George Lillo and Richard Steele wrote the trend-setting plays of the early Augustan period. Lillo's plays consciously turned from heroes and kings and toward shopkeepers and apprentices. They emphasized drama on a household scale, rather than a national scale, and the hamartia and agon in his tragedies are the common flaws of yielding to temptation and the commission of Christian sin. The plots are resolved with Christian forgiveness and repentance. Steele's The Conscious Lovers (1722) hinges upon his young hero avoiding fighting a duel. The plays set up a new set of values for the stage. Instead of amusing the audience or inspiring the audience, they sought to instruct the audience and to ennoble it. Also, the plays were popular precisely because they seemed to reflect the audience's own lives and concerns (Legouis 782–787, 879–883).
