Mac Flecknoe (Masterplots II: Poetry Series)
At a glance:
- Author: John Dryden
- First Published: 1682
- Type of Work: 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: London, England
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 1619 words long]
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- Mac Flecknoe (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
- Mac Flecknoe (Masterplots II: Poetry Series)
- Mac Flecknoe (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
- Mac Flecknoe (Cyclopedia of Literary Places)
See Also:
John Dryden (Cyclopedia of World Authors)John Dryden (Poetry)John Dryden (Dictionary of World Biography)John Dryden (Drama)
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