John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  The “Annus Mirabilis” evinces a considerable portion of labour and attention; the lines and versification are highly polished, and the expression was probably carefully corrected. Dryden as Johnson remarks, already exercised the superiority of his genius, by recommending his own performance, as written upon the plan of Virgil; and as no unsuccessful effort at producing those well-wrought images and descriptions, which create admiration, the proper object of heroic poetry. The “Annus Mirabilis” may indeed be regarded as one of Dryden’s most elaborate pieces; although it is not written in his later, better, and most peculiar style of poetry.

  The poem first appeared in octavo, in 1667, and was afterwards frequently reprinted in quarto. It was dedicated to the metropolis of Great Britain, as represented by the lord mayor and magistrates. A letter to Sir Robert Howard was prefixed to the poem, in which the author explains the purpose of the work, and the difficulties which presented themselves in the execution. And in this epistle, as a contrast between the smooth and easy style of writing which was proper in addressing a lady, and the exalted style of heroic, or at least historical, poetry, he introduces the verses to the Duchess of York, already mentioned.

  The “Annus Mirabilis” being the last poetical work of any importance produced by our author, until “Absalom and Achitophel,” the reader may here pause, and consider, in the progressive improvement of Dryden, the gradual renovation of public taste. The irregular pindaric ode was now abandoned to Arwaker, Behn, Durfey, and a few inferior authors; who either from its tempting facility of execution, or from an affected admiration of old times and fashions, still pestered the public with imitations of Cowley. The rough measure of Donne (if it had any pretension to be called a measure) was no longer tolerated, and it was expected, even of those who wrote satires, lampoons, and occasional verses, that their rhymes should be rhymes, both to the ear and eye; and that they should neither adore their mistresses nor abuse their neighbours, in lines which differed only from prose in the fashion of printing. Thus the measure used by Rochester, Buckingham Sheffield, Sedley, and other satirists, if not polished or harmonized, approaches more nearly to modern verse, than that of Hall or Donne. In the “Elegy on Cromwell,” and the “Annus Mirabilis,” Dryden followed Davenant, who abridged, if he did not explode, the quaintnesses of his predecessors. In “Astroea Redux” and his occasional verses to Dr. Charlton, the Duchess of York, and others, the poet proposed a separate and simpler model, more dignified than that of Suckling or Waller; more harmonious in measure, and chaste in expression, than those of Cowley and Crashaw. Much, there doubtless remained, of ancient subtlety, and ingenious quibbling; but when Dryden declares, that he proposes Virgil, in preference to Ovid, to be his model in the “Annus Mirabilis” it sufficiently implies that the main defect of the poetry of the last age had been discovered, and was in the way of being amended by gradual and almost imperceptible degrees.

  In establishing, or refining, the latter style of writing, in couplet verse, our author found great assistance from his dramatic practice; to trace the commencement of which is the purpose of the next Section.

  SECTION II.

  Revival of the Drama at the Restoration — Heroic Plays — Comedies of

  Intrigue — Commencement of Dryden’s Dramatic Career — The Wild Gallant —

  Rival Ladies — Indian Queen and Emperor — Dryden’s Marriage — Essay on

  Dramatic Poetry, and subsequent Controversy with Sir Robert Howard — The

  Maiden Queen — The Tempest — Sir Martin Mar-all — The Mock Astrologer — The

  Royal Martyr — The Two Parts of the Conquest of Granada — Dryden’s

  Situation at this Period.

  It would appear that Dryden, at the period of the Restoration, renounced all views of making his way in life except by exertion of the literary talents with which he was so eminently endowed. His becoming a writer of plays was a necessary consequence; for the theatres, newly opened after so long silence, were resorted to with all the ardour inspired by novelty; and dramatic composition was the only line which promised something like an adequate reward to the professors of literature. In our sketch of the taste of the seventeenth century previous to the Restoration, this topic was intentionally postponed.

