The Dynasts is an English-language closet drama in verse and prose by Thomas Hardy. Hardy himself described this work as "an epic-drama of the war with Napoleon, in three parts, nineteen acts and one hundred and thirty scenes". Not counting the Forescene and the Afterscene, the exact total number of scenes is 131. The verse is primarily iambic pentameter, occasionally tetrameter, and often with rhymes. The three parts were published in 1904, 1906 and 1908.
