Yet it cannot be said that Dryden was in any respect a dramatist of a high order. As a writer of comedy he was not only inferior to contemporaries and immediate successors like Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, but in certain ways he was surpassed by Shadwell, the very man whom he himself has consigned to a disagreeable immortality as the hero of the 'MacFlecknoe.' His comedies are not merely full of obscenity,—which seems to have been a necessary ingredient to suit them to the taste of the age,—but they are full of a peculiarly disagreeable obscenity. One of his worst offenses in this direction, and altogether his most impudent one, was his adaptation for the stage of Shakespeare's 'Tempest.' The two plays are worth reading together for the sake of seeing how easily a pure and perfect creation of genius can be vulgarized in language and spirit almost beyond the possibility of recognition. In his tragedies, however, Dryden was much more successful. Yet even these, in spite of the excellence of occasional passages, do not attain to a high rank. Indeed, thought and expression are at times extravagant, not to say stilted, to an extent which afterward led him himself to make them the subject of ridicule. It was in them, however, during these years that he perfected by degrees his mastery of heroic verse, of which later he was to display the capabilities in a way that had never previously been seen and has never since been surpassed.
A controversy in regard to the proper method of composing plays brought forward Dryden, at an early period in his literary career, as a writer of prose. In this he at once attained unusual eminence. In him appear for the first time united the two characters of poet and of critic. Ben Jonson had in a measure preceded him in this respect; but Jonson's criticism was not so much devoted to the examination of general principles as to the exposure of the hopeless, helpless obtuseness of the men who had a different opinion of his works from what he himself entertained. The questions discussed by Dryden were of a more general nature. With the Stuarts had come in French literary tastes and French literary methods. The age was supposed to be too refined to be pleased with what had satisfied the coarse palates of preceding generations. In stage-writing in particular, the doctrine of the unities, almost uniformly violated by Shakespeare and most of the Elizabethans, was now held up as the only correct method of composition that could be employed by any writer who sought to conform to the true principles of art. Along with this came the substitution in the drama of rhyme for blank verse. Upon the comparative merits of these two as employed in tragedy, arose the first controversy in which Dryden was engaged. This one was with his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard; for in 1663 Dryden had become the husband of the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, thus marrying, as Pope expressed it, "misery in a noble wife." Dryden was an advocate of rhyme; and the controversy on this point began with the publication in 1668 of his 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy.' It was afterward carried on by both parties, in prefaces to the plays they successively published. The prefaces to these productions regularly became later the place where Dryden laid down his critical doctrines on all points that engaged his attention; and whether we agree with his views or not, we are always sure to be charmed with the manner in which they are expressed.
In 1667 Dryden published a long poem entitled 'Annus Mirabilis.' It was in the same measure as the stanzas on Oliver Cromwell. It gave him a good deal of reputation at the time; but though it is far from being a despicable performance, few there are now who read it and still fewer who re-read it. Far different has been the fate of his next work. It was not until 1681, when England was beginning to emerge slowly from the excitement and agitation growing out of the alleged Popish plot, that he brought out his 'Absalom and Achitophel,' without question the greatest combined poetical and political satire to be found in our tongue. Here it was that for the first time he fully displayed his mastery over heroic verse. The notion once so widely prevalent—for the vogue of which, indeed, Dryden himself is mainly responsible—that Waller and Denham brought this verse to perfection, it now requires both extensive and special ignorance of our earlier authors to entertain; but on the other hand, there is no question that he himself imparted to the line a variety, vigor, and sustained majesty of movement such as the verse in its modern form had never previously received. There is therefore a fairly full measure of truth in the lines in which he was characterized by Pope:—
"Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march and energy divine."
These lines of Pope, it may be added, exemplify purposely two peculiarities of Dryden's versification,—the occasional use of the triplet instead of the regular couplet, and of the Alexandrine, or line of six feet, in place of the usual line of five.
The poem is largely an attack upon the Earl of Shaftesbury, who in it bears the title of Achitophel. The portrayal of this statesman, which is given in this volume, is ample evidence of that skill of the poet in characterization which has made the pictures he drew immortal. Perhaps even more effective was the description of the Duke of Buckingham, under the designation of Zimri. For attacking that nobleman Dryden had both political and personal reasons. Buckingham had now joined the opponents of the court. Ten years previously the poet himself had been brought by him on the stage, with the aid of others, in the play called "The Rehearsal." His usual actions had been mimicked, his usual expressions had been put into the mouth of the character created to represent him, who was styled Bayes. This title had been given him because Dryden figuratively wore the bays, or laurel, as poet laureate. The name henceforward stuck. Dryden's turn had now come; and it was in these following lines that he drew the unfaded and fadeless picture of this nobleman, whose reputation even then was notorious rather than famous, and whose intellect was motley-minded rather than versatile:—
"Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the front rank of these did Zimri stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome.
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long,
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over-violent or over-civil
That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art:
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate."
As an example of the loftier and more majestic style occasionally found in this poem, is the powerful appeal of Achitophel to Absalom. The latter, it is to be said, stands for the Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of the illegitimate sons of Charles II. Him many of the so-called country party, now beginning to be styled Whigs, were endeavoring to have recognized as the next successor to the throne, in place of the Roman Catholic brother of the king, James, Duke of York. As a favorite son of the monarch, he, though then in opposition, is treated tenderly by Dryden throughout; and this feeling is plainly visible in the opening of the address to him put into the mouth of Achitophel, in these words:—
"Auspicious prince, at whose nativity
Some royal planet ruled the southern sky,
Thy longing country's darling and desire,
Their cloudy pillar and their guardian fire,
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas and shows the promised land,
Whose dawning day in every distant age
Has exercised the sacred prophet's rage,
The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision and the old men's dream,—
Thee savior, thee the nation's vows confess,
And never satisfied with seeing, bless."