Banks, and later works by Nicholas Rowe and Joseph Addison, have been included in tighter or looser definitions of heroic drama. Heroic drama in literary criticism Today, drama is divided up into numerous subgenres; Dryden, however, worked from Classical critics. There was little dramatic critical theory for him to appeal to, and the new rules brought over from France (particularly those of Corneille and Boileau) did not match English theatrical history or practice. The emphasis on unities and on maintaining only Classically proscribed dramatic forms also came from Thomas Rymer, who condemned the heterogeneity of the stage. Aristotle had only spoken of satire, epic, and tragedy, and Horace also wrote only of comedy, tragedy and satire, and so Dryden was seeking to square actual theatrical practice with an ancient framework for literature. He was attempting his own neo-classicism. The First Folio of Shakespeare had divided Shakespeare's plays into "history," "tragedy," and "comedy," but these terms were stretched. Dryden, therefore, implicitly recognises that drama had moved into the territory of other types of poetry, but he strives to restrain that freedom by reforming the stage to a true and epic subject matter. Satirical response George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and others satirised heroic drama in The Rehearsal. The satire was successful enough that heroic drama largely disappeared afterwards. Buckingham attacked the stupidity of blustering, military heroes, as well as the apparent self-importance of attempting a dramatic entertainment about the serious subjects of military and national history. Buckingham's criticism of Dryden in The Rehearsal is partly Dryden's bombastic verse but, more pointedly, Dryden's personal interest in creating a "pure" drama. The character of Bayes is ludicrous more for his hubris in damning actual plays in favour of imagined ones than he is for being a poetaster. References Theatre in England Drama 1670s plays 1670s in England Tragedies (dramas)