Dryden's Heroic play

The tragic authors of the Restoration  period and their tragedies occupy a position in the whole less important, though distinctly curious. With all their faults, there can be no doubt that comedies like Love for Love , The Confederacy, and the Beaux-Stratagem mark in certain directions an advance upon all English comic work before them, except that of Shakespeare .For poetry is not necessary to comedy , and   is absolutely necessary to tragedy.

The tragedy of the times divide itself, with the usual overlapping, into two parts- the Heroic Drama and the Blank verse tragedy . In both periods and in both kinds the mighty craftsmanship of Dryden led the way and despite the traditional repute of Venice Preserved, it is impossible here to admit that any examples surpassed The Conquest of Granada in the first kind, and All for Love in the second.

The Rival Ladies, which is Dryden's first serious play, and which followed The Wild Gallant at not great interval, is neither wholly tragic nor wholly comic, neither wholly rhymed nor wholly blank verse and prose. But The Indian Emperor (1665), following an Indian Queen, in which he helped his brother-in-law , Sir Robert Howard, was his first distinct and original venture wholly in the new style.

The Maiden Queen(1667) is a blend of  a tragic, or at least serious, heroics and comic prose. But Tyrannic Love , or  The Royal Martyr (1669), a dramatization of the legend of St.Catherine, first exhibited the heroic style in perfection.The splendid rhetoric of the best passages,the rattling single stick play of the rhyming dialogue, and the really noble sentiment of much of it, almost excuse the enthusiasm of audiences for a style full of most glaring faults. This is still more the case with the two parts of The Conquest of Granada (1670), which brought the kind of of its highest perfection.

The State of Innocence, which is half  an opera and more than half a  Heroic play, shows an undiminished popularity of the style. And in Aurangzeb, still heroic. When he turned from rhyme to blank verse, he actually took a play of  Shakespeare's for something more than the canvas of his new attempt.