John Dryden (1631-1700)

1650: Trinity College, Cambridge

-Secretary to Sir George Pickering

The Heroic Stanzas on the Death of the Lord Protector (1659)

-Heroic plays – Rant and bombast, mechanical plots and grandiose

speeches – Conflict between honour and love

1670: Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal

Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Mac Flecknoe: Thomas Shadwell

-Translated Virgil’s Aeneid

-Translated satires and fables from by Ovid, Juvenal and Boccaccio

Alexander’s Feast (1697): Second Ode

The Discourse on Satire

Essay of Dramatic Poesy

-Debate on drama

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Eugenius: “well-born” – Charles Sackville, Lord Backhurst, who was

a poet and Dryden’s patron

-Crites: “Judge” or “Critic” in Greek – Sir Robert Howard, Dryden’s

brother-in-law – Classical conservatism

-Lisideius: Sir Charles Sedley – French drama

-Neander: “new man” – Dryden – English drama

The Essay was occasioned by a public dispute with Sir Robert

Howard (Crites) over the use of rhyme in drama.

Traditionalists such as Jonathan Swift, in his Battle of the Books

(1704), bemoaned the modern corruption of religion and learning,

and saw in the ancients the archetypal standards of literature. The

moderns, inspired by various forms of progress through the

Renaissance, sought to adapt or even abandon classical ideals in

favour of the requirements of a changed world and a modern

audience.

A play is a just and lively image of human nature, representing its

passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is

subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind.

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Crites says that all the rules for drama, concerning the plot, the

ornaments, descriptions, and narrations, were formulated by

Aristotle, Horace, or their predecessors.

Unities of time, place and action

Eugenius: Not only do we have the collective experience and wisdom

of the ancients to draw upon, but also, we have our own experience

of the world, a world understood far better in scientific terms than in

ages past. By the time of Horace, the division of a play into five acts

was firmly established, but this distinction was unknown to the

Greeks. The Greeks did not even confine themselves to a regular

number of acts. Not only do the ancients fail to fulfil one of the

essential obligations of drama, that of delighting, but they also fall

short in the other requirement, that of instructing. Eugenius berates

the narrow characterization by Greek and Roman dramatists, as well

as their imperfect linking of scenes. He cites instances of their own

violation of the unities. When the classical authors such as Euripides

and Terence do observe the unities, they are forced into absurdities.

Eugenius also berates the ancients for not dealing sufficiently with

love.

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Lisideius argues that the current French theatre surpasses all

Europe, observing the unities of time, place, and action, and is not

strewn with the cumbersome underplots that litter the English stage.

The French provide variety of emotion without sinking to the absurd

genre of tragicomedy, which is a uniquely English invention. Lisideius

also points out that the French are proficient at proportioning the time

devoted to dialogue and action on the one hand, and narration on the

other.

Neander or Dryden argue that a play should present a “lively imitation

of Nature” In justifying the genre of tragicomedy, Neander states that

the contrast between mirth and compassion will throw the important

scenes into sharper relief. This exaltation of tragicomedy effectively

overturns nearly all of the ancient prescriptions concerning purity of

genre, decorum, and unity of plot. Neander argues that anyone with

actual experience of the stage will see how constraining the classical

rules are.

Neander: In order to express nature, Shakespeare did not need to

look outwards, toward the classics, but rather into his own humanity.

Beaumont and Fletcher had both the precedent of Shakespeare’s wit

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and natural gifts which they improved by study. What they excelled at

was expressing “the conversation of gentlemen,” and the

representation of the passions, especially of love. Neander or Dryden

effectively argues for an independent tradition for English drama, with

new archetypes displacing those of the classical tradition.

Following Aristotle, Crites insists that the most natural verse form for

the stage is blank verse, since ordinary speech follows an iambic

pattern.

Neander: In everyday life, people do not speak in blank verse, any

more than they do in rhyme. He also observes that rhyme and accent

are a modern substitute for the use of quantity as syllabic measure in

classical verse. In tragedy, while the use of verse and rhyme helps

the poet control an otherwise lawless imagination, it is nonetheless a

great help to his luxuriant fancy. Modern writers ought to be at liberty

to create their own archetypes and literary traditions.

Neander: Unity of a play – A play has to present, through its use of

plot and characterization, events and actions which are probable and

express truth or at least a resemblance to truth; that the laws of

“nature” be followed, if not through imitation of the ancients, then

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through looking inward at our own profoundest constitution; and

finally, that every aspect of a play be contrived with the projected

response of the audience in mind.