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DRYDEN, JOHN (1631-1700)

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Originally appearing in Volume V08, Page 613 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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DRYDEN, See also:JOHN (1631-1700) , See also:English poet, See also:born on or about the 9th of See also:August 1631, at Aldwinkle, in See also:Northamptonshire, was of See also:Cumberland stock, though his See also:family had been settled for three generations in Northamptonshire, had acquired estates and a baronetcy, and intermarried with landed families in that See also:county. His See also:great-grandfather, who first carried the name See also:south, and acquired by See also:marriage the See also:estate of Canons See also:Ashby, is said to have known See also:Erasmus, and to have been so proud of the great See also:scholar's friendship that he gave the name of Erasmus to his eldest son. The name Erasmus was See also:borne by the poet's See also:father, the third son of See also:Sir Erasmus Dryden. The leanings and connexions of the family were Puritan and See also:anti-monarchical. Sir Erasmus Dryden went to See also:prison rather than pay See also:loan See also:money to See also:Charles I.; the poet's See also:uncle, Sir John Dryden, and his father Erasmus, served on See also:government commissions during the See also:Commonwealth. His See also:mother's family, the Pickerings, were still more prominent on the Puritan See also:side. Sir See also:Gilbert See also:Pickering, his See also:cousin, was See also:chamberlain to the See also:Protector, and was summoned to See also:Cromwell's See also:House of Lords in 1657. A trustworthy tradition asserts that John Dryden was born at the rectory of Aldwinkle All See also:Saints, of which his maternal grandfather, See also:Henry Pickering, was See also:rector. Dryden's See also:education was such as became a See also:scion of these respectable families of squires and rectors, among whom the See also:chance contact with Erasmus had See also:left a certain tradition of scholarship. His father, whose own See also:fortune, added to his wife's, was not large, procured for the poet, who was the eldest of fourteen See also:children, See also:admission to See also:Westminster school as a See also:king's scholar, under the famous Dr See also:Busby. Some elegiac verses which Dryden wrote there on the See also:death of a schoolfellow, Henry, See also:Lord See also:Hastings, son of the See also:earl of See also:Huntingdon, in 1649, were published in Lacrymae Musarum, among other elegies by " See also:divers persons of See also:nobility and See also:worth " in See also:commemoration of the same event. He appeared soon after again in See also:print, among writers of commendatory verses to a friend of his, John See also:Hoddesdon, who published a See also:volume of Epigrams in 165o.

Dryden's contribution is signed " John Dryden of Trinity C.," as he had gone up from Westminster to See also:

Cambridge in May 165o. He was elected a scholar of Trinity on the Westminster See also:foundation in See also:October of the same See also:year, and took his degree of B.A. in 1654. The only recorded incident of his See also:college See also:residence is some unexplained See also:act of disobedience to the See also:vice-See also:master, for which he was " put out of See also:commons " and " gated " for a fortnight. His father died in 1654, leaving him master of two-thirds of a small estate near See also:Blakesley, worth about £6o a year. The next three years he is said to have spent at Cambridge. In any See also:case they were spent somewhere in study; for his first considerable poem bears indisputable marks of scholarly habits, as well as of a command of See also:verse that could not have been acquired without practice. The See also:middle of 1657 is given as the date of his leaving the university to take up his residence in See also:London. In one of his many subsequent See also:literary quarrels, it was said by See also:Shadwell that he had been clerk to Sir Gilbert Pickering, his cousin, who was chamberlain to Cromwell; and nothing is more likely than that he obtained some employment under his powerful cousin when he came to London. He is said to have lived at first in the house of his first publisher, Herringman, with whom he was connected till 1679, when See also:Jacob See also:Tonson began to publish his books. He first emerged from obscurity with his Heroic Stanzas (1659) to the memory of the Protector. That these stanzas should have made him a name as a poet does not appear surprising when we compare them with See also:Waller's verses on the same occasion. Dryden took some See also:time to consider them, and it was impossible that they should not give an impression of his intellectual strength.

