The Seventeenth Century after the Restoration (1660-1700) if
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The Restoration Comedy of Manners / 201
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THE RESTORATION COMEDY OF MANNERS \J Q. 32. Write a short essay on any one of the following:
, (a) The Comedy of Manners (and four other topics).
Cf- . (Gorakhpur 1985)
Or
Q. Write a short note on the comedy of manners.
(Agra 1968) Or
Q. Write an essay on one of the fallowing:
(a) Comedy of Manners in the Restoration period (and four more topics) (Punjab 1967)
Or
Q. Write a note on the Comedy of Manners.
(Rohilkhand 1981) Or
Q. What are the characteristics of Restoration comedy and how does it differ from Shakespeare’s ? (Agra 1972)
Or
Q. What are the characteristics of the Restoration Comedy of Manners? Illustrate your answer (Punjab 1965, Agra
1989*
Or
Q. In what important respects doe? Restoration com-
edy differ ftam the Elizabethan 1 (Agra 1962)
Or
Q. Write an essay on the Restoration Comedy of Manners. How does the Restoration Comedy of Manners differ from the Elizabethan Comedy 1 (Rohilkhand, 1990)
Or
Q. Write an essay on any one of the following :-
(a) The Comedy of Manners (and six more topics).
Introduction:-
Bonainy Dobrcc points out (hut in the history of dramatic literature there arc some periods which arc predominantly comic and some which arc difinitcly tragic. Tragedy generally flourishes when religious, moral, and social values arc more or less fixed and positive; and comedy, when they arc uncertain and fluid. The ages of Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Corneillc were the periods of the dominance of tragedy, and those of Aristophanes, Jonson, and Molicre that of comedy. The Restoration period, likewise, was a comic period as, to use the words of Dobrcc, ”it was an age of enquiry and curiosity.” Things like-sexual morali’.y came to be examined, and new conclusions, mostly tentative, came to be expressed. Comedy was thrown into a more scientific and literally ”prosaic” mould, and the imaginative fights of (he Elizabethans and the bi/.arrc poetry of the metaphysical* were discarded in favour of a down-to-earth kind of expression. The Restoration age was marked by the establishment of the Royal Society and a great expansion of scientific knowledge. In many departments of life and literature this scientific spirit of enquiry and disbelief was aboard. This temper and spirit of the age found appropriate expression in comedy. Whereas in the Held of tragedy the age has none to show except Otway as a true master, in the Held of comedy il p<cscnts a galaxy of brilliant writers whose work has made this age one of the most splendid in the annals of English drama.
The Comedy of Manners :-
Chiefly the Restoration age is associated with the rise and development of what is called ”the comedy of manners.” This kind of comedy was indeed a-true mirror of the temper and outlook of the society– rather a section of the socicty–of the age. But it will be a gross error to suppose that the comedy of manners was the only kind of comedy written and appreciated in this age. The chief practitioners of the comedy of manners were:
(5) Sir George Etherge (1635-1691)
(ii) William Wychcrley (1640-1715)
(iii) William Congreve (1670-1729)
(iv) Sir John Vanbrugh (1661-1726)
(v) George Farquhar (1678-1707)
The comedies written by these playwrights, says Dobree, ”form but an infinitesimal portion of the many comedies produced during these years.” Their comedy of manners, says the same critic, ”did not by any means dominate the world of the theatre: it was rivalled by many
The Restoration Comedy of Manners / 203
another forms which proved as popular, if not more popular, with contemporary audiences.” The other forms of comedy were mainly the comedy of humours and the comedy of intrigue. Whereas Shadwell made his mark in the former kind, Drydcn, Tale, Durfey, and some others achieved notable successes in the latter. Let us now examine the salient features of the comedy of manners and see how it differs from Elizabethan comedy.
Shaping Influences :- *
Whereas throughout its long career English tragedy has always accepted foreign influences, English comedy has been less amenable to them. But the Restoration comedy of manners did assimilate a good deal of the Continental spirit. John Wilcox h The Relation of Moliere to Restoration Comedy has tried to dispel the belief that Restoration comedy Was substantially influenced by French comedy. Even then it is certain that Moliere was held in much respect by Restoration dramatists. He provided them with quite a few ideas about plot and effective comic characterisation. The strong element of intrigue in the plot is due in some measure to the influence of Spanish drama. As regards the influence of the preceding masters of comedy on Restoration comedy, it is of interest to note that Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher stand in the forefront whereas Shakespeare is relegated to the background. Restoration comedy lacks the warmth and depth of Elizabethan comedy, but on the. side of credit it also -eschews its extravagance and lack of realism. Shakespeare’s plays were out of favour in this age. Samuel Pepys records in his Diary that once he attended a performance of Shakespeare’s A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, but he did not like it at all, ”for it is the most uninspired play that ever I saw in my life.” Another diarist of the age, Evelyn, in the same tone criticises Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet : ”I saw Hamlet played, but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his majesty’s being so long abroad.” Unlike the ”romantic” Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher were respected and appreciated by both the dramatists and audiences of the age. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher were respected and appreciated by both the dramatists and audiences of the age, Ben Jonson taught the comedy writers a sense of hard realism combined with a hard-hitting satirical temper. Beaumont and Fletcher bequeathed them a courtly spirit. Johnson was directly and even dully copied by his ”sons” like Shadwell. But he had also to teach the writers of the comedy of manners quite a few things. Bonamy Dobree avers in this connexion: ”Even the
204 / A History of English Literature
masters of the comedy of manners showed that they had learned part of their art at least from the early seventeenth century playwright Ben Jonson.” There is some resemblance of approach and effect between the comedy of humours and the comedy of manners. Both are realistic and satiric. A ”manner” is something natural and ingrained; a manner is not so deeply-seated and is the product of social influence which can be easily dated. Humours, on the other hand, are mostly dateless-jealousy greed, sensuality etc. Manners are of the nature of acquired follies and vices.
Coterie Literature :-
The manners which the comedy of manners reveals were not the manners of all classes of Restoration society ; they were rather the manners of the courtly classes only. Thus an important difference between Elizabethan and the Restoration comedy of manners concerns the extent of the areas of their appeal. Elizabethan drama was a national affair, and the London of that age supported no fewer than six companies of players; but in Restoration London at no time could be found more than two. The players catered for the taste of only the courtly classes. The playwrights themselves were gentlemen, or, at least, pretenders to gentility. Congrcve is said to have once told Voltaire that he wished to be regarded not as a literary man but as a gentleman. Dryden complained that the Elizabethan dramatists’ wit ”was not the wit of gentlemen.” Even Steele asserted that ”the chief qualification” of a dramatist was ”to be a very well-bred man”. Thus the comedy of manners was written by ”gentlemen”, for ”gentlemen”, and about ”gentlemen”. According to Archer, this very quality was a fatal weakness of Restoration comedy which, as he puts it, ”was essentially coterie talk, keyed up to the pitch of a particular and narrow set.” P. A. W. Collins in his essay on Restoration comedy in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol. IV avers : The presence of the upper class at the centre of the comic action marked off Restoration comedy from its predecessors. Traditionally, comedy dealt with lower class persons, und one of the limitations which the Restoration found in Elizabethan comedy was its poor showing in ’gentlemen’. The Restoration comedy of manners concentrated on the activities, intrigues and amorous achievements of gay, frivolous, rakish type of young men and women” ”Restoration comedy is,” says Allardyce Nicoll in British Drama, ”wholly aristocratic, the manners, displayed being not those of men in general (such as Jonson showed in his honours) but the affectations and cultured veneer of finer society. For these men a manner was not a trait native to an individual, but a quality acquired by him from social intercourse.” .
The Restoration Comedy of Manners / 205
Realism, Social Analysis, and Satire :- ,
Unlike the Elizabethan romantic comedy, the .comedy of manners is characterised by realism, social analysis, and satire. Its use of prose served to heighten the realistic effect. .Says a critic: ”In the school of Ethercge and Wycherlcy, idealism entirely disappeared : their aim was to copy minutely the manners of domestic life. Vice and folly were not to be moralised about or ridiculed, they were to be photographed. Realism is everything, morality is nothing” . These dramatists held a mirror to the finer society of their age. ”This fine society,” says Allardyce Nicoll, thus mirrored in the comedy of manners, as it was ihc society of Charles H’s Court, was dilettante, careless, intent only on pleasure and amorous intrigue, so that the comedy which depicted it has an air of abandon and of immorality which is markedly different from the manlier temper of the Elizabethan stage.” The scene of most comedies of manners is London, more specifically its coffee- and chocolate-houses, clubs, and gambling houses which were haunts of the corrupt and fashionable ladies and gentleman of the age. Apart from these ladies (mostly flirts) and gentleman (mostly rakes) we have as typical characters the foolish country squire, the male bawd, and so on. Love intrigues, clandestine love affairs, gossip, charactcr^assassination, drinking, gambling, womanising, and scandal-mongcring are some of the pursuits of these characters and as such they provide the staple of the plots. These comedies are thus true pictures of the noble society of the age. But they are much more. To quote George Shcrburn in A Literary History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh, ”Restoration comedy is rather an anatomy of life, not more a representation than a commentary on life and on various social schematisms.” Further he says that ”Restoration comedy is rather less a representation of life than it is a commentary upon manners.” This ”commentary” is satirical in its nature. All satire admits of an element of exaggeration, and Restoration comedy is not without it. If we base our ideas regarding the higher society of the Restoration age entirely on the comedy of manners we will be treading unsafe grounds. We have to tone the colours down to arrive at the truth.
Immorality :-
One feature of Restoration comedy which has been often condemned and almost as often defended, is its immorality. The following points are worthy of notice in connexion with this alleged immorality:
(i) Restoration comedy held a mirror to the high society of the Restoration age.The society was immoral, so was image as represented by the comedy.
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(ii) The persistent attack on the sanctity of the marital bond made by the comedy writers and the parallel advocacy of free love (mainly to cater for the needs of the libido) imparts to the comedy of manners a pronounced immoral note.
(iii) Most comedy writers relished the presentation of scenes and acts suggestive or even clearly indicative of sexual grossness.
(iv) The comic dialogue was bristling with salacious innuendoes. The choicest obscenities were put into the mouths of female players who were selected to speak out the epilogues.
(v) The introduction for the first time of actresses on the stage also lowered the level of morality. These actresses were mostly women of easy virtue.
Jeremy Collier was the first to raise his powerful voice against the immorality of Restoration stage. Dr. Johnson, Macaulay, Leslie Stephen, and many more have since followed his lead, even though with not the same fanaticism. In his Prologue spoken…tal-Drury Lane (\747) Dr. Johnson writes thus about Restoration comedy writers :
Tltemselves they studied, as they felt tliey writ;
Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit.
Vice always found a sympathetic friend;
They pleas ’d their age, and did not aim to mend. Leslie Stephen says that the comedy of manners is a comedy ”written by blackguards for blackguards.” Lamb maintained that he did not take the immorality of the comedy of manners seriously as it did not strike him as realistic but only a ”utonia of gallantry.” Dobree and Nicoll ”defend” the comedy of manners for almost lh«i same reason-it was immoral because the society it mirrored was immoral. ”If,” says Nicoll, ”we condemn the society of the Restoration Court we need not thereby condemn the dramatists of that period…” But a mirror has no power of thinking or feeling; the comedy writers did have. And they positively show that they relish immorality, perhaps because it is a passport to success with their restricted audience. Much of their wit is concerned with the expression or insinuation of obscenities. Cuckoldom is the theme dearest to them. The restrictions of marriage are their bete noire. Lady-killing is glorified (not just represented) as the distinguishing mark of a gentleman. Gambling and drinking are made noble pursuits. The hero is always a gentleman – rake poised to cuckold a gull or some other gentleman-take. The whole concept of love is anti-romantic and even cynical. This cynicis-n is also apparent in characterisation. All virtuous characters, whenever they are repre-
ri
The Restoration Comedy of Manners / 207
seated, are shown as uninteresting fools meant only to be hoodwinked by some clever scoundrel.
Plot-construction and Dialogue :-
The writers of the comedy of manners gave much more importance to the wit and polish of their dialogue than to the construction of their plot-which Aristotle thinks is the soul of a tragedy (and therefore quite important for a comedy too). Some love intrigue or love intrigues provided them with the ground-work of theii plot. But they seldom harmonised or even developed their plot with much architectonic skill. The lesson of Ben Jonson in this sphere was entirely lost. What was important for these playwrights was the dialogue and the individual scene or episode. They did not mind incorporating into a comedy numerous plots and sub-plots. Thus .for instance, Etherege’s Comical Revenge has no fewer than four plots. These dramatists often looked for guidance to the French comedy writers and Ben Jonson, but they showed no evidence of having learnt their architectonic skill.
The dialogue in the comedy of manners was sought to be made by its writer witty, polished, and crisp. The verbal fireworks of this comedy are both pleasing and displeasing. Bonamy Dobree points ouf.’By the quality of its wit Restoration comedy is immediately dated. It is this persistent attempt to be witty that makes many people regard Restora- t tion comedy as tedious, undramatic stuff, during the action of which persons come upon the stage to fire off epigrams at one another. Though we may now and again find the method tiresome, yet it has its interest and even its beauty.” L. C. Knights criticises the comedy of manners not because it is immoral but because it is dull iu spite of its constant effort to be witty.
The Playwrights :- ^
The two periods important for the comedy of manners were
1668-76 and 1793-1707 because during them most of such comedies were written.
The first true practitioner of the comedy of manners was Etherege whose important works include Love in a Tub, She Wou’d If She Cou’d, and TJie Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter. Etherege himself was a courtier and naturally adept at revealing the manners of courtiers. ”His laughter”, says Dobree, ”is always that of delight at being very much alive, and is only corrective here and there by accident.” Etherege lacks the brilliance and polish of Congreve, but he has a naturalness and airy grace of his own.
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Wycherle/s reputation is based upon four plays: Love in a Wood, Tlie Genleleman Dancing-Master, Tlie Country Wife, and Tlie Plain Dealer. The first three of them are after the mould of Etherege. They deal with fops and gallants and seem to revel in their contemptible intrigues. The Country Wife is the most indecent of all. However, in Tlie Plain Dealer Wycherley emerges in the role of a satirist rather than a reveller. But his real attitude and moral standing are somewhat ambiguous. He lacks the airy wit of Etherege, but in plot-construction he is much ahead of him. His plots are well harmonised and rounded •entities.
Congreve lacks the strength of Etherege and Wycherley. According to Dobree, ”his whole power is centred on an airiness of fancy and delicacy of style eminently adapted to the expression of the conventional conversation of the fine society of his time.” According to Henley ”he is saved from oblivion by the sheer strength of style.” Congreve’s most important comedies are The Old Bachelor, Tlie Double Dealer, Love for Love,and The Way of the World, In his comedies he creates, a world of his own. It is a superficial and trivial world, no doubt, but it is interesting, and Congreve knows its ins and outs.
Farquhar wrote some seven plays, the most outstanding of which are Tlie. Recruiting Officer and The Beau’s Stratagem. He is much less witty and polished than Congreve. His dialogue is nearer the language of normal conversation. P. A. W. Collins says: ”If his plays lack the nicer insights pf Congreve and the mordancy of Wycherley, they are more generally humane than theirs and are the most attractive (as they were long among the most popular) of Restoration comedies.” Farquhar does not flout moral standards and in this respect he looks forward to the drama of Steele and the succeeding age.
Vanbrugh is known chiefly for his comedies The Relapse, Tlie Provoked Wife,and The Confederacy. The second named is his masterpiece; the third named is the most immoral. All of them are concerned with unhappy marriages. Vanbrugh lacks the wit and elegance of Congreve, but his plots are better constructed. He relishes farce and caricature and lacks the intellectual force of Congreve. Even then, his plays are readable today on account of their genial humour, even though often of the farcical kind.
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Heroic Tragedy/209
/ HEROIC TRAGEDY
\S
Q.33. Write all that you know about the vogue of the heroic tragedy in the seventeeth century. (Rohilkhand 1983)
Or
Q. Write a brief essay on heroic tragedy. (Rohilkhand 1988) Q. Write an essay on one of the following:The Heroic Tragedy (and four more topics) (Puravanchal 1990)
Or .
Q. Write ;an essay on heroic drama of the Restoration.
Or
Q. What is a heroic play? Discuss John Dryden as a writer of heroic plays.
Introduction :-
If the age of the Restoration (1660-1700) is one of the most splendid periods in the annals of English drama, it is primarily on account of the comedy of manners. This kind of comedy-brilliant, witty, albeit a little licentious here and there-was an authentic reflection of the society of the age. The so-called heroic tragedy which had a brief run concurrently, with the comedy of manners had also a modicum of popularity, but was too stilted and artificial and, to some extent, merely a transplant from the French soil. A heroic tragedy of the Restoration (for example, Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada or Tyrannic Love) is much less representative of the ethos of Restoration society than a comedy of manners.
What Is a Heroic Play?
< A heroic play (and most heroic plays end unhappily, and hence are tragedies), like a heroic poem or an epic, is generally built around a largerthan-life heroic warrior who is a master both of swordsmanship and stagy rhetoric. The hero is almost invariably a king, prince, or an army general. The plot of the play involves the fate of an empire. Gallantry, adventure, love, and honour are the usual themes of heroic plays. The principal conflict faced by the hero is between love and honour. The writers of heroic plays aimed at the effects of intensity and sublimity and were keen to arouse in the audience admiration more than the specific tragic emotions of pity and fear. The diction and verse used by them were in accordance with their aim. They mostly used rhymed pentameter couplets (heroic couplets) which were quite artificial but could be impressively
210 / A History of English Literature
declamatory. For impressing the audience even more, elaborate stage scenery and even live animals were used by theatre managers. Little wonder then if heroic drama managed to rival the Restoration comedy of manners in popularity. Its Principal Practitioners : Sir William D’Avenant :-
The vogue of the heroic play lasted throughout the reign of Charles II (i.e. 1660-1685) and even beyond to the early years of the eighteenth century. Its principal practitioners were John Dryden, Elkanah Settle, Nat Lee, and Thomas Otway. Among the lesser playwrights may be mentioned Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery and John Crowne. Dryden is surely head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. There is a controversy regarding which is the earliest heroic play or tragedy in the history ol English drama. There are two contenders for this honour of precedence-The Siege of Rhodes (1656) by Sir William D’Avenant and The Indian Queen (1664) by John Dryden and Sir Robert Howard (Dryden’s brotherin-law and Crites of Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poetry). If, strictly speaking, not the first heroic play, The Siege of Rhodes was, in Cazamian’s words, ”the germ both of English opera and heroic tragedy.” Put up on the stage before the Restoration when the Puritans were in power and the theatres were lying closed to popular entertainment, the play was written by the author on a heroic theme with the avowed aim of recommending virtue ”under the forms of valour and conjugal love.” The play deals with the siege of Rhodes (an island off Greece) by the Turkish king Solyman the Magnificent. The valour of the Sultan is matched by the conjugal devotion of lanthe, wife of the Sicilian Duke Alphonso, who succeeds in saving her husband and those who are defending the island from the Turkish hordes. The play, which may alternatively be called an opera, is in rhymed verse which has musical quality, for it is meant for recitation rather than natural dialogue. Another sensational feature of the play was its emphasis (something new in the history of English drama) on stage accessories for creating picturesque effects. Much more was sought by D’Avenant to be shown than acted out. The besieged town of Rhodes, the Turkish camp, the fleets, and the port were materially represented on the stage itself. Needless to say, the play was very well received by the dramastarved Londoners who had remained without entertainment since 1649 when the theatres were closed by the Puritan regime.
Yet another remarkable feature of The Siege of Rhodes was the introduction of actresses to play the role of female dramatis personae. F6rmerly such roles were played by boy actors (who for reasons of appearance and voice could pass for ladies). The new daring step taken by D’Avenant was welcomed by all and became a norm of the English the-
Hcroic Tragedy/211
atre. In fact one of the reasons why love is such an important theme of heroic tragedy (as lust is of the manners comedy) is to be found here. The playwrights had to invent suitable roles for some accomplished, beautiful, and popular actresses who appeared on the scene-actresses like Nell Gwyn and Mrs. Barry whose very presence among the players was an insurance of success. They were very successful as beloveds or wives of great heroes or as princesses and ”captive queens” courted by noble heroes in a grandiloquent style.
John Dryden :-
The Indian Queen (1664) by Dryden and Howard is the first heroic play, but it cannot be called a tragedy because of its happy ending. The play has almost all the other ingredients of heroic tragedy. Montezuma is an army general of heroic blood in love with a princess (whom he ultimately marries-hence the happy ending). The central motives in the play are love and valour. Then there are stock characters other than the virtuous heroine and the all-conquering, honourable hero-such as the emperor of a remote land, the villain-general, the rival contrasting queens, and the noble idealist. The rhyming couplets in which the play is couched aim at sublimity and sonority but often descend into rant and singsong. Dryden’s heroic plays are:
The Indian Emperor (1665)
Tyrannic Love (1669)
The Conquest ofGranda (1670)
Amboyana (1673)
Aureng-Zebe (1675)
Except Tyrannic Love almost none of these plays can technically be called a tragedy with respect to its ending, but all of them are heroic plays different from the later plays of Dryden VSt&All for Love (1677) and Don Sebastian (1689) which use blank verse rather than rhyme and which avoid the stereotypes of heroic drama.
The hero of Tyrannic Love, Maximin, a Roman emperor, has an intensity of passion and ear-filling sonarity of style which remind one of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. Like Tamburlaine, Maximin dies threatening fte gods in heaven. He rants:
And after thee I go
Revenging still, and following ev’n to the other world my blow:
And shoving back this earth on which I sit.
\ow:
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/’// mount, and scatter all the Gods I hit.
Maximin falls in love with Catharine, the Christian princess of Alexandria, his captive. Catharine, a pious Christian (who was sainted later), rejects his love and converts Maximin’s wife, Queen Berenice, to Christianity, thus sorely provoking him. Both Catharine and Berenice are beheaded at Maximin’s command. Maximin is soon stabbed to death by one of his officers who is in love with Berenice.
The Conquest of Granada is, in the words of Sherbum and Bond, ”Dfyden’s most elaborate heroic play.” It is in two parts, each comprising five acts. The hero of the play is Almanzor, a valiant solider, who participates in the battle btween the Spaniards and the Moors over Granada. Almanzor is in love with Almahide, fiance of Boabdelin, the Moorish ruler of Granada. Almanzor remains unsuccessful in his suit for Almahide till the death of Boabdelin in the last act. The plot of the play is very complicated and the frequency with which the hero changes his allegiance between the warring Spaniards and Moors would put to shame even the most seasoned turncoat in an Indian State Assembly. Almanzor’s rants are flamboyant and sometimes grotesque, but none can ignore the intensity of his character. When the King’s guards approach to kill him he cautions them:
Stand off: I have not leisure yet to die.
Sherbum and Bond appropriately comment: ”Clearly such a man has something!”
Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe, though not a heroic tragedy, is a notable heroic play and Dryden’s last attempt in the genre. With mis play he bade good-bye to what he called ”his long-loved mistress rhyme” and tried his hand at a different kind in blank verse. Aureng-Zebe is (mis) represented by Dryden as an ideal prince-virtuous, honourable, valiant, and generous as a son, lover, and brother. The captive queen Indamora, who is loved by his father Shah. Jehan and brother Moral in addition to himself, is won by him after a lot of intrigues and complications. The play shows Dryden’s maturity. There is much less of rant and more of real poetry which we can find in several reflective passages such as the following uttered by the hero, beginning:
When 1 consider life, ^tis all a cheat’
Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit.
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.
To-morrow ’s falser than the former dayCazamian praises Aureng-Zebe as ”the most inward of Dryden’s
Heroic Tragedy 7213
heroes, the one in whom virtue is endued with the most distinctly psychological quality.”
Elkanah Settle :-
Settle as a writer of heroic drama is chiefly known for his tragedy The Empress of Morocco (1673). One of the reaons why Dryden gave up writing heroic plays after Aureng-Zebe was the highly undeserved success of Settle’s play. ”The play,” according to Sherbum and Bond, ”is hardly more absurd than some of Dryden’s, but its plotting, which concerns the successful intrigues of a wicked empress and her lover against her son, is less well knit than Dryden’s work, and its poetry is obviously inferior.” This play by Settle was followed by .a long satiricial wrangle between Dryden and his friends on the one hand and Settle on the other. The last blow was delivered by Dryden who in the second^part of his Absalom andAchitophel (1682) pilloried Settle as Doeg. Nat Lee :-.
Nat Lee is described by Bonamy Dobree in Restoration Tragedy as ”the most completely ’heroic’ of all the outstanding heroic writers.” His plays, some ten in number, are, in NicolFs words, ”formless and hysterical.” Sherbum and Bond observe: ”His characters do rage rather than speak; situations change with absurd rapidity; at times motivation of im- ’ portant deeds is sadly deficient; and there is an almost unvarying high emotional tension.” Lee’s continuous striving after grandeur and sublim- \ ity often yields only fustian and grotesque rant. Dobree says: ”There can be no purple patch where all is incarnadined, and humanity itself is drowned in an ocean of verbiage.” Of course, there are a few lucid and strangely beautiful passages which prove that Lee had a modicum’of poetry in him. But as often Lee exposes himself to ridicule. Consider, for example, the last words spoken by King Augustus in Gloriana:
So Heaven abroad with conquest crowns my wars, But wracks my spirits with domestic jars.
The words ”wracks” and ”jars” bring before the mind’s eye a picture of a kitchen, which is clearly unintentional. Lee’s impetousity and torrential rant with little regard for the occasion and for the identity of the speaker compel one to question his sanity. And, indeed, Lee renamed in a madhouse for five long years. Lee’s best known play is The Rival Queens (1677) which represents tl.e bloody rivalry between the two wives of Alexander the Great, namely, Statira and Roxana. Roxana stabs Statira to death and Alexander is poisoned by the conspirator Cassandei.
1
214 / A History of R^pii«*« Literature Thomas Otway: „ –
With Otway heroic drama loses some of its specifically heroic character and accommodates the elements of pathos and even sentimentalism which are essentially alien to this spirit. In Otway we.see the last flicker of Elizabethan glory. His best plays are The Orphan (1680) and Venice Preserv’d(\692), both in blank verse, Otway excels in the delineation of tender scenes involving lovers and children. Dobree objects to his ”tearmongering”, but we cannot help admiring his poetic and dramatic powers. Otway paved the way for sentimental comedy of the eighteenth century.
Conclusion:
The cult of the heroic drama which lasted for about two decades after the Restoration was largely a product of the French influence. French classical tragedy from Corneille to Racine in the seventeeth century was emulated by heroic dramatists of England led by Dry den. English heroic drama was extremely artificial both in content and style. It was supposed to be the dramatic form of heroic or epic poetry. The failure of heroic drama was in part due to the radical incompatibility between the content and the form: the former was overly and patently romantic and the latter largely neoclassical. However, even the worst of heroic plays has its dazzling splendour and beauty which arise from the vigour and energy of expression, howsoever stilted and bombastic.
Q.34.
Q-
Restoration Prose / 215
RESTORATION PROSE
Describe and account for the change that came over English prose in the middle of the seventeenth century.
(Agra 1966) Or
How does post-Restoration English prose differ from the prose before the Restoration? What were the causes for the change ? (Asm
1962) V^
Or
Q.
Q. In .what ways did the Restoration mark the birth of modern English prose ? (Agra 1959)
Introduction :-
’ The Restoration age was an important juncture in the development of English prose. Broadly speaking, it was the period when English prose moved from antiquity to modernity. Matthew Arnold observes in this connexion: The Restoration marks the real moment of birth of our modern prosc.-.English prose after the Restoration breaks with the times preceding it, finds the true law of prose and becomes modern; becomes b spite of superficial differences the style of our own day.” Louis I. Bredvold avers that ”Dryden and his contemporaries created modern English prose”. The prose before the Restoration is characterised by prolixity, kivolvedness, complexity, and diffuseness; but the prose after the Restoration has the modern qualities of clarity, precision, and simplicity. With the Restoration English prose moves speedily towards being strictly functional. It retrenches all unnecessary ornamentation and starts the job of doing without fuss the task which it is ordained to perform.
The Transition :•
The linguistic change in the Restoration age went hand in hand with the social change. With the stability in society came the stability in language. This period saw the transition from the turbulence of antiquity to the stability and balance of the new times. This transition was the sum-total of many complex forces. So was the transition in English prose from the fluidity, complexity, and ”quaintness” of writers like Burton and Browne to the clarity, conciseness, perspecuity, and ”modernity” of writers like Dryden, Bunyan, Halifax, and others. Dryden was the writer to set the tone with his racy, masculine, and forceful prose, and the change was completed by the prose-writers of the age of Queen Anne, like Addison and Swift.
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Critical Interest :-
What is alsoof interest to note is that in the Restoration age critical interest in prose was shown for the first time in the history of English literature. Critical interest in poetry dates from a much earlier oeriod. but such interest in prose is visible only in this period. Before this period the rules of English grammar and syntax were in a state of fluidity. In the Restoration period the need of stabilising the English language in general and prose in particular was voiced by many eminent writers like Dryden and Thomas Sprat. They expressed the desire to clarify and fix the language once and for all so as to obviate the possibility of undue licence on account of the fluidity of the rules of . grammar and syntax. To this end some prominent writers even went so far as to propose the establishment of an academy of language on the lines of the French Academy. For example, Dryden wrote in the Dedication to The Rival Ladies (1664) : ”I am sorry that (speaking so noble a language as we do) we have not a more certain measure of it as they have in France where they have an Academy erected for the purpose.” However, this proposed Academy was destined to have no existence apart from the one on paper even though in 1664 a committee was nominated by the Royal Society to take steps for the stabilisation of the English language. But what is noteworthy here is the interest taken in it during the period in question as also the desire expressed by quite a few writers for fixing the English language which occasioned it.
Anotner factor which compels our attention is the critical interest shown by some writers of the age in English prose styje. For the first time in history we find men of letters discussing what is and what is not good prose style. Their new interest starts with Hobbes and the Royal Society. After that we find most prose writers expressing themselves in passing and sometimes at some length on this subject. The consensus of their opinion seems to be in favour of clarity, simplicity, and utility and against pedantry, affectation, rusticity,turigidity alike. Span in his History of the Royal Society (1667) wrote how the Society asked ”from all their members, a ctese, naked, natural way’of speaking : positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they can; and preferring the language of artisans, countrymen and merchants before mat of wits and scholars.” John Hughes in his essay Of Style (1698) gave as ”the best direction… a diligent and careful perusal of the most correct writers of the language In their various kinds, with the conversationof people of fashion that speak well and without affectation.” Later still we find Addison, Defoe,
Restoration Satire / 217
and Swift-to name only a few-writing on this very topic. In fact, there were very few prose writers in the post-Restoration period who did not say somethig as to how English should be written, or written better.
De-Latioisation :-
The transition from antiquity to modernity to which English prose found itself subjected in the Restoration age was,broadly speaking,a movement towards its” dei-Latinisation.” The English prose before the Restoration was highly Latinised both in diction (choice of words) and syntax (structure of the sentence). There was a comparatively high proportion of words of Latin origin as distinct from those of AngloSaxon derivation. The sentence-structure was after the Latin practice. The prose of Caroline writers like Browne and Milton, for instance, is highly Latinised in diction and syntax. This Latinisation results in complexity of style. Furthcr,the pre-Restoration prose writers had an exceeding fondness for Latin quotations (which were usually printed in italics). The most prolific quoter was Burton, the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy. To make confusion worse confounded, the pre-Restoration writers were used to employing a very large number of parentheses.’ The Latinised syntax (to be more specific, the kind employed by the Roman orator Cicero) meant very often the prolongation of a sentence with the help of an unwieldy number of subordinate clauses though not unoften with a sense of balance and rhetorical organisation. As in Milton and Browne the distinction between the sentence and the paragraph often altogether disappeared, for sentences went like the river Alph in Coleridge’s Kubla Khanj
The de-Latinisation of English prose around and after the Restoration meant the simplification and modernisation of English prose as regards both its diction and syntax. It also implied the bringing nearer of the written language to the spoken language. The tendency to use plethoric Latin quotations as also parentheses came to be discouraged and,in general, English prose took a great leap forward from antiquity to modernity.
Let us now discuss some of the important factors which caused, attended; or conditioned this remarkable change.
The Royal Society :-
The first of them, and an important one, was the establishment of the Royal Society for the promotion of experimental science. It was Charles II who granted the charter to the Society in 1662, thus extend* ing to it royal patronage and blessing. It became a ”fashion” with courtiers to dabble in experimental science and even to have private
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laboratories of their own. The Royal Society did some very useful work, and the names of such genuine scientists as Boyle were associated with it. However it had a pretty .promiscuous membership. Such persons as Dryden, Glanville-Charles IFs chaplain–the divine Isaac Barrow, and the future bishops Seth Vtord and John Wilkins were also its members. The establishment of the Royal Society and the progress nf experimental science to which it gave rise were important factors in effecting the transition in English prose from antiquity to simplicity and modernity. The language used by scientists to describe their experiments must need be clea^unimpassioned, and almost mathematical in plainness. There is no place in it for words and expressions which bear extra scientific, say,morat, religious, or sensuous connotations. The numerous volumes which appeared under the title of The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society did much to pave the way for scientific, matter-of-fact prose. The society itself, as Sprat tells us. was ”most solicitous” about retrenching all ”extravagance” of expression and there ”has been a constant resolution to reject all amplifications, digressions, all swellings of style, to return back to the primitive purity and shortness when men delivered so many things almost in an equal number of words’ The plain language used and recommended by members of the Royal Society which had connections with the intellectual elite of the age, naturally had much influence upon contemporary men of letters. So the establishment of the Royal Society was a momentous step for promoting the use of direct and dear language free from conceits and stylistic gewgaw*.
Sermons :•
From science 10 sermons is indeed a tar cry. But the divines of the age did as good work as the scientists tor the simplification of English prose. The age is known for the great sermons written during it. South, Barrow, and Archbishop Tillotson dissociated themselves from the old style and couched their sermons in an effective and simple English capable of being understood and appreciated by common people. In this way they, kept pace with the scientists. They did nut treat their hearers as passive recipients or as empty buckets to be pumped into, but rational and critical persons. Nor did they have a taste for pedantry and affectation. Tillotson played a major role in effecting the change in English prose. Dryden, one of the greatest masters of English prose, professed to have learned his style chiefly from Tillotson. During the Augustan a*e, religion was still, in A. R. Humphrey’s words, ”a continumg concern of life”, even though it had been dislodged from its
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former pedestal of glory. The change in the style of the clergy was bound to have some impact on that of the secular writers too.
Restoration Comedy :-
Restoration comedy, too, contributed towards the establishment of modern prose. The Restoration comedy writers replaced verse with prose as their medium. Admittedly, they did not so much simplify English prose as added to it that delicacy, finesse, and elegance hitherto missing in it. Courthope, referring to the part played by the Restoration comedy writers,observes in Joseph Addison (E. M. L):
”….our gratitude is due to the Caroline dramatists who may justly claim to be founders of the social prose style in English literature. Before them English prose had been employed no doubt with music and majesty by many writers but the style of these is scarcely representative : they had used the language for their own elevated purposes without, however, attempting to give it that balanced fineness and subtlety which make it a fitting instrument for conveying the complex ideas of an advanced stage of society. Dryden, Wycherley, and their followers/impelled by the taste of the court to study the French language,brought to English composition a nicer standard of logic and a more choice selection of language while the necessity x>f pleasing their audiences with brilliant dialogue made them careful to give their sentences that well-poised structure which Addison afterwards carried to perfection in the Spectator.”
Even if one may entirely agree with Courthope regarding the importance of the Caroline dramatists, it will have to be admitted that these dramatists made the cultivation of good English a contemporary vogue and almost one of the standards of good breeding and ”politeness”. The new. prose of Restoration drama might not have had the subtle harmonies of the prose of Sir Thomas Browne or the Latinised sweep of that of Hooker’s,but it had certainly much more of brilliance and culture and ”modernity.” Notwithstanding its occasional lapse into verbal quibbles and rather unsavoury, salacious, innuendoes, it was a plastic enough vehicle for various kinds of thoughts and feelings, and entirely capable of fulfilling the needs of expression of a more complex and advanced society. The prose of the Augustan writers is more akin to this prose than this prose is to the prose of the early seventeenth century.
Last, but not least, was the modernising influence exerted on English prose by the ”popularisation” of literature towards the end of the seventeenth century. The unprecedented expansion of the circle of
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readers was much responsible for the simplification and stabilisation of English prose. In the post-Restoration age writing became, for the first time in history, a lucrative profession. Dryden, the most prominent literary figure of the age, depended for his livelihood entirely on writing. There was an unprecedented spurt in party pamphleteering to form and guide public opinion on the issues of the everyday life. These pamphlets were obviously addressed to the general public and were therefore couched in a simple and clear prose so as to be easily comprehensible to them. In the general public many writers found their new patrons. Formerly they had depended on the bounty of rich patrons even for the publication of their works. But now the printed word could sell and many merchants and manufacturers of books appeared on the scene. The language employed by the writers with an eye on the. common people was, naturally enough, simple and clear. The social sense of the public was a novelty for the writer and it was a very important factor responsible for the simplification of English prose. The prospect of general rather than individual reception deterred the writer from indulging in his private whims and fancies and directed him to employ the idiom of the common reader. Journalism :-
Add to the ”popularisation” of literature the development of journalism in the post-Restoration period. Though the first periodical essay (The Taller) and the first daily (The Courant) appeared in the beginning of the eighteenth century, yet even in the period under consideration there is evidence of a.hectic journalistic activity. The names of Ned Ward, Roger L. Estrange ? and many other lesser writers are associated with post-Restoration journalism. They catered for the com* mori people and naturally expressed themselves in a simple and easily comprehensible language. In short, on account of the ”popularisation” of literature and the emergence of journalism in the post-Restoration age, English prose grew much clearer, simpler, more easily intelligible and therefore ”modern”.
^/ RESTORATION SATIRE
Q. 34. Give a critical estimate of English verse satire in the later O half of the seventeenth cent ury. (Agra 1965)
Or
S Restoration Satire/ 221
W
Q- What is satire ? Give an account of the Restoration satire.
(Rohilkhand 1985) Or Q. , Write a short essay on any one of the following:
(a) Growth of satirical spirit in the Restoration period (and three more topics). ’unjab 1966)
Introduction :-
The Restoration age is known for the great efflorescence of the spirit of satire which was to reign supreme for decades thereafter. In the hands of Dryden satire became for the first time a polished and highly effective weapon of offence, correction, and even self-expression. The spirit of satire did not manifest itself only in the satirical verse of Dryden, Butler, Oldham, Rochester Cotton, and others, but also in Restoration drama-tragedy as well as comedy. Generally, tragedy does not lend itself to satire; but in Otway’s Venice Preserved we have a very easily recognizable representation of Shaftesbury in the character of Senator Antonio. As regards Restoration comedy, it is nothing if not satirical. Its obvious intention is to portray and comment upon contemporary manners and to satirise the deviations from the accepted code of gentleness. Thus we have to agree with Cazamian when he maintains :*The Restoration theatre is in a sense and in its most brilliant aspects, one great satire…” The satiric spirit rife in the Restoration period influenced even such a poet as Milton. Epic lends itself to satire even less than tragedy but in Milton’s Paradise Lost there are p usages with patently satirical intent, s»uch ax, for instance,the <me dot cribing the nocturnal activities of ”the sons of Belial” who evidently are no other than the voluptuous and riotous courtiers and their trainbearers. Reasons for the Growth of the Satirical Spirit :-
As to why the satirical spirit grew enormously in the Restoration period is a provocative question. Some reasons accounting for this growth can, however, be easily adduced. Let us briefly consider them.
All satire, whether constructive or just destructive, arises from a sense of dissatisfaction, anger, or disgust at the departure of the real from the ideal, the falling short of things from their well- eccepted standards of excellence. Now with the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England, conventional, orthodox, and puritanic morality and I religiosity were dismissed as standards of excellence, and their
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place was given to ”fashion and genteel taste-/ Oirte these new standards were fixed, it became very .-easy to detect any departure from them, which necessitated xhasfjscjnem Says Cazamian: ”Judging and condemning, as a result, grgufmorc simple and more facile operations.” Moreover, with the’ Restoration came a greater freedom of expression, and even the most scurrilous abuse or salacious condemnation in print came to be tolerated-particularly so if it was directed against the Puritan fanatics or the political enemies of monarchy and the king. Indeed, in the Restoration age appeared numerous satires on Puritans and their creed. Butler’s Hudibras is the most well known of them. Then, the political strife which bedevilled the Restoration- age was/also responsible for giving rise to numerous satires. It was in this age that there came to be for the first time a clear polarisation of the English political opinion (between the Whigs and Tories). Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel and The Medal are basically political satires. Finally, the neo-classical tendency which was in the ascendant in this period also encouraged the growth of the satiric spirit. An increased interest in the study of classical writersmostlythe Roman writers of antiquity-prompted the Restoration men of letters to take up the genre of satire as a vehicle of personal expression and public improvement. The great Roman satirists-Persius, Juvenal, and Horace-were studied, appreciated, admired, and imitated However, it was the two first named who exerted a tangible influence on the Restoration satirists. Juvenal with the gift of noble invective was the most favoured. Oldham thought he was assiduously copying Juvenal in his own satires and was called later ”the English Juvenal.” Horace came to exert an appreciable influence only in’the eighteenth century. His gift of comedy and his subtle indirection of technique had an impress on the masterful satire of Pope and his con temporaries.
But k was not only the study of Roman classics which encouraged satire in the Restoration age. There is also to be reckoned the prevalence of satire in contemporary France. In that age most of the fashions in dress, manners, and literature were imported from France. At that time the spirit of satire was abroad in France. Boileau, the neo-classical French poet, critic, and satirist,was the most brilliant practitioner of this genre. Most of the English satirists of the last years of the seventeenth and the early yean of the eighteenth, century exhibit in their work a more considerable influence of Boileau than of any Roman satirist.
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Samuel Butler (1612-80) :-
”The Restoration period opens with a work very much exhibitive of its spiril-Hiidibras of Samuel Butler which appeared in three parts in
1663, 1664,and 1678, each part consisting of three cantos. It was a powerful but ”low” satire or. :he Puritans who had been subdued with the restoration! of Charles 11 to the throne of England in 1660. Butler was not a courtier, no: wai. he a member of the nobility, and the story goes that he died in poverty. Nevertheless, in his attack on the Puritans he outdid many a courtier. Hudibras tnjoyed excessive popularity with the courtiers and the king himself who used to keep a copy of it always in his pocket. The poem is formless, crabbed in versification and gross at numerous places,but none can deny the force of punches Butler levelled against the Puritans.
In its form Hudibras is a burlesque of high romance representing puissant knights out to defend virtue. That way it resembles Cervantes’ Don Quixote which is also a burlesque of the same kind. But it has also elements reminiscent of the French poet Scarron who burlesqued the epic of Virgil.
The name ”Hudibras” is taken from’Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Butler’s Hudibras is a Presbyterian who is hypocritical, covetous, cowardly, and full of pedantic learning. Ralpho, an Independent, is his squire. The hero rides a rickety horse and is equipped with rusty arms. In the company of his squire, he comes out in search of some righteous adventure. However, his squire and he go all the time quarrelling about minute points of religious doctrine, and their quarrels consume a sizable proportion of the poem. Hudibras is described to be
in Logic a great critic, Profoundly skill’d in Analytic; He could distinguish, and divide A liair’twixt south and south-west side; On either which he would dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute.
Of course, Hudibras’. logic-chopping is satirical of the puritanic casuistry.
The first adventure ot Hudibras and Ralpho is their fight with a group of bear-baiters. The-Puritans were against all country sports including bear-baiting not because, as Macaulay puts it, bearbaiting gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. In the beginning the two adventures are successful but then they are vanquished and put in stocks as a couple of miscreants. Even
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when they are in stocks they continue mutual polemics.
In part II Hudibi as is represented as having fallen in love with the property of a widow and.incidentally, the widow herself too. The widow asks him to submit to whipping for winning her favour. Hudibras urges Ralpho to serve as his substitue. A loud quarrel ensues between the two. They consult an astrologer who is discovered to be a humbug, is beaten up and left by the two adventurers for dead. Hudibras parts company with Ralpho so that the latter may be apprehended as the murderer.
In part III Hudibras is represented as going alone to the widow for pleading for her favour. Qn hearing a. knock he hides under a bed thinking that it is the ghost of the astrologer who has come to wreak vengeance. His cowardice is discovered and he is soundly belaboured. After escaping ignominiously he consults a lawyer who advise him to write love-letters to his beloved. The rest of this part does not advance the story at all. It is probable that Butler desired to round off the work with a fourth part.
Basically this satire is intended against the Puritans, their hypocrisy, pedantry, covejousness, casuistry, fanaticism, and querulousness. Of course, Hudibras and Ralpho are representatives of the Puritans. The satire, however, here and there, becomes broader in ’, purpose and signif cance. Butler is anti-intellectual, anti-science and | even anti-poetry! He was fighting a losing battle with his age and, to quote George Sherburn, ”his lot was to go down fighting scurrilously.” 1 The unit of the poem is the octosyllabic couplet. But Butler’s | couplets are.most rugged and unmusical. He is very fond of curious ’ double rhymes which add a touch of the doggerel.
Among the rest of Butler’s work may be mentioned his Satire on the Royal Society and The Elephant in the Moon, both of which show his disapproval of the new learning. John JVyden (1631-1700) :-
Dryden is the mo:’ distinguished of the Restoration satirists. It was he who established classic*;! satire in England, breaking away from the traditons of Donne, Hall, Cleveland, Bui’-r, and others. His contemporary Butler in his form and method falls mo. ^ in line with the native tradition than the neo-classical tradition initiated by Dryden. Butler’s ”ragged and jagged”versification puts one in mind of Langland, bkelton, and Donne rather than the contemporary neo-classical French school
Restoration Satire / 225
represented chiefly by Boileau who influenced a large number of English poets of the Restoration and the early eighteenth century. Before Dryden, satire enjoyed a quite low level among literary genres. But Dryden, especially with his Absalom and Achilophel, brought it near the dignity of the epic. The satirist was a very respectable member of the ancient Roman society, and the satirist in the post- Restoration age became a very reputable, if not a very respectable member of the English society.
Dryden found himself in his proper element when at the age of fifty he came to the writing of his most outstanding satire cntidcdAbsalom andAchitopheL This work is of the nature of a political satire and was most probably written at the suggestion of the king himself to embody the royal and Tory point of view regarding the Exclusion crisis. Charles II had no legitimate issue and his throne was to come to his brother, the Duke of York, who was sought by the Whigs to be excluded from succession for his alleged Roman Catholic sympathies, Charles H’s illegitimate soothe Duke of Monmouth, was favoured by the Whigs for succession. Monmouth was thought to have been incited by the wily Earl of Shaftesbury to take up arms against the king. Shaftesbury was put in the Tower. A week before the date of his trial came Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel which was obviously meant to secure Shaftesbur/s indictment. Therein Dryden respresented Shaftesbury as a wicked seducer of the innocent Duke of Monmouth who was tempted by Shaftesbury as Adam had been seduced by Satan. Dryden also took occasion in the poem to lash at some other Whig leaders. The main interest of the poem lies in the satiric portraits which in their execution show the hand of a master.
Ther was a also a sequence to this poem, composed mainly by Nahum Tate and containing some two hundred tines by Dryden, in which he lashed Etkanah Settle and Thomas Shadwell as Dpeg and 6g respectively.
TJie Medal, again was political and topical in nature and genesis. la spite o( Absalom and Achitophel and the virulent propaganda by other Tories, Shaftesbury could not be indicted at the trial and was released from the Tower. The Whigs were jubilant and struck a medal bearing the effigy of their hero to commemorate the triumphant occasion. Dryden felt piqued and let out a virulent attack on Sbaftesbury and his followers in The MedaL
Mac Flecknoe is the only satire written by Dryden in which he attacks a personal enemy. He is .Thomas Shadwell who is satirised by Dryden as the occupant of the throne of dullness in succession to his
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”father,” Flecknoe, a very dull Irish poet. The poem abounds in passages of brilliant wit and sarcasm and strokes of mock-heroic characterization all masterfully calculated to scarify the allegedly dull poet and playwright. Minor Satirists :-
Among the other satirists of the age may be mentioned Oldham, Rochester, and Cotton. John Oldham (1653-83), the young friend of Dryden, looked for inspiration and guidance wholly to the ancient Roman writers, particularly Juvenal. He has often been called ”the English Juvenal” but not for very good reason. He erroneously believed that in his harsh diction and deliberately rugged versification he was following Juvenal. His satire is too generalised and avoids personalities altogether. His most important and ambitious work is his Satire upon the Jesuits. The inspiration of this satire is mostly classical, and as in the satires of Juvenal, there is not much humour ”to- relieve” as Cazamian puts it, ”the eloquence and irony of the execration.”
Rochester is known for his poem On Nothing which was praised by Dr. Johnson. His Satyr against Mankind (1675) is a cynical but light-hearted denunciation of all humanity. Rochester has plenty of wit, but most of his works other than the two named above are full of unprintable Crossness.
Charles Cotton is known for Scarronides : or Virgite Travestie (1663) in which he burlesqued Virgil’s heroic poetry after the example of the French poet Scarron, The poem owed some of its popularity to the anti-heroic cult ’initiated by Butler’s Hudibnu.
DRYDEN AS A NEO-CLASSICIST Q.36 Discuss Dryden as a Neo-classicisL (Agra 1961)
Introduction :-
Both in theory and practice Dryden was essentially a neoclassicist. In his criticism as well as his creative work he appears as a supporter of the theory and practice of the Greek and Latin writers of antiquity, even though he always disclaims any slavish adherence to those ”rules” which were enunciated long ago. In his classicism he was more or less a representative of the age. Along with Milton he stands at the end of the Renaissance. Milton and Dryden,according to George Sherburn, ’represent two developments at the end of the Renaissance. Milton preserved the elevation and growing richness of the humanist Intellect, while Dryden developed in the realistic, critical, and skeptical tradition
Dryden as a Neo Classicist 227
initiated in part by Montaigne. Mjjton in his post-Restoration poems thought and worked in terms of the higher genres, epic and tragedy, and he thus achieved the acme of English neo-classic distinction, Dryden followed in inferior genres, and the lesser poets in general followed Dryden in this respect.”
Dryden and His Times :-
The classicism of Dryden and Milton was representative of the post-Restoration period. The Restoration marked the close of the genuine romanticism of the Elizabethan period and also the decadent ’romanticism of the Jacobean and Caroline periods. The creative imagination, exuberant fancy and extravagance of the past: had no appeal for an age which saw the establishment of the Royal Society and with that the glorious initiation of an era of experimental science. A critical spirit was abroad, and men stopped taking everything foi granted. This critical spirit was analytic and inquisitive, not synthetic and naively credulous. It put a greater premium on intellect and reason than on imagination. Dryden was a great exponent of this spirit. As a critic puts it, ”the merits of the new school are found in its intellectual force and actuality; just as its demerits lie in its lack of deep imagination, and tendency to deal with manners and superficialities, rather than with elemental things and larger issues of life.”
Dryden’s neo-classicism signifies mainly the following two characteristics :
(i) His appreciation and recommendation of the theory and practice of the ancient Greek and Roman writers (and also their old Italian and contemporary French imitators).
(ii) His critical and realistic appraisal of his own times through the handling of topical and realistic themes having a direct and immediate bearing upon his society and times.
Basically, Dryden’s neo-classicism, like the classical temper of his times, was a reaction against the decadent romanticism of the preceding age. The metaphysical tradition of Donne in the hands of his followers was, in the words of a critic, ”guiding poetry towards a wilderness of nonsensical thought and of grotesque form” .”Somehow? says the same critic, ”unconsciously, yet nonetheless firmly, there arose towards the middle of the [seventeenth] century a desire for a change, a reversion to something more orderly and more definite. The glorious days of Elizabeth had gone for even Now there were the tendencies for repressing the formless poetry, the formless prose, and the
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extravagant philosophy. This repression led to the pseudo-classicism of the late seventeenth’ and early eighteenth centuries. It found no greater champion than John Dryden.” It stands to reason whether this classicism was true or ”pseudo.” Though Dryden was a great champion of this classicism yet it must be admitted that before him Waller and Denham had done some pioneer work. Imitation of the Ancients :•
Dryden’s neo-classicism manifests itself primarily in his reverence of the ancients and his repeated protestations in favour of their theory and practice. It was perhaps on account of their lack of native genius that Dryden and his contemporaries looked towards the ancient Greek and Roman writers for inspiration as well as guidance. This habit”, says a critic, ”quite noticeable during the time of Dryden, deepened and hardened during the succeeding era of Pope-so much so that the latter laid down as a fine test of excellence:
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; To copy Nature is to copy them.”
Dryden and his contemporaries looked upon the ancients as their models. By *the ancients” (hey generally, and practically, meant the ancient writers. Seneca provided the model for tragedy, Terence and Plautus for comedy, Virgil for epic and pastoral, Horace and Juvenal for satire, Pindar for odes, and Horace (with his Ars foetica) for literary criticism. Of all the ancient Roman writers, Dryden respected Virgil the most and repeatedly acknowledged him as his master and guide. It was a lifelong ambition of his to write an epic in the manner of Virgil’s/leneid and to imitate thebrilliance^tateUness, and sonority of this masterpiece. It must be remembered thai the neo-classical critics in France as also in England had given epic the most exalted place among the poetic ”kinds.” Hence Dryden’s ambition, is understandable. But as Louis I, Bredvold puts it, ”this ambition he sacrificed for the various opportunities of the moment, because of the pressing necessity of earning a living for his family.” Apart from the fact that Dryden ”imitated” the ancients and drew inspiration from them it is notable that he translated quite a few of them into F-ngli^h verse. Among those whose works he ”translated” (in part) may be mentioned Virgil and Boccaccio. Influence of the Neo-classictsts :-
Dryden’s neo-classicism was, partly, imported stuff. In France, to quote an opinion, ”the reaction against the poetic -licence of the Renaissance had set in somewhat earlier-establishing order and dis-
: Dryden as a Neo Classicist /229
cipline in literature. Corneillc and Racine had developed a drama on the lines of Latin tragedy… and Moliere evolved, under the influence of classical example , a type of social comedy, which ranged from hearty farce to the elegant comedy of manners.” According to W. H. Hudson, ”the contemporary literature of France was characterised by lucidity.vivacity, and-by reason of the close attention given to form– correctness, elegance, and finish….It was moreover a literature in tvnich infellect was in the ascendant and the critical faculty always in control.” It was to this literature that Dryden looked for inspiration, extravagance were based on French models. In Dryden’s comedies, too, the influence of the French masters like Moliere is quite apparent, though this influence is for the worse.
Realism :-
Much of romantic literature is marked by a lack of realism amounting sometimes to sheer escapism. Classicism, on the other hand, puts a special emphasis on concrete reality and aims pre-eminently at the edification and improvement of the reader. But a true classical writer does not indulge in ephemeral journalism. Even if he may deal with topical issues he treats them in such a way that his work does not lose interest outside the context of his age and his environment. Dryden, like his contemporaries, says a critic, ”did not allow his thoughts to wander off with Spenser into fairyland or to explore with Milton the mysteries of heaven and hell. He made his verse the vehicle of argument, controversy, personal and political satire.” Dryden’s poetry is not the poetry of basic human passions but of the practical motives which govern human actions. He was a man right in the .thick of the faction-torn political life of his age. He had strong likes and dislikes, though these likes and dislikes were seldom constant. Most of his poetical work is intimately linked with the events and ethos of his age or his own life, his friends and his enemies. H’.s.ReIigio Laid (1683) for instance, was written in defence of the Church of England when he himself was one of its ardent members. On becoming a Roman Catholic he came out with The Hind and the Panther (1687) defending his new religion. His Annus Mirabilis (The Year of Wonders) describes the wonderful events -the Great Fire and the defeat of the Dutch Fleet-of the year 1666. His three great satires–/lfoafo/r; and Achitophel, The Medal, and Mac Flecknoe-aic concerned with the political activity of his age and are designed to chastise his personal and political enemies. FJ cm all this it should be dear that he was very realistic in the choice of themes for his poetry. These themes may have been prosaic enough.
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but his poetry cannot be called prosaic. Matthew Arnold went so far as to assert that Dry den and Pope are the classics not of our poetry but of prose. As T.S. Eliot and Mark Van Doren have pointed out. Dryden’s treatment is poetic. It is, in fact, the superabundance of Dryden’s poetic f<.._:ty that raises even prosaic themes to the level of high poetry.
Vers de Societe :-
Dryden’s poetry was vers de societe. ”The poet”, says Louis I. Bredvold, ” was in this age close to his public, was indeed, presumably a part of it: a gentleman who wrote.for ladies and gentlemen. He found his audience in this select circle:, and his works were appraised not by reviews in literary journals but by the judgements voiced in the coffee-house or drawing room. The poet was a man of the world and he wrote about politics, war,religion, or scientific progress whatever might interest the society in which he lived. He wrote verses for social or festive occasions as a matter of course, poetry being one of the delightful amusements of Iife…this poetry has the merits and the defects of the society for which it was written.” Whereas the romantic poet writes mainly as an individual for himself primarily, the classical poet like Dryden writes as a cultured man speaking to other cultured men. His aim is not self-revelation but arguing and convincing with the help of logic or that ”specious logic” which is called satire. Dryden was the greatest arguer in verse, but what is of primary significance is not his argumentation but his poetry~to whatever purpose it may have been bent by him Intellect versus Imagination :-
Classical poetry is characterised broadly speaking, by the predominance of the intellectual faculty, control,good sense, reason, order,symmetry,and clarity over heady iraagination^awlessness, disorder, extravagance, eccentricity, and disrespect of authority. Dryden himself compared imagination to a headstrong horse and reason to the bit which regulates its speed and but for which the beast would go out of control and do much mischief. George Shcrburn maintains in this connexion: ”Basically the school of Dryden is devoted to a belief in control as essential to art,to a disbelief in ”unpremeditated art:1 One’s imagination was controlled by the procedure of the ancients and by thinking in terras of genres.” It must be understood that this insistence on control, reason, or intellect is not necessarily an evidence
Dryden as a Neo Classicist / 231
of imaginative sterility. It is rather tentamount to a preference of order over chaos, of sobriety over extravagance. There are very few poets who have the vitality and exuberance of Dryden, even when some have much more of intensity and profundity. It is wrong to say that Dryden’s poetry is completely intellectual andhas nothing to do with imagination or emotion. As Cazamian maintains, Dryden ”retains in his blood the glow of an ardour that is vanishing from his generation. The mature art he creates for himself is not of the stripped and somewhat spare type, to which a perfected technique will tend; but rather of a still sturdy, robust and strong-lived quality. The psychological sources that nurture it are exclusively intellectual.” Thus we may say that Dryden is not a strict classicist. His art, says Cazamian, ”is a mixed art, neither the pure classicism which Pope will endeavour to practise, nor the pseudo-classicism, tainted with decadent Romanticism, which Dryden bad practised in his early poems; but a strong blending in which the essential elements of discipline and of an accepted rule combine with the sovereign ease and boldness of inspiration.” His odes are good instances of the combination of discipline and inspiration.
As a Critic :-
Thus Dryden was never a .hidebound! classicist. His approach is always marked by flexibility and tentativeness. That is evident in hi* critical works also. He gave due respect to the ancients but was not chary of praising the moderns – 3ven those moderns who did not care for the rules of the ancients. His glowing tribute to Chaucer and Shakespeare is well known. He seems to believe in a kind of theory of continuous evolution towards perfection. He makes bold attempts to critkise the triteness of Roman comic plots, their poor wit driu instructiveness though he praises their dexterous handling of individual situations and the regularity of their structure. He is also critical of those ”classical” French dramatists who put all the stress on regularity, which, according to him, leads to ”thinness.” He asks disarmingly: ”Now what, I beseech you,is more easy than to write a regular French play, or more difficult than write an irregular English one, like those of Fletcher, or of Shakespeare?” Further, he condemns the French preoccupation with ”rules” at the cost of the spirit of writing. He maintains that ”in most of the irregular plays of Shakespeare or Fletcher…there is a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the writing than there is in any of tine French.* Dryden was indeed influenced by the French neo-dassical critics such Le Bossu, Rapin, and later Boileau; but their influence en him is not so strong as on critics like Rymer who tenaciously and
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unimaginatively adhered to all the ”rules.” Unlike Rymer, Dryden himself was a creative writer brimful of native poetic energy which he refused to curb by the mechanical application of these rules. Thus in him was a synthesis of classical and romantic qualities. Cazamian avers : ”Full of the doctrine of the ancients, he bends it to a free and fruitful adaptation; and his instinct outruns and explains away the last scruples of the thinker.”
Expression :-
In his expression, again,Dryden appears as a classicist cherishing the virtues of clarity, simplicity, neatness and order. He has been rightly called the father of modern English prose. As W. J. Long maintains, before Dryden ”the general tendency of writers was towards extravagance of thought and language. Sentences were often involved arid loaded with Latin quotations and classical allusions.” Dryden brought prose from the turbulence and confusion of antiquity to the perspicuity and order of modernity. Even though his prose has a charming masculine vigour and raciness yet basically it is functional in nature.
in the field of verse also Dryden emphasised the need for clarity, order.and balance. He popularised the use of the heroic couplet as a. vehicle for almost all kinds of poetry and even tragedy. For its neatness, clarity,and balance the heroic couplet appealed to him. After him the couplet became the recognised measure for all classical poetry of the school of Pope and even later. Dryden’s achievement is to have made the heroic couplet a self-contained unit by discouraging the tendency towards enjambcment. He married his sense perfectly to his metre. However,he leserved for himself considerable liberty in the employment of this measure. His frequent use of alexandrines and triplcls–of which Pope was highly critical-may be mentioned in this connexion.
DRYDEN AS A SATIRIST Q. 37. Discuss Dryden as a writer of satires: (Rohilkhand, 1979)
Or
Q. Consider Dryden as a satirist. (Punjab Sept. 1979)
Introduction :-
Dryden is one of the greatest English satirists. He is the first practitioner of classical satire which after him was to remain in vogue for about one hundred and fifty years. From the very beginning of his
Dryden as a Satirist / 233
literary career Dryden evinced a sharp satiric bent. He translated some of the satires of the Roman writer Persius when he was only a pupil at Westminster. Further, in his comedies he produced numerous passages of sparkling satire . He keenly studied the satirical traditions of Rome and France and whatever satire England had to offer. But it was not till he was about fifty that he came to write Absalom and Achitophel~the first of the four major satiric works on which his reputation as a poet is based. With his practice he gave a new form and direction to English satire and raised it to the level of French and Roman satire. He made satire not only a redoubtable weapon to chastise personal and public enemies but also an important, if not a very exalted.genre of literature which was later to attract such great writers as Pope, Swift, Addison, and Dr. Johnson. Dryden’s four important satires are:
(1) Absalom andAdiitophel.
(2) The second part of Absalom and Achitophel chiefly written by Nahum Tate and including about 200 lines by Dryden.
(3) The Medal.
(4) Mac Flecknoe. Dryden’s Contribution and Place :-
Dryden as a satirist does not fall in with native English tradition of Langland. Gascoigne, Donne, Lodge, Hall, Marston, Cleveland, etc. which was carried on by his contemporaries like Oldham and Samuel Butler. Just as in his non-satiric poetry he reacted against the ”romanticism” of the Elizabethans and the confusion, grotesqueness, and formlessness of the imitators of Donne, similarly in his satire he broke away from the harshness,disrespect of form,and denunciatory tone of the English satirists before him. He seems to have looked for inspiration not towards them but–a neo-classicist as he was-towards the Roman satirists-Horace, Juvenal, and Persius-and their French followers, the most outstanding of whom was his adored Boileau.
Both as a critic and as a creative writer, Dryden emphasised and felt the need for artistic control and urbanity of manner. For all successful satire these qualities are of the nature of pre-requisites. It is most essential for a satirist to hide his disgust and moral animus behind a veil of equanimity and urbanity of manner. If he just loses his head at the sight of the object which is to be the target of his attack and comes out with open denunciation or direct name-calling he will not be a successful satirist. A satirist is a propagandist in so far as his effort is to direct the sympathies of the reader into harmony with his own and
>
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against the object sought to be satirised. Naturally enough, if he speaks too openly from the .position of a partisan, he will cut little ice with the reader. So the satirist should not appear too scrious–too serious to be taken seriously. Of course he should be very serious, but he should give the impression of being not very serious, or even neutral between the two opposite points of view, one of which his effort is to promote and the other to counteract. He should lessen, as far as possible, the intensity of self-involvement through the employment of some sly indirection of technique. Dryden himself was aware of it when he said that the satirist should make a man ”die sweetly,” call him a fool or a rogue without using these ”opprobrious terms.” He distinguished between the ”slovenly butchering” done by a bad satirist and the dexterous stroke which severs the head but leaves it standing. Seldom docs Dryden indulge in open denunciation or invective, but he often uses such indirect techniques as irony, sarcasm, and^tbove a!l,his exubcranl wit. It is what primarily distinguishes him from his predecessors who were always open and direct in their attacks. His satire is indirect and, therefore, smooth, urbane, and without angularities or harshness. The same is the case with his versification. He found a good satiric vehicle in the heroic couplet and chiselled and planed it to brilliance. His versification avoids the harshness deliberately cultivated by his young friend Oldham who also employed the heroic couplet. Observes Hugh walker : ”It is this combination-smoothness of verse, lucidity of style, urbanity of manner-which makes Dryden’s satire so strikingly original. In English there had hitherto been nothing comparable to it.” Controlled Contempt :-
Dryden’s satire is remarkable as an artistic expression of controlled contempt Broadly speaking, the three great English satirists Dryden, Pope, and Swift-work through different channels. Dryden is a master of scorn or contempt, Pope of rage, and Swift of disgust. Of course, all of them artistically control their respective presiding feeling, else they would not have been ”great” satirists. Dryden who in T. S. Eliot’s phrase is ”the great master of contempt,” unlike his predecessors, does not take any moral airs. Doane, Hall, and Marston seem to be speaking from a moral elevation, as if they were saints whose moral sense has been outraged. Now, this takes for granted a kind of moral pose which debars satire from assuming an appearance of genuineness or sincerity. Once this moral pose has been seen through by the i e*der, he cannot accept to be dictated or ”moved” by the satirist whom he knows to be an erring being like himself. Drydeo speaks as one civilised being to others, without pretending to grve them lessons in
Dryden as-a Satirist / 235
morality. For one thing^ie eschews all moral and religious issues. The issues he tackles concern politics, taste and good breeding and, only incidentally, morals or religion. Saintsbury observes: ”It never does for the political satirist to lose his temper and to rave and rant and denounce with the air of an inspired prophet.” As a critic says, ”Dryden assumes no moral airs, firmly controls his satirical spirit and skilfully selects the points and the manner of his attacks…The result is a humorous, disdainful, and yet incisive mockery.” Dryden’s Elevating Style :-
One of Dryden’s unique gifts is his capacity to ennoble and elevate the objects of his satire even when his motive is to demean or depress them. The buoyant vigour of his poetry does not lef them touch the lowly ground. T. S. Eliot was the first to direct attention to this point when he wrote in his essay on Dryden: ”Much of Dryden’s unique art consists in his ability to make the small into the great, the prosaic into the poetic, the trivial into the magnificent.” Even when Dryden pours the vials, of his scorn on such characters as Titus Oates, Slingsby Bethel, and Shadwell, he gives them something of heroic dignity. He extends the dimensions of their being (in the case of Shadwell, his physical being too !) and makes them ”poetic”. His scorn diminishes and depresses them, but his poetry extends and exalts them. His personal animus is often lost in the energy of creation, so that a Mac Flecknoe becomes much more important than the real man called Shadwell, Corah than Titus Oates, and Shimei than Slingsby Bethel. Personal envy and malice shed their grossness and are burnished into real poetry. The end product has little resemblance with the material Dryden starts with. Bonamy Dobree observes: ”We have only to think of Mac Flecknoe to forget Shadwell; to think of Achitophel is to forget Shaftesbury, the persons are lost in history, the satires are part of our national consciousness. Everything is all the time compared not with something little but with something great.” That way, Dryden’s modus operandi is much different from Pope’s. When Pope satirises, he diminishes; when Dryden satirises, he exalts.
By exalting and enlarging the objects of his satire, Dryden also raised the lowly genre of satire to the level of epic. This was a no small achievement. HU work/Uwa/om andAchifophel-lo which he gave the title ”a Poem” and not ”a Satire”-is the first instance in English of a heroic satire. As Ian Jack has pointed cut inAugstan Satin, this poem consists of passages peculiar not only to one ”kind” of poetry but to many kinds-epic, satire, panegyric, etc. The style seldom becomes low, the kind of which may be employed for an ordinary satire. Even in his
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mock-heroic satire Mac Flecknoe, which is conceived on a much lower plane than Absalom and Achitophel. Dryden does not use very low or vulgar imagery to punish Shadwell. The mock-heroic effect is created by the element of incongruity generated by the use of high idiom and imagery for such an allegedly ”low” character as Shadwell. The use of contemporary locations, stress, etc, has a further ludicrous effect. In Absalom and Achitophel the use of biblical parallels has an exalting effect but in Mac Flecknoe the reference to concrete historical details has the effect of the mock heroic. Thus, in a word, whereas Absalom and Actitophel is a heroic satire, Mac Falcknoe is a mock-heroic satire. However, in both the satirist works through high, and not low or vulgar, imagery and idiom.
This ”exalting” effect on his satiric objects is made possible only by Dryden’s effective and masterful handling of the heroic couplet–a poetic measure which it was to his credit to perfect into an excellent vehicle of satire by giving to it neatness, epigrammatic cogency and smart and felicitous phrasing, and fully exploiting the scope it has for balance and antithesis. To a large extent he regularised the heroic couplet by discouraging the licence taken by the earlier practitioners of this measure. He gave each line five regular stresses and avoided, as far as possible,what is called enjambement or the trailing of sense from one couplet to the next. His couplets are generally end-stopped and after every line there is generally a natural stop. However, he himself took liberties with the location of the caesura and shifted it within the line or even dispensed with it altogether at times. His handling of the heroic couplet is not as strict and disciplined as Pope’s. For instance, he sometimes uses an alexandrine instead of a regular pentameter, and sometimes the couplet grows into a triplet. Pope was strict to avoid such licence, and he even took Dryden to task for it. Neverthless, Dryden’s heroic couplets are more energetic, racy, and spontaneouslooking than Pope’s. As a master of contempt- sometimes expressed in ironical terms-Drydea finds the couplet a very handy medium. Many of Dryden’s couplets come out with sizzling and scarifying intensity, and the sound of some of them, as Saintsbury puts it, resembles the sound of a s!ap in the face.
Dryden’s Major Satires :-
(1) Absalom and Achitophel is Dryden’s first and by far his best satire. It was perhaps written at the suggestion of Charles II and was out just a week before the trial cf Shaftesbury for sedition. It was thus political in nature and was the representation of the Tory point of view. Its purpose was to malign Shaftesbury as an enemy of peace and the
Dryden as a Satirist /237
nation and a seducer of the Duke of Monmouth-the King’s illegitimate son. The ”poem” is conceived on near-epic dimensions though it contains many elements below the dignity of an epic proper. There is much too little action though considerable tenseness. Much of the interest of this work lies in the satirical portraits of Shaftesbury, the Duke of Buckingham, Slingsby Bethel, and Titus Oates veiled behind the biblical or pseudo-biblical figures of Achitophel, Zimri, Shimet, and Corah respectively. The poem,says Sir Edmund Gosse, ”really consists of satirical portraits cut and polished like jewels and flashing malignant light from all their facets.” There are some portraits of the allies of the King, too, but they are not so effective. Indeed Dryden is a great master of the satiric portrait which was quite fashionable at that time.* Unlike Pope1 he gives his portrait a typical and, often, universal character and significance, so that the historical character sought to be satirised is often lost in the finished poetic portrait. (Pope was much too malignant ever to lose sight of his. target). There is a sensitive variation of tone with which Dryden handles one character after another, as there is in each case a varying degree of contempt and remorse at the sense of wasted or misdirected talent.
(2) The two hundred odd lines which Dryden contributed to the second part of Absalom and Achitophel authored by Nahum Tate constitute its best part. The rest of the poem is beneath criticism, and even contempt. In his contribution, he satirised Shadwell and Elkanah Settle in the characters of Og and Doeg respectively.
(3) TTieMedaAsubtitled^ Satire Against Seditionwa&jngain, topical in genesis. In spite, of Absalom and Achitophel, Shaftesbury was released from captivity. To commemorate his release the Whigs struck a medal bearing the effigy of their hero. This stung Dryden into action and The Medal was the result. He calls Shaftesbury ”the pander of the people’s heart” and takes him to task for his seditious activities which would, Dryden alleges, plunge the country into ruin. He vigorously upholds, as in Absalom and Achitophel, Hobbes’s theory of political covenant.
(4) Mac Flecknoe is the only satire in which Dryden lashes a personal enemy even though his target–Shadwell~was a vigorous upholder of the Whig cause. The sub-title of the work is ”A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T. S.” Of course, T. S.” is Thomas Shadwell. The poem is of the nature of a lampoon. Dryden ridicules ShadweU by representing him as the fittest heir to Flecknoe-the king of the realm of dullness. Flecknoe was a very Voluminous and terribly dull poet of Ireland. He is shown to single out Shadwell, one of his numerous progeny, as
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Shadwell alone of all my sons is he
Wlio stands confirmed in full stupidity.
Then is described the coronation of Shadwell in a mock-heroic style. The poem was to serve as a model for Pope’s Dunciad–one of the most powerful poems of the eighteenth century.
DRYDEN-THE FATHER OF ENGLISH CRITICISM
Q. 38 How is Dryden ’the father of English riticism’?
(Agra 1967) Or
Q. Discuss Dryden’s work and achievement as a literary
critic.
Or
Q. Assess Dryden’s contribution to English literary
criticism.
Introduction :-
It w,as 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 itthat 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 English literary criticism ”brick” and left it ”marble.”
I
^^ «.
Dryden-The Fa’her of English Criticism / 239
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 English prose), 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 u:s 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, ideed, to steal a phrase from him, ”God’s plenty”. No English literary critic before Dryden had been so vast in range or sterling in quality. Dryden-the Father of English Descriptive Criticism :-
Out of this ”God’s plenty” of Dryden’s critical works perhaps the most valuable passages are those which constitute descriptive criticism. George Watson in his excellent work The Literary Critics divides literary criticism into three broad categories listed below:
(i) ”Legislative criticism, including books of rhetoric.” Such criticism claims to teach *’ >et how to write, or write better. Thus it is meant for the writer and not the reader of poetry. Such criticism flourished before Dryden who broke new ground.
(ii) ”Theoretical criticism or literary aesthetics.” Such criticism had also become almost a defunct force. Today it has come back with a vengeance in the shape of various literary theories.
(iii) ”Desciptive criticism or the analysis of existing literary works.* This”, says Watson, ”is the youngest of the three forms, by far the most
240/A History of English Literature
voluminous and the only one which today possesses any life and vigour of its own.”
Whether or not Dryden is ”the father of English criticism” it is fair enough to agree with Watson that ”he is clearly the founder of descriptive criticism in English.” All English literary critics before him-such as Gascoigne, Puttenham, Sidney, and Ben Jonson–were critics of the legislative or theoretical kind. None of them concerned himself with given literary works for interpretation and appreciation. Of course, now and then, Dryden’s predecessors did say good or badihings about this or that writer, or this or that literary composition; for instance, Sidney praised Shakespeare and commented on his contemporaries. However, such stray comments were not grounded on any carefully formulated principles of appreciation. ”Audiences”, says Dr. Johnson, ”applauded by instinct, and poets parhaps often pleased by chance.” Dryden was^o repeat Dr. Johnson’s words, ”the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition.” Dryden ”practised” what he ”taught.” He was the first in England ”to attempt extended descriptive criticism.” Thus he established a new tradition and did a signal service to literary’ criticism. Watson says : ”The modern preoccupation with literary analysis emerges, patchily but unmistakably, in his prejudiced and partisan interest in his own plays and poems.”
It is to be noted that every one of Dryden’s prefaces to his own works is of the nature of an apologia meant to defend in advance the poet’s reputation by attempting to answer the possible objection likely to be raised.1 Such self-justification leads him often to the analysis of his creative works and the discussion of principles to determine ”the merit of composition.” Dryden’s Important Descriptive Criticism :-
Dryden’s very first critical essay–the dedicatory letter to his first published play The Rival Ladies (1664)–contains the germ of descriptive criticim. However, the first critical analysis of a literary work in English was the ”examen” of Ben Jonson’s comedy Tlte Silent Woman embedded in Dryden’s only formal work of criticism-the essay Of Dramatic Poesie. This ”examen,” in Watson’s words, ”is the earliest substantial example of descriptive criticism in the language.9 Dryden selects The Silent Woman as ”the pattern of a perfect play.” Of this play, Dryden proposes to ”make a short examen, according to those rules
I. Swift in A Tale ofq Tub satirises Dryden’s prefaces. In Section V he quips: ”He has often said to me in confidence that the world would never suspected him to be so great a poet, if he had not assured them so frequently in his prefaces that it was impossible they could cither doubt or forgett if
Dryden -The Father of English Criticism / 241
which the French observ..” The intrinsic merit of the ”examen”, unlike the historical, is very limited. It is not only crude, but imprecise; so much so that in Watson’s words ”it would not be acceptable as passwork in any modern school of English.” When facts do not suit his conclusions, Dryden has little scruple in misrepresenting them. For example, he says that the action of the play ”lies all within the compass of two houses,” when the fact is that there are three houses and a lane. In spite of such patent inaccuracies, the ”examen” is, in the words of David Daiches, ”a technical achievement of a high order and probably the first of its kind in English.”
Dryden’s criticism of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Chaucer is much more substantial than this ”examen”. His aggressive nationalism distorts to some extent his appreciation of English writers. However, he has quite a few illuminating remarks to make. As regards Shakespeare we find Dryden strangely cowed down by the worthless and vituperative criticism of his contemporary, Rhymer; but his appreciation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is superb and eminently readable even today. His very acute analysis of Chaucer’s characterisation in his Perface to the Fables remains, in the words of Atkin in English Literary Criticism: 17th and 18th Centuries, ”something rare and of permanent value in English criticism.”
Dryden’s Liberalism, Scepticism, Dynamism, and Probabilisn :•
As a literary critic, Dryden was certainly influenced by ancient Greek and Roman critics (such as Aristotle, Longinus, and Horace) and later Italian and contemporary French critics (such as Rapin and Boileau). But this influence did not go beyond a limit. The age in which he lived accepted this influence in all spheres of literature and Dryden was not isolationist enough to escape the ’spirit of the age. However, his fundamental liberalism, scepticism, dynamism, and probabilism-not to speak of his admirable sanity and common sensehelped him to fight quite a few dogmas and conventions imported from abroad. The French neo*classicists of his age stuck to their Aristotelian guns with tenacity. While paying due respect to Aristotle, Dryden refused to swear by his name. He demolished, for example, the.formidable trinity of the so-called ”three unities,” the prejudice against tragi-comedy, and the rigorous enforcement of the principle of decorum. He was not a hidebound nco-Aristotelian like his contemporary Rhymer who denounced Shakespeare for his refusal to fall in line with the principles of Aristotle. Dryden seems to have had belief, tike Longinus and the ronuntic^in inspiration and the inborn creathe power of the poet He favoured the romantic extravagance* of
242 / A History of English Literature .,-, •
Shakespeare and candidly criticised ancient Roman and contemporary French drama which strictly followed all the ”rules.” Of course, he favoured ”regularity” and deference to some basic ”rules” of composition, but, unlike, say, Rhymer, he refused to worship these rules and to consider them as substitutes for real inspiration and intensity of expression. The bit and the bridle are necessary, but there has to be a horse first. ”Now what, I beseech thee,” asks he ”is more easy than to write a regular French play, or more difficult than write an irregular English one, like those of Fletcher, or of Shakespeare?”
Dryden’s intellectual scepticism, which Louis I. Bredvold stresses in The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden, was greatly responsible for his liberal and unorthodox outlook. His probabilism as a literary critic is both his strength and weakness. While discussing an issue, he argues, very often, from both the sides and leaves the conclusion hanging in the air. In the essay Of Dramatic Poesie, for instance, he compares ancient and modern drama, Elizabethan playwrights of his country and French play wrights of his own age, and rhyme and blank verse; but these issues are discussed by four interlocutors, and Drydet: (though very easily recognisable in Neander) is, apparently at least, non-committal. His somersault on the question of the relative merit of rhyme and blank verse may be variously quoted as a time-serving trick or as an example of his dynamism, but the undeniable fact remains that as a literary critic he is flexible enough to keep the issue open. Watson remarks: ”Dyden’s whole career as a critic is permeated by what we might tactfully call his sense of occasion: Pyrrhonism, or philosophical scepticism, liberated him from the tyranny of truth.” And further: ”Dryden is remarkable as a critic not only for the casual ease with which he contradicts himself, but for the care he takes in advance to ensure that there will not be much in future to contradict.” Dryden’s ”Historic Sense* :
Dryden’s impatience with classical ”rules” arose mainly from his abundant ”historic sense.” He was the first critic who emphasised the dynamic character of literature. Literature, according to him, is expressive of the genius of a nation, and it necessarily keeps pace with the times. It is simply not possible to formulate a body of rules applicable to literatures of various nations in various ages. He affirmed thaHvhat was liked by ancient Greeks ”would not satisfy an English audience.” He refused to believe that ancient Greeks and Romans ”were models f or all time and in all languages.” He was not,therefore, cowed down by the authority of Aristotle. He declared : ”It is not enough that Aristotle had said so, for Aristotle drew his models of tragedy from
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Sophocles and Euripides: and,if he had seen ours, might have changed his mind”. This outspoken assertion comes partly from Dryden’s ”cultural patriotism* but partly from his keen historic sense.1 Dryden-the Father of Comparative Criticism :-
Commenting upon Dryden’s ”examen” of The Silent Woman in the essay Of Dramatic Poesie Watson says : The chief triumph of the examen lies in its attempt at comparative criticism, in its balancing of the qualities of the English drama against those of the French. It is undeniably the first example of such criticism in English, and among the very earliest in any modern language.” Dryden, says Scott-Jomes, ”opens a new field of comparative criticism.” In the course of his critical works, Dryden critically compares Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Chaucer and Ovid, Chaucer and Boccaccio, Horace and Juvenal, ancient and modern drama, contemporay French and English drama, Elizabethan and Restoration drama, rhyme and blank werse as vehicles of drama, and so on. This method of comparative criticism is very rewarding and illuminating and a favourite instrument of modern critics.
1. A curious example of the kind is provided by Pope in An Essay on Criticism :
• -Otic learning flourish’* most in France, The rules a nation, bom to save, obeys… ? But we, brave Britons, foreign laws dapis’d.