John Dryