The Heroic Tragedy

Sibaprasad Dutta
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Heroic Tragedy is a name given to the form of tragedy which had

some vogue in the beginning of the Restoration period (1660-1700). It
was drama in the epic mode – grand, rhetorical and declamatory at its
best and often bombastic at its worst. Its themes were love and
honour, and it was considerably influenced by French classical drama,
especially by the works of Corneille and Racine. John Dryden thus
defined it in the preface to The Conquest of Granada (1672) : “ An
heroic play ought to be an imitation, in little, of an heroic poem ; and
consequently … love and valour ought to be the subject of it”. In these
plays, as in an epic, the protagonist is a large-scale warrior whose
actions involve the fate of an empire. A noble hero and an equally
noble heroine are typically placed in a situation in which their
passionate love is in conflict with the demands of honour and with the
hero’s patriotic duty to his country. When the conflict ends in a
disaster, the effect is a tragedy.

Heroic drama was staged in a spectacular and operatic fashion, and in

it one can detect the influences of opera which, at this time, was
establishing itself. The two main early works of this genre were The
Siege of Rhodes (1656) and The Spaniards in Peru (1658) by Sir
William Davenant who was virtually the pioneer of English opera and
who promoted heroic drama. The main plays thereafter were Robert
Howard’s The Indian Queen (1665) and those by Dryden. This kind
of tragedy was satirized and burlesqued by Buckingham in The
Rehearsal (1672) and much later again by Sheridan in 1779. Heroic
drama was initially written in closed heroic couplet, and later in blank
verse.
John Dryden (1631 – 1700 ) was the chief exponent of this dramatic
form. The Indian Emperor (1665), Tyrrannick Love (1669), The
Conquest of Granada (1669-1670) and Aureng-zebe (1675) are his
important works in heroic couplet. Being in course of time weary of “
his long-loved mistress, Rime,” as “ Passion’s too fierce to be in fetters
bound, / And Nature flies him like enchanted ground”, he replaced
heroic couplet with blank verse. His play, All for Love or The World
Well Lost (1678) written in blank verse on the theme of
Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is considered to be his
dramatic masterpiece. Although it was a daring thing to attempt what
Shakespeare had already done, he did not copy it despite following
Shakespeare very closely. His play is of distinctly different nature and
high merit – his characters are well-drawn and vivid, and the
style ,though not as forceful as Shakespeare’s, is grand and restrained.
After the Revolution, he wrote Don Sebastian (1690), Cleomenes
(1692) and Love Triumphant (1694). The last was a tragic-comedy
and a failure, being of far less merit than the kind of Shakespeare’s
The Winter’s Tale. And the other two were average and not
attractive like All for Love. At various stages of his career, he
attempted, in collaboration with Nathaniel Lee, to improve upon
Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Troilus and Cressida with results
as lamentable as they were sure to be.

Thomas Otway (1651-85 ) is another name in the field of Heroic

tragedy. His first play, Alcibiades was staged in 1675, and this play
was followed by Don Carlos (1676), The Orphan (1680) and Venice
Preserv’d (1682), the last one being his masterpiece. Although Otway
came out with a heroic play in Don Carlos, its reputation was feeble.
The Orphan was successful, and it struck the note of deep pathos,
characteristic of Otway. The play has a calmness of tone and lacks in
heroic rants. Otway’s finest work was Venice Preserv’d , a tragedy
written on a grander scale than The Orphan. The characters are
handled adroitly, especially those of Jaffier and Pierre. The play has
rugged and sombre force, and reveals the playwright’s considerable
skill in writing out high drama. In the opinion of an authority on the
drama, the play has been revived more often than any play outside
Shakespeare’s – an undeniable proof of its dramatic qualities.

The next name worthy of mention is Nathaniel Lee (1653 ? – 92) . In

spite of the fact that Lee who had an unbalanced nature and whose
short existence on earth was darkened by mental troubles and
hastened by the excesses he committed does not preclude him from
being admired as a Romanticist, remarkable for the individuality of his
soul. He was a belated Elizabethan, inspired by the spirit of heroic
tragedy. He wrote in blank verse, unusually indeed. Of his many
tragedies, some important works are Nero (1674), Sophonisba
(1676), The Rival Queens (1677) and Mithridates (1678). He also
collaborated with Dryden in the production of two plays. In his own
time, Lee’s name became a byword to distinguish a kind of wild, raving
style, which, in part at least , seems to have been a product of
madness. But when he is tranquil, he writes brilliantly . He has a
command of deep pathos, and all through his work he has touches of
real poetic quality.

John Crowne ( c. 1640 – 1703? ) was a voluminous playwright whose

best known works are Caligula (1698), a heroic tragedy, and
Thyestes (1681) also a heroic tragedy ,though written in blank verse.
Crowne also wrote a comedy , Sir Courtly Nice (1685) which
received good appreciation from the viewers, if not from the critics.
Crowne was an average Restoration dramatist. The plays show some
talent and a fair amount of skill in versification.
Nicholas Rowe (1674 – 1718) who, during his lifetime, was a person
of eminence and who became Poet Laureate in 1715 wrote a number
of heroic plays. The best known among them are Tamerlane (1702),
The Fair Penitent (1703) and the popular Jane Shore (1714).
Johnson says of him , “ His reputation comes from the reasonableness
of some of his scenes, the elegance of his diction, and the suavity of
his verse.”

The Heroic Tragedy, an important genre of the form, occupies a silver

shelf in the literary history of England. Although the Mount
Shakespeare stood out overlooking the field, the dramatists could
produce some works like All for Love and Venice Preserved which
are still read with avid interest. The tragical faculty was dwindling all
through the period down the Shakespeare Lane with characters
becoming more stagy and situations acquiring the taint of horror more
and more. This is an age of experiment though marked by a decline
from the Shakespearian flight.

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