Romantics, and later figures born after or just before the revolutionary year of 1789 such as Shelley, John Keats and Lord George Gordon Byron, in their presentations of selfhood and in their poetic reactions to revolutionary disillusionment and defeat.
First, I will show how Wordsworth, in the philosophical tradition of John Locke, tries to reestablish his internalized selfhood through poetic
romantic comedy; the versatile Thomas Lodge and Thomas Nashe; Thomas Kyd, who popularized neo-Senecan tragedy; and Christopher Marlowe, the greatest dramatist of the group. Focusing on heroes whose very greatness leads to their downfall, Marlowe wrote in blank verse with a rhetorical brilliance and eloquence superbly equal to the demands of high drama. William Shakespeare, of course, fulfilled th