Oedipus (Dryden play) the drama were inferior to the original work by Sophocles. In our Age, Corneille has attempted it, and it appears by his Preface, with great success: But a judicious Reader will easily observe, how much the Copy is inferiour to the Original. Dryden disapproves of the way Corneille has treated the subject, but not the subplot – a love story involving Theseus and Dirce: in "Oedipus, a Tragedy", Dryden himself uses a love story as subplot. According to Dryden, however, the French dramatist failed to create a heroic Oedipus. Instead of showing Oedipus as a just and merciful monarch, Corneille
Tragedy time of the empire, the tragedies of two playwrights survive—one is an unknown author, while the other is the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of which are "fabula crepidata" (tragedies adapted from Greek originals); his "Phaedra", for example, was based on Euripides' "Hippolytus". Historians do not know who wrote the only extant example of the "fabula praetexta" (tragedies based on Roman subjects), "Octavia", but in former times it was mistakenly attributed to Seneca due to his appearance as a character in the tragedy. Seneca's tragedies rework those of all three of the Athenian tragic playwrights whose