JOHN DRYDEN
Despite his
popularity during the Restoration and even today, little is known about John
Dryden except what is contained in his works. Because Dryden wrote from the
beginning through the end of the Restoration period, following his career is
like following the history of English society during this time. In fact, many
literary scholars consider the end of the Restoration period to have occurred
with Dryden's death in 1700.
Dryden was the first born of
fourteen to Puritan parents on 9 August 1631. In 1659, Dryden published his first writing entitled "Heroique
Stanzas to the Glorious Memory of Cromwell." Then, in 1660, he wrote "Astraea Redux,"
another poem, but this one celebrated "the happy Restoration and return" of Charles II.
Also in 1660, Dryden wrote a poem honoring Sir Robert Howard, an investor
in the King's Company, with whom Dryden remained involved personally and
professionally for some time. Howard helped Dryden get involved with the King's
Company, and in 1662, Dryden's first
play, a comedy called The Wild Gallant, appeared (and failed) there. In 1663, Dryden
married Howard's sister, Lady Elizabeth, "under the cloud of some personal
disgrace." The marriage provided no financial advantage or much
compatibility for the couple, but Dryden did gain social status because of her
nobility. For his first dramatic success,
Dryden collaborated with Sir Howard to write The Indian Queen, a rhyming tragedy that created a
sensation with its elaborate scenery and costumes.
Because of his social success,
Dryden was made a member of the Royal Society in 1663. Since he was a
non-participating member and did not pay his dues, his membership was later
revoked.
In 1668, Dryden was named Poet
Laureate and was offered a share in the Theatre Royal's profits in exchange for
his plays. He became the chief writer of
rhymed heroic tragedy. His writing was mocked by Buckingham in The Rehearsal with the character of Bayes. With All
for Love, or the World Well
Lost in 1677, Dryden
broke away from using rhyme in his plays. All for Love, the story of Antony
and Cleopatra, is still Dryden's most admired work and was his most
financially successful play.
Dryden was a very vocal Tory
during the Popish Plot, at which time he made many Whig enemies, including Buckingham
and Thomas Shadwell. He remained a Tory propagandist until the end of James
II's reign.
Dryden's religious beliefs seemed
to change with the times as well. In 1682, he declared himself an Anglican.
When James took the throne in 1685, however, Dryden converted to Catholicism.
Unfortunately for Dryden, when William and Mary took the throne in 1689, they
replaced Catholic Dryden with Protestant Shadwell as Poet Laureate. With the
loss of his honorable position, Dryden was forced financially to return to the
theatre and wrote four plays, all relatively unsuccessful because of Protestant
prejudices, before retiring in 1694. With his retirement, Dryden found time to
relax by receiving attention from younger writers at Will's Coffeehouse,
fishing, and translating classic authors such as Virgil.
A few weeks before his death,
Dryden finished a "secular masque" for The
Pilgrim, a play written for his benefit. Dryden died on May 1, 1700 on
the third night of its production.
Dryden – The Father of English
Criticism
Introduction:
It was no less exacting a critic than Dr. Johnson who decorated
Dryden with the medal of the fatherhood of English criticism.
"Dryden", he wrote, "may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer
who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition." Dr.
Johnson's tribute to Dryden should not be allowed to imply that no literary
criticism existed in England before Dryden. Some literary criticism did exist before him, but much of it
was not worth the name.
In general, English literary criticism before Dryden was patchy, ill-organised, cursory, perfunctory, ill-digested, and heavily leaning on ancient Greek and Roman, and more recent Italian and French, criticism. It had no identity or even life of its own. Moreover, an overwhelming proportion of it was criticism of the legislative, and little of it that of the descriptive, kind. Dryden evolved and articulated an impressive body of critical principles for practical literary appreciation and offered good examples of descriptive criticism himself. It was said of Augustus that he found Rome brick and left it marble. Saintsbury avers that Dryden's contribution to English poetry was the same as Augustus' contribution to Rome. With still more justice we could say that Dryden found Englishliterary criticism "brick" and left it "marble."
Dryden's
Critical Works:
Dryden was truly a versatile man of letters. He was a playwright
(both tragic and comic), a vigorous and fluent prose writer (justifiably the
father of modern Englishprose), a great poet (one of the best satiric poets of
England so far), a verse translator, and, of course, a great literary critic.
His literary criticism makes a pretty sizable volume. Much of it, however, is
informal, occasional, self-vindicating, and, as F. R. Leavis terms it in his
appreciation of Dr. Johnson as a critic in a Scrutiny number, "dated".
Dryden wrote only one formal critical work-the famous essay Of Dramatic Poesie. The rest of his critical
work consists of three classical lives (Plutarch, Polybius, and Lucian), as
many as twenty-five critical prefaces to his own works, and a few more prefaces
to the works of his contemporaries. These critical prefaces are so many bills
of fare as well as apologies for the writings to which they are prefixed. In
his critical works Dryden deals, as the occasion arises, with most literary questions which were the burning
issues of his day, as also some fundamental problems of literary creation,
apprehension, and appreciation which are as important today as they were at the
very inchoation of literature. He deals, satisfactorily or otherwise, with such
issues as the process of literary creation, the permissibility or otherwise of
tragi-comedy, the three unities the Daniel-Campion controversy over rhyme
versus blank verse, the nature and function of comedy, tragedy, and poetry in
general, the function and test of good satire, and many others. Here is,
indeed, to steal a phrase from him, "God plenty". No Englishliterary critic
before Dryden had been so vast in range or sterling in quality.
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