The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 07

by John Dryden

THE PREFACE.

Whether it happened through a long disuse of writing, that I forgot the usual compass of a play, or that, by crowding it with characters and incidents, I put a necessity upon myself of lengthening the main action, I know not; but the first day's audience sufficiently convinced me of my error, and that the poem was insupportably too long. It is an ill ambition of us poets, to please an audience with more than they can bear; and supposing that we wrote as well as vainly we imagine ourselves to write, yet we ought to consider, that no man can bear to be long tickled. There is a nauseousness in a city-feast, when we are to sit four hours after we are cloyed. I am therefore, in the first place, to acknowledge, with all manner of gratitude, their civility, who were pleased to endure it with so much patience; to be weary with so much good-nature and silence; and not to explode an entertainment which was designed to please them, or discourage an author, whose misfortunes have once 292 more brought him, against his will, upon the stage. While I continue in these bad circumstances, (and, truly, I see very little probability of coming out) I must be obliged to write; and if I may still hope for the same kind usage, I shall the less repent of that hard necessity. I write not this out of any expectation to be pitied, for I have enemies enow to wish me yet in a worse condition; but give me leave to say, that if I can please by writing, as I shall endeavour it, the town may be somewhat obliged to my misfortunes for a part of their diversion. Having been longer acquainted with the stage than any poet now living, and having observed how difficult it was to please; that the humours of comedy were almost spent; that love and honour (the mistaken topics of tragedy) were quite worn out; that the theatres could not support their charges; that the audience forsook them; that young men, without learning, set up for judges, and that they talked loudest, who understood the least; all these discouragements had not only weaned me from the stage, but had also given me a loathing of it. But enough of this: the difficulties continue; they increase; and I am still condemned to dig in those exhausted mines.

Whatever fault I next commit, rest assured it shall not be that of too much length: Above twelve hundred lines have been cut off from this tragedy since it was first delivered to the actors. They were indeed so judiciously lopped by Mr Betterton, to whose care and excellent action I am equally obliged, that the connection of the story was not lost; but, on the other side, it was impossible to prevent some part of the action from being precipitated, and coming on without that due preparation which is required to all great events: as, in particular, that of raising the mobile, in the beginning of the fourth act, which a man of Benducar's cool character 293 could not naturally attempt, without taking all those precautions, which he foresaw would be necessary to render his design successful. On this consideration, I have replaced those lines through the whole poem, and thereby restored it to that clearness of conception, and (if I may dare to say it) that lustre and masculine vigour, in which it was first written. It is obvious to every understanding reader, that the most poetical parts, which are descriptions, images, similitudes, and moral sentences, are those which of necessity were to be pared away, when the body was swollen into too large a bulk for the representation of the stage. But there is a vast difference betwixt a public entertainment on the theatre, and a private reading in the closet: In the first, we are confined to time; and though we talk not by the hour-glass, yet the watch often drawn out of the pocket warns the actors that their audience is weary; in the last, every reader is judge of his own convenience; he can take up the book and lay it down at his pleasure, and find out those beauties of propriety in thought and writing, which escaped him in the tumult and hurry of representing. And I dare boldly promise for this play, that in the roughness of the numbers and cadences, (which I assure was not casual, but so designed) you will see somewhat more masterly arising to your view, than in most, if not any, of my former tragedies. There is a more noble daring in the figures, and more suitable to the loftiness of the subject; and, besides this, some newnesses of English, translated from the beauties of modern tongues, as well as from the elegancies of the Latin; and here and there some old words are sprinkled, which, for their significance and sound, deserved not to be antiquated; such as we often find in Sallust amongst the Roman authors, and in Milton's "Paradise" 294 amongst ours; though perhaps the latter, instead of sprinkling, has dealt them with too free a hand, even sometimes to the obscuring of his sense.

