that might have gone with them originally and exposes their inherent absurdity. The play is credited with putting an end to heroic drama, but, in the long run, it did not. If "heroic drama" is understood only as the writings of Dryden in an heroic vein, then perhaps The Rehearsal was a success. Dryden was unable or unwilling to pursue heroic drama for long after The Rehearsal came out. Whether The Rehearsal or the she-tragedy made popular by the acting of Elizabeth Barry did it, there was a turn away from the Classical heroes of Dryden's heroic drama. However, new plays with exaggerated heroes who mouth impossibly high-sounding moral sentiments and accomplish impossibly extravagant actions continued to be written through to the 1740s (see, for example, Henry Carey's Chrononhotonthologos). In fact, the trend toward absurdly lofty bombast and sentiment was so strong that Richard Brinsley Sheridan reworked The Rehearsal for his play, The Critic (1779), where the target was the inflated importance and prose of theatre criticism. To some degree, the parodic form of a play-within-a-play goes back to Shakespeare's satire of pantomime plays in A Midsummer Night's Dream and forward to the contemporary Mel Brooks film (and later stage musical) The Producers. Eighteenth-century editions of The Rehearsal contained a Key that identified the Restoration plays to which Buckingham and his collaborators allude in their work. The Key was originally attributed to Buckingham himself, but is actually the work of Morphew Briscoe. Briscoe's Key contains some accurate information, but also has deficiencies. Later commentators have worked to improve upon it. Character list Reproduced from the first edition, but adjusted to modern spelling. Men Bayes Johnson Smith Two Kings of Brentford Prince Pretty-man Prince Volscius Gentleman Usher Physician Drawcansir General Lieutenant General Cordelio Tom Thimble Fisherman Sun Thunder Players Soldiers Two Heralds Four Cardinals Mayor Judges Sergeants at Arms Women Amaryllis Cloris Parthenope Pallas Lightning Moon Earth Attendants of Men and Women Plot synopsis Act I, Scene I Johnson and Smith, who has just come to the city from the country, meet by chance and begin talking about the new plays that are currently being shown. The author and director of a new play, Bayes, appears and introduces his production to the two men, boasting about the greatness of his work. Lacking inspiration for original material, Bayes steals all of his ideas from different epics and plays of the time, as