[In this essay, Kirsch interprets Dryden's Aureng-Zebe as a pivotal heroic drama.]

The second decade of the Restoration witnessed two significant changes in the development of serious drama: the advent of sentimental heroes and domestic situations, and the abandonment of rhyme. The changes are particularly interesting because they seem to be related. They can be seen in all the serious plays of the decade, but their relationship is perhaps most clear in Dryden's Aureng-Zebe (1676), the play which stands midway between The Conquest of Granada (1672) and All for Love (1678), the former a rhymed play whose hero exemplifies an aristocratic code of glory and self-aggrandizement, the latter an unrhymed play whose hero is guided by standards of sentiment and self-denial.

I. SENTIMENT AND THE FALL OF GLORY

Aureng-Zebe gathers up many themes and characters long familiar in Dryden's rhymed plays. The Emperor is a variation upon the old Montezuma in The Indian Emperour, debasing himself and imperiling his kingdom by a love he cannot control. Nourmahal is a duplicate of the lustful and villainous Zempoalla in The Indian Queen, and Arimant, who sues in vain for the heroine's love, is a carbon copy of the equally unsuccessful Acacis of The Indian Queen. Indamora is a slightly weaker version of Almahide, the heroine of The Conquest of Granada; Melisinda, a considerably more pathetic copy of Valeria, the self-denying mistress of Tyrannic Love. Aureng-Zebe and Morat repeat the contrast of virtue and vice embodied by Guyomar Odmar in The Indian Emperour.

But if the characters are old the way in which they are treated is new. Dr. Johnson commented that “The personages [in Aureng-Zebe] are imperial; but the dialogue is often domestick, and therefore susceptible of sentiments accommodated to familiar incidents.”¹ The clearest verification of his observation is to be found in the character of Melisinda. Melisinda is descended from the unrequited lovers of Dryden's earlier plays, but she also anticipates Octavia in All for Love. She is a wife and she cannot thrive, as her predecessors had, by meriting the love which her rival possesses. When Morat first reveals his infidelity, Melisinda “retires, weeping, to the side of the Theatre.” (sig. [G3])² Afterwards she tells Morat plaintively of her love for him. Morat replies:

You say you love me; let that love be shown.
'Tis in your power to make my happiness.
MEL.
Speak quickly: to command me is to bless.
MOR.
To Indamora you my Suit must move:
You'll sure speak kindly of the man you love.

But Melisinda is not such stuff as the old heroines were made of, though Morat himself, of course, is hardly the hero to inspire her. She answers:

Oh! rather let me perish by your hand,
Than break my heart, by this unkind command …
Try, if you please, my Rival's heart to win:
I'll bear the pain, but not promote the sin.

Morat then casts her off, and she weeps again. At this point the Emperor intrudes upon them and notices her tears. Rather than have him think that her marriage has been violated and that her “Lord” is “unkind,” she says:

Believe not Rumor, but your self; and see
The kindness 'twixt my plighted Lord and me.
                                                                                                    [Kissing Morat.
This is our State; thus happily we live;
These are the quarrels which we take and give.
I had no other way to force a Kiss.          (Aside to Mor.)
Forgive my last Farewel to you, and Bliss.
                                                                                                                                            [Exit.

(sigs. [H4]-I)

The sentimentality of this farewell is particularly important because the scene is not isolated, as such scenes usually were in Dryden's other plays. The domestic sentimentality with which Melisinda is portrayed pervades the entire play.

The most significant evidence of this domesticity is the contrast between Morat and his brother, Aureng-Zebe. With the partial exception of Guyomar in The Indian Emperour, Aureng-Zebe is like no other hero in Dryden's previous plays. Before Aureng-Zebe Dryden's heroes had been distinguished by their capacity for passion, frequently expressed in rant, by their primitivistic if not primitive natures (both Montezuma and Almanzor are characterized as children of nature), and by their constant desire to prove their worth in love as well as in war. None of them were temperate men: if they denied themselves the physical satisfaction of love they did so, as Almanzor made clear, “because I dare.” (Conquest of Granada, Part 2, sig. N2) They lived not by virtue, in any conventional sense, but by their pride. They conformed only to their own most extravagant conceptions of individual power, to what Corneille and other French writers termed la gloire, and like the Cornélian heroes, they sought not approval but admiration.³

To such motives and aspirations Aureng-Zebe is essentially immune. He is described, in contrast to all his brothers, as a man

                                                            … by no strong passion sway'd,
Except his Love, more temp'rate is, and weigh'd: …
He sums their Virtues in himself alone,
And adds the greatest, of a Loyal Son.

(sig. B2v)

The moment he appears on stage he kneels to his father and kisses his hand, exclaiming:

Once more 'tis given me to behold your face:
The best of Kings and Fathers to embrace.
Pardon my tears; 'tis joy which bids 'em flow,
A joy which never was sincere till now.

(sig. C)

Since his love for Indamora is his one “strong passion,” he is at first enraged to learn that his father has become his rival, and he threatens to rebel against him to protect Indamora from imprisonment. But she chastens him:

Lose not the Honour you have early wonn;
But stand the blameless pattern of a Son. …
My suff'rings for you make your heart my due:
Be worthy me, as I am worthy you.

Aureng-Zebe rises to the challenge:

My Virtue was surpris'd into a Crime.
Strong Virtue, like strong Nature, struggles still:
Exerts itself, and then throws off the ill.
I to a Son's and Lover's praise aspire:
And must fulfil the parts which both require.

(sig. C3v)

For the remainder of the play he does so; he refuses to cede to his father his right to Indamora's love, and at the same time he refuses to sully the “glory”—the word is his—of his name by rebelling against him.

Despite his protestations about the strength of his virtue, Aureng-Zebe is what Indamora calls him, “the blameless pattern of a Son.” The enormous capacity for passion of all Dryden's previous heroes—a capacity which Aureng-Zebe is allowed to demonstrate only with the emotion of jealousy—is gone; Aureng-Zebe is a temperate man. Gone too are the roughness which characterized the earlier heroes and the rant which was the emblem of their heroic pride. Aureng-Zebe's failure to embody these qualities would not alone signify Dryden's departure from his earlier conception of heroic drama: Guyomar, for example, had been drawn on similar lines in The Indian Emperour. But Guyomar shared the stage with Cortez; Aureng-Zebe is the only hero of the play which bears his name. All the marks of heroic virtue which he lacks are appropriated by Morat, and in Morat the quest for personal glory which had distinguished such characters as Almanzor and Montezuma is stigmatized as unmistakable evidence of villainy. Dryden thus splits the hero, and in the process he irrevocably undermines the heroic ethos which had animated his earlier plays.

The change is discernible the moment Morat makes his first appearance. He is a soldier, proud in his power of arms, triumphant in his speech:

To me, the cries of fighting Fields are Charms:
Keen be my Sab[r]e, and of proof my Arms.
I ask no other blessing of my Stars:
No prize but Fame, nor Mistris but the Wars.

(sig. F2)

He also aspires to greatness:

Me-thinks all pleasure is in greatness found.
Kings, like Heav'ns Eye, should spread their beams around.
Pleas'd to be seen while Glory's race they run.

(sig F2v)

But his designs upon the state are unscrupulous; and the maxims by which he proposes to rule are the hallmarks of political villainy. Like his heroic forbears, he is a child of nature, but of a nature which Dryden now makes clear is nasty, solitary and brutish, the reverse of the natural paradise which nourished the virtues of Montezuma and Almanzor. Aureng-Zebe remarks to Morat:

When thou wert form'd, Heav'n did a Man begin;
But the brute Soul, by chance, was shuffl'd in.
In Woods and Wilds thy Monar[c]hy maintain:
Where valiant Beasts, by force and rapine, reign.
In Life's next Scene, if Transmigration be,
Some Bear or Lion is reserv'd for thee.

(sig. F4v)⁴

But this is not the worst of the indignities which Morat's grandeur must suffer. In what is certainly one of the most extraordinary scenes in all of Dryden's heroic drama, Indamora successfully persuades Morat to abandon forever the corrupt code by which he lives. Morat argues that usurpation by force eventually justifies itself:

But who by force a Scepter does obtain,
Shows he can govern that which he could gain.

Indamora replies that such a doctrine is an invitation to an anarchy of power, and Morat begins his retreat:

I without guilt, would mount the Royal Seat;
But yet 'tis necessary to be great.
IND.
All Greatness is in Virtue understood:
'Tis onely necessary to be good.
Tell me, what is't at which great Spirits aim,
What most your self desire?
MOR.
Renown, and Fame,
And Pow'r, as uncontrol'd as is my will.
IND.
How you confound desires of good and ill!
For true renown is still with Virtue joyn'd;
But lust of Pow'r lets loose th'unbridl'd mind.
Yours is a Soul irregularly great,
Which wanting temper, yet abounds with heat:
So strong, yet so unequal pulses beat.
A Sun which does, through vapours dimnly shine:
What pity 'tis you are not all Divine! …
Dare to be great, without a guilty Crown;
View it, and lay the bright temptation down:
'Tis base to seize on all, because you may;
That's Empire, that which I can give away:
There's joy when to wild Will you Laws prescribe,
When you bid Fortune carry back her Bribe:
A joy, which none but greatest minds can taste;
A Fame, which will to endless Ages last.
MOR.
Renown, and Fame, in vain, I courted long;
And still pursu'd 'em, though directed wrong. …
Unjust Dominion I no more pursue;
I quit all other claims, but those to you.

(sigs.K2v-[K3])

Morat does not give up his claims to Indamora, even at his death, but he signifies his reclamation by renouncing his “pleasure to destroy” and by showing generous feelings towards both his brother and Indamora herself. (sigs. [K3]-K3v)

There are, of course, many scenes in heroic drama in which the villain converts to virtue on his deathbed. But Morat's capitulation involves far more than himself. With his fall from grandeur, and with Aureng-Zebe's corresponding rise to the virtues of love and piety, Dryden, in effect, recognized the exhaustion of the form of drama which only four years before he had acclaimed as the equal of the tragedies of the last age. Aureng-Zebe does not mark a total break with the earlier plays. The peripatetic stage pattern remains, as it was to remain in the drama for years to come; and though the super-hero is clearly repudiated, some of his principles survive. Both Aureng-Zebe and Indamora seek to make themselves worthy of each other, and love and honor are still the principal catch-words. The play closes, in fact, with the Emperor giving Aureng-Zebe Indamora's hand as his “just [reward] of Love and Honour.” (sig. M3v) But if the topics are the same—the “mistaken Topicks of Tragedy,” Dryden was later to call them—the purposes for which they are used have begun to change. Pity and the capacity for tears have begun to supersede the union of private and public pride as the credentials of heroism, and the focal scenes are those which occasion a display of these sentiments rather than those which demonstrate grandeur and evoke admiration.⁵ The virtues which Indamora and Aureng-Zebe insist upon are those of the private life, and there is no corresponding emphasis upon public responsibility. Aureng-Zebe is less the best of subjects than he is the best of sons, one of the first heralds of the paragons of filial devotion that abound in eighteenth-century plays.⁶ In Morat's case even the antinomy of love and honor itself begins to be sapped at its roots, for he gives up an honor which, though corrupted, still bears the marks of the old heroic grandeur; and he gives it up for love. This is the first time in all of Dryden's drama that love and honor constitute a real antithesis, and the victory of love in this context spells the end of the heroic play. Two years later, Antony also gives up honor, and he does so all for love.

