m, he was soon to
be unrivalled. In the rhymed heroic plays, as they were called, he found
just the sphere in which he was most qualified to excel. The taste for
these dramas, which owed most to France and something to Italy and Spain,
had come in with the Restoration. Their chief peculiarities were the
complete subordination of the dramatic to the rhetorical element, the
predominance of pageant, and the substitution of rhymed for blank verse.
Dryden's first experiment in this drama was the _Rival Ladies_, in which
the tragic portions are composed in rhyme, blank verse being reserved for
the parts approaching comedy. In his next play, the _Indian Queen_,
written in conjunction with Howard, blank verse is wholly discarded. The
dedication of the _Rival Ladies_ to Orrery is appropriate. Roger Boyle,
Baron Broghill, and first Earl of Orrery, was at this time Lord President
of Munster, and it was he who had revived these rhymed plays in his _Henry
V._, which was brought out in the same year as Dryden's comedy. Whoever
has read this drama and Orrery's subsequent experiments, _Mustapha_
(1665), the _Black Prince_ (1667), _Tryphon_ (1668), will be able to
estimate Dryden's absurd flattery at its proper value.

But these dramatic innovations were sure not to pass without protest,
though the protest came from a quarter where it might least have been
expected. Sir Robert Howard was the sixth son of Thomas, first Earl of
Berkshire. He had distinguished himself on the Royalist side in the Civil
War, and had paid the penalty for his loyalty by an imprisonment in
Windsor Castle during the Commonwealth. At the Restoration he had been
made an Auditor of the Exchequer. Dryden seems to have made his
acquaintance shortly after arriving in London. In 1660 Howard published a
collection of poems and translations, to which Dryden prefixed an address
'to his honoured friend' on 'his excellent poems.' Howard's rank and
position made him a useful friend to Dryden, and Dryden in his turn was
no doubt of much service to Howard. Howard introduced him to his family,
and in December 1663 Dryden married his friend's eldest sister, the Lady
Elizabeth Howard. In the following year Dryden assisted his
brother-in-law in the composition of the _Indian Queen_. There had
probably been some misunderstanding or dispute about the extent of the
assistance which Dryden had given, which accounts for what follows. In
any case Howard published in 1665, professedly und