ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY.
————Fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exors ipsa secandi.
This Essay contains the first detailed view of our author's opinions concerning the Drama. In many things, particularly in the main point of preference given to rhyme, he afterwards saw cause to retract some of the principles here laid down. We have endeavoured elsewhere to trace the progress and alteration of Dryden's sentiments upon these subjects.[94] But the reader's attention may be here called to the elegant form into which he has thrown his Essay, and which has been so often in vain followed by clumsy imitators. The scene of the dialogue, and the striking incident by which it is introduced, have the happiest effect in arresting the attention; and infinite address is displayed in conducting the subject, from the distant noise of a bloody sea-fight, into the academic prolusions of dramatic criticism.
The speakers in the dialogue are four; three of whom are persons "whom their wit and quality have made known to all the town." The fourth, of whose properties the author speaks more modestly, is Neander, under which feigned appellation Dryden himself is figured. In corroboration of this, Mr Malone produces two instances, in which Dryden is called Neander by the famous Corinna, or Eliza Thomas.[95] Moreover, the curious reader must be informed, that there is an anagram in the name of the second personage, Lisideius, which points him out to be Sir Charles Sedley, or Sidley, for his name was spelled both ways.[96] Crites, the advocate for blank verse, is Sir Robert Howard, our author's friend and brother-in-law; who, in the preface to his plays, published in 1665, had censured rhiming tragedies as unnatural. Prior has assured us, that Eugenius means the witty Earl of Dorset, then Lord Buckhurst.[97] A very critical observer may remark an inaccuracy in introducing his lordship as listening to the sound of a sea-fight, in which he was himself actually engaged.[98] But Dryden did not mean to identify his speakers, and those shadowed out under them, otherwise than in their capacity of critics and authors.
Dryden has, with infinite address, avoided, or overcome, the obstacles which commonly attend an argumentative discussion, in form of a dialogue. The author of such disputations, in general, so obviously favours one of the combatants, that we as soon expect Hector to slay Achilles, or Turnus to defeat Æneas, as nourish the least hope of the unfriended champion making any effectual resistance. Besides, in prepared arguments of this sort, as in prepared jests on the stage, there is an obvious opening left for those thrusts on which the author chiefly depends for success; so that, instead of admiring the victor, we are angry at the bad address of his antagonist. All these obstacles Dryden has contrived to surmount, by the number of his characters, and the variety of their dialogue, where not only the argument of Neander's antagonists is fairly stated, but the topics are so judiciously varied, that the reader is brought to the point which the author aims at, without stiffness or constraint, as if in the ordinary flow of literary conversation. Thus, as we never see the purpose which Dryden wishes to attain, we arrive at his conclusion without fatigue or prejudice.
The "Essay on Dramatic Poetry" was assailed by several critics. Martin Clifford, of the Charter-House, accused our author of pilfering from the French critics, in the second of four very abusive letters. The only existing edition of these diatribes is one in 1687; but, from their date and import, this may have been a reprint. Sir Robert Howard also attacked the Essay, in the preface to his "Duke of Lerma," which led Dryden to assert his preference of rhyming tragedies, in the Defence prefixed to the "Indian Emperor." See Vol. III. p. 263.
This Essay was first published in 1668, or perhaps in the December preceding. Sixteen years afterwards, Dryden bestowed on it a thorough revisal; and having, in many places, altered and amended the expression with unusual care, he published a second edition in 1684, with the following dedication to Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset.