JOHN DRYDEN (1631–1700)
1. His Life. Dryden’s life was a long one. It was, in addition, an exceedingly fruitful one. For forty years he continued to produce an abundance of literary works of every kind—poems, plays, and prose works. The quality of it was almost unfailingly good, and at the end of his life his poetry was as fresh and vivacious as it had been in the prime of his manhood.
Of Dryden it can be said without qualification that he is representative of his age. Indeed, it has been urged as a fault against his character that he adapted himself with too facile a conscience to the changing fortunes of the times. His earliest work of any importance is pre-Restoration, and consists of a laudation of Oliver Cromwell. At the Restoration he changed his views, attaching himself to the fortunes of Charles II and to the Church of England. This loyalty brought its rewards in honors and pensions, so that for many years Dryden was easily the most considerable literary figure in the land. Yet his career was not without its thorns, for smaller men were busy with their slanders. On the accession of James II in 1685 Dryden changed his faith and political persuasion, becoming a Roman Catholic. To his new beliefs he adhered steadfastly, even when in 1688 the Revolution brought certain disasters to such public men as adhered to Catholicism. Thus Dryden lost his posts of Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal. The Laureateship was conferred on Shadwell, his most rancorous foe; and Dryden retired with dignity to sustain his last years with his literary labors. To this last period of his career we owe some of his finest translations and narrative poems. When he died in 1700 he was accorded a splendid funeral in Westminster Abbey, though it was many years before his grave was marked by a tombstone.
2. His Poetry. Dryden began his life’s work with poetry; he concluded it with poetry; and the years between are starred with the brightness of his greater poems. As early as February, 1664, Pepys records in his diary that he met “Mr. Dryden, the poet”; and he remained “Mr. Dryden, the poet,” till the day of his death. It is therefore as a poet that Dryden is chiefly to be judged.
His first published poem of any consequence was a series of heroic stanzas on the death of the Protector Oliver Cromwell (1659). It consists of thirty-seven quatrains of no particular merit. They move stiffly, and are quite uninspired by any political or personal enthusiasm, but they show a certain angular force and a little metrical dexterity. Two stanzas will show the art of the earliest Dryden:
His grandeur he derived from Heaven alone,
For he was great, ere Fortune made him so;
And wars, like mists that rise against the sun,
Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.
No borrowed bays his temples did adorn,
But to our crown he did fresh laurels bring;
Nor was his virtue poisoned, soon as born,
With the too early thoughts of being king.
In 1660 he made a great step forward in poetical craftsmanship by publishing Astrœa Redux, in celebration of Charles II’s return. The poem represents a complete reversal of the poet’s political opinions; but it is nevertheless a noteworthy literary advance. In its handling of the subject it shows a firmer grip and stronger common sense; in its style a new command of sonorous and dignified phrasing; and (as important a feature as any of the others) it is written in the heroic couplet.
Methinks I see those crowds on Dover’s strand,
Who in their haste to welcome you to land
Choked up the beach with their still growing store,
And made a wilder torrent on the shore.
Here we see Dryden, though not yet at his best, coming to his own. The couplet marches with a steady but animated ring and swing. Its phrasing is apt and vivid; and it possesses a strength and music that are new. It marks the beginning of that adherence to the use of the couplet which was to be Dryden’s lifelong habit, and which was to mark a new epoch in our literature.
Two other poems of this year—one on the coronation and one addressed to the Chancellor, Clarendon,—resemble Astrœa Redux in their main features, and are little inferior.
In 1666 he produced Annus Mirabilis, dealing with the extraordinary events of the year, particularly the Fire of London and the Dutch war. The poem is long, and often dull. When he attempts “style” he is sometimes florid and ridiculous. Moreover, the meter returns to the quatrain. The work is inferior to those of 1660, but is still an advance on the stanzas to Cromwell.
For more than fifteen years succeeding this Dryden devoted himself almost entirely to the writing of plays. Then, about 1680, events both political and personal drove him back to the poetical medium, with results both splendid and astonishing. Political passions over the Exclusion Bills were at their height, and Dryden appeared as the chief literary champion of the monarchy in the famous satirical allegory Absalom and Achitophel (1681). Absalom is the Duke of Monmouth, the unfortunate aspirant to the succession; and Achitophel is his daring but injudicious counselor Shaftesbury. These two are surrounded by a cluster of lesser politicians, upon each of whom Dryden bestows a Biblical name of deadly aptness and transparency. The satire is of amazing force and range, rarely stooping to scurrility, but punishing its victims with devastating scorn and a wrathful aloofness; and it takes shape in the best quality of Dryden’s couplet. Long practice in dramatic couplet-writing had now given Dryden a new metrical facility, tightening and strengthening the measure, and giving it crispness and energy without allowing it to become violent and obscure. We give a specimen of this measure, which in many ways represents the summit of Dryden’s poetical achievement:
Of these the false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o’er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleased with the danger when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing—a son.
