1839, John Richard Darley, A Treatise on Homer: With Miscellaneous Questions, Samuel J. Machen, page 72:
[…] hence, the gods in the Iliad are never “ Dii ex machinis,” they are providential and governing, they prepare the conflict, mature the crisis, […]
1882: The Dublin Journal of Medical Science, volume № 73, page 329 (Fannin & Co.)
[…] assume nervous influences of which the student has no knowledge, and which he must provisionally regard as dii ex machinis, to be looked-up afterwards.
2005: Christoph Clausen, Macbeth Multiplied: Negotiating Historical and Medial Difference Between Shakespeare and Verdi, page 161 (Rodopi; ISBN 90‒420‒1887‒9, 978‒90‒420‒1887‒7)
In John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728), the ludicrously contrived last-minute rescue of Maceath works as a deliberate deflation of opera’s various dii ex machinis.
