We shall in the present chapter discuss the two comedies or rather farces just mentioned, and notice on the one hand the rather amorphous production which, during the first thirty years of Elizabeth, represented the influence of a growing taste for personal and lively dramatic story on the somewhat arid soil of the Morality and Interlude, and, on the other, the abortive attempt to introduce the regular senecan tragedy-an attempt which almost immediately broke down and disappeared, whelmed in the abundance of chronicle-play and melodrama.
"A History of English Literature Elizabethan Literature"
George Saintsbury
In 1594 came his interesting senecan tragedy of Cleopatra; in 1595 the first part of his chief work, The History of the Civil Wars, and in 1601 a collected folio of "Works."
"A History of English Literature Elizabethan Literature"
George Saintsbury
Then he rested, at any rate from publication, till 1605, when he produced Philotas, another senecan tragedy in verse.
"A History of English Literature Elizabethan Literature"
George Saintsbury