SOURCE: Armistead, J. M. “Hero as Endangered Species: Structure and Idea in Lee's Sophonisba.” Durham University Journal 71, no. 1 (December 1978): 35-43.

In this essay, Armistead rebuts long-standing criticisms of Sophonisba, arguing that the play's two plots are masterfully interwoven in order to explore the theme of heroism in the modern world.

In charting the modulation of high heroic drama into something resembling genuine tragedy, one can hardly afford to overlook Nathaniel Lee's first smash hit, Sophonisba, or Hannibal's Overthrow (1675).¹ 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 extravanganza of ranting lovesickness. The most recent historian of Restoration drama, Robert D. Hume, continues this negative trend by reiterating the opinions of Dryden and...