a hundred of them, not only for his own plays but also for those of other dramatists. They employ straightforward, colloquial diction and syntax, and they are normally written in heroic couplets. In his early examples in this genre, Dryden follows established convention by having the poems appeal for the indulgence of the audience and a favorable reception of the play. Later he adapts the poems to varied subjects and purposes, some having little to do with drama. He writes prologues to introduce special performances at unaccustomed sites, such as Oxford, or to greet an eminent person in the audience (a duke or duchess, perhaps), or to mark some theater occasion, such as the opening of a new playhouse. In some of the poems, he reflects on the poor taste of the audience; in others, he explains principles of literary criticism. He may take his audience into his confidence and impart his own personal plans. At times, as in the “Prologue toThe Duke of Guise” (1684), he outlines his views on political questions, explaining how events chronicled in the play resemble those then current. In more than a few, he titillates the audience with sexual humor, allusion, and innuendo. For all their variety, the poems evidence throughout some of Dryden’s most characteristic poetic qualities—directness, clarity, colloquial tone, wit, and adaptability.

Mac Flecknoe

Neither the occasion nor the time of Dryden’s first satire, Mac Flecknoe, a mock-heroic attack on a rival playwright, Thomas Shadwell, is known with certainty. Dryden selects the demise of the poetaster Richard Flecknoe (d. 1678) as the basis of his poem—a mock coronation, in which Flecknoe, dubbed the reigning prince of dullness, chooses Shadwell as his successor. This situation permits scintillating literary inversion; the kingdom of letters, Augustan Rome, and the seriousness of succession to the throne all provide contrasting analogy and allusion. The poem satirizes not only Shadwell but also bad taste in art. Establishing a polarity between true and false wit, Dryden creates by implication an aesthetic ideal.

In the first section of the poem, Flecknoe arrives at his decision regarding a successor. The poem then describes the festivities preceding Shadwell’s coronation and the coronation itself, followed by the long oration and fall of Flecknoe. The opening lines invite the reader to assume that selecting a successor to the throne of dullness is serious business:

All human things are subject to decay,And, when Fate summons, Monarchs must obey.This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, youngWas call’d to Empire, and had govern’d long;In Prose and Verse, was own’d, without disputeThrough all the Realms of Nonsense, absolute.

The sober aphorism in the opening lines, followed by comparison with Augustus, creates a tone of solemnity, to be overturned by the mockery of “Realms of Nonsense.” As Flecknoe selects Shadwell, he catalogs a series of personal attributes praiseworthy in a dunce, usually deriving from the plays of Shadwell. However, Dryden does not refrain from personal satire directed at Shadwell’s size, perhaps because Shadwell himself had used his corpulent appearance as a basis for his resemblance to Ben Jonson:

Besides his goodly Fabrick fills the eyes,And seems design’d for thoughtless Majesty:Thoughtless as Monarch Oakes that shade the plain,And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.

Another satiric maneuver is to separate poets into two camps, with Shadwell relegated to the company of dullards. An example occurs when Flecknoe describes the site of the coronation:

Great Fletcher never treads in Buskins here,Nor greater Jonson dare in Socks appear.But gentle Simkin just reception findsAmidst this Monument of vanish’t Minds.

The polarity of artists includes such figures as Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, Sir Charles Sedley, and Sir George Etherege at one end; and John Ogleby, Thomas Heywood, John Shirley, Thomas Dekker, and Richard Flecknoe at the other.

As there is a difference between true and false writing, there is also a hierarchy of forms or genres. Flecknoe admonishes Shadwell to abandon the drama and turn to those poems developed through what Dryden’s age considered false wit: pattern poems, anagrams, acrostics, and ballads—works appropriate to his dull wit. In Mac Flecknoe, Dryden generally maintains a tone of exuberant good humor and mirth, seldom resorting to lampoon. The poem does, however, illustrate the problem of topicality, since many of its allusions are now obscure and others are altogether lost. Still, as Dryden explores the kingdoms of sense and nonsense, he clearly demonstrates his reliance on parallels and polarities.

Satiric poems

Dryden’s three later satiric poems—Absalom and Achitophel, Part I, The Medal, and Absalom and Achitophel, Part II (with Nahum Tate)—concern the struggle of the Whigs to alter the succession in England by excluding James, duke of York, the King’s brother, and giving the right of succession to James, duke of Monmouth, the king’s illegitimate son. This enterprise was ably led by the earl of Shaftesbury (Achitophel), though he could not prevail against the determined opposition of the king. Charles II (David) understood that permitting Parliament to change the established succession would alter the form of monarchy from a royal one, in which the king normally followed law and established tradition but could exercise extraordinary powers in times of crisis, to a constitutional monarchy in which the king’s power became subject to parliamentary restrictions. Dryden’s objective in the poem is to persuade readers to support the king in the conflict.

Absalom and Achitophel

Thus in Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden (then poet laureate) employed his pen in the king’s behalf—according to anecdote, at the king’s own suggestion. He makes use of the biblical rebellion against David by his son Absalom, at the instigation of Achitophel (II Samuel 13-18), a parallel familiar to his audience. Dryden freely adds characters and alters the biblical parallel to make it apply to English political leaders and institutions, pointing out that although the biblical account ends with the death of Absalom, he hopes that a peaceful resolution with Monmouth remains possible.

The satire of Absalom and Achitophel differs somewhat from that of Mac Flecknoe. Although Dryden believed satire to be a form of heroic or epic poetry, implying some narrative content, he had maintained a tone of ironic mockery and fine raillery throughout Mac Flecknoe. Absalom and Achitophel represents a mixed or Varronian kind of satire, perhaps owing something to Juvenal as well as to Marcus Terentius Varro. The satiric elements are confined chiefly to the first section of the poem, in which Dryden discredits the Whig opponents of the king. Instead of implying an ideal, as satire normally does, Dryden explains it directly in a passage that has come to be regarded as an essay on government (vv. 723-810). Finally, Dryden praises the supporters of the king individually and has the king appear in his own person at the poem’s end, showing David (Charles II) facing his opponents with firmness and moderation.

In addition to the biblical parallel, Dryden makes effective use of characters, a technique that owes something to classical satirists but more to the character writers of the seventeenth century. A “character” in Dryden is a passage, sometimes satiric, sometimes serious, delineating a person and creating a unified impression. Though Dryden includes both satiric and complimentary characters, the satiric ones—Achitophel (Shaftesbury), Zimri (Buckingham), Shimei (Slingsby Bethel), and Corah (Titus Oates)—are the most memorable. In his character of Zimri (vv. 543-568), Dryden portrays the duke of Buckingham as foolishly inconsistent: “A man so various, that he seem’d to be/ Not one, but all Mankind’s Epitome.” In his perversity, Zimri is made to reflect a kind of frenetic energy:

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;Was everything by starts, and nothing long;But in the course of one revolving Moon,Was Chymist, Fidler, States-Man, and Buffoon.

Such an indiscriminate course indicates that Zimri’s judgment about human beings and political institutions cannot be trusted, as the character goes on to suggest. The character becomes a major means of discrediting the king’s chief opponents, yet it also permits Dryden to praise the king’s loyal supporters.

Religio Laici

For his religious poem, Religio Laici, Dryden assigns no genre, giving as the subtitle “A Poem.” In a lengthy preface, he finds precedent for his work in the epistles of Horace. It is often called a ratiocinative poem, but it closely resembles the genre in English poetry designated “verse essay.” It surveys a definite subject, presents a variety of positions, explores their bases, provides reasoned analysis, and gives the poet’s personal positions. Religio Laici surveys religious movements in England during Dryden’s day and rejects all except the established church, supporting the official view that the Church of England represents a via media—a middle way—avoiding the extremes of the Deists, Catholics, and Dissenters. Dryden upholds biblical authority against the Deists, citing reasons for belief in scriptural authority and arguing that the religious principles advocated by the Deists were first brought to humans by revelation, not innate understanding, as Deists believed, for otherwise the Greeks and Romans would have discovered them. As the Deist relies too heavily on humankind’s reason, the Catholic relies too heavily on tradition and the argument of infallibility, while the Protestant errs in the extreme in another direction, relying excessively on private interpretation of the Scriptures, an extreme that leads to disorder in society.

Dryden’s conclusion indicates both his moderation and his intensely conservative outlook. Essential points of faith are few and plain. Since people believe more than is necessary, they should seek guidance from reliable ancient theologians on disputed points. If that does not provide adequate enlightenment, they can either leave the matter unsettled or restrain further speculation and inquiry in the interest of public peace and order.

“To the Memory of Mr. Oldham”

“To the Memory of Mr. Oldham” (1684), a poem that demonstrates the efficacy of heroic couplets for a serious theme, may be Dryden’s finest elegy. John Oldham, a younger poet, had attained success with his satires against the Jesuits and had died young. Dryden pays tribute to a fellow satirist with whom he can identify. The opening lines establish the basic tone: “Farewell, too little, and too lately known,/ Whom I began to think and call my own.” The classical simplicity of “farewell,” the weight and seriousness of the long vowels and semivowels, and the balance within the lines (“too little and too lately” and “think and call”) establish a serious, even tone that Dryden can vary, yet preserve. In a second part of the poem, he stresses the youth of Oldham and his early achievement, acknowledging its imperfection. The tone of unqualified praise has altered, but balance and tonal consistency remain. Dryden next demonstrates his exquisite sense of poetic sound when he turns to the defects of Oldham’s poetry, choosing to downplay them: “But Satyr needs not those, and Wit will shine/ Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.” The cadence in the second line sounds harsher because it follows a perfectly balanced line. After further downplaying of the importance of a good ear in the insipid passage, “Maturing time/ But mellow what we write to the dull sweets of Rime,” Dryden returns to the balanced and rational tone:

Once more, hail and farewell; farewell thou young,But ah too short, Marcellus of our Tongue;Thy Brows with Ivy, and with Laurels bound;But Fate and gloomy Night encompass thee around.

Allusion to Marcellus enables Dryden to draw the parallel to Augustan Rome, where the nephew who might have succeeded Augustus dies young. Thus, the kingdom of civilized letters in Dryden’s age resembles the finest earlier civilization. The balance within the verse (“Ivy and Laurels,” “Fate and gloomy Night”) ends the poem in a tone of serious, subdued expression of loss.

Odes

As one would expect, in the ode Dryden abandons the heroic couplet for a more complicated stanza and metrical pattern. His odes are occasional poems either on the death of someone, as in “Threnodia Augustalis,” on the death of Charles II, or “To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew,” or commemoration of an occasion, as in his two odes for Saint Cecilia’s Day, written ten years apart (1687 and 1697), both commemorating the patron saint of music. They share a common theme, the power of music to influence people’s emotions or passions. In the first “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day,” Dryden employs the traditional association of instruments with particular human passions and develops his theme, “What Passion cannot Musick raise and quell,” in a kind of linear fashion, the trumpet instilling courage and valor, the flute arousing love, the violin, jealousy, and the organ influencing devotion. Inclusion of the organ enables Dryden to allude to Saint Cecilia, who is said to have invented that instrument. According to legend, while playing on her invention she drew an angel to earth, the harmony having caused him to mistake earth for heaven. In a concluding grand chorus, Dryden sees music, an element of the creation, as also befitting the end of creation:

So, when the last and dreadful hourThis crumbling Pageant shall devour,The Trumpet shall be heard on high,The Dead shall live, the Living die,And Musick shall untune the sky.

Alexander’s Feast

Alexander’s Feast, the second Saint Cecilia ode, is constructed according to a more ambitious plan, for Dryden imagines Alexander celebrating his victory over the Persian king Darius, listening to the music of Timotheus, which has sufficient power to move a hero of Alexander’s greatness. The shifts are abrupt, as in the Pindaric ode, yet Dryden preserves the Horatian structure with a regular development of emotional response, as Timotheus causes the monarch to experience a sense of deification, a desire for pleasure, pity for the fallen Darius, and then love. No sooner has Alexander indulged his pleasure than Timotheus, in another strain, incites him to revenge, and the king seizes a torch to set the Persian city aflame. At the poem’s end, Dryden compares Cecilia and Timotheus. In this ode, Dryden achieves a remarkably complex, forceful, and energetic movement, and he lends dramatic strength to the familiar theme by creating a dramatic parallel that involves historical characters. Although the ode attains a kind of Pindaric exuberance, Dryden nevertheless follows a regular, linear organization.

Horatian verse epistles

One of Dryden’s principal poetic forms is the Horatian verse epistle, a type of poetry he wrote over a period of nearly forty years. The genre permits a poet to address an individual, speaking in his own person, and revealing as much or as little about himself as he wishes. Dryden’s epistles are usually poems of praise, though wit may sometimes be the chief purpose. Two of his final epistles, “To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve” and “To My Honour’d Kinsman, John Driden” (a poem addressed to his cousin, who then served in Parliament), are among his most memorable. Dryden’s reliance on kingdoms and monarchies comes to the fore in each—the state in the epistle to his kinsman and the kingdom of letters in the poem to the dramatist William Congreve.

A favorite device of Dryden’s is to set up polarities between differing ages and make comparisons, as he does in his “Epigram on Milton”: “Three Poets in three distant ages born/ Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.” The contrasts constitute a witty means of expressing praise, an art that Dryden had mastered in both verse and prose—being as skilled in panegyric as he was in satire.

In “To My Dear Friend Mr Congreve,” the colloquial tone of the opening line belies a more serious theme and purpose: “Well then; the promis’d hour is come at last;/ The present Age of Wit obscures the past.” Speaking of the wits of his time, Dryden acknowledges that, owing to a deficiency of genius, they have not equaled the achievements of Shakespeare and Jonson, and thus, metaphorically, “The second Temple was not like the first.” Having introduced his metaphor of the temple, Dryden exploits it by alluding to another age and comparing Congreve to the Roman architect Vitruvius. Dryden goes on to praise Congreve’s specific abilities as a dramatist, comparing him with Jonson, Fletcher, George Etherege, Thomas Southerne, and Wycherley, and, in a further allusion to Rome, with Scipio, for achieving greatness in youth.

Becoming more personal, Dryden shifts the parallel to the kingdom of poetry and, specifically, to his own tenure as poet laureate:

O that your Brows by Lawrel had sustain’d,Well had I been Depos’d, if You had reign’d!The Father had descended for the Son;For only You are lineal to the Throne.

It was a great irony in Dryden’s life that the poet he had made successor to the throne of dullness in Mac Flecknoe, Thomas Shadwell, had succeeded instead to the laureateship. The poem concludes with Dryden speaking of his own departure from the stage and asking the young Congreve to treat his memory kindly, a request that Congreve, to his credit, fulfilled by editing Dryden’s plays and writing a personal testimony and memoir favorable to the older poet. The poem is vintage Dryden, displaying the polarities between ages, the temple metaphor, the Roman allusions, and, above all, the monarchical metaphor involving successions, coronations, and reigns.