Heroic drama is a type of play

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

 popular during the Restoration

English Restoration

The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

 era in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, distinguished by both its verse structure and its subject matter. The sub-genre of heroic drama evolved through several works of the middle to later 1660s; John Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

's The Indian Emperour

The Indian Emperour

The Indian Emperour, or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, being the Sequel of The Indian Queen is an English Restoration era stage play, a heroic drama written by John Dryden that was first performed in the Spring of 1665...

(1665

1665 in literature

The year 1665 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*November 7 - The London Gazette is published for the first time.* Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society begins publication....

) and Roger Boyle's

Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery

Roger Boyle redirects here. For others of this name, see Roger Boyle Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery was a British soldier, statesman and dramatist. He was the third surviving son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork and Richard's second wife, Catherine Fenton. He was created Baron of Broghill on...

 The Black Prince

The Black Prince (play)

The Black Prince is a Restoration era stage play, a historical tragedy written by Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery. It premiered on stage in 1667 and was first published in 1669...

(1667

1667 in literature

-Events:* The Roman Catholic Church places the works of René Descartes on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.* Molière's play, Tartuffe, is banned.* Edmund Castell is imprisoned for debt....

) were key developments.

Dryden in 1670

The term "heroic drama" was invented by Dryden for his play, The Conquest of Granada

The Conquest of Granada

The Conquest of Granada is a Restoration era stage play, a two-part tragedy written by John Dryden that was first acted in 1670 and 1671 and published in 1672...

(1670

1670 in literature

The year 1670 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* The philosophical arguments of John Locke inspire the formation of the Board of Trade in London ....

). For the Preface to the printed version of the play, Dryden argued that the drama was a species of epic poetry

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

for the stage, that, as the epic was to other poetry, so the heroic drama was to other plays. Consequently, Dryden derived a series of rules for this type of play.

First, the play should be composed in heroic verse

Heroic verse

Heroic verse consists of the rhymed iambic line or heroic couplet. The term is used in English exclusively.In ancient literature, heroic verse was synonymous with the dactylic hexameter. It was in this measure that those typically heroic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey and the Aeneid were written...

 (closed couplets in iambic pentameter). Second, the play must focus on a subject that pertains to national foundations, mythological events, or important and grand matters. Third, the hero of the heroic drama must be powerful, decisive, and, like Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

, dominating even when wrong. The Conquest of Granada followed all of these rules. The story was that of the national foundation of Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 (and King Charles II

Charles II of England

Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...

 was known to be fond of Spanish plays), and the hero, Almanzor, was a man of great martial prowess and temperament.

Dryden's Conquest of Granada is one of the better heroic tragedies, but his highest achievement is his adaptation (which he called All for Love, 1678) of Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra to the heroic formula. Other heroic dramatists were Nathaniel Lee (The Rival Queens) and Thomas Otway, whose Venice Preserved is a fine tragedy that transcends the usual limitations of the form. We also owe indirectly to heroic tragedy two very amusing parodies of the type: the Ducke of Buckingham's The Rehearsal and Henry Fielding's The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great

Other dramatists

"Those who associate 'heroic drama' primarily with the use of the 'heroic couplet' usually set as its extent the years from 1664 to 1678. This, certainly, is its period of fullest development and authority. Those who prefer to accentuate the elements suggested by the very term 'heroic' rather than the strict rhymed verse form are willing to admit wider limits." Restoration plays by Sir William Davenant

William Davenant

Sir William Davenant , also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil...

, Thomas Otway

Thomas Otway

Thomas Otway was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for Venice Preserv'd, or A Plot Discover'd .-Life:...

, Nathaniel Lee

Nathaniel Lee

Nathaniel Lee was an English dramatist.He was the son of Dr Richard Lee, a Presbyterian clergyman who was rector of Hatfield and held many preferments under the Commonwealth...

, John Crowne

John Crowne

John Crowne was a British dramatist and a native of Nova Scotia.His father "Colonel" William Crowne, accompanied the earl of Arundel on a diplomatic mission to Vienna in 1637, and wrote an account of his journey...

, Elkanah Settle

Elkanah Settle

Elkanah Settle was an English poet and playwright.He was born at Dunstable, and entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1666, but left without taking a degree. His first tragedy, Cambyses, King of Persia, was produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1667...

, and John Banks

John Banks (playwright)

John Banks was an English playwright of the Restoration era. His works concentrated on historical dramas, and his plays were twice suppressed because of their implications, or supposed implications, for the contemporaneous political situation....

, and later works by Nicholas Rowe and Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...

, have been included in tighter or looser definitions of heroic drama.

Heroic Drama in literary criticism

Today, drama is divided up into numerous sub-genres; Dryden, however, worked from Classical critics. There was little dramatic critical theory for him to appeal to, and the new rules brought over from France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 (particularly those of Corneille

Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

 and Boileau

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was a French poet and critic.-Biography:Boileau was born in the rue de Jérusalem, in Paris, France. He was brought up to the law, but devoted to letters, associating himself with La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière...

) did not match English theatrical history or practice. The emphasis on unities and on maintaining only Classically proscribed dramatic forms also came from Thomas Rymer

Thomas Rymer

Thomas Rymer , English historiographer royal, was the younger son of Ralph Rymer, lord of the manor of Brafferton in Yorkshire, described by Clarendon as possessed of a good estate, who was executed for his share in the Presbyterian rising of 1663.-Early life and education:Thomas Rymer was born at...

, who condemned the heterogeneity of the stage. Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

 had only spoken of satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

, epic

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

, and tragedy

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

, and Horace

Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

 also wrote only of comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

, tragedy and satire, and so Dryden was seeking to square actual theatrical practice with an ancient framework for literature. He was attempting his own neo-classicism. The First Folio

First Folio

Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....

 of Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 had divided Shakespeare's plays into "history," "tragedy," and "comedy," but these terms were stretched. Dryden, therefore, implicitly recognizes that drama had moved into the territory of other types of poetry, but he strives to restrain that freedom by reforming the stage to a true and epic subject matter.

Satirical response

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, 20th Baron de Ros of Helmsley, KG, PC, FRS was an English statesman and poet.- Upbringing and education :...

 and others satirized heroic drama in The Rehearsal

The Rehearsal (play)

The Rehearsal was a satirical play aimed specifically at John Dryden and generally at the sententious and overly ambitious theatre of the Restoration tragedy. The play was staged in 1671 and published anonymously in 1672, but it is certainly by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and others...

. The satire was successful enough that heroic drama largely disappeared afterward. Buckingham attacked the stupidity of blustering, military heroes, as well as the apparent self-importance of attempting a dramatic entertainment about the serious subjects of military and national history.

Buckingham's criticism of Dryden in The Rehearsal

The Rehearsal (play)

The Rehearsal was a satirical play aimed specifically at John Dryden and generally at the sententious and overly ambitious theatre of the Restoration tragedy. The play was staged in 1671 and published anonymously in 1672, but it is certainly by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and others...

is partly Dryden's bombastic verse but, more pointedly, Dryden's personal interest in creating a "pure" drama. The character of Bayes is ludicrous more for his hubris in damning actual plays in favor of imagined ones than he is for being a poetaster.