See also:

Donne was his See also:model; it is obvious that both his See also:ear and his See also:imagination were saturated with Donne's elegiac strains when he wrote; yet when we look beneath the See also:surface we find unmistakable traces that the See also:pupil was not without decided theories that ran See also:counter to the practice of the master. It is plainly not by See also:accident that each See also:stanza contains one clear-cut brilliant point. The poem is an See also:academic exercise, and it seems to be animated by an under-current of strong contumacious protest against the To those who regard the poet as a seer with a sacred See also:mission, and refuse the name altogether to a literary manufacturer to See also:order, it comes with a certain See also:shock to find Dryden, the hereditary Puritan, the panegyrist of Cromwell, hailing the return of King Charles in See also:Astraea Redux (166o), deploring his See also:long See also:absence, and proclaiming the despair with which he had seen " the See also:rebel thrive, the loyal crost." A See also:Panegyric on the See also:Coronation followed in 1661. From a literary point of view also, Astraea Redux is inferior to the Heroic Stanzas. Dryden was compelled to supplement his slender income by his writings. He naturally first thought of tragedy his own See also:genius, as he has informed us, inclining him rather to that See also:species of See also:composition; and in the first year of the Restoration he wrote a tragedy on the See also:fate of Henry, See also:duke of See also:Guise. But some See also:friends advised him that its construction was not. suited to the requirements of the See also:stage, so he put it aside, and used only one See also:scene of the See also:original See also:play later on, when he again attempted the subject with a more practised See also:hand. Having failed to write a suitable tragedy, he next turned his See also:attention to See also:comedy, although, as he admitted, he had little natural turn for it. " I confess," he said, in a See also:short See also:essay in his own See also:defence, printed before The See also:Indian See also:Emperor, " my See also:chief endeavours are to delight the See also:age in which I live. If the See also:humour of this be for See also:low comedy, small accidents and raillery, I will force my genius to obey it, though with more reputation I could write in verse. I know I am not so fitted by nature to write comedy; I want that gaiety of humour which is required to it. My conversation is slow and, dull; my humour saturnine and reserved; in short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in See also:company or make repartees.

So that those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit; reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend." He was really as well as ostentatiously a playwright; the age demanded comedies, and he endeavoured to See also:

supply the See also:kind of comedy that the age demanded. His first See also:attempt was unsuccessful. Bustle, intrigue and coarsely humorous See also:dialogue seemed to him to be See also:part of the popular demand; and, looking about for a See also:plot, he found some-thing to suit him in a See also:Spanish source, and wrote The See also:Wild Gallant. The play was acted in See also:February 1663, by See also:Thomas See also:Killigrew's company in See also:Vere See also:Street. It was not a success, and. See also:Pepys showed See also:good See also:judgment in pronouncing the play " so poor a thing as ever I saw in my See also:life." Dryden never learned moderation in his humour; there is a student's clumsiness and extravagance in his indecency; the plays of See also:Etheredge, a See also:man of the See also:world, have not the uncouth riotousness of Dryden's. Of this he seems to have been conscious, for when the play. was revived, in 1667, he complained in the See also:epilogue of the difficulty of comic wit, and admitted the right of a See also:common See also:audience to See also:judge of the wit's success. Dryden, indeed, took a See also:lesson from the failure of The Wild Gallant; his next comedy, The See also:Rival Ladies, also founded on a Spanish plot, produced before the end of 1663, and printed in the next year, was correctly described by Pepys as " a very See also:innocent and most See also:pretty witty play," though there was much in it which the See also:taste of our time would consider indelicate. But he never quite conquered his tendency to extravagance. The Wild Gallant was not the only victim. The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, produced in 1673, shared the same fate; and even as See also:late as 168o, when he had had twenty years' experience to See also:guide him, The Kind Keeper, or Mr See also:Limber-See also:ham was prohibited, after three representations, as being too indecent for the stage. Dislike to indecency we are See also:apt to think a somewhat ludicrous pretext to be made by Restoration play-goers, and probably there was some other See also:reason for the See also:sacrifice of Limberham; still there is a certain savageness in the spirit of Dryden's indecency which we do not find in his most licentious contemporaries.

