The Villain as Hero in Elizabethan Tragedy #230823

Elizabethan drama is a term rather loosely used to cover the plays produced between the accession of Elizabeth, in 1558, and the restoration of Charles II in 1660. The plays of this period are, as every student knows, of very mixed type and unequal value, including as they do the sacred drama of national origin, the Latin imitations of Plautus and Seneca, the masterpieces of Shakespeare, and the decadent drama immediately preceding the closing of the theatres. It was towards the end of the sixteenth century that the Moral plays, performed chiefly for the edification and amusement of the common people, and the stiff imitations of classical plays, performed chiefly at court, began to give way before a new movement drawing nourishment from both, but distinctly different from either the Romantic Drama, the drama of passion, which was the crown and flower of Elizabethan dramatic art, and of which Shakespeare is the great exemplar.