SOURCE: Cooke, A. L., and Thomas B. Stroup. “The Political Implications in Lee's Constantine the Great.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 49, no. 4 (October 1950): 506-15.

In this essay, Cooke and Stroup argue that Constantine the Great was a political play that made veiled references to contemporary events, including the Popish Plot and the Rye House Plot.

Several scholars have called attention to a few political echoes in Nathaniel Lee's last play, Constantine the Great (D.L., Nov., 1683). Montague Summers lists Arius as one of the stage characters who satirize Shaftesbury.¹ Roswell Ham in his biography of Lee ignores the political implications of the play altogether.² Ghosh discusses the political references of the prologue and epilogue, but he is not concerned with the political implications in the play itself.³ Häfele in the preface to his edition of Constantine, 1933, deals more fully with the reflections of contemporary politics in...