Palamon and Arcite | Page 6

we taste the Dryden of the Satires
and the Fables_. His _Essay on Dramatic Poesy started modern prose.

Hitherto English prose had suffered from long sentences, from involved
sentences, and from clumsy Latinisms or too bald vernacular. Dryden
happily united simplicity with grace, and gave us plain, straightforward
sentences, musically arranged in well-ordered periods. This was the
vehicle in which he introduced literary criticism, and he continued it in
prefaces to most of his plays and subsequent poems.
At this same time he not only discussed the drama, but indulged in its
production; and for a score of years from the early sixties he devoted
himself almost exclusively to the stage. It was the most popular and the
most profitable mode of expression. He began with a comedy, the
_Wild Gallant_, in 1662. It was a poor play and was incontinently
condemned. He then developed a curious series of plays, of which the
_Indian Emperor_, the Conquest of Grenada_, and _Aurengzebe are
examples. He professedly followed French methods, observed the
unities, and used the rhymed couplet. But they were not French; they
were a nondescript incubation by Dryden himself, and were called
heroic dramas. They were ridiculed in the Duke of Buckingham's farce,
the Rehearsal; but their popularity was scarcely impaired.
In 1678 Dryden showed a return to common sense and to blank verse in
All for Love, and, though it necessarily suffers from its comparison
with the original, Shakspere's Antony and Cleopatra, it nevertheless
possesses enough dramatic power to make it his best play. He had
preceded this by rewriting Milton's Paradise Lost as an opera, in the
State of Innocence, and he followed it in 1681 with perhaps his best
comedy, the Spanish Friar.
Dryden was now far the most prominent man of letters in London. In
1670 he had been appointed Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal
with a salary of two hundred pounds and a butt of sack. His connection
with the stage had been a decided financial success, and he was in
receipt of an income of about seven hundred pounds, which at modern
values would approximate $15,000. His house on Gerard Street, Soho,
backed upon Leicester's gardens. There he spent his days in writing, but
the evening found him at Will's Coffee House. In this famous resort of
the wits and writers of the day the literary dictator of his generation

held his court. Seated in his particular armchair, on the balcony in
summer, by the fire in winter, he discoursed on topics current in the
literary world, pronounced his verdict of praise or condemnation, and
woe to the unfortunate upon whom the latter fell. A week before
Christmas, in 1679, as Dryden was walking home from an evening of
this sort, he was waylaid by masked ruffians in Rose Alley and was
beaten to unconsciousness. The attack was supposed to have been
incited by Rochester, who smarted under an anonymous satire
mistakenly attributed to Dryden.
Though wrongly accused of this particular satire, it was not long before
he did turn his attention to that department of verse. It was the time of
the restless dissent of the Whigs from the succession of James; and in
1681 Dryden launched Absalom and Achitophel, one of the most
brilliant satires in our language, against Shaftesbury and his adherents,
who were inciting Monmouth to revolt. He found an admirable parallel
in Absalom's revolt from his father David, and he sustained the
comparison. The Scriptural names concealed living characters, and
Shaftesbury masked as Achitophel, the evil counsellor, and
Buckingham as Zimri. Feeling ran high. Shaftesbury was arrested and
tried, but was acquitted, and his friends struck off a medal in
commemoration. In 1682, therefore, came Dryden's second satire, the
Medal. These two political satires called forth in the fevered state of the
times a host of replies, two of the most scurrilous from the pens of
Shadwell and Settle. Of these two poor Whigs the first was drawn and
quartered in MacFlecnoe, while the two were yoked for castigation in
Part II. of Absalom and Achitophel, which appeared in 1682. Dryden
possessed preëminently the faculty for satire. He did not devote himself
exclusively to an abstract treatment, nor, like Pope, to bitter
personalities; he blends and combines the two methods most effectively.
Every one of his brisk, nervous couplets carries a sting; every distich is
a sound box on the ear.
We reach now a most interesting period in Dryden's career and one that
has provoked much controversy. In 1681 he published a long argument
in verse, entitled Religio Laici (the Religion of a Layman), in which he
states his religious faith and his adherence to the Church of England.

When King James came to the throne in 1685 he made an immediate
attempt to establish the Roman Catholic faith; and now