  In the times of James I. and of his successor, the theatre retained, in some degree, the splendour with which the excellent writers of the virgin reign had adorned it. It is true, that authors of the latter period fell far below those gigantic poets, who flourished in the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries; but what the stage had lost in dramatic composition, was, in some degree, supplied by the increasing splendour of decoration, and the favour of the court. A private theatre, called the Cockpit, was maintained at Whitehall, in which plays were performed before the court; and the king’s company of actors often received command to attend the royal progresses. Masques, a species of representation calculated exclusively for the recreation of the great, in whose halls they were exhibited, were an usual entertainment of Charles and his consort. The machinery and decorations were often superintended by Inigo Jones, and the poetry composed by Ben Jonson the laureate. Even Milton deigned to contribute one of his most fascinating poems to the service of the drama; and, notwithstanding the severity of his puritanic tenets, “Comus” could only have been composed by one who felt the full enchantment of the theatre. But all this splendour vanished at the approach of civil war. The stage and court were almost as closely united in their fate as royalty and episcopacy, had the same enemies, the same defenders, and shared the same overwhelming ruin. “No throne no theatre,” seemed as just a dogma as the famous “No king no bishop.” The puritans indeed commenced their attack against royalty in this very quarter; and, while they impugned the political exertions of prerogative, they assailed the private character of the monarch and his consort, for the encouragement given to the profane stage, that rock of offence, and stumbling-block to the godly. Accordingly, the superiority of the republicans was no sooner decisive, than the theatres were closed, and the dramatic poets silenced. No department of poetry was accounted lawful; but the drama being altogether unhallowed and abominable, its professors were persecuted, while others escaped with censure from the pulpit, and contempt from the rulers. The miserable shifts to which the surviving actors were reduced during the commonwealth, have been often detailed. At times they were connived at by the caprice or indolence of their persecutors; but, in general, so soon as they had acquired any slender stock of properties, they were beaten, imprisoned, and stripped, at the pleasure of the soldiery.

  The Restoration naturally brought with it a revived taste for those elegant amusements, which, during the usurpation, had been condemned as heathenish, or punished as appertaining especially to the favourers of royalty. To frequent them, therefore, became a badge of loyalty, and a virtual disavowal of those puritanic tenets which all now agreed in condemning. The taste of the restored monarch also was decidedly in favour of the drama. At the foreign courts, which it had been his lot to visit, the theatre was the chief entertainment; and as amusement was always his principal pursuit, it cannot be doubted that he often sought it there. The interest, therefore, which the monarch took in the restoration of the stage, was direct and personal. Had it not been for this circumstance, it seems probable that the general audience, for a time at least, would have demanded a revival of those pieces which had been most successful before the civil wars; and that Shakespeare, Massinger, and Fletcher, would have resumed their acknowledged superiority upon the English stage. But as the theatres were re-established and cherished by the immediate influence of the sovereign, and of the court which returned with him from exile, a taste formed during their residence abroad dictated the nature of entertainments which were to be presented to them. It is worthy of remark, that Charles took the models of the two grand departments of the drama from two different countries.

  France afforded the pattern of those tragedies which continued in fashion for twenty y
ears after the Restoration, and which were called Rhyming or Heroic Plays. In that country, however, contrary to the general manners of the people, a sort of stately and precise ceremonial early took possession of the theatre. The French dramatist was under the necessity of considering less the situation of the persons of the drama, than that of the performers who were to represent it before a monarch and his court. It was not, therefore, sufficient for the author to consider how human beings would naturally express themselves in the predicament of the scene; he had the more embarrassing task of so modifying their expressions of passion and feeling, that they might not exceed the decorum necessary in the august presence of the grand monarque. A more effectual mode of freezing the dialogue of the drama could hardly have been devised, than by introducing into the theatre the etiquette of the drawing-room. That etiquette also, during the reign of Louis XIV., was of a kind peculiarly forced and unnatural The romances of Calprenède and Scudéry, those ponderous and unmerciful folios now consigned to utter oblivion, were in that reign not only universally read and admired, but supposed to furnish the most perfect models of gallantry and heroism; although, in the words of an elegant female author, these celebrated writings are justly described as containing only “unnatural representations of the passions, false sentiments, false precepts, false wit, false honour, and false modesty, with a strange heap of improbable, unnatural incidents, mixed up with true history, and fastened upon some of the great names of antiquity.” Yet upon the model of such works were framed the court manners of the reign of Louis, and, in imitation of them, the French tragedy, in which every king was by prescriptive right a hero, every female a goddess, every tyrant a fire-breathing chimera, and every soldier an irresistible Amadis; in which, when perfected, we find lofty sentiments, splendid imagery, eloquent expression, sound morality, everything but the language of human passion and human character. In the hands of Corneille, and still more in those of Racine, much of the absurdity of the original model was cleared away, and much that was valuable substituted in its stead; but the plan being fundamentally wrong, the high talents of these authors unfortunately only tended to reconcile their countrymen to a style of writing which must otherwise have fallen into contempt. Such as it was, it rose into high favour at the court of Louis XIV., and was by Charles introduced upon the English stage. “The favour which heroic plays have lately found upon our theatres,” says our author himself, “have been wholly derived to them from the countenance and approbation they have received at court.”