II. RHYME AND DECORUM

The exploitation of sentiment in Aureng-Zebe is reflected in the structure of its verse. Saintsbury pointed out that “There is in Auren-zebe a great tendency towards enjambment; and as soon as this tendency gets the upper hand, a recurrence to blank verse is, in English dramatic writing, tolerably certain.”⁷ Dryden himself is aware that this is happening, for he complains in the prologue to the play that he

Grows weary of his long-lov'd Mistris, Rhyme.
Passion's too fierce to be in Fetters bound,
And Nature flies him like Enchanted Ground.

(sig. [a2])

In the dedication he remarks that “If I must be condemn'd to Rhyme, I should find some ease in my change of punishment. I desire to be no longer the Sisyphus of the Stage; to rowl up a Stone with endless labour (which to follow the proverb, gathers no Mosse) and which is perpetually falling down again.” (sig. [A4]) At a distance of three centuries we may overlook the importance of these statements, since our own prejudices about the failure of rhymed verse in English drama may lead us to believe that Dryden was simply acknowledging an obvious fact. But in order to understand the significance of what he is saying we must appreciate how central rhyme had been both in his theory and practice of heroic drama.

Dryden's first discussion of rhyme appears as early as 1664 in his dedication of The Rival Ladies to the Earl of Orrery. He points out that rhyme is “not natural” only “when the Poet either makes a Vicious choice of Words, or places them for Rhyme (sic) sake so unnaturally, as no Man would in ordinary Speaking …” He states further that

the Excellence and Dignity of it, were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it; He first made Writing easily an Art: First shew'd us to conclude the Sense, most commonly, in Distichs; which in the Verse of those before him, runs on for so many Lines together, that the Reader is out of Breath to overtake it. This sweetness of Mr. Wallers Lyrick Poesie was afterwards follow'd in the Epick by Sir John Denham, in his Coopers-Hill: a Poem which your Lordship knows for the Majesty of the Style, is, and ever will be the exact Standard of good Writing. But if we owe the Invention of it to Mr. Waller, we are acknowledging for the Noblest use of it to Sir William D'avenant; who at once brought it upon the Stage, and made it perfect, in the Siege of Rhodes.

(sig. [A4]; Ker, I, 7)⁸

Having established the literary excellence of this form of verse, and its attendant dignity and majesty, Dryden considers the subjects which are appropriate to it. He acknowledges the common objection that “Rhyme is only an Embroidery of Sence, to make that which is ordinary in it self pass for excellent with less Examination,” but he concludes that such a defect is caused by an abuse of rhyme: “… as the Best Medicines may lose their Virtue, by being ill applied, so is it with Verse, if a fit Subject be not chosen for it. Neither must the Argument alone, but the Characters, and Persons be great and noble; Otherwise, (as Scaliger says of Claudian) the Poet will be, Ignobiliore materiâ depressus. The Scenes, which, in my Opinion, most commend it, are those of Argumentation and Discourse, on the result of which the doing or not doing some considerable action should depend.” (sig. A4v; Ker, I, 8-9) T. S. Eliot has suggested that Dryden defended the rhymed couplet “because it was the form of verse which came most natural to him,”⁹ and the suggestion is persuasive. The argument of the dedication to The Rival Ladies reads suspiciously as if Dryden were trying to parlay his instinct for rhyme into a full-fledged theory of drama; all the salient features of his later theory are present, even the epic analogy, which is implied in the reference to Denham's Cooper's Hill. But in any case, the essay stresses the literary perfection of verse which had been practiced by Denham and Waller and ennobled on the stage by Sir William D'avenant, and its argument is controlled throughout by the principle of decorum of style. At its inception, therefore, Dryden's theory of the heroic play constituted a commitment to rhyme and an exploration of the subjects suitable to it.

