SOURCE: Brown, Richard E. “Heroics Satirized by ‘Mad Nat. Lee’.” Papers on Language and Literature 19, no. 4 (fall 1983): 385-401.

In the following essay, Brown examines four of Lee's plays—The Massacre of Paris; The Princess of Cleve, Theodosius, and Lucius Junius Brutus—works that the critic says belie Lee's reputation for bombast and mental instability.

Dryden addressed his young friend, Nathaniel Lee, in the Prologue to Lee's Rival Queens (March, 1676/77):

They only think you animate your Theme With too much Fire, who are themselves all Phle'me: .....Despise those Drones, who praise while they accuse The too much vigor of your youthful Muse.(1) 

Dryden's remark is one of the earliest indications that from his first three dramas, Nero, Sophonisba, and Gloriana, Lee had already acquired the reputation for bombast, bloodshed and a lack of artistic control which he was unable to shake later in his career, and which persists in...