Amboyna, all apparently first acted in 1672, though Marriage à la Mode was probably written in the preceding year. Of these plays the first is a lively comedy of manners, mixed with a rather crude tragic plot, in the, heroic style; the second is an inferior comedy, a poor attempt at humorous work; and the third, a still more wretched tragedy, huddled up in haste to serve a political purpose. In Amboyna, Dryden sought to inflame the English against the Dutch, with whom they were then at war, thus supporting a policy for which he later fiercely condemned Lord Shaftesbury. The play (and notably the prologue and epilogue, which are printed in this volume) is interesting as the author's first attempt at political satire. A more serious vexation than The Rehearsal came upon Dryden in 1673, when Elkanah Settle, a young poet of twenty-five, won a startling triumph with his heroic play, The Empress of Morocco. This drama, which, though not wholly without poetic merit, is unworthy of being compared to The Conquest of Granada, was performed at court by a company of ladies and gentlemen, before being presented at the public theatre, an honor to which none of the Laureate's pieces had ever attained. To make matters worse, Lord Mulgrave, one of Dryden's patrons, wrote the prologue for the first court production, and Lord Rochester, to whom he had dedicated Marriage à la Mode, that for the second. When The Empress of Morocco was printed, it was adorned with illustrations, or "sculptures," which had never before been used in a printed drama; and to it the author prefixed a preface aimed directly at Dryden. Literary people began to compare Settle's merits with Dryden's, the younger set favoring the younger poet. Stung to the quick, Dryden forgot his accustomed dignity, and joined Shadwell and Crowne, his friends and fellow dramatists, in writing a scurrilous pamphlet, published in 1674, under the title, Notes and Observations on The Empress of Morocco; or, Some few Erratas to be Printed instead of the Sculptures with the Second Edition of that Play (see page 905), In this he abuses Settle roundly as a foolish pretender to poetry, and holds up to contempt the plot, character-drawing, and style of his tragedy. His usual method is to quote a few lines from The Empress of Morocco, and then, in a paragraph or two of mordant criticism, to point out their defects. To such an assault Settle had no difficulty in replying. He issued a pamphlet "contumaciously entitled," as Sir Walter Scott remarks, Notes and Observations on The Empress of Morocco Revised; with some few erratas, to be Printed instead of the Postscript, with the Next Edition of The Conquest of Granada, in which he subjects Dryden's favorite play to the same sort of petulant analysis. The outcome of the whole controversy is well stated by Scott: "Dryden seems himself to admit that the principal difference between his heroic plays and The Empress of Morocco was that the former were good sense, that looked like nonsense, and the latter nonsense, which yet looked very like sense. A nice distinction, and which argued some regret at having opened the way to such a rival. . . . It was obvious that the weaker poet must be the winner by this contest in abuse; and Dryden gained no more by his dispute with Settle than a well-dressed man who should condescend to wrestle with a chimney-sweeper. The feud between them was carried no further, until, after the publication of Absalom and Achitophel, party animosity added spurs to literary rivalry." 1 It is, then, small wonder that Dryden undertook no new work for the theater during the years 1673 and 1674. He was not a little disenchanted with the plays that had brought him fame, and was driven to form new ideals of style. In this he was assisted by three critical works that appeared in France during 1674: Rapin's Reflexions sur la Poëtique, 1 Life of Dryden, in Scott-Saintsbury edition, i. 160, 161. Boileau's Art Poétique, and Boileau's translation of the treatise of Longinus On the Sublime. The whole drift of these works, which Dryden undoubtedly read soon after their appearance in France, and for which he had a lively admiration, was against the extravagant "bladder'd greatness" of the heroic plays, and in favor of chastened, refined character-drawing and diction. To abandon entirely the heroic plays, however, would have been to confess defeat and discomfiture. Accordingly, in 1675, Dryden returned to his task and produced his Aureng-Zebe. This drama, though superficially resembling The Conquest of Granada, is in its nature more like a French tragedy than a typical heroic play. Dryden has completely altered the historic background of his story, and constructed a plot modeled on the Mithridate of Racine. But in drawing his characters he did not submit to the restraints of French etiquette, choosing rather as his models the heroes of Shakespeare. "The personages are imperial," to use Dr. Johnson's courtly phrase, "but the dialogue is often domestic, and therefore susceptible of sentiments accommodated to familiar incidents." In the prologue Dryden admits that: he has now another taste of wit; And, to confess a truth, (tho' out of time,) (Page 77, col. 1, lines 6-16.) In the dedication to the play he makes more explicit his wish, at which he hints above, of retiring from dramatic writing. (See page xxvi.) Thus we are not surprised to find that when Dryden, two years later, determined after all to resume writing for the stage, he composed a blank verse drama, in which he attempted a full synthesis of the form of the French classic drama with a characterdrawing and style imitated from Shakespeare. In his All for Love he recast the old story of Antony and Cleopatra into the form of a French tragedy, laying the emphasis not on action, but on psychological analysis. He is no longer influenced by the mechanical rules of Corneille's examens, but by the spirit of Racine. On the other hand, each speech bears witness to his careful study of Shakespeare. The play is beyond doubt the finest of Dryden's dramatic works, and it contains some of his truest poetry; fresh from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, we can still read with intense pleasure Dryden's version of the story. With the possible exception of Congreve's Mourning Bride, All for Love is the happiest result of the French influence on English tragedy, an influence that continued in force, practically undisputed, until the rise of the romantic movement. At about the same time that All for Love was first acted, there appeared an important critical work, which helped to confirm Dryden in his altered point of view. Late in 1677 Thomas Rymer published his book, The Tragedies of the Last Age, Considered and Examined by the Practice of the Ancients, and by the Common Sense of All Ages, the most ambitious piece of criticism that had been written in England since Dryden's Essay of 1 For the phrase, compare page 515. ? See Holzhausen: "Dryden's Heroisches Drama," in Englische Studien, xv. 14, 15. C P Dramatic Poesy, to which, despite the interval of nine years that separated them, it was in some sense a reply. Whereas Dryden, a superficial scholar but a practical dramatist, who understood the taste of the British public, had dismissed the Greek theater as worthy of only sentimental respect, and had exalted the Elizabethan drama as the greatest in all history, Rymer, a man of real though prejudiced erudition, with no sympathy whatever for popular taste, condemns the English tragedy of Shakespeare and his school as brutish, and exalts Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides as models to be imitated by all later playwrights. Unlike Dryden, Rymer has no independent literary taste; he does not judge of any play immediately, as it appeals to him; instead of this, he has certain fixed tests, derived from the classical school of criticism, by which he tries all the tragedies that he discusses For him the plot is the main subject of consideration; to character-drawing and style he pays little attention. Repelled as Dryden was by many of Rymer's opinions, he could not help respecting the critic's learning, and admiring the strictly logical method so akin to one side of his own mind-by which he reached his results. On first reading Rymer's book, Dryden made some notes for a reply to it, which a happy chance has preserved to us. "My judgment on this piece is this," he tells us, "that it is extremely learned, but that the author of it is better read in the Greek than in the English poets; that all writers ought to study this critique, as the best account I have ever seen of the ancients; that the model of tragedy he has here given is excellent, and extreme correct; but that it is not the only model of all tragedy, because it is too much circumscrib'd in plot, characters, etc.; and lastly, that we may be taught here justly to admire and imitate the ancients, without giving them the preference, with this author, in prejudice to our own country." He will not admit that the plot is of any such exclusive importance in tragedy as Rymer maintains, and makes a strong plea for English character-drawing and style.1 In the year 1678 Dryden produced three dramas: The Kind Keeper, a comedy, the most indecent of his plays, but one not lacking in the comic spirit; Edipus, a tragedy of the French type, on which he worked in collaboration with Nathaniel Lee; and Troilus and Cressida, an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy of that name into a form less at variance with the French rules. With this last play he published (1679) an important essay, The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy. In writing this treatise he borrowed much from the fashionable French critics of the time, Boileau (especially from his translation of Longinus), Rapin, and Bossu (a new French critic, whose Traité du Poëme Epique had appeared in 1675); and by the whole tenor of his argument he showed the strong influence that the ideas of the English theorist Rymer had had upon him. By a new dictum on tragi-comedy, which was in striking contrast with his previous words in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden here made plain his conversion to the classic point of view: — "Two different independent actions distract the attention and concernment of the audience, and consequently destroy the intention of the poet; if his business be to move terror and pity, and one of his actions be comical, the other tragical, the former will divert the people, and utterly make void his greater purpose. Therefore, as in perspective, so in tragedy, there must be a point of sight in which all the lines terminate: otherwise the eye wanders, and the work is false. This was the practice of the Grecian stage." After this time Dryden in his critical works remains true to the classic theory of the drama, of which he never questions the validity. Yet his very next play, The Spanish 1 Dryden refers to Rymer in the preface to All for Love, published in 1678. But as Rymer's book is mentioned in the Term Catalogue for Michaelmas Term, 1677 (licensed for the press on November 26), it appeared too early to have influenced him in the composition of the play. Friar (1680 or 1681), is a patent tragi-comedy. This departure from his critical tenets, however, he excuses as a concession to English taste, instead of defending it on abstract grounds, as he would have done in his earlier years. The Spanish Friar was well received in its own time, and later remained the most popular of Dryden's plays. The character of Friar Dominic, from whom the comedy derives its name, has more vitality than most of its author's creations. To sum up, Dryden's dramas, though they are now less read than his other works, are of the greatest historic interest. More than any other writer, he represents the long conflict between the English tradition and the French influence. In comedy he did creditable work in all three of the prevailing types, comedy of humors, comedy of intrigue, and comedy of manners. Though surpassed in comic force by Etherege and Wycherley, perhaps even by Shadwell, he is broader in his range than any of the three. In tragedy he first developed an entirely new type of drama, the heroic play: and then, abandoning his own creation, he succeeded in naturalizing in England the French classic tragedy. In the development of his own style, Dryden's dramatic experience was of immense value. Compelled to address a popular audience, he purified his diction of the last remnants of the artificiality that is so prominent in his early work, and of which traces still remain in Annus Mirabilis. He developed, both in prose and in verse, a style marked above all by transparent clearness. In the heroic plays he often allowed his fluency to degenerate into bombast; later, while retaining his impetuous vigor, he acquired dignity and reserve. Through this constant practice in the technique of style, based on study of the Elizabethan and the French dramatists, Dryden gained the matchless skill that he afterwards showed in satire and controversy, when he turned from the description of dramatic types to portraits of living men and women; from disputes on nice points of love and honor to arguments on questions of theology. In following Dryden's literary career we have lost sight of his personal history. During his barren year, 1674, he wrote The State of Innocence, an opera, not intended for actual production, based on Milton's Paradise Lost. Though the piece is not devoid of literary merit, it is now remembered principally from an anecdote related by Aubrey: "John Dryden, Esq., Poet Laureate, who very much admires him [Milton] went to him to have leave to put his Paradise Lost into a drama in rhyme. Mr. Milton received him civilly, and told him he would give him leave to tag his verses." 1 At this meeting surely the smaller man stands forth in the better light: Dryden in his own years of old age and tribulation would scarcely have answered a polite request with such crusty condescension. In 1678 or 1679 Dryden seems to have quarreled with his publisher Herringman, to whom he devotes a contemptuous line in Mac Flecknoe (1682); in 1679 his Troilus and Cressida was "printed for Jacob Tonson," then a young and far from prominent bookseller. Tonson printed nearly all Dryden's later works, and owes to this fact no small portion of his fame as one of the chief English publishers. In 1673 Dryden had dedicated Marriage à la Mode in terms of fulsome flattery to Lord Rochester, a profligate young nobleman and a minor poet of the period. At some time between that date and 1678, when in the preface to All for Love he terms Rochester a "rhyming judge of the twelvepenny gallery" and "a legitimate son of Sternhold," Dryden had a violent quarrel with that nobleman. It is generally stated, on quite insufficient evidence, that Rochester had deserted Dryden out of pure fickleness, and had been instrumental in having first Settle and then Crowne promoted over Dryden's head to 1 Brief Lives, ed. Clark, Oxford, 1898, ii. 72. C court favor.1 Whatever may have been the immediate causes of difference, Dryden was on intimate terms with Rochester's enemy, the Earl of Mulgrave. Mulgrave had written (according to his own account, in 1675) an Essay upon Satire, in which he ridicules Rochester unsparingly, and which became public property in November, 1679. He wa supposed — falsely, if we may credit his later statement—to have been aided by Dryden in the satire on Rochester. These circumstances are mentioned in a letter written by that nobleman at the time: "I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own share is not the least. . . . The author is apparently Mr. Dr[yden], his patron Lord M[ulgrave] having a panegyrick in the midst." 2 To revenge himself, Rochester had Dryden set upon and beaten by hired ruffians as he was returning home from Will's Coffee-House, on the evening of December 18, 1679. Though a reward was offered for the discovery of the offenders, or their employer, no one was ever brought to justice for the crime. Rochester's guilt is, however, made practically certain by a passage in another of his letters: "You write me word that I'm out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please; and leave the repartee to Black Will with a cudgel." Such was the low state of English public morals that Dryden's misfortune created amusement rather than sympathy. Even Mulgrave, who had been the occasion of this cowardly assault, referred to it with no touch of indignation in his Essay on Poetry,3 first published in 1682: — The Laureate here [in satire] may justly claim our praise, III Beginning dramatic work more from the pressure of circumstances than from natural inclination, Dryden had never been fully satisfied with his success in it. He felt that his talents fitted him for a higher calling than that of a mere popular playwright, exposed to insults and humiliation from unworthy antagonists. Of his disappointment and his ambition he tells us in the dedication to Aureng-Zebe, published in 1676: "I desire to be no longer the Sisyphus of the stage; to roll up a stone with endless labor, which, to follow the proverb, gathers no moss, and which is perpetually falling down again. I never thought myself very fit for an employment where many of my predecessors have excell'd me in all kinds; and some of my contemporaries, even in my own partial judgment, have outdone me in comedy. Some little hopes I have yet remaining, and those, too, considering my abilities, may be vain, that I may make the world some part of amends for many ill plays, by an heroic poem. Your Lordship [the Earl of Mulgrave] has been long acquainted with my design; the subject of which you know is great, the story English, and neither too far distant from the present age, nor too near approaching it. Such it is, in my opinion, that I could not have wish'd a nobler occasion to do 1 The received story of this quarrel goes back to Johnson and Malone, who have been rather hastily followed by Scott and Beljame. The present editor agrees with Christie in rejecting it. * See Malone, Prose Works of John Dryden, vol. i, pt. i, p. 134. See pages 905, 906. |