The following year, in the preface to Four New Plays, Sir Robert Howard objected to rhymed plays, arguing that since a play, unlike a poem, “is presented as the present Effect of Accidents not thought of,” rhymed verse and rhymed repartee were unnatural, appearing rather as the premeditation of the author than as the natural result of the dialogue and conversation of characters. He added that “the dispute is not which way a Man may write best in, but which is most proper for the Subject he writes upon …”¹⁰ In Of Dramatick Poesie (1668) Crites reiterates Howard's position, offering a series of arguments terminating in the assertion that since people do not speak in rhyme and since drama must imitate the conversation of people, rhyme has no place in serious drama. Crites recommends that blank verse, which is “nearest Nature,” should be preferred. Neander's response is an appeal to decorum: “I answer you … by distinguishing betwixt what is nearest to the nature of Comedy, which is the imitation of common persons and ordinary speaking, and what is nearest to the nature of a serious Play: this last is indeed the representation of Nature, but 'tis Nature wrought up to an higher pitch. The Plot, the Characters, the Wit, the Passions, the Descriptions, are all exalted above the level of common converse, as high as the imagination of the Poet can carry them, with proportion to verisimility. Tragedy we know is wont to image to us the minds and fortunes of noble perons, and to portray these exactly, Heroick Rhime is nearest Nature, as being the noblest kind of modern verse.” (sigs. I-I2v, Kv; Ker, I, 90-93, 100-01) As in the dedication of The Rival Ladies the burden of Dryden's argument lies in his insistence that the style be suited to the purpose of the genre. Thus, a serious play is “nearest Nature” when, in certain respects, it is farthest from it; decorum, not illusion, is the measure of artistic perfection. As Dryden explains, “A Play … to be like Nature, is to be set above it; as Statues which are plac'd on high are made greater then the life, that they may descend to the sight in their just proportion;” (sig. K2; Ker, I, 102) and the artifice of rhyme, “the noblest kind of modern verse,” is the means by which this aesthetic distance can best be achieved.

In “A Defence of an Essay of Dramatique Poesie” Dryden amplifies this position. Howard had repeated his objections to rhyme in the preface to The Duke of Lerma, and Dryden replied with a searching exposition of his belief that, above all, “a play is supposed to be the work of the poet.” (Ker, I, 114) In support of this conviction he argued that “'Tis true, that to imitate well is a poet's work; but to affect the soul, and excite the passions, and, above all, to move admiration (which is the delight of serious plays), a bare imitation will not serve. The converse, therefore, which a poet is to imitate, must be heightened with all the arts and ornaments of poesy; and must be such as, strictly considered, could never be supposed spoken by any without premeditation.” (Ker. I, 113-14) This passage provides further evidence that in Dryden's mind the heroic play was inseparable from “all the arts and ornaments of poesy,” and that rhymed verse was intimately associated with the stipulated end of heroic drama, the creation of epic admiration.

In the preface to The Conquest of Granada Dryden once again justifies rhyme—this time confident that it was “already in possession of the Stage.” He remarks that “it is very clear to all, who understand Poetry, that serious Playes ought not to imitate Conversation too nearly;” and he adds that “… it was onely custome which cozen'd us so long: we thought, because Shakespear and Fletcher went no farther, that there the Pillars of Poetry were to be erected. That, because they excellently describ'd Passion without Rhyme, therefore Rhyme was not capable of describing it. (sigs. a2-a2v; Ker, I, 148-49) Rhymed heroic verse, “the last perfection of Art,” was clearly Dryden's bid for dramatic fame. He wrote in the preface to Annus Mirabilis (1667) that he preferred Virgil to Ovid because Virgil, speaking usually in his own person, “thereby gains more liberty then the other, to express his thoughts with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to confess, as well the labour as the force of his imagination.” (sig. A8; Ker, I, 15-16) The self-conscious employment of artifice had a long history in the drama and criticism of Jonson, Fletcher and their followers, including D'avenant. Dryden was an heir to this tradition, and the rhymed heroic play was his attempt to preserve it by perfecting upon the English stage a language of tragedy that would “confess as well the labour as the force of his imagination.”

