Heroic Tragedy

            In England, during the Restoration period, a type of tragedy developed. It was characterized by spectacle, violent emotional conflicts in the main characters, extra vagant dialogue and exotic setting. Frequently, the plays were written in heroic couplets. The scenery was elaborate.
             The influences that produced the heroic drama were the romantic plays of the Jacobeans, especially those of Beaumont and Fletcher, the development of opera in England and theFrench court romances that were brought to England.
             By the court of Charles II.
             The style of the plays is bombastic, conceived for a delivery that now seems mannered and rhetorical. These plays are highly conventional, and the conventions now seem absurd or meaningless. The hero himself is highly artificialÜno figure o flesh and blood, no psychological study of him. The typical Restoration hero is brave, boastful, and bone headed. Restoration tragedy is sufficiently classical in inspiration to put plot below character, but the playwrights have a tendency to say "This is how man might behave under these conditions- and how splendid if he did!-.
             The hero's strength of character and the heroines virtue aroused wonder. The plot was made to match, being filled with events that are astounding rather meaningful. This is partly due to classical influence, or rather to the modified form of classicism practiced in the French theatre .The classical unities led at its best to compression, to concentration, to refinement, it led to mere sensationalism, a series of misfortunes coming too rapidly one upon another to do anything but stun the reader.
             The most characteristic situation for the hero to find himself in is what is called the "love and honour-paradox. This device is often said to be drawn from the French dramatists, and indeed Comeille has presented one of the most involved yet symmetrical examples of it in his Horace.
             The situation usually presented is that of a man whose duty to his king, his country and the code of his class is in conflict with his affection for wife, friend or sweet heart.