Filmer wrote a lengthy blank verse tragedy, The Unnatural Brother (published London, 1697), adapted from an episode in Cassandre, a romance by Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède.[3] In terms of plot, it is considered derivative of Othello, and The Villain by Thomas Porter in the same tradition.[4] It was acted at the theatre in Little Lincoln's Inn Fields, and was received coldly. Part of this drama was reproduced by Pierre Antoine Motteux as The Unfortunate Couple; a short Tragedy, in The Novelty (1697).[1][3] The Novelty was then used as the basis for a 1704 play, The Unnatural Couple.[5]
Filmer in his tragedy was swimming against the tide of recent fashion–for the music of John Eccles, the productions of The Indian Queen as semi-opera and George Powell's Brutus of Alba—in excluding music from his tragedy, a position he defended in the introduction to the published text.[6] He pointed to features that he considered important (restriction of the number of characters on the stage at one time, in particular) as belonging to a classical tradition in drama he valued; the later 17th century London audience never favoured them.[7]
In a later work, Filmer defended the stage itself against the attacks of Jeremy Collier in a treatise A Defence of Plays (posthumous publication in 1707).[8] He brought to bear the argument that Collier failed to understand "Stage-Discipline" (i.e. poetic justice).[9] Collier replied in A Farther Vindication of the Short View (London, 1708).[3]
