Although the years from 1660 to 1700 offer little in tragedy that has proved of permanent value, they mark the continuance of the _genre_ in a full tide of popularity. Probably in no forty years since then have so many original tragedies appeared in the London theatres; certainly in no forty years since have so many Elizabethan tragedies been revived. Tragedies and tragicomedies together are in numbers almost equal to the comedies which we think of as especially distinguishing the Restoration stage. There was hardly a writer for the theatre who did not try his hand at tragedy. In spite of the rivalry of opera and comedy, it continued from Davenant to Southerne to delight the age. Its literary as well as its theatrical importance was maintained. Noble authors as well as the greatest wits, the Earl of Orrery, Granville, Dryden, and Congreve, courted the tragic muse. Tragedy written for the popular stage had, indeed, a literary eminence hardly recognized before, even in the generation preceding the Civil War. In comparison with their Elizabethan predecessors the tragedies of this time are, in fact, literary rather than popular. They draw their themes from French or English plays; they display little innovation and still less study of life; they adopt rules and regulations; they are conventional and artificial. They respond to literary traditions; they hardly express the sentiments or ideas of their age. Some exceptions there are; but even plays like those of Banks, which gained theatrical success without literary distinction, resembled their more worthy brethren in their adherence to convention rather than nature.