In all these tragedies, whether acted or not, and whether works of genius or not, certain resemblances have been noted. They exhibit most of the elements that characterize the romantic movement as it stirred English poetry from the "Lyrical Ballads" to the first publications of Tennyson and Browning. Without realism in plot or language, and dealing always with what is unusual, improbable, and removed from the present, they made little effort to catch the interest of the average audience or to excite an interest common to ordinary experience. Their reaction against the frivolity of contemporary melodrama was as decided as their reaction against eighteenth century conventionality; but both impulses led to poetry, passion, and Shakespeare, but not to drama. They did not succeed in working out cause and effect of character through incident; when they desired to gain stage effectiveness, they merely borrowed from current melodrama or from the Elizabethans. Elizabethan influence is usually apparent in the choice of themes, in the devising of plot and situations, and particularly in the figurative and ornate phrasing. The revival of some Elizabethan plays on the stage, the vulgarization in the illegitimate drama of many of their incidents, and the general interest among readers at this time in the Elizabethan drama, all encouraged a fondness for madness, incest, battles, villany, and unrestrained passion of various kinds. In phrasing, the Elizabethan influence appears in all degrees; in the sympathetic emulation of Keats, in the amazing reproductions of Beddoes, or in the starched artificiality of the poetic embellishments of Milman, Knowles, or Procter. In general the style is redundant and florid. In such plays as were adapted for the stage, it will almost always be found that the mere curtailing of the figures, soliloquies, and episodes causes a marked improvement in the dramatic quality of the dialogue. Byron and Shelley both attempted to free their dramatic blank verse from conceits and artificialities, and to give it directness and lack of ornamentation corresponding to natural speech. In consequence, Byron's blank verse often makes a slovenly approach to prose, and Shelley's loses something of the beauty of his non-dramatic masterpieces; but on the whole, "Sardanapalus" and still more "Cain" and "The Cenci" show their greatness in this as in other respects, in the dramatic quality of their verse.