At the opening of the theatres, tragedy and tragicomedy took up their courses about where they had left off. The plays of Davenant, the main connecting link between the two periods, might be treated in connection with either, without seeming in the least out of place. Tragicomedy of the type current in the thirties continued in the sixties; tragedy oscillated between honor and horror, fine writing and perverted lust, as in Massinger, Shirley, and Glapthorne. Spanish stories, long influential in the drama, promised for a time to prove still more important. Dryden's first two plays, "The Wild Gallant" (1663)[25] and "The Rival Ladies" (1664), were based, like many other contemporary plays, on Spanish originals; but the second introduced rhyme and some of the elements of the plots of the heroic plays. It was, however, the Elizabethan plays that the audiences went to see, and that the dramatists had constantly before them. The plays of the Marlowean period were regarded as out of date, and very few were revived, practically none of the tragedies except the early ones of Shakespeare. Of the later Elizabethans, Beaumont and Fletcher were the most popular, for a time surpassing Shakespeare. Over thirty of their plays were revived, and many of these were constantly acted. Of tragedies and tragicomedies, "The Maid's Tragedy," "Philaster," "Bonduca," "A King and No King," "Valentinian," and "Rollo" held the stage till the end of the century, the first three much longer. Jonson's tragedies, as well as his comedies, were revived; and Massinger's "Virgin Martyr," Webster's "White Devil," Chapman's "Bussy D'Ambois," Shirley's "Cardinal" and "Traitor" were among the plays that carried on the traditions of the tragedy of blood. Shakespeare's comedies fell into disfavor, but his tragedies were popular from the start. This was due in part to the genius of Betterton, who found his best opportunities in depicting their protagonists, in part to their merits as stage plays for both actors and audiences; but, whatever the causes of their success, they soon exercised a large and increasing influence upon the theory and practice of tragedy. The Elizabethan plays, however, had almost from the first to encounter a rivalry with a new fashion. Davenant, their reviver, was also the first with the new. His "Siege of Rhodes" (1656), with its scenery, machines, music, rhyme, and heroics, may be said to inaugurate both the opera and the heroic play. Howard's "Indian Queen" (1664), in which Dryden had a hand, was followed by Dryden's "Indian Emperor" (1665), in rhyme and displaying the full-fledged heroic formula. The love-complications of its plot are of a kind constantly reappearing not only in the heroic plays but in later tragedy as well.