204. The older and more rugged iambic survives in the fables of Phaedrus, written at no distant date from these plays, if not actually contemporary.
205. Cp. Leo, op. cit. i. 166, 174.
206. See p. 29.
207. These horrors go beyond the crucifixion scene in the Laureolus (see p. 24), and the tradition of genuine tragedy was all against such presentation. As far as the grotesqueness and bombast of the plays go, the age of Nero might have tolerated them. We must remember that seventeenth-century England enjoyed the brilliant bombast of Dryden (e.g. in Aurungzebe) and that the eighteenth delighted in the crude absurdities of such plays as George Barnwell.
208. Cp. also Phaedra 707, where Hippolytus' words, 'en impudicum crine contorto caput | laeva reflexi,' can only be justified as inserted to explain to the hearers what they could not see. See also p. 48, note.
209. They have been influenced by the pantomimus and the dramatic recitation so fashionable in their day, inasmuch as they lack connexion, and, though containing effective episodes, are of far too loose a texture to be effective drama.
210. See R. Fischer, Die Kunstentwicklung der englischen Tragödie; J. W. Cunliffe, Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy; J. E. Manly, Introductory Essay to Miller's Translation of the Tragedies of Seneca. The Senecan drama finds its best modern development in the tragedies of Alfieri. Infinitely superior in every respect as are the plays of the modern dramatist, he yet reveals in a modified form not a few of Seneca's faults. There is often a tendency to bombast, an exaggeration of character, a hardness of outline, that irresistibly recall the Latin poet.
211. The debt is as good as acknowledged, ll. 58 sqq.
212. ll. 310 sqq.
213. l. 915.