The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon

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Hardy's massive closet drama — three parts, nineteen acts, 130 scenes — dramatizes the Napoleonic Wars from Trafalgar to Waterloo, with Napoleon, Wellington, Pitt, and historical figures alongside the Spirit of the Years, the Spirit of the Pities, and other supernatural observers. Hardy worked on it from 1904 to 1908 and considered it his masterpiece; it is almost entirely unperformable as written but extraordinary as a reading experience — the culmination of Victorian verse drama's ambitions and a unique synthesis of historical epic, philosophical meditation, and visionary theater. Some passages of lyric verse are among the finest Hardy wrote.