heroic play

heroic play, a type of play prevalent in Restoration England during the 1660s and 1670s.

Modeled after French Neoclassical tragedy, the heroic play was written in rhyming pentameter couplets. Such plays presented characters of almost superhuman stature, and their predominant themes were exalted ideals of love, honour, and courage. The heroic play was based on the traditional epic and romance. The most popular writer of heroic plays was John Dryden, whose Conquest of Granada, in two parts (1670, 1671), had all the requisite elements of poetry, battle, courage, death, and murder. George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, satirized the heroic play in The Rehearsal (first performed 1671), its particular target being Dryden. Although Dryden continued to use the form through the mid-1670s, the heroic play had largely died out as a genre by the end of the decade. The term heroic play has also been applied to plays with all the attributes given above, but written in blank verse.