Naevius not only like Ennius although with far less successadapted Greek tragedies for the Roman stage, but also attempted to create, independently of the Greeks, a grave national drama (-fabula praetextata-).

Her drama is a still-life drama, intensely and profoundly inward.

What laws, indeed, can apply to a form which has no proper element, but, like the amphibious animal described by the sailor, "cannot live on land and dies in the water"? To return to our immediate topic, the poet who essays dramatic composition on mere abstract impulse, because other poets have done so, or because he is told that it pays, is only too likely to produce willy-nilly a "closet drama."