Restoration theatre was a visual as well as a verbal medium, complementing its dialogue with a range of sensational effects. Although composing a neat history of the development of spectacle in the later seventeenth century would be reductive, it is possible to construct a rough chronology of its changing role in Restoration drama. Theatrical spectacle, particularly in the form of gruesome killings, had long been characteristic of the English stage; Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedies often featured multiple suicides or homicides, leaving the stage littered with dead bodies. In their fondness for spectacle, especially lurid scenes of rape and murder, English playwrights participated in a dramatic tradition distinctly different from that of their French contemporaries. French neoclassical theory dictated that scenes of violence occur offstage, and some French critics condemned the English stage for its “barbarism.” English dramatic practice, however, never adhered to such rules; although many English playwrights, such as John Dryden and later John Dennis, respected the French theorists, most English writers attacked the decorum and orderliness of French drama for its blandness and insipidity. By contrast, English drama, with its battles, violence, and elaborate spectacle, was seen as “manly” and “lively,” a testament to the vigor of the nation and its people.