But the practice of such a language, as Dryden had repeatedly argued, was contingent upon a conception of tragedy which could justify it. Consequently, his admission in the prologue to Aureng-Zebe that he is weary of rhyme and that “Passion's too fierce to be in Fetters bound” is not primarily a confession of impatience with the heroic couplet itself—Dryden continued to use rhyme in other genres—but rather a critical recognition that the purpose of serious drama was changing and that therefore the artifice of rhyme could no longer exercise its proper function in the theatre.¹¹ The same principle of decorum by which Dryden had justified rhyme for the representation of grandeur and glory compelled him to acknowledge its inappropriateness for the portrayal of sentiment and piety.

In both its form and substance, therefore, Aureng-Zebe represents a turning point in Dryden's dramatic career; and the domesticity, sentimental characterizations and appeals to pity and tears which are evident in Aureng-Zebe become increasingly dominant in the plays which immediately follow it: particularly in All for Love (1678) and Troilus and Cressida (1679).¹²All for Love is professedly designed “to work up the pity [of the original story] to a greater heighth …” (sig. b) Octavia is introduced as a stock if uninviting symbol of the family and the scene in which she appears “leading Antony's two little Daughters” (sig. [F3]) is a paradigm of sentimental drama. Cleopatra, who complains that “Nature meant” her to be “A Wife, a silly harmless houshold Dove, / Fond without art; and kind without deceit,” (sig. [G4]) is a drastically domesticated version of Shakespeare's heroine; and Antony, who Dryden notes is not “altogether wicked, because he could not then be pitied,” (sig. b) is as different from Shakespeare's hero as he is from the heroical hero of Dryden's earlier plays. Indecisive, and the constant prey of conflicting sentiments, Antony is thrown by the successive pleas of Ventidius, Octavia, Dolabella and Cleopatra into alternating postures of grief and hope; and his capacity to assume such postures with extravagance and tears becomes the final measure of his heroism. Dryden describes him accurately in the prologue:

His Heroe, whom you Wits his Bully call,
Bates of his mettle; and scarce rants at all:
He's somewhat lewd; but a well-meaning [m]ind;
Weeps much; fights little; but is wond'rous kind.

(sig. χ)

To an extent, the description applies to every major character in the play, all of whom, with the exception of Alexas, an unregenerate villain, demonstrate their worth by fighting little and weeping much.¹³

Troilus and Cressida shows a similar orientation towards sentimental effects. Cressida, like Cleopatra, is made transparently faithful; and Troilus, like Antony, is portrayed in a series of tableaux of grief and hope; Hector, the play's most exemplary character, numbers as a principal heroic virtue his devotion as a husband and a brother. All three characters, but especially the men, are distinguished by their ability to feel compassion for one another. Hector is valiant, but Andromache's highest praise of him is that his “Soul is proof to all things but to kindness.” (sig. I2) Troilus, younger and more demonstrative than Hector, shows his mettle by tears and distraction. During their farewell scene he and Cressida “both weep over each other,” (sig. G) and after Cressida kills herself to prove her fidelity to him, he demonstrates his own love by the extremity of his grief:

                                                            … she dy'd for me;
And like a woman, I lament for her:
Distraction pulls me several ways at once,
Here pity calls me to weep out my eyes;
Despair then turns me back upon my self,
And bids me seek no more, but finish here:
                                                                      [Sword to his breast.

(sig. K2v)

The play's most celebrated scene, added by Dryden at the suggestion of Betterton, shows Troilus and Hector debating whether to surrender Cressida to the Greeks. The dispute has the same turns and counterturns as the rhymed debates in Dryden's earlier plays, but the crux of the argument is now plainly the point of pity rather than the point of honor. After Troilus agrees to give Cressida up, Hector tells him, “I pity thee, indeed I pity thee,” and Troilus answers:

Do; for I need it: let me lean my head
Upon thy bosome; all my peace dwells there;
Thou art some God, or much much more then man!

