Dryden, John - Susan C. Greenfield (essay date 1995)
Susan C. Greenfield (essay date 1995)
SOURCE: "Aborting the 'Mother Plot': Politics and Generation in Absalom and Achitophel," in ELH, Vol. 62, No. 2, Summer 1995, pp. 267-93.
[In the following excerpt, Greenfield observes that a marked ambiguity in Dryden's poem Absalom and Achitophel reflects the confusion and changing attitudes toward sexual biology, succession, and the monarchy which occurred during his era.]
Although critics have discussed the connections between fatherhood and kingship in Absalom and Achitophel, nobody has yet attended to the poem's less obvious, but equally important and politically-charged representations of maternity. Absalom and Achitophel begins and ends with references to mothers: the opening describes how, despite the queen's infertility, the lustful David has still managed to create "several Mothers" (13), and the poem concludes with David's stunning image of a "Viper-like"...
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