LEE, NATHANIEL (c. 1650-1692), dramatist, was the son of Dr Lee, incumbent of Hatfield, Hertfordshire. He studied at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. After essaying the profession of an actor with very slight success, he wrote several tragedies, the best known of which are The Rival Queens, 1677, and Theodosius, 1680. He also assisted Dryden in producing CEdipus and 7'/ D fike of Guise. From 1684 to 1688 he was an inmate of Bedlam, and afterwards until his death he was subject to intermittent attacks of insanity. Though he wrote the Princess V Cleve in 1689, and the Massacre of Paris in 1690, he was in his later years dependent chiefly on charity. He died in London in 1692, not in 1690 as is usually stated, the register of St Clements Danes church giving the date of his burial as the 6th May. The dramas of Lee are of course written in the artificial style characteristic of the period, and they also display occasionally a tendency to wild extravagance, but they nevertheless contain many passages of true poetic tenderness and grace.