Of such satire as this Dryden himself says not unfairly, “It is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough. I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blind sides and little extravagances.” The hitting is hard, but not foul.
Next year he produced another political poem, The Medal, which called forth an answer from an old friend of Dryden’s, Shadwell. Dryden retorted in MacFlecknoe, a personal lampoon of gigantic power and ferocity, but degraded with much coarseness and personal spite. A similar poem is the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, to which poem Dryden contributed a violent attack on Shadwell, giving him the name of Og. The main part of the work was composed by Nahum Tate, a satellite of Dryden’s.
A new poetical development was manifest in Religio Laici (1682) and The Hind and the Panther (1687). The first poem is a thesis in support of the English Church; the second, written after the accession of James, is an allegorical defense of the Roman Catholic faith. Alterations like these in Dryden’s opinions gave free play to the gibes of his enemies. In spite of their difference in opinion, these poems have much in common: a clear light of argument, a methodical arrangement of ideas, and a mastery of the couplet that often lifts the drabness of the expository theme into passages of noble feeling and splendor. The allegorical treatment of The Hind and the Panther allows of a livelier handling; but the poem is very long, consisting of more than one part, and much of it is dogmatic assertion and tedious argument.
After the Revolution, when he was driven from his public appointments, Dryden occupied himself chiefly with translations. He once more used the couplet medium, turning Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio into English, and adapting Chaucer to the taste of his time. The translation is so free that much of it is Dryden’s own, and all of it teems with his own individuality. We give a passage to illustrate both the latest phase of his couplet and his power as a narrative poet:
Scarce the third glass of measured hours was run,
When like a fiery meteor sunk the sun,
The promise of a storm; the shifting gales
Forsake by fits and fill the flagging sails;
Hoarse murmurs of the main from far were heard,
And night came on, not by degrees prepared,
But all at once; at once the winds arise,
The thunders roll, the forky lightning flies.
In vain the master issues out commands,
In vain the trembling sailors ply their hands;
The tempest unforeseen prevents their care,
And from the first they labour in despair.
The giddy ship betwixt the winds and tides,
Forced back and forwards, in a circle rides,
Stunned with the different blows; then shoots amain,
Till counterbuffed she stops, and sleeps again.
Cymon and Iphigenia
Though it is small in bulk, Dryden’s lyrical poetry is of much importance. The longest and the best-known pieces of this class are his Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (1687) and Alexander’s Feast, written for the same anniversary in 1697. Both show Dryden as a master of melodious verse and of a varied and powerful style. The numerous lyrics that appear in his plays are charming. One stanza will illustrate this sweetly facile phase of the poet’s art:
On a bank, beside a willow,
Heaven her covering, earth her pillow,
Sad Amynta sighed alone;
From the cheerless dawn of morning
Till the dews of night returning,
Singing thus she made her moan:
“Hope is banished,
Joys are vanished,
Damon, my beloved, is gone!”
His numerous prologues and epilogues, written in couplets, show abundant wit and vivacity, yet they habitually appeal to the worst instincts of his audiences, being very often coarse and unmannerly.
3. His Drama. In his dramatic work, as elsewhere, Dryden is a faithful reflex of his time. His methods and objects vary as the public appreciation of them waxes and wanes, with the result that he gives us a historical summary of the popular fancy.
His first play was a comedy, The Wild Gallant (1663), which had but a very moderate success. It has the complicated plot of the popular Spanish comedies and the “humors” of Jonson’s. After this unsuccessful attempt at public favor Dryden turned to tragedy, which henceforth nearly monopolizes his dramatic work.
His tragedies fall into two main groups:
(a) The Heroic Play. This is a new type of the tragedy that became prominent after the Restoration, and of which Dryden is one of the earliest and most skillful exponents. The chief features of the new growth are the choice of a great heroic figure for the central personage; a succession of stage incidents of an exalted character, which often, through the inexpertness of the dramatist, became ridiculous; a loud and ranting style; and the rhymed couplet. Dryden’s Rival Ladies (1663) is a hybrid between the comic and heroic species of play; The Indian Emperor (1665), Tyrannic Love (1669), The Conquest of Granada (1670), and Aurengzebe (1675) show the heroic kind at its best and worst. Though Dryden is heavily weighted with the ponderous mechanism of the heroic play, his gigantic literary strength is often sufficient to give it an attraction and a kind of heavy-footed animation.
(b) His Blank-verse Tragedies. The heroic play was so easily parodied and made ridiculous, that the wits of the Restoration were not slow to make a butt of it. Their onslaughts were not without their effect on Dryden, for already in Aurengzebe a shamefaced weakening of the heroic mannerisms is apparent. In the prologue to this play Dryden fairly admits it, saying that he
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rime.
Passion’s too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And Nature flies him like enchanted ground.
His next play, All for Love, or The World well Lost (1678), is in blank verse, and is considered to be his dramatic masterpiece. For subject he chose that of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. It was a daring thing to attempt what Shakespeare had already done; but Dryden, while following the earlier play somewhat closely, never actually copies it. He produces a play of a distinctly different nature, and of a high merit. The characters are well drawn and animated, and the style, though lacking the daimonic force of Shakespeare’s at his best, is noble and restrained. We give Dryden’s handling of the death of Cleopatra, a passage which should be compared with that of Shakespeare given on p. [121].
(Antony is lying dead on the stage; Charmion and Iras, the Queen’s two handmaidens, are in attendance on her.)
Charmion.To what end
These ensigns of your pomp and royalty?
Cleopatra. Dull that thou art! Why, ’tis to meet my love;
As when I saw him first, on Cydnos’ bank,
All sparkling, like a goddess....
Haste, haste, both,
And dress the bride of Antony.
Charmion.’Tis done.
Cleopatra. Now seat me by my lord; I claim this place....
Reach me the casket.
Iras.Underneath the fruit
The aspic lies.
Cleopatra.Welcome, thou kind deceiver!
[Putting aside the leaves.
Thou best of thieves, who with an easy key
Dost open life, and, unperceived by us,
Even steal us from ourselves....
Haste, bare my arm, and rouse the serpent’s fury.
[Holds out her arm, and draws it back.
Coward flesh,
Wouldst thou conspire with Cæsar to betray me,
As thou wert none of mine? I’ll force thee to it,
And not be sent by him,
But bring, myself, my soul to Antony.
[Turns aside, and then shows her arm bloody.
Take hence; the work is done....
Charmion.The next is ours.
Iras. Now, Charmion, to be worthy
Of our great queen and mistress.
[They apply the aspics.
Cleopatra. Already, death, I feel thee in my veins:
I go with such a will to find my lord,
That we shall quickly meet.
A heavy numbness creeps through every limb,
And now ’tis at my head: my eyelids fall,
And my dear love is vanquished in a mist.
Where shall I find him, where? O turn me to him,
And lay me on his breast! Cæsar, thy worst;
Now part us, if thou canst.[Dies.
[Iras sinks down at her feet, and dies; Charmion stands behind her chair, as dressing her head.
After the Revolution he wrote Don Sebastian (1690), Cleomenes (1691), and Love Triumphant (1694). The last was a tragi-comedy and a failure. The other two, however, were quite up to the average of his plays. In addition, at various stages of his career he collaborated with Lee in two other tragedies, and attempted, with lamentable results, to improve upon Shakespeare’s Tempest and Troilus and Cressida.
4. His Prose. Dryden’s versatility is apparent when we observe that in prose, as well as in poetry and drama, he attains to primacy in his generation. In the case of prose he has one rival, John Bunyan. No single item of Dryden’s prose work is of very great length; but in his Essay of Dramatic Poesie (1668), in his numerous dedicatory epistles and prefaces, and in the scanty stock of his surviving letters we have a prose corpus of some magnitude. The general subject of his prose is literary criticism, and that of a sane and vigorous quality. The style is free, but not too free; there are slips of grammar, but they are not many. The Essay of Dramatic Poesie is his longest single prose work. It is cast into dialogue form, in which four characters, one of whom is Dryden himself, discuss such well-worked themes as ancients versus moderns and blank verse versus rhyme. Studded throughout the book are passages of rare ability, one of which is the following, which illustrates not only his prose style, but also his acute perception of literary values:
To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,
Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.
Virg., Ecl., i, 26