  The French comedy, although Molière was in the zenith of his reputation, appears not to have possessed equal charms for the English monarch. The same restraint of decorum, which prevented the expression of natural passion in tragedy, prohibited all indelicate licence in comedy. Charles, probably, was secretly pleased with a system, which cramped the effusions of the tragic muse, and forbade, as indecorous, those bursts of rapturous enthusiasm, which might sometimes contain matter unpleasing to a royal ear. But the merry monarch saw no good reason why the muse of comedy should be compelled to “dwell in decencies for ever,” and did not feel at all degraded when enjoying a gross pleasantry, or profane witticism, in company with the mixed mass of a popular audience. The stage, therefore, resumed more than its original licence under his auspices. Most of our early plays, being written in a coarse age, and designed for the amusement of a promiscuous and vulgar audience, were dishonoured by scenes of coarse and naked indelicacy. The positive enactments of James, and the grave manners of his son, in some degree repressed this disgraceful scurrility; and, in the common course of events, the English stage would have been gradually delivered from this reproach by the increasing influence of decency and taste. But Charles II., during his exile, had lived upon a footing of equality with his banished nobles, and partaken freely and promiscuously in the pleasure and frolics by which they had endeavoured to sweeten adversity. To such a court the amusements of the drama would have appeared insipid, unless seasoned with the libertine spirit which governed their lives, and which was encouraged by the example of the monarch. Thus it is acutely argued by Dennis, in reply to Collier, that the depravity of the theatre, when revived, was owing to that very suppression, which had prevented its gradual reformation. And just so a muddy stream, if allowed its free course, will gradually purify itself; but, if dammed up for a season, and let loose at once, its first torrent cannot fail to be impregnated with every impurity. The licence of a rude age was thus revived by a corrupted one; and even those plays which were translated from the French and Spanish, were carefully seasoned with as much indelicacy, and double entendre, as was necessary to fit them for the ear of the wittiest and most profligate of monarchs.

  Another remarkable feature in the comedies which succeeded the Restoration is the structure of their plot, which was not, like that of the tragedies, formed upon the Parisian model. The English audience had not patience for the regular comedy of their neighbours, depending upon delicate turns of expression, and nicer delineation of character. The Spanish comedy, with its bustle, machinery, disguise, and complicated intrigue, was much more agreeable to their taste. This preference did not arise entirely from what the French term the phlegm of our national character, which cannot be affected but by powerful stimulants. It is indeed certain, that an Englishman expects his eye, as well as his ear, to be diverted by theatrical exhibition; but the thirst of novelty was another and separate reason which affected the style of the revived drama. The number of new plays represented every season was incredible; and the authors were compelled to have recourse to that mode of composition which was most easily executed. Laboured accuracy of expression, and fine traits of character, joined to an arrangement of action, which should be at once pleasing, interesting, and probable, require sedulous study, deep reflection, and long and repeated correction and revision. But these were not to be expected from a playwright, by whom three dramas were to be produced in one season; and in their place were substituted adventures surprises, rencounters, mistakes, disguises, and escapes, all easily accomplished by the intervention of sliding panels, closets, veils, masks, large cloaks, and dark lanthorns. If the dramatist was at a loss for employing these convenient implements, the fifteen hundred plays of Lope de Vega were at hand for his instruction; presenting that rapid succession of events, and those sudden changes in the situation of the personages, which, according to the noble biographer of the Spanish dramatist, are the charms by which he interests us so forcibly in his plots. These Spanish plays had already been resorted to by the authors of the earlier part of the century. But under the auspices of Charles II., who must often have witnessed the originals while abroad, and in some instances by his express command, translations were executed of the best and most lively Spanish comedies.

  The favourite comedies therefore, after the Restoration, were such as depended rather upon the intricacy than the probability of the plot; rather upon the vivacity and liveliness, than on the natural expression of the dialogue; and, finally, rather upon extravagant and grotesque conception of character, than upon its being pointedly delineated, and accurately supported through the representation. These particulars, in which the comedies of Charles the Second’s reign differ from the example set by Shakespeare, Massinger and Beaumont and Fletcher, seem to have been derived from the Spanish model. But the taste of the age was too cultivated to follow the stage of Madrid, in introducing, or, to speak more accurately, in reviving, the character of the gracioso, or clown, upon that of London. Something of foreign manners may be traced in the licence assumed by valets and domestics in the English comedy; a freedom which at no time made a part of our national manners, though something like it may still be traced upon the Continent. These seem to be the leading characteristics of the comedies of Charles the Second’s reign, in which the rules of the ancients were totally disregarded. It were to be wished that the authors could have been exculpated from an heavier charge, — that of assisting to corrupt the nation, by nourishing and fomenting their evil passions, as well
as by indulging and pandering to their vices.