Thomas F. Curley has written:

'The nature of Senecan drama'

Seneca was a Latin playwright whose plays were probably studied by Shakespeare in school. Senecan tragedies tended to be gory, and it is thought that this was an influence on Titus Andronicus. They also tended to be talky, which might have influenced the player's speech in Hamlet, which has a distinctly Senecan ring to it. Hamlet is an intellectual snob, so he'd like this sort of thing.

Titus Andronicus is influenced by Seneca more than any of Shakespeare's other plays. In particular Seneca's play Thyestes

C. A. J. Littlewood has written:

'Self-representation and illusion in Senecan tragedy' -- subject(s): Illusion in literature, Influence, Mythology, Classical, in literature, Self-presentation in literature, Tragedies, Tragedy

It's like what kind of drama do we have!

Sad Endings-Tragedy

Happy Endings-Comedy

Then the Tragedy is divided into:

Traditional, Senecan Tragedy , Revenge Tragedy/Tragedy of blood, Domestic/bourgeois , Tragicomedy.

Comedy:

Romantic,Satiric, Comedy of Manners, Farce, Humours,Melodrama.

'The Spanish Tragedy' by the English playwright Thomas Kyd (possibly a few years prior to 1590) was the only/main basis for his reputation and in it, he adapted (Roman) Senecan tragedy for the Elizabethan stage, creating the first, and setting a fashion for, so-called 'revenge tragedies', among which were numbered Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'.

Shakespeare was a young playwright trying to make a name for himself. He had already had hits with a string of history plays about the Wars of the Roses, with his Senecan tragedy, Titus Andronicus, and some early romantic comedies.

They were used to it. Shakespeare built on a tradition of tragedies, and his audience would have been familiar with the most popular Elizabethan play of all, Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, which featured a man being murdered onstage in the presence of his lover, a man being hanged while convinced to the last second that he has been pardoned, a stage play in which some of the actors are really murdered and one really commits suicide (in front of their parents), and finally a man who bites out his own tongue and spits it on the stage. Other playwrights wrote similarly juicy revenge tragedies. At the same time anyone who had been to grammar school had read the extremely gory and violent tragedies of the Roman playwright Seneca, and there were contemporaries of Shakespeare who imitated the Senecan style, Ben Jonson for one. Besides, the realities of violence were well known to the audience. It was a rough time, and people did not whitewash the facts of life.

Tragedy was not a medieval dramatic form. The medieval dramatic forms were the mystery play (stories dramatized from the Bible or the lives of saints) and the morality play (allegorical dramatizations of moral or theological points). The most famous morality play is Everyman, which dramatized the adage "you can't take it with you". Early Tudor drama built on these forms and used them also for secular purposes, to discuss political or domestic issues, leading to a peculiar English style of drama which evolved throughout the sixteenth century. But tragedy did not come from this root. The earliest English tragedy is Gorboduc (1561) which derived its plot structure from the Roman playwright Seneca, but employed English blank verse. English playwrights moved further and further from the Senecan style (which to be frank is somewhat dull and clunky, since we never see any action but only hear people talk about it), creating a new English tragic style, probably best exemplified in Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, written at about the time Shakespeare was beginning his playwriting career. The Spanish Tragedy was not only the most popular Elizabethan play of all, but was of enormous influence on all English dramatists and particularly Shakespeare. Shakespeare was familiar with medieval drama (his actor that "out-Herods Herod" refers to a Christmas mystery), but it did not influence him as much as more recent plays.

They were used to it. Shakespeare built on a tradition of tragedies, and his audience would have been familiar with the most popular Elizabethan play of all, Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, which featured a man being murdered onstage in the presence of his lover, a man being hanged while convinced to the last second that he has been pardoned, a stage play in which some of the actors are really murdered and one really commits suicide (in front of their parents), and finally a man who bites out his own tongue and spits it on the stage. Other playwrights wrote similarly juicy revenge tragedies. At the same time anyone who had been to grammar school had read the extremely gory and violent tragedies of the Roman playwright Seneca, and there were contemporaries of Shakespeare who imitated the Senecan style, Ben Jonson for one. Besides, the realities of violence were well known to the audience. It was a rough time, and people did not whitewash the facts of life.

Marlowe was a figure early in the very fertile period of Elizabethan drama. His plays are primarily tragedies, usually based on a historical event, such as the life of Tamburlaine, the reign of Edward II, and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. He drew from the work of his contemporaries, the so-called "university wits" including Greene, Nashe, Lyly, Peele and Lodge. All of these playwrights fed off of each other, and the sophistication of dramatic technique grew astronomically in a very short time. As a group they built on the tradition of Roman tragedy, primarily Seneca, and earlier attempts to write English tragedy in the Roman style, including the iambic pentameter tragedy of Gorboduc. Some of these playwrights (but not Marlowe particularly) also drew on the English tradition of comic playwriting which is based originally on medieval morality plays, and followed such earlier comedies as Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton's Needle.

Dramatist means " a person who writes plays".

Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, the son of a maker of gloves, he was educated at the grammar school, and in 1582 married Anne Hathaway. They had a daughter, Susanna in 1583, and in 1585 twins, Hamnet (who died in 1596) and Judith. By 1592 Shakespeare was established in London as an actor and a dramatist, and from 1594 he was an important member of the Lord Chamberlain's Company of actors. In 1598 the Company tore down their regular playhouse, the Theatre, and used the timber to build the Globe Theatre in Southwark, London. Shakespeare became a 'sharer' in the venture, which entitled him to a percentage of the profits. In 1603 the Company became the King's Men. By this time Shakespeare was the leading playwright of the company and one of its business directors; he also continued to act. He retired to Stratford in about 1610, where he died on 23 April 1616. He was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity, Stratford.

Shakespeare changed the nature of drama in England. Arriving in London in the last decade of the sixteenth century, Shakespeare began his play-writing career by adapting the forms of already-successful plays - plays about historical characters (both English and Roman), the Senecan 'Tragedy of Blood', Romantic Comedy and plots centering on the Machiavellian villain. From the very first, however, Shakespeare transformed everything he touched: characters developed from the elementary stock characters of earlier traditions - such as the young Hero and Heroine, the Stern Father and the Tyrannical Ruler who must be overthrown - into recognizable human beings. Chronicle plays dealing with the sequence of English monarchs in consecutive order were replaced by studies of good governance - what made a 'good' king? And how - after over a hundred years of turbulence - was England to be well managed? The last decade of the sixteenth century, and the first decade of the seventeenth century, saw the greatest period of English drama. The theatre became an established part of London life, both presenting and subverting contemporary political and social ideas. Shakespeare, acknowledged as the greatest of English writers, needs to be studied both through his own texts and in relation to the literature and society of his time.