Heroic Drama

Heroic Drama Criticism

• Introduction
• Representative Works
• Criticism: Definitions And Overviews
  • The Author's Apology prefixed to The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, an Opera
  • The Rise of the Heroic Play
  • Ideas of Greatness: The ‘Heroic’ Play
  • Heroic Action
• Criticism: Politics And Heroic Drama
  • Authority and Obligation in the State: ‘Let Majesty no more be held Divine.’
  • Heroes and States: Heroic Romance
• Criticism: Early Plays: Dryden And Orrery
  • The Significance of Dryden's Aureng-Zebe
  • Dryden's Plays of Ideas
  • Regicide and Reparation: The Autobiographical Drama of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery
  • ‘Private Greatness’: The Feminine Ideal in Dryden's Early Heroic Drama
  • Orrery's The Generall and Henry the Fifth: Sexual Politics and the Desire for Friendship
• Criticism: Later Plays: Lee And Otway
  • So Noble a Pleasure
  • Hero as Endangered Species: Sophonisba, or Hannibal's Overthrow. A Tragedy (1675)
  • The Distinction of Otway and Betterton
• Further Reading