The rival queens of Alexander the Great--Roxana and Statira--figure in the first, which is still presented upon the stage.

It has been called, with just critical point, "A great and glorious flight of a bold but frenzied imagination, having as much absurdity as sublimity, and as much extravagance as passion; the poet, the genius, the scholar are everywhere visible." THOMAS SOUTHERN, 1659-1746: wrote _Isabella, or The Fatal Marriage_, and _Oronooko_.

In the latter, although yielding to the corrupt taste of the time in his comic parts, he causes his captive Indian prince to teach that period a lesson by his pure and noble love for Imoinda.

Oronooko is a prince taken by the English at Surinam and carried captive to England.
These writers are the best representatives of those who in tragedy and comedy form the staple of that age.

Their models were copied in succeeding years; but, with the expulsion of the Stuarts, morals were somewhat mended; and while light, gay, and witty productions for the stage were still in demand, the extreme licentiousness was repudiated by the public; and the plays of Cibber, Cumberland, Colman, and Sheridan, reflecting these better tastes, are free from much of the pollution to which we have referred..