiston Bank, near Edinburgh) was a Scottish dramatist whose play Douglas, according to the poet Thomas Gray, “retrieved the true language of the stage.” Home entered the church, then fought against the Jacobites in the 1745 uprising led by Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie). When his play Douglas was produced (1756) in Edinburgh, the church, disapproving of the theatre, sent him a summons,...