The Origin of the English Heroic Play

Abstract

shape of the stage, the introduction of scenery, the appearance of female actors, and the far-reaching influence of the new opera must be taken into account, but the main elements of the Heroic Play, the heroic personae dramatis, the love-interest, and the point of honour, are as clearly seen in the plays of Goffe or Cartwright or Carlell as in those of Orrery or Dryden. It is principally in form and in the employment of mechanical contrivances on-the stage that the post-Restoration drama is original. In both these respects it is usual to look to Davenant as the pioneer. The Siege of Rhodes is an important document, but its importance as an influence is questionable. It exhibits, no doubt, the earliest expression of heroic material in rhyme, but it must be noted that the verse is not mainly heroic. The couplet appears, but the staple is lyrical. It is worth while to notice, too, that Davenant was not an enthusiast for the heroic couplet, even for non-dramatic uses, and employed in his Gondibert the so-called heroic quatrain. It would have been a strange irony if the contemner of the couplet for its natural employment had succeeded by his example in establishing it for its least appropriate use in the drama! In spite of this, however, The Siege of Rhodes is interesting to us. It indicates the strong heroic tendency of the age, and in an interesting passage of the preface casts a light upon the 'Heroic Play' (perhaps the earliest use of the phrase) as a protest against the domestic comedy and tragedy of the Elizabethans. It is not only in literature that we find this reaction against the Bartholomew Fair of everyday life. The societies that grouped themselves around the Duchess of Newcastle and Mrs Katherine Philips illustrate the same process. Mrs Philips, who becomes 'the matchless Orinda,' will interest us later, so she deserves our chief attention here. She and her friends seem to have created for themselves an ideal world,