SOURCE: Armistead, J. M. “Hero as Endangered Species: Sophonisba, or Hannibal's Overthrow. A Tragedy (1675).” In Nathaniel Lee, pp. 43-57. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979.

In the following essay, Armistead discusses the structure and themes of Nathaniel Lee's most successful foray into the genre of heroic drama, Sophonisba.

In charting the modulation of high heroic drama into something resembling genuine tragedy, we can hardly afford to overlook Nathaniel Lee's first smash hit. That it usually is passed over suggests that most commentators have uncritically accepted impressionistic or satiric responses to the play—responses like those of the Earl of Rochester, Henry Fielding, and Sir Adolphus Ward, all of whom felt Lee had unforgivably distorted history into an extravaganza of ranting lovesickness. The most recent historian of Restoration drama, Robert D. Hume, continues this negative trend by reiterating the opinions of Dryden and Gerard Langbaine: Lee fails to unify his two plots...