argumentative
dialogue with his mistress, was, in all respects, as magnificent and
inflated as might beseem his irresistible prowess. Witness the famous
speech of Almanzor:

_Almanz_. To live!
If from thy hands alone my death can be,
I am immortal and a god to thee.
If I would kill thee now, thy fate's so low,
That I must stoop ere I can give the blow:
But mine is fixed so far above thy crown,
That all thy men,
Piled on thy back, can never pull it down:
But, at my ease, thy destiny I send,
By ceasing from this hour to be thy friend.
Like heaven I need but only to stand still,
And, not concurring to thy life, I kill,
Thou canst no title to my duty bring;
I'm not thy subject, and my soul's thy king.
Farewell. When I am gone,
There's not a star of thine dare stay with thee:
I'll whistle thy tame fortune after me;
And whirl fate with me wheresoe'er I fly,
As winds drive storms before them in the sky.

It was expected by the audience, that the pomp of scenery, and bustle of
action, in which such tremendous heroes were engaged, should in some
degree correspond with their lofty sentiments and superhuman valour.
Hence solemn feasts, processions, and battles by sea and land, filled
the theatre. Hence, also, the sudden and violent changes of fortune, by
which the hero and his antagonists are agitated through the whole piece.
Fortune has been often compared to the sea; but in a heroic play, her
course resembled an absolute Bay of Biscay, or Race of Portland,
disturbed by an hundred contending currents and eddies, and never
continuing a moment in one steady flow.

That no engine of romantic surprise might be wanting, Dryden contends,
that the dramatist, as he is not confined to the probable in character,
so he is not limited by the bounds of nature in the action, but may let
himself loose to visionary objects, and to the representation of such
things as, not depending upon sense, leave free exercise for the
imagination. Indeed, if ghosts, magicians, and demons, might with
propriety claim a place anywhere, it must be in plays which throughout
disclaim the common rules of nature, both in the incidents narrated, and
the agents interested.[3]

Lastly, the action of the heroic drama was to be laid, not merely in the
higher, but in the very highest walk of life. No one could with decorum
aspire to share the sublimities which it annexed to character, except
those made of the "porcelai