Thomas Otway (March 3, 1652 – April 14, 1685) was an English dramatist of the Restoration period.
Born the son of a clergyman, he was educated for the church, but on quitting Oxford, and coming to London, he became an actor, but performed with indifferent success. Otway was more valued for the sprightliness of his conversation and wit, which procured him the friendship of the Earl of Plymouth, who obtained for him a cornet's commission in the troops which then served in Flanders.

In 1678, driven to desperation by her, Otway obtained a commission through Charles, Earl of Plymouth, a natural son of Charles II, in a regiment serving in the Netherlands. The English troops were disbanded in 1679, but were left to find their way home as best they could. They were paid with depreciated paper, and Otway arrived in London late in the year, ragged and dirty, a circumstance utilized by Rochester in his Sessions of the Poets, which contains a scurrilous attack on his former protégé.



He had recourse to writing for the stage, and this was the only employment that nature seems to have fitted him for. Leigh Hunt terms Otway 'the poet of sensual pathos; for, affecting as he sometimes is, he knows no way to the heart but through the senses
Besides ten plays, Otway composed some miscellaneous poems, and wrote several translations.




After experiencing many reverses of fortune in regard to his circumstances, but generally changing for the worse, he died April 13, 1685, at a public-house on Tower-hill, whither he had retired to avoid the pressure of his creditors.