[ 7 ] 



■ ference to queftions of national importance, aiid. topics that em- 

 ployed the public mind, was confidered as an excellence, and 

 the more diredly a play was brought to bear on the prefent 

 times, the more happy was the poet efteemed in his choice of 

 a fubjed. The' Perjce of JEJchylus was written by him and 

 reprefented at Athens no long time after the battle of Sahimis, 

 which it celebrates, and at which the author was prefent. The 

 Supplices^ the Heraclida, and the Oedipus Coloneus were exprefsly 

 written for the purpofe of paying a compliment to the Athenian 

 people. The contefl; for fovereignty between the Greeks and 

 Afiatics was a topic, of which the poets of the former people, 

 from Homer downwards, never loft fight. Among the tragedies of 

 Seneca there is one entitled O&avia, of which the unfortunate 

 daughter of Mejfalina and wife of Nero is the heroine. Shake-. 

 fbearey who was a ftranger to the rules of falfe criticifm, and 

 confulted only nature and good fenfe, did not find any thing 

 in the recent date of a tranfadion which rendered it lefs proper, 

 in his opinion, for becoming the fubjed of dramatic reprefen- 

 tation. Many of his moft popular plays are formed on the tranf- 

 adions of EngHJh hiftory, particularly the conflids between the 

 houfes of Tork and Lancajier, which were then frefh in the 

 mind of every body. The tragedy of Henry the eighth, in which 

 the fovereign of England is a principal perfonage, and the divorce 

 and death of his royal confort are introduced, was brought on 



the 



I 



