It would be tedious to trace the infatuation for the heroic plays and the partial return to the Elizabethans in the work of the various dramatists whose careers paralleled Dryden's. His rival, Settle, wrote heroic plays, a sensational political play on the Whig side, "Pope Joan, or the Female Prelate," and a long series of tragedies and comedies extending well into the next century. John Crowne, another contemporary, began with tragic comedies and heroic rhymed plays, proceeded to Shakespearean alterations, "Thyestes," and blank verse plays in the Elizabethan tradition, and ended his career with a rhymed "Caligula." Among those who in tragedy confined themselves mainly to adaptations or borrowings from the Elizabethans were Tate, Ravenscroft, and D'Urfey; and a group of women should be mentioned,--Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Pix, and Mrs. Centlivre,--who in the later half of the period devoted considerable attention to tragedy without creating any marked departure from the commonplace. We must confine ourselves to the authors whose tragedies had a more extended interest. Nathaniel Lee wrote his first play in 1675, when he was eighteen years old, and produced ten tragedies, in addition to the two in which he collaborated with Dryden, before the close of 1684, when he became insane. The first three, "Nero," "Sophonisba," and "Gloriana," were rhymed, but the fourth, "The Rival Queens" (1677), preceded Dryden in its return to blank verse and won an enormous success, maintaining itself on the stage long after the death of Betterton. His remaining tragedies were in blank verse, "Mithridates," "Oedipus," "Theodosius," "Cæsar Borgia," "Lucius Junius Brutus," "Duke of Guise," "Constantine," and "The Massacre of Paris," which with the tragicomedy "The Princess of Cleve" was acted after his release from the madhouse.