As for the story, or plot, of the tragedy, it is purely fiction; for I take it up where the history has laid it down. We are assured by all writers of those times, that Sebastian, a young prince of great courage and expectation, undertook that war, partly upon a religious account, partly at the solicitation of Muley Mahomet, who had been driven out of his dominions by Abdelmelech, or, as others call him, Muley Moluch, his nigh kinsman, who descended from the same family of Xeriffs, whose fathers, Hamet and Mahomet, had conquered that empire with joint forces, and shared it betwixt them after their victory; that the body of Don Sebastian was never found in the field of battle, which gave occasion for many to believe, that he was not slain[1]; 295 that some years after, when the Spaniards, with a pretended title, by force of arms, had usurped the crown of Portugal from the house of Braganza, a certain person, who called himself Don Sebastian, and had all the marks of his body and features of his face, appeared at Venice, where he was owned by some of his countrymen; but being seized by the Spaniards, was first imprisoned, then sent to the gallies, and at last put to death in private. It is most certain, that the Portuguese expected his return for almost an age together after that battle, which is at least a proof of their extreme love to his memory; and the usage they had from their new conquerors, might possibly make them so extravagant in their hopes and wishes for their old master[2].

This ground-work the history afforded me, and I desire no better to build a play upon; for where the event of a great action is left doubtful, there the poet is left master. He may raise what he pleases on that foundation, provided he makes it of a 296 piece, and according to the rule of probability. From hence I was only obliged, that Sebastian should return to Portugal no more; but at the same time I had him at my own disposal, whether to bestow him in Afric, or in any other corner of the world, or to have closed the tragedy with his death; and the last of these was certainly the most easy, but for the same reason the least artful; because, as I have somewhere said, the poison and the dagger are still at hand to butcher a hero, when a poet wants the brains to save him. It being therefore only necessary, according to the laws of the drama, that Sebastian should no more be seen upon the throne, I leave it for the world to judge, whether or no I have disposed of him according to art, or have bungled up the conclusion of his adventure. In the drawing of his character, I forgot not piety, which any one may observe to be one principal ingredient of it, even so far as to be a habit in him; though I shew him once to be transported from it by the violence of a sudden passion, to endeavour a self-murder. This being presupposed, that he was religious, the horror of his incest, though innocently committed, was the best reason which the stage could give for hindering his return. It is true, I have no right to blast his memory with such a crime; but declaring it to be fiction, I desire my audience to think it no longer true, than while they are seeing it represented; for that once ended, he may be a saint, for aught I know, and we have reason to presume he is. On this supposition, it was unreasonable to have killed him; for the learned Mr Rymer has well observed, that in all punishments we are to regulate ourselves by poetical justice; and according to those measures, an involuntary sin deserves not death; from whence it follows, 297 that to divorce himself from the beloved object, to retire into a desert, and deprive himself of a throne, was the utmost punishment which a poet could inflict, as it was also the utmost reparation which Sebastian could make. For what relates to Almeyda, her part is wholly fictitious. I know it is the surname of a noble family in Portugal, which was very instrumental in the restoration of Don John de Braganza, father to the most illustrious and most pious princess, our queen-dowager. The French author of a novel, called "Don Sebastian," has given that name to an African lady of his own invention, and makes her sister to Muley Mahomet; but I have wholly changed the accidents, and borrowed nothing but the supposition, that she was beloved by the king of Portugal. Though, if I had taken the whole story, and wrought it up into a play, I might have done it exactly according to the practice of almost all the ancients, who were never accused of being plagiaries for building their tragedies on known fables. Thus, Augustus Cæsar wrote an "Ajax," which was not the less his own, because Euripides had written a play before him on that subject. Thus, of late years, Corneille writ an "Œdipus" after Sophocles; and I have designed one after him, which I wrote with Mr Lee; yet neither the French poet stole from the Greek, nor we from the Frenchman. It is the contrivance, the new turn, and new characters, which alter the property, and make it ours. The materia poetica is as common to all writers, as the materia medica to all physicians. Thus, in our Chronicles, Daniel's history is still his own, though Matthew Paris, Stow, and Hollingshed writ before him; otherwise we must have been content with their dull relations, if a better pen had not been allowed to come after them, 298 and writ his own account after a new and better manner.