In a final turn, Hector offers to fight to keep Cressida in Troy, but Troilus refuses: “That you have pitied me is my reward,” and Hector concedes: “The triumph of this kindeness be thy own.” (sig. F4v)¹⁴

The reward of pity and the triumph of kindness in All for Love and Troilus and Cressida are the natural results of the process which begins in Aureng-Zebe. There are specific resemblances between Aureng-Zebe and the later plays: the give and take of compassion between Indamora and Melisinda looks forward to the debates between Antony and Ventidius and between Hector and Troilus; Indamora's praise of Aureng-Zebe's capacity for pity anticipates Andromache's praise of Hector's responsiveness to kindness; Melisinda's abandonment is a model for Octavia's. But more important than the particular analogues is the major shift of emphasis in Aureng-Zebe which makes the later developments possible. Morat's conversion and the repudiation of his aspirations to personal glory, Aureng-Zebe's temperance and family loyalty, Melisinda's unrelieved distress, and the general disposition of all the exemplary characters to demonstrate their virtue through tears and compassion mark Dryden's distinct departure from his earlier ideals of heroic drama and pave the way for the stress upon domestic piety and compassion that characterizes both his own subsequent plays and the plays of the dramatists who succeeded him.

Dryden, of course, was not alone in creating this orientation, nor did he exploit it as extensively as his younger contemporaries, Lee and Otway, but Aureng-Zebe is a testimony to his sensitivity to its dramaturgical consequences. In the history of the late seventeenth-century English theatre Aureng-Zebe stands out as an important anticipation of the sentimental drama that flourished in the following century.

Notes

1. Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1905), I, 360-61.

2. References to Dryden's plays are to the texts of the first editions.

3. For a full discussion of these points see my article, “Dryden, Corneille and the Heroic Play,” Modern Philology, LX (1962).

4. Aureng-Zebe uses similar language in condemning Nourmahal when he realizes that she is trying to seduce him:

   Hence, hence, and to some barbarous Climate fly,
   Which onely Brutes in humane form does yield,
   And Man grows wild in Nature's common Field.

   (sigs. H2-H2v)

   Cf. Montezuma's account of his wild upbringing (The Indian Queen, in Sir Robert Howard, Four New Plays (1665), sig. Z2v) and Almanzor's boast of kinship with the “noble Savage.” (The Conquest of Granada, Part I, sig. [A4]).

5. This change of focus is evident not only in the scenes and speeches that have been cited, but throughout Aureng-Zebe. Compassion is a constant touchstone of virtue in the play. During their first scene together Indamora tells Melisinda that because she is “Distress'd” herself, she “therefore can compassion take, and give,” and Melisinda, in return, promises to “pay the charity” which Indamora has “lent [her] grief.” (sigs. F, Fv) In a later scene, when their fates seem to have been reversed again, Melisinda remarks:

   Madam, the strange reverse of Fate you see:
   I piti'd you, now you may pity me.

   (sig. [G4])

   Indamora praises Arimant for his “generous Pity” (sig. C4v) and tells Morat when she pleads for Aureng-Zebe's life:

   Had Heav'n the Crown for Aureng-Zebe design'd,
   Pity, for you, had pierc'd his generous mind.
   Pity does with a Noble Nature suit:
   A Brother's life had suffer'd no dispute.

   (sig. [G3])

   Aureng-Zebe confirms Indamora's judgment by taking pity upon Nourmahal, who he thinks is his enemy, (sig. E) and upon the Emperor, who he knows has been his rival. (sig. I4v)

   All the virtuous characters, moreover, demonstrate their compassion by crying. Aureng-Zebe sheds tears when he first sees his father, (sig. C) and weeps as a means of earning Indamora's forgiveness after a quarrel. (sig. [I4]) Indamora kneels to Nourmahal in tears, (sig. Lv) and weeps at Morat's death, as she explains to the jealous Aureng-Zebe, in tribute to her own redemptive powers:

   Those tears you saw, that tenderness I show'd,
   Were just effects of grief and gratitude.
   He di'd my Convert.

   (sig. M)

   Melisinda is described as “bath'd in tears” before the audience ever sees her, (sig. E4v) and the moment she does appear, Indamora greets her as a personification of grief:

   When graceful sorrow in her pomp appears,
   Sure she is dress'd in Melisinda's tears.

   (sig. F)

   On one occasion Melisinda even delivers a lecture on the beneficence of tears:

   IND.

   I'm stupifi'd with sorrow, past relief

   Of tears: parch'd up, and wither'd with my grief.

   MEL.

   Dry mourning will decays more deadly bring,

   As a North Wind burns a too forward Spring.

   Give sorrow vent, and let the sluces go.

   (sig. [K4])

6. The emphasis upon family relationships throughout Aureng-Zebe is notable. For the first time in Dryden's plays, family piety becomes an essential means of differentiating virtue and vice. The virtuous characters in the play are uniformly conscious of their domestic obligations. Aureng-Zebe, as we have seen, is the best of sons; Indamora promises to be the best of daughters-in-law; and Melisinda, as Dryden remarks of her in the dedication, is “a Woman passionately loving of her husband, patient of injuries and contempt, and constant in her kindness, to the last. …” (sig. a) On the other hand, the Emperor is loyal neither to his son nor to his wife; Morat is both unconstant and brutal to his wife; and Nourmahal, who boasts that “Love sure's a name that's more Divine than Wife,” (Sig. G) entertains desires that are incestuous as well as unfaithful.

7. Dryden (London, 1881), p. 57.

8. With the exception of “A Defence of an Essay of Dramatique Poesie,” quotations from Dryden's criticism are from the texts of the first editions, but I have also cited page references from Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1926). Quotations from “A Defence” are from Ker's text.

9. John Dryden (New York, 1932), p. 37.

10. Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn (Oxford, 1908), II, 101, 102.

11. Judging by the stage effects in Aureng-Zebe itself, and by the form of heroism the play supports, audiences began to demand a sense of illusion rather than of artifice, domesticated heroes whom they could sympathize with rather than admire. Under such circumstances, as Dryden seems increasingly to have realized, Sir Robert Howard's arguments were valid. Dryden fully disavowed the style of the rhymed heroic play in the preface to Troilus and Cressida (1679) and the dedication of The Spanish Fryar (1680); see Ker, I, 222-24, 245-47. For a discussion of the aesthetic consequences of this change of taste see Earl R. Wasserman, “The Pleasures of Tragedy,” ELH, XIV (1947), 283-307.

12. The material of Oedipus (1679), which Dryden wrote in collaboration with Lee, was less amenable to sentimental treatment, although Dryden made the most of his opportunities. Oedipus and Jocasta are reduced to figures of sensational distress, and a new sub-plot is introduced dealing with the pathetic circumstances of the lovers, Euridice and Adrastus.

13. The tears of the men in All for Love are especially conspicuous. Antony weeps three times onstage (sigs. C. [F4], I3v-[I4] and once his “falling tear” is reported. (sig. D) Dolabella cries when Antony exiles him, (sigs. I3v-[I4]) and even Ventidius cries twice, once in grief for Antony (sig. C) and once in joy over Antony's family reunion:

    My joy stops at my tongue;
    But it has found two chanels here for one,
    And bubbles out above.

    (sig. G)

14. In analyzing the aim of tragedy in the preface to Troilus and Cressida, Dryden says that “… when we see that the most virtuous, as well as the greatest, are not exempt from … misfortunes, that consideration moves pity in us: and insensibly works us to be helpfull to, and tender over the distress'd, which is the noblest and most God-like of moral virtues,” (sig. a2v; Ker, I, 210) a statement which relates Dryden's growing concern with pity to contemporary benevolist theories. See R. S. Crane, “Suggestions toward a Genealogy of the ‘Man of Feeling,’” ELH, I (1934), pp. 205-30.