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