I must further declare freely, that I have not exactly kept to the three mechanic rules of unity. I knew them, and had them in my eye, but followed them only at a distance; for the genius of the English cannot bear too regular a play: we are given to variety, even to a debauchery of pleasure. My scenes are therefore sometimes broken, because my underplot required them so to be, though the general scene remains,—of the same castle; and I have taken the time of two days, because the variety of accidents, which are here represented, could not naturally be supposed to arrive in one: but to gain a greater beauty, it is lawful for a poet to supersede a less.

I must likewise own, that I have somewhat deviated from the known history, in the death of Muley Moluch, who, by all relations, died of a fever in the battle, before his army had wholly won the field; but if I have allowed him another day of life, it was because I stood in need of so shining a character of brutality as I have given him; which is indeed the same with that of the present emperor Muley-Ishmael, as some of our English officers, who have been in his court, have credibly informed me.

I have been listening—what objections had been made against the conduct of the play; but found them all so trivial, that if I should name them, a true critic would imagine that I played booty, and only raised up phantoms for myself to conquer. Some are pleased to say—the writing is dull; but, ætatem habet, de se loquatur. Others, that the double poison is unnatural: let the common received opinion, and Ausonius his famous epigram, answer 299 that[3]. Lastly, a more ignorant sort of creatures than either of the former maintain, that the character of Dorax is not only unnatural, but inconsistent with itself: let them read the play, and think again; and if yet they are not satisfied, cast their eyes on that chapter of the wise Montaigne, which is intitled, De l'Inconstance des Actions humaines. A longer reply is what those cavillers deserve not; but I will give them and their fellows to understand, that the earl of Dorset was pleased to read the tragedy twice over before it was acted, and did me the favour to send me word, that I had written beyond any of my former plays, and that he was displeased any thing should be cut away. If I have not reason to prefer his single judgment to a whole faction, let the world be judge; for the opposition is the same with that of Lucan's hero against an army; concurrere bellum, atque virum.

I think I may modestly conclude, that whatever errors there may be, either in the design, or writing of this play, they are not those which have been objected to it. I think also, that I am not yet arrived to the age of doting; and that I have given so much application to this poem, that I could not probably let it run into many gross absurdities; 300 which may caution my enemies from too rash a censure, and may also encourage my friends, who are many more than I could reasonably have expected, to believe their kindness has not been very undeservedly bestowed on me. This is not a play that was huddled up in haste; and, to shew it was not, I will own, that, besides the general moral of it, which is given in the four last lines, there is also another moral, couched under every one of the principal parts and characters, which a judicious critic will observe, though I point not to it in this preface. And there may be also some secret beauties in the decorum of parts, and uniformity of design, which my puny judges will not easily find out: let them consider in the last scene of the fourth act, whether I have not preserved the rule of decency, in giving all the advantage to the royal character, and in making Dorax first submit. Perhaps too they may have thought, that it was through indigence of characters that I have given the same to Sebastian and Almeyda, and consequently made them alike in all things but their sex. But let them look a little deeper into the matter, and they will find, that this identity of character in the greatness of their souls was intended for a preparation of the final discovery, and that the likeness of their nature was a fair hint to the proximity of their blood.

To avoid the imputation of too much vanity, (for all writers, and especially poets, will have some,) I will give but one other instance, in relation to the uniformity of the design. I have observed, that the English will not bear a thorough tragedy; but are pleased, that it should be lightened with underparts of mirth. It had been easy for me to have given my audience a better course of comedy, I mean a more diverting, than that of Antonio and Morayma; but I dare appeal, even to my enemies, 301 if I, or any man, could have invented one, which had been more of a piece, and more depending on the serious part of the design. For what could be more uniform, than to draw from out of the members of a captive court, the subject of a comical entertainment? To prepare this episode, you see Dorax giving the character of Antonio, in the beginning of the play, upon his first sight of him at the lottery; and to make the dependence, Antonio is engaged, in the fourth act, for the deliverance of Almeyda; which is also prepared, by his being first made a slave to the captain of the rabble.