The undisciplined force of the man carried him to an excess from which more dexterous writers held back. II After the See also:

production of The Rival Ladies in 1663, Dryden assisted Sir See also:Robert See also:Howard in the composition of a tragedy in heroic verse, The Indian See also:Queen, produced with great splendour in See also:January 1664. He married See also:Lady See also:Elizabeth Howard, Sir Robert's See also:sister and daughter of the 1st earl of See also:Berkshire, on the 1st of See also:December 1663. Lady Elizabeth's reputation was some-what compromised before this See also:union, which was not a happy one, and there is some See also:evidence for the See also:scandal in a See also:letter written by her before her marriage to See also:Philip, and earl of See also:Chesterfield. The Indian Queen was a great success, one of the greatest since the reopening of the theatres. This was in all likelihood due much less to the heroic verse and the exclusion of comic scenes from the tragedy than to the magnificent scenic accessories—the battles and sacrifices on the stage, the See also:spirits singing in the See also:air, and the See also:god of dreams ascending through a See also:trap. The novelty of these Indian See also:spectacles, as well as of the Indian characters, with the splendid Queen Zempoalla, acted by Mrs See also:Marshall in a real Indian See also:dress of feathers presented to her by Mrs Aphra See also:Behn, as the centre of the play, was the chief See also:secret of the success of The Indian Queen.. These melodramatic properties were so marked a novelty that they could not fail to draw the See also:town. Dryden was tempted to return to tragedy; he followed up The Indian Queen with The Indian Emperor, or the See also:Conquest of See also:Mexico by the Spaniards, which was acted in 1665, and also proved a success. But Dryden was not content with See also:writing tragedies in rhymed verse. He took up the question of the propriety of See also:rhyme in serious plays immediately after the success of The Indian Queen, in the See also:preface to an edition (1664) of The Rival Ladies. In that first statement of his case, he considered the chief objection to the use of rhyme, and urged his chief See also:argument in its favour.

Rhyme was not natural, some See also:

people had said; to which he answers that it is as natural as See also:blank verse, and that much of its unnaturalness is not the See also:fault of the rhyme but of the writer, who has not sufficient command of See also:language to rhyme easily. In favour of rhyme he has to say that it at once stimulates the imagination, and prevents it from being too discursive in its flights. During the Great See also:Plague, when the theatres were closed, and Dryden was living at Charlton, See also:Wiltshire, at the seat of his father-in-See also:law, the earl of Berkshire, he occupied a considerable part of his time in thinking over the principles of dramatic composition, and threw his conclusions into the See also:form of a dialogue, which he called an Essay of Dramatick Poesie and published in 1668. The essay takes the form of a dialogue between See also:Neander (Dryden), See also:Eugenius (Charles, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards earl of See also:Dorset), Crites (Sir R. Howard), and Lisideius (Sir C. See also:Sedley), who is made responsible for the famous See also:definition of a play as a " just and lively See also:image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind." Dryden's form is of course borrowed from the ancients, and his See also:main source is tha See also:critical See also:work of See also:Corneille in the prefaces and discourses contained in the edition of 1660, but he was well acquainted with the whole See also:body of contemporary See also:French and Spanish See also:criticism. Crites maintains the superiority of the classical See also:drama; Lisideius supports the exacting rules of French dramatic writing; Neander defends the English drama of the preceding generations, including, in a long speech, an examination of See also:Ben See also:Jonson's Silent Woman. Neander argues, however, that English drama has much to gain by the observance of exact methods of construction without abandoning entirely the See also:liberty which English writers had always claimed. He then goes on to defend the use of rhyme in serious drama. Howard had argued against the use of rhyme in a " preface " to Four New Plays (1665), which had furnished the excuse for Dryden's essay. Howard replied to Dryden's essay in a preface to The Duke of See also:Lerma (1668). Dryden at once replied in a masterpiece of sarcastic See also:retort and vigorous reasoning, A Defence of an Essay of Dramatique Poesie, prefixed to the second edition (1668) of The Indian Emperor.

It is the ablest and most See also:

complete statement of his views about the employment of rhymed couplets in tragedy. Before his return to town at the end of 1666, when the theatres (which had been closed during the disasters of 1665 and 1666) were reopened, Dryden wrote a poem on the Dutch See also:war and the Great See also:Fire entitled Annus Mirabilis. The poem is in quatrains, the See also:metre of his Heroic Stanzas in praise of Cromwell, which Dryden See also:chose, he tells us, " because he had ever judged it more See also:noble and of greater dignity both for the See also:sound and number than any other verse in use amongst us." The preface to the poem contains an interesting discussion of what he calls "wit-writing," introduced by the remark that " the composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit." His description of the Great Fire is a famous specimen of this wit-writing, much more careless and daring, and much more difficult to sympathize with, than the graver conceits in his panegyric of the See also:Pro= tector. In Annus Mirabilis the poet apostrophizes the newly founded Royal Society, of which he had been elected a member in 1662. From the reopening of the theatres in 1666 till See also:November 1681, the date of his See also:Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden produced nothing but plays. The stage was his chief source of income. Secret Love, or the See also:Maiden Queen, a tragi-comedy, produced in See also:March 1667, was based on an See also:episode in the Artamene, ou le See also:Grand See also:Cyrus of Mlle de See also:Scudery, the See also:historical original of the " Maiden Queen" being See also:Christina, queen of See also:Sweden. The See also:prologue claims that the piece is written with pains and thought, by the exactest rules, with strict observance of the unities, and " a mingled See also:chime of Jonson's humour and of Corneille's rhyme "; but it owed its success chiefly to the See also:charm of Nell See also:Gwyn's acting in the part of Florimel. It is noticeable that only the more passionate parts of the dialogue are rhymed, Dryden's theory apparently being that rhyme is then demanded for the See also:elevation of the See also:style. His next play, Sir See also:Martin See also:Mar-all, or the Feigned Innocence, an See also:adaptation in See also:prose of the duke of See also:Newcastle's See also:translation of See also:Moliere's L'Etourdi, was produced at the Duke's See also:theatre, without the author's name, in 1667. It was about this time that Dryden became a retained writer under See also:contract for the King's theatre, receiving from it £300 or f400 a year, till it was burnt down in 1672, and about £200 for six years more till the beginning of 1678. His co-operation with See also:Davenant in a new version (1667) of See also:Shakespeare's See also:Tempest —for his See also:share in which Dryden can hardly be pardoned on the ground that the chief alterations were happy thoughts of Davenant's, seeing that he affirms he never worked at anything with more delight—must also be supposed to be anterior to the completion of his contract with the Theatre Royal.

He was engaged to write three plays a year, and he contributed only ten plays during the ten years of his engagement, finally exhausting the See also:

patience of his partners by joining in the composition of a play for the rival house. In adapting L'Etourdi, Dryden did not catch Moliere's lightness of See also:touch; his alterations go towards making the comedy into a See also:farce. Perhaps all the more on this See also:account Sir Martin Mar-all had a great run at the theatre in See also:Lincoln's See also:Inn See also:Fields. There is always a certain coarseness in Dryden's humour, apart from the coarseness of his age,—a certain forcible roughness of touch which belongs to the See also:character of the man. His An Evening's Love, or the See also:Mock Astrologer, an adaptation from Le Feint Astrologee of the younger Corneille, produced at the King's theatre in 1668, seemed to Pepys " very smutty, and nothing so good as The Maiden Queen or The Indian Emperor of Dryden's making." See also:Evelyn thought it foolish and profane, and was grieved " to see how the stage was degenerated and polluted by the licentious times." Ladies d la Mode, another of Dryden's contract comedies, produced in 1668, was " so mean a thing," Pepys says, that it was only once acted, and Dryden never published it. Of his other comedies, Marriage a la Mode (produced 1672), The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery (1673), The Kind Keeper, or Mr Limberham (1678), only the first was moderately successful. While Dryden met with such indifferent success in his willing efforts to supply the demand of the age for "low comedy, he struck upon a really popular and profitable vein in heroic tragedy. Tyrannic Love, or the Royal See also:Martyr, a See also:Roman play dealing with the persecution of the Christians by Maximin, in which St See also:Catherine is introduced, and with her some supernatural machinery, was produced in 1669. It is in rhymed couplets, but the author again did not See also:trust solely for success to them; for, besides the magic incantations, the singing angels, and the view of See also:Paradise, he made Nell Gwyn, who had stabbed herself as See also:Valeria, start to life again as she was being carried off the stage, and speak a riotous epilogue, in violent contrast to the serious character of the play. Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of See also:Granada, a tragedy in two parts, was written in 1669 to 1670. The historical background is taken chiefly from Mlle de Scudery's See also:romance of Almahide, but Dryden borrows freely from other books of hers and her contemporaries. This piece seems to have given the crowning touch of provocation to the. wits, who had never ceased to ridicule the popular taste for these extravagant heroic plays.

Dryden almost invited See also:

burlesque in his epilogue to the second part of The Conquest of Granada, in which he charged the comedy of the Elizabethan age with coarseness and See also:mechanical humour, and its conceptions of love and See also:honour with meanness, and claimed for his own time and his own plays an advance in these respects. The See also:Rehearsal, written by the duke of See also:Buckingham, with the assistance, it was said, of See also:Samuel See also:Butler, Martin See also:Clifford, Thomas See also:Sprat and others, and produced in 1671, was a severe and just See also:punishment for this boast. Davenant was originally the See also:hero, but on his death in 1668 the See also:satire was turned upon Dryden, who is here unmercifully ridiculed under the name of Bayes, the name being justified by his See also:appointment in 1670 as poet See also:laureate and historiographer to the king (with a See also:pension of £300 a year and a See also:butt of See also:canary See also:wine). It is said that The Rehearsal was begun in 1663 and ready for See also:representation before the plague. But this probably only means that Buckingham and his friends had resolved to burlesque the absurdities of Davenant's operatic heroes in The See also:Siege of See also:Rhodes, and. the extravagant heroics of The Indian Queen. Materials accumulated upon them as the See also:fashion continued, and by the time Dryden had produced his Tyrannic Love, and his Conquest of Granada, he had so established himself as the chief offender as to become naturally the central figure of the burlesque. Later Dryden fully avenged himself on Buckingham by his portrait of Zimri in Absalom and Achitophel. His immediate reply is contained in the preface " Of Heroic Plays " and the " Defence of the Epilogue," printed in the first edition (1672) of his Conquest of Granada. In these, so far from laughing with his censors, he addresses them from the See also:eminence of success. " But I have already swept the stakes; and, with the common good fortune of prosperous gamesters, can be content to sit quietly; to hear my fortune cursed by some, and my faults arraigned by others, and to suffer both without reply." Heroic verse, he assures them, is so established that few tragedies are likely henceforward to be written in any other metre. In the course of a year or two The Conquest of Granada was attacked also by Elkanah See also:Settle, on whom Dryden revenged himself later, making him the " Doeg " of the second part of Absalom, and Achitophel. His next tragedy, See also:Amboyna (1673), an See also:exhibition of certain atrocities committed by the Dutch on English merchants in the See also:East Indies, put on the stage to inflame the public mind in view of the Dutch war, was written, with the exception of a few passages, in prose, and those passages in blank verse.

An See also:

opera which he wrote in rhymed couplets, called The See also:State of Innocence, and Fall of Man, an attempt to turn part of Paradise Lost into rhyme, as a See also:proof of its superiority to blank verse, was prefaced by an " See also:Apology for Heroique See also:Poetry and Poetique See also:Licence," and entered at Stationers' See also:Hall in 1674, but it was never acted. The redeeming circumstance about the performance is the admiration professed by the adapter for his original, which he pronounces " undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble and most See also:sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced." Dryden is said to have had the See also:elder poet's leave " to tag his verses." In Aurengzebe, which was Dryden's last, and also his best, rhymed tragedy, he borrowed from contemporary See also:history, for the Great Mogu4 was See also:stilt living. In the prologuehe confessed that he had grown weary of his long-loved See also:mistress rhyme and retracted, with characteristic frankness, his disparaging contrast of the Elizabethan with his own age. But the stings of The Rehearsal had stimulated him to do his utmost to justify his devotion to his mistress, and he claims that Aurengzebe is the most correct " of his plays. It was entered at Stationers' Hall and probably acted in 1695, and published in the following year. After the production of Aurengzebe he seems to have rested for an See also:interval from writing, enabled to do so, probably by an additional pension of £loo granted to him by the king. During this interval he would seem to have reconsidered the principles of dramatic composition, and to have made a particular study of the See also:works of Shakespeare. The fruits of this appeared in All for Love, or the World Well Lost, a version of the See also:story of Antony and See also:Cleopatra, produced in 1678, which must be regarded as a very remarkable departure for a man of his age, and a wonderful proof of undiminished openness and plasticity of mind. In his previous writings on dramatic theory, Dryden, while admiring the rhyme of the French dramatists as an advance in See also:art, did not give unqualified praise to the regularity of their plots; he was disposed to allow the irregular structure of the Elizabethan dramatists, as being more favourable to variety both of See also:action and of character. , But now, in See also:frank See also:imitation of Shakespeare, he abandoned rhyme, and, if we might judge from All for Love, and the precepts laid down in his " Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy," prefixed to See also:Troilus and Cressida (1679), the chief point in which he aimed at excelling the Elizabethans was in giving greater unity to his plot. He upheld still the superiority of Shakespeare to the French dramatists in the delineation of character, but he thought that the See also:scope of the action might be restricted, and the parts See also:bound more closely together with See also:advantage. All for Love and Antony and Cleopatra are two excellent plays for the comparison of the two methods.

Dryden gave all his strength to All for Love, writing the play for himself, as he said, and not for the public. Carrying out the See also:

idea ex-pressed in the See also:title, he represents the two. lovers as being more entirely under the dominion of love than Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeare's Antony is moved by other impulses than the See also:passion for Cleopatra; it is his master See also:motive, but it has to maintain a struggle for supremacy; " Roman thoughts " strike in upon him even in the very height of the enjoyment of his mistress's love, he chafes under the yoke, and breaks away from her of his own impulse at the See also:call of spontaneously reawakened ambition. Dryden's Antony is so deeply sunk in love that no other impulse has See also:power to stir him; it takes much persuasion and skilful artifice to detach him from Cleopatra even in thought, and his soul returns to her violently before the rupture has been completed. On the other hand, Dryden's Cleopatra is so completely enslaved by love for Antony that she is incapable of using the calculated caprices and meretricious coquetries which Shakespeare's Cleopatra deliberately practises as the highest art of love, the surest way of maintaining her See also:empire over her great See also:captain's See also:heart. It is with difficulty that Dryden's Cleopatra will agree, on the See also:earnest solicitation of a wily counsellor, to feign a liking for See also:Dolabella to excite Antony's See also:jealousy, and she cannot keep up the pretence through a few sentences. The characters of the two lovers are thus very much contracted, indeed almost overwhelmed, beneath the pressure of the one ruling motive. And as Dryden thus introduces a greater regularity of character into the drama, so he also very much contracts the action, in order to give See also:probability to this temporary subjugation of individual character. The action of Dryden's play takes See also:place wholly in See also:Alexandria, within the See also:compass of a few days; it does not, like Shakespeare's, extend over several years, and See also:present incessant changes of scene. Dryden chooses, as it were, a fragment of a historical action, a single moment during which motives play within a narrow circle, the culminating point in the relations between his two personages. He devotes his whole play, also, to those relations; only what bears upon them is admitted. In Shakespeare's play we get a certain historical See also:perspective, in which the love of Antony and Cleopatra appears 'in its true proportions beneath the See also:firmament that overhangs human affairs.

In Dryden's play this love is our universe; all the other concerns of the world retire into a shadowy, indistinct background. If we rise from a comparison of the plays with an impression that the Elizabethan drama is a higher type of drama, taking Dryden's own definition of the word as " a just and lively image of human nature," we rise also with an impression of Dryden's power such as we get from nothing else that he had written since his Heroic Stanzas, twenty years before. It was twelve years before Dryden produced another tragedy worthy of the power shown in All for Love. See also:

Don See also:Sebastian was acted and published in i6go. In the interval, to sum up briefly Dryden's work as a dramatist, he wrote See also:Oedipus (pr. 1679) and The Duke of Guise (pr. 1683) in See also:conjunction with Nathaniel See also:Lee; Troilus and Cressida (1679); The Spanish See also:Friar (1681) ; See also:Albion and Albanius, an opera (1685); See also:Amphitryon (16go). In Troilus and Cressida he follows Shakespeare closely in the plot, but the dialogue is rewritten throughout, and not for the better. The versification and the language of the first and the third acts of Oedipus, which with the See also:general See also:plan of the play were Dryden's contribution to the See also:joint work, See also:bear marked evidence of his See also:recent study of Shakespeare. The Duke of Guise provided an obvious parallel with contemporary English politics. Henry III. was identified with Charles II., and See also:Monmouth with the duke. The lord chamberlain refused to license it until the See also:political situation was less disturbed.

The plot of Don Sebastian is more intricate than that of All for Love. It has also more of the characteristics of his heroic dramas; the extravagance of sentiment and the suddenness of impulse remind us occasionally of The Indian Emperor; but the characters are much more elaborately studied than in Dryden's earlier plays, and the verse is sinewy and powerful. It would be difficult to say whether Don Sebastian or All for Love is his best play; they share the See also:

palm between them. Dryden's subsequent plays are not remarkable. Their titles and See also:dates are—King See also:Arthur, an opera (1691), for which See also:Purcell wrote the See also:music; Cleomenes (1692); Love Triumphant (1694). Soon after Dryden's See also:abandonment of heroic couplets in tragedy, he found new and more congenial work for his favourite See also:instrument in satire. As usual the idea was not original to Dryden, though he struck in with his majestic step and See also:energy divine, and immediately took the See also:lead. The See also:pioneer was See also:Mulgrave in his Essay on Satire, an attack on See also:Rochester and the See also:court, which was circulated in MS. in 1679. Dryden himself was suspected of the authorship, and it is not impossible that he gave some help in revising it; but it is not likely that he attacked the king on whom he was dependent for the greater part of his income, and Mulgrave in a See also:note to his Art of Poetry in 1717 expressly asserts Dryden's See also:ignorance. Dryden; however, was attacked in See also:Rose Street, Covent See also:Garden, and severely cudgelled by a company of ruffians who were generally supposed to have been hired by Rochester. In the same year See also:Oldham's satire on the See also:Jesuits had immense popularity, chiefly owing to the excitement about the Popish plot. Dryden took the See also:field as a satirist towards the See also:close of 1681, on the side of the court, at the moment when See also:Shaftesbury, baffled in his efforts to exclude the duke of See also:York from the See also:throne as a papist, and secure the See also:succession of the duke of Monmouth, was waiting his trial for high See also:treason.

Absalom and Achitophel produced a great stir. Nine See also:

editions were sold in rapid succession in the course of a year. There was no compunction in Dryden's ridicule and invectivh. ,Delicate wit was not one of Dryden's gifts; the motions of his weapon were sweeping, and the blows hard and trenchant. The advantage he had gained by his recent studies of character was fully used in his portraits of Shaftesbury and Buckingham, Achitophel and Zimri. In these portraits he shows considerable art in the introduction of redeeeming traits to the general outline of malignity and depravity. It is not impossible that the fact that his pension had not been paid since the beginning of 168o weighed with him in writing this satire to gain the favour of the court. In a play produced in 1681, The Spanish Friar, he hadwritten on the other side, gratifying the popular feeling by attacking the Roman See also:Catholic priesthood. Three other satires followed Absalom and Achitophel, one of them hardly inferior in point of literary power. The Medall; a Satyre against See also:Sedition (March 1682) was. written in ridicule of the See also:medal struck to commemorate Shaftesbury's acquittal. Then Dryden had to take vengeance on the literary champions of the Whig party who had opened upon him with all their See also:artillery. Their See also:leader, Shadwell, had attacked him in The Medal of John Bayes, which Dryden answered in October 1682 by Mac See also:Flecknoe, or a Satyr upon the True-Blew See also:Protestant Poet, T.S.

This satire, in which Shadwell filled the title-role, served as the model of the Dunciad. To the second part of Absalom and Achitophel (November 1682), written chiefly by See also:

Nahum See also:Tate, he contributed a long passage of invective against Robert See also:Ferguson, one of Monmouth's chief advisers, Elkanah Settle, Shadwell and others. Religio Laici, which appeared in the same See also:month, though nominally an exposition of a layman's creed, and deservedly admired as such, was not without a political purpose. It attacked the Papists, but declared the " fanatics " to be still more dangerous. Dryden's next poem in heroic couplets was in a different See also:strain. On the See also:accession of See also:James, in 1685, he became a Roman Catholic. There has been much discussion as to whether this See also:conversion was or was not sincere. It can only be said that the coincidence between his See also:change of faith and his change of See also:patron was suspicious, and that Dryden's character for consistency is certainly not of a kind to quench suspicion. The force of the coincidence cannot be removed by such pleas as that his wife had been a Roman Catholic for several years, or that he was converted by his son, who was converted at Cambridge, even if there were any evidence for these statements. See also:Scott defended Dryden's conversion,—as See also:Macaulay denounced it, from party motives. It is worth while, however, to See also:notice that in his earlier defence of the English See also:Church he exhibits a See also:desire for the definite guidance of a presumably infallible creed, and the case for the Roman Church brought forward at the time may have appeared convincing to a mind singularly open to new impressions. At the same time nothing can be clearer than that Dryden always regarded his literary See also:powers as a means of subsistence, and had little See also:scruple about accepting a brief on any side.

The See also:

Hind and the See also:Panther, published in 1687, is an ingenious argument for Roman Catholicism, put into the mouth of " a See also:milk-See also:white hind, immortal and unchanged." There is considerable beauty in the picture of this See also:tender creature, and its enemies in the See also:forest are not spared. One can understand the admiration that the poem received when such allegories were in fashion. It was the chief cause of the veneration with which Dryden was regarded by See also:Pope, who, himself educated in the Roman Catholic faith, was taken as a boy of twelve to see the See also:veteran poet in his See also:chair of honour and authority at See also:Wills's See also:coffee-house. It was also very open to ridicule, and was treated in this spirit by See also:Prior and See also:Montagu, the future earl of See also:Halifax, in The Hind and the Panther transversed to the story of the See also:Country See also:Mouse and the See also:City Mouse. Dryden's other literary services to James were a See also:savage reply to Stillingfleet—who had attacked two papers published by the king immediately after his accession, one said to have been written by his late See also:brother in advocacy of the Church of See also:Rome, the other by his late wife explaining the reasons for her conversion—and a translation of a life of See also:Xavier in prose. He had written also a panegyric of Charles, Threnodia Augustalis, and a poem in honour of the See also:birth of James II.'s See also:heir, under the title of Britannia rediviva (1688). Dryden did not abjure his new faith on the Revolution, and so lost his See also:office and pension as laureate and historiographer royal. For this act of constancy he deserves See also:credit, if the new powers would have considered his services worth having after his frequent apostasies. His rival Shadwell reigned in his See also:stead. Dryden was once more thrown mainly upon his See also:pen for support. He turned again to the stage and wrote the plays already enumerated. A great feature in the last See also:decade of his life was his See also:translations from the See also:classics.

See also:

Ovid's Epistles translated appeared in 168o; and numerous translations from See also:Virgil, See also:Horace, Ovid, See also:Lucretius and See also:Theocritus appeared in the four volumes of See also:Miscellany Poems—Miscellany Poems (1684), Sylvae (1685), Examen poeticism (1693), The See also:Annual Miscellany (1694 by the " most eminent hands "); in 1693 was published the verse translation of the Satires of See also:Juvenal and of See also:Persius by " Mr Dryden and several other eminent hands," which contained his " Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire "; and in 1697 Jacob Tonson published his most important translation, The Works of Virgil.. The See also:book, which was the result of three years' labour, was a vigorous, rather than a close, rendering of Virgil into the style of Dryden. Among other notable poems of this See also:period are the two " Songs for St See also:Cecilia's See also:Day," written for a London musical society for 1687 and 1697, and published separately. The second of these is the famous See also:ode on " See also:Alexander's Feast." The well-known See also:paraphrase of Veni, Creator Spiritus was posthumously printed, and his " Ode to the memory of See also:Anne Killigrew," called by Dr See also:Johnson the noblest ode in the language, was written in 1686. His next work was to render some of See also:Chaucer's and See also:Boccaccio's tales and Ovid's Metamorphoses into his own verse. These translations appeared in November 1699, a few months before his death, and are known by the title of Fables, See also:Ancient and See also:Modern. The preface, which is an admirable example of Dryden's prose, contains an excellent appreciation of Chaucer, and, incident-ally, an See also:answer to See also:Jeremy See also:Collier's attack on the stage. Thus a large portion of the closing years of Dryden's life was spent in translating for See also:bread. He had a windfall of 500 guineas from Lord See also:Abingdon for a poem on the death of his wife in 1691, and he received liberal presents from his cousin John Driden and from the duke of See also:Ormonde, but generally he was in considerable pecuniary straits. Besides, his three sons held various posts in the service of the pope at Rome, and he could not well be on good terms with both courts. However, he was not molested in London by the government, and in private he was treated with the respect due to his old age and his admitted position as the greatest of living English poets. He held a small court at Wills's coffee-house, where he spent his evenings; here he had a chair by the fire in See also:winter and by the window in summer; See also:Congreve, See also:Vanbrugh and See also:Addison were among his admirers, and here Pope saw the old poet of whom he was to be the most brilliant See also:disciple.

He died at his house in Gerrard Street, London, on the 1st of May 1700 and was buried on the 13th of the month in Westminster See also:

Abbey. Dryden's portrait, by Sir G. See also:Kneller, is in the See also:National Portrait See also:Gallery.

End of Article: DRYDEN, JOHN (1631-1700)

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