Palamon and Arcite

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Palamon and Arcite, by John Dryden
#3 in our series by John Dryden
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Palamon and Arcite
Author: John Dryden
Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7490]
[Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on May 10,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1

0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PALAMON
AND ARCITE ***
Produced by Ted Garvin, Charles Franks
& the Distributed
Proofreaders Team
DRYDEN'S PALAMON AND ARCITE
EDITED
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
GEORGE E.
ELIOT, A.M.
ENGLISH MASTER IN THE MORGAN
SCHOOL
TO
HENRY A. BEERS
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
LITERATURE IN YALE UNIVERSITY
WHO FIRST
AROUSED MY INTEREST IN DRYDEN
AND DIRECTED MY
STUDY OF HIS WORKS
THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
PREFACE.
To edit an English classic for study in secondary schools is difficult.
The lack of anything like uniformity in the type of examination
required by the colleges and universities complicates treatment. Not
only do two distinct institutions differ in the scope and character of
their questions, but the same university varies its demands from year to
year. The only safe course to pursue is, therefore, a generally
comprehensive one. But here, again, we are hampered by limited space,
and are forced to content ourselves with a bare outline, which the
individual instructor can fill in as much or as little as he pleases.
The ignorance of most of our classical students in regard to the history
of English literature is appalling; and yet it is impossible properly to
study a given work of a given author without some knowledge of the
background against which that particular writer stands. I have, therefore,
sketched the politics, society, and literature of the age in which Dryden
lived, and during which he gave to the world his _Palamon and Arcite_.
In the critical comments of the introduction I have contented myself

with little more than hints. That particular line of study, whether it
concerns the poet's style, his verse forms, or the possession of the
divine instinct itself, can be much more
satisfactorily developed by
the instructor, as the student's knowledge of the poem grows.
It is certainly a subject for congratulation that so many youth will be
introduced, through the medium of Dryden's crisp and vigorous verse,
to one of the tales of Chaucer. May it now, as in his own century,
accomplish the poet's desire, and awaken in them appreciative
admiration for the old bard, the best story-teller in the English
language.
G. E. E. CLINTON, CONN., July 26, 1897.
INTRODUCTION.
THE BACKGROUND.
The fifty years of Dryden's literary production just fill the last half of
the seventeenth century. It was a period bristling with violent political
and religious prejudices, provocative of strife that amounted to
revolution. Its social life ran the gamut from the severity of the
Commonwealth Puritan to the unbridled debauchery of the Restoration
Courtier. In literature it experienced a remarkable transformation in
poetry, and developed modern prose, watched the production of the
greatest English epics, smarted under the lash of the greatest English
satires, blushed at the brilliant wit of unspeakable comedies, and
applauded the beginnings of English criticism.
When the period began, England was a Commonwealth. Charles I., by
obstinate insistence upon absolutism, by fickleness and faithlessness,
had increased and strengthened his enemies. Parliament had seized the
reins of government in 1642, had completely established its authority at
Naseby in 1645, and had beheaded the king in front of his own palace
in 1649. The army had accomplished these results, and the army
proposed to enjoy the reward. Cromwell, the idolized commander of
the Ironsides, was placed at the head of the new-formed state with the
title of Lord Protector; and for five years he ruled England, as she had

been ruled by no sovereign since Elizabeth. He suppressed
Parliamentary dissensions and royalist uprisings, humbled the Dutch,
took vengeance on the Spaniard, and made England indisputably
mistress of the ocean. He was succeeded, at his death in 1658,