The late sixteenth-century playwrights, dubbed by nineteenth-century writer George Saintsbury as the university wits, included such figures as Marlow, Nashe, Lodge, and Lyly and others who tended to write about heroic themes in a tragic vein. Classical references abounded—the conventions of Senecan tragedy, for example, in which blood and gore were rampant.

With Shakespeare, a new era arose in which the conventions of Senecan tragedy were put into question and even (arguably) satirized; for example, see Shakespeare's treatment of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy in Hamlet. A shift also occurred in the direction of allowing for a much greater dramatic range, from light comedies to tragedies that focused as much on inner life as they did on bloody quarrels.

With Shakespeare, English dramatic poetry began to show its range and nuance while retaining its capacity to render scenes of tragedy and heroism—albeit with more complex social critique and self-doubt thrown into the mix, as in Coriolanus.