The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI

In the last decade of Dryden's life, he brought four new works before the theatre-going public: a dramatic opera, a tragedy, a tragicomedy, and a number of appendages to an old comedy by John Fletcher, which was revived partly so that Dryden might have the author's third-night profits. He died that night, but his family received the money. The dramatic opera, King Arthur , benefited from a fine score by Henry Purcell and has remained in the operatic repertoire to this day. Cleomenes , the traged