JOHN DRYDEN 1631-1700 John Dryden was born in 1631 at Aldwinkle in Northamptonshire. He received the rudiments of education at Tichmarsh in his native county. He was afterwards admitted King's scholar at Westminster, and under the celebrated Dr. Busby made rapid progress in classical learning. From Westminster he was elected, 1650, Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. He took his degree in 1654, and three years later finally left his university for London, where he at once entered on the career of a literary man, which he pursued to the very end of his life. He occupied in his relations with men of genius, of rank, and political influence as high a station in the very foremost circles as literary reputation could gain for its owner. Dryden attached himself to the court party in the reigns of Charles II and James II, in the latter of which he left the Church of England for the Church of Rome. At the Revolution he was dismissed from the place of Poet Laureate, which he had held since 1670, as the successor of Davenant, and lived in comparative obscurity, though he was still patronized by several of the nobility. By the loss of this office he became again almost wholly dependent on literary labor for bread. Dryden was married to Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, and had several children, none however of whom long survived him. He died in 1700, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Dryden was the most popular and (putting aside Milton, who belongs to an earlier period) most eminent poet of the latter half of the seventeenth century. His works consist of plays, satires, translations, and occasional poems. Of these, the plays are much the most voluminous, and in their time were doubtless considered the most important; but later generations have bestowed very little attention on them. They, however, gave occasion to several of those compositions which have made him distinguished as a prose writer, critical prefaces, explaining the nature of the works they introduce, and vindications, rebutting the attacks of literary rivals or political opponents. These prose pieces have had very warm admirers, including Gray and Charles James Fox; and are characterized by Johnson in words that may be worth quoting: "Criticism, either didactic or defensive, occupies almost all his prose, except those pages which he has devoted to his patrons: but none of his prefaces were ever thought tedious. They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is little is gay; what is great is splendid. He may be thought to mention himself too frequently; but while he forces himself upon our esteem, we cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Everything is excused by the play of images and the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and though, since his earlier works were written several centuries have passed, they contain nothing uncouth or obsolete. W OF HEROIC PLAYS HETHER heroic verse ought to be admitted into serious plays is not now to be disputed:1 it is already in possession of the stage; and I dare confidently affirm that very few tragedies, in this age, shall be received without it. All the arguments which are formed against it can amount to no more than this-that it is not so near conversation as prose; and therefore not so natural. But it is very clear to all who understand poetry that serious plays ought not to imitate conversation too nearly. If nothing were to be raised above that level the foundation of poetry would be destroyed. And if you once admit of a latitude, that thoughts may be exalted, and that images and actions may be raised. above the life, and described in measure without rhyme, that leads you insensibly from your own principles to mine: you are already so far onward of your way that you have forsaken the imitation of ordinary converse; you are gone beyond it; and to continue where you are is to lodge in the open field, betwixt two inns. You have lost that which you call natural, and have not acquired the last perfection of art. But it was only custom which cozened us so long: we thought, because Shakespeare and Fletcher went no farther, that there the pillars of poetry were to be erected; that, because they excellently described passion without rhyme, therefore rhyme was not capable of describing it. But time has now convinced most men of that error. It is indeed so difficult to write verse that the adversaries of it have a good plea against many who undertake that task without being formed by art or nature for it. 1 This essay was originally prefixed to Dryden's Conquest of Granada," which was first published in 1672. That play, however, appears to have been first acted in the year 1670; for the author in the epilogue to the First Part tells the audience that he had not yet attained his fortieth year. He was born in August, 1631. In the preface to "The Mock Astrologer," which appeared in 1671, as we have already seen, he mentions The Conquest of Granada as having been previously acted, though not then published. Yet even they who have written worst in it would have written worse without it: they have cozened many with their sound who never took the pains to examine their sense. In fine, they have succeeded; though it is true they have more dishonored rhyme by their good success than they could have done by their ill. But I am willing to let fall this argument: it is free for every man to write, or not to write, in verse, as he judges it to be or not to be his talent; or as he imagines the audience will receive it. 3 For heroic plays (in which only I have used it without the mixture of prose) the first light we had of them on the English theatre was from the late Sir William D'Avenant. It being forbidden him in the rebellious times to act tragedies and comedies, because they contained some matter of scandal to those good people, who could more easily dispossess their lawful sovereign than endure a wanton jest, he was forced to turn his thoughts another way, and to introduce the examples of moral virtue, writ in verse, and performed in recitative music.2 The original of this music, and of the scenes which adorned his work, he had from the Italian operas; but he heightened his characters (as I may probably imagine) from the example of Corneille and some French poets. In this condition did this part of poetry remain at his Majesty's return; when growing bolder, as being now owned by a public authority, he reviewed his "Siege of Rhodes," and caused it to be acted as a just drama. But as few men have the happiness to begin and finish any new project, so neither did he live to make his design perfect: there wanted the fulness of a plot and the variety of characters to form it as it ought; and perhaps something might have been added to the beauty of the style. All which he would have performed with more exactness had he pleased to have given us another work of the same nature. For myself and others who come after him, we are bound, with all veneration to his memory, to acknowledge what advantage we received from that excellent groundwork which he laid; and since it is an easy thing to add to what already is invented, we 2 The first edition of Sir William D'Avenant's Siege of Rhodes was published in quarto in 1656, with the following title: "The Siege of Rhodes, made a representation by the art of prospective in scenes; and the story sung in recitative_music.-At the back part of Rutland House, in the upper end of Aldersgate-street, London." 3 In the time of Shakespeare, and long afterwards, our English theatres were unfurnished with scenes. ought all of us, without envy to him, or partiality to ourselves, to yield him the precedence in it. Having done him this justice, as my guide, I may do myself so much, as to give an account of what I have performed after him. I observed then, as I said, what was wanting to the perfection of his "Siege of Rhodes;" which was design and variety of characters. And in the midst of this consideration, by mere accident I opened the next book that lay by me, which was an Ariosto in Italian; and the very first two lines of that poem gave me light to all I could desire: "Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori, Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto," &c. For the very next reflection which I made, was this-that an heroic play ought to be an imitation, in little, of an heroic poem; and consequently, that love and valor ought to be the subject of it. Both these Sir William D'Avenant had begun to shadow; but it was so, as first discoverers draw their maps, with head-lands, and promontories, and some few outlines of somewhat taken at a distance, and which the designer saw not clearly. The common drama obliged him to a plot well-formed and pleasant, or as the ancients called it, one entire and great action. But this he afforded not himself in a story, which he neither filled with persons, nor beautified with characters, nor varied with accidents. The laws of an heroic poem did not dispense with those of the other, but raised them to a greater height; and indulged him a farther liberty of fancy, and of drawing all things as far above the ordinary proportion of the stage as that is beyond the common words and actions of human life; and therefore, in the scanting of his images, and design, he complied not enough with the greatness and majesty of an heroic poem. I am sorry I cannot discover my opinion of this kind of writing without dissenting much from his, whose memory I love and honor. But I will do it with the same respect to him, as if he were now alive, and overlooking my paper while I write. His judgment of an heroic poem was this: "That it ought to be dressed in a more familiar and easy shape; more fitted to the common actions and passions of human life; and, in short, more like a glass of nature, shewing us ourselves in |