The vogue of the heroic play was about over. In 1678 came Rymer's attempt at a model heroic tragedy and his "Tragedies of the Last Age," a severe attack upon the Elizabethan drama from the point of view of extreme pseudo-classicism. But in the same year was acted Dryden's "All for Love," in blank verse, with a preface extolling Shakespeare, rejecting the models of the ancients as "too little for English tragedy," discarding "the nicety of manners of the French," yet claiming credit for an observance of the unities. This was the one play in which, as he declared, Dryden followed his own bent unheedful of stage fashions, and it seems to have set the fashion and led the way back to blank verse and to Shakespeare. Rhymed plays continued to appear occasionally, but blank verse was henceforth recognized as the proper medium for tragedy.
Even Dryden's praise of Shakespeare is modified by his respect for French rules, and by the prevailing opinion that Shakespeare's genius lacked the improvements readily secured by an application of the accepted formulas of art. That a certain improvement is accomplished cannot be denied. The incoherent profusion of scenes, the host of distracting incidents are reduced to order, the unities of time and place give a directness and rapidity to the action that "Antony and Cleopatra" greatly lacks. In characterization and poetry Dryden's play is, to be sure, not comparable with Shakespeare's, but in both respects it far surpasses the numerous other English dramas on the subject. This is faint praise. By following Shakespeare without imitating him, and by adapting a play to the stage requirements of the day without bowing to the absurdities of the heroic models, Dryden succeeded in producing a great and original poetical drama. Not in response to mere theatrical fashion or to French taste or theory, but in response to the inspiration of Shakespeare came the finest product of Restoration tragedy.
In this same year as "All for Love" appeared "Oedipus," written in collaboration with Lee, in which the authors brought to their classical model the methods of the Elizabethans. Eurydice and Adrastus furnish the necessary love story, and Creon becomes the hateful rival and intriguing villain. The declamation sometimes shows Dryden at his best, the bombast and horrors are in Lee's worst vein. In the next year appeared Dryden's improvement of "Troilus and Cressida" with his careful essay on "The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy," in which he criticises after the fashion set by Rymer the errors of Shakespeare and Fletcher, insists on the necessity of unity, order, and greatness in action, and praises the excellence of Fletcher and especially of Shakespeare in character and passion. Nowhere else, perhaps, has Dryden expressed so discriminatingly and so finally his own views and, on the whole, the views of his age, on tragedy. Shakespeare's greatness is recognized as preëminent in the presentation of character and passion; his faults in coherence and unity of structure and his archaism in manners and proprieties are admitted.