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Discuss "Mac Flecknoe" as a personal satire.
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Dryden's "Mac Flecknoe" uses epic diction and parodies the conventions of epic poetry in order to ridicule Shadwell's personality and his poetry. Alongside this parody is more straightforward personal attack, accusing Shadwell of stupidity and dullness.
By the time that he came to write "Mac Flecknoe," John Dryden had participated in a long series of quarrels—personal, professional, and political—with Thomas Shadwell, the subject of his satire. Dryden's style is mock epic, and he makes his subject into an inverted Odysseus. Whereas Odysseus was known for his quick wits and brilliant abilities, Shadwell's name is continually associated with dullness and stupidity, as when Flecknoe says:
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dullness from his tender years.
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he
Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Now Empress Fame had published the renown,Like the ancient Roman satirists who are his models, Martial and Juvenal, Dryden associates the personality of his target with the age in which he lives, which is also dull and deserves no better heroes. It is this way of writing that gives the satire of Dryden, and his eighteenth-century successors, Pope and Swift, a general quality of belittling and looking backward which goes beyond the immediate target and encompasses society as a whole. Only such a corrupt age, in Dryden's view, could support such a talentless poet.
Of Shadwell's coronation through the town.
Roused by report of fame, the nations meet,
From near Bun-Hill, and distant Watling Street.
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