Mac Flecknoe
by John Dryden
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At a glance:
- Author: John Dryden
- First Published: 1682
- Type of Poem: Satire
- Genres: Satire, Poetry, Mock-heroic poetry
- Subjects: Tradition, Authors or writers, Literature, Poetry or poets, England or English people, Seventeenth century, Kings, queens, or royalty, London, Drama or dramatists, Rome, Aesthetics
- Locales: Europe, London, England, United Kingdom
The Poem
Mac Flecknoe is a satiric poem of 217 lines, written in heroic couplets (pairs of rhyming lines of iambic pentameter). The poem has been commonly adjudged the best short satiric poem in the English language. In it, John Dryden seeks to lampoon Thomas Shadwell, a well-known playwright and indifferent poet, by placing him in an incredible and wholly invented fictional world. He is portrayed as “Mac” (or the son of) Flecknoe—Richard Flecknoe having been an even less accomplished poet than Shadwell. Both of them, the poem implies, are of Irish (and hence of...
(The entire page is 1638 words.)
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Popular Questions
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