Page 58 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

Unit 8: The Restoration Period or Beginning of Neoclassicism (Dryden's Contribution, Glorious Revolution of 1688)

follow no one particular style, except that they all show sexual awareness, a willingness to satirise, Notes
and a dependence upon wit to dominate their opponents. Each of these poets wrote for the stage as
well as the page. Of these, Behn, Dryden, Rochester, and Gould deserve some separate mention.

Dryden was prolific; and he was often accused of plagiarism. Both before and after his Laureateship,
he wrote public odes. He attempted the Jacobean pastoral along the lines of Walter Raleigh and
Philip Sidney, but his greatest successes and fame came from his attempts at apologetics for the
restored court and the Established Church. His Absalom and Achitophel and Religio Laici both
served the King directly by making controversial royal actions seem reasonable. He also pioneered
the mock-heroic. Although Samuel Butler had invented the mock-heroic in English with Hudibras,
Dryden’s MacFlecknoe set up the satirical parody. Dryden was himself not of noble blood, and he
was never awarded the honours that he had been promised by the King (nor was he repaid the
loans he had made to the King), but he did as much as any peer to serve Charles II. Even when
James II came to the throne and Roman Catholicism was on the rise, Dryden attempted to serve the
court, and his The Hind and the Panther praised the Roman church above all others. After that
point, Dryden suffered for his conversions, and he was the victim of many satires.

John Dryden was born at “Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire”, in 1631. He came of a Puritan family,
which had been for years very active in the political world. Dryden was sent to school at
Westminster. He published some verses at the age of eighteen. In 1650 he entered Trinity College,
Cambridge, and took a degree of B.A. four years later, but it is probable that he spent also the next
three years at Cambridge. He went to London in 1657. His first important literary effort, Heroic
Stanzas to the memory of Cromwell, was published in 1659. This was followed the next year by
verses on the return of Charles. In order to add to his slender income, he turned to the stage, and
after two unsuccessful attempts he produced his first play, The Wild Gallant, in 1663. This comedy
was not well received, and Dryden confesses that his forte was not comedy. The same year he
produced The Rival Ladies, and married Lady Elizabeth Howard. The Indian Queen (1664), written
in collaboration with Sir Robert Howard, his wife’s brother, enjoyed considerable success. Dryden
followed this with The Indian Emperor (1665). During the Plague Dryden lived with his father-in-
law in Wiltshire, where he wrote his Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668). Howard’s preface to his
Four New Playes (1665) called forth a reply from Dryden: A Defence of an Essay of Dramatique
Poesie (1668). From the re-opening of the theaters in 1666, to 1681, Dryden wrote little except his
plays. The production of Buckingham’s satirical play The Rehearsal in 1671, in which Dryden was
the chief personage, called forth the preface Of Heroic Plays and Defence of the Epilogue (1672). All
for Love, in all probability the poet’s greatest play, was performed in 1678. He continued to
produce plays to the end of his career. In 1681 he turned to satire and wrote Absalom and Achitophel,
which achieved instant and widespread popularity. This was followed by other satires. In 1687,
after his conversion to the Catholic Church, he wrote The Hind and the Panther, a plea for
Catholicism. His Catholic leanings lost for him the laureateship and other offices when the
Revolution came. During his last ten years he translated many of the Latin classics: Virgil, Ovid,
Lucretius, Horace, Theocritus, and others, and modernized Chaucer. He died in 1700, and was
buried in Westminster Abbey.
Dryden’s contribution to English literature, besides his poems and plays, was the invention of a
direct and simple style for literary criticism. He improved upon the prose of the Elizabethan
writers in the matter of ridding English of its involved forms, even if through that process he lost
some of its gorgeous ornament and rugged strength. Jonson’s method in criticism was after all not
much more than the note-book method of jotting down stray thoughts and opinions and reactions.
Dryden elaborated his ideas, sought the weight of authority, argued both sides of the question,
and adduced proofs. Dryden performed an inestimable service to his countrymen in applying true
standards of criticism to the Elizabethans and in showing them a genuine and sympathetic if
occasionally misguided love for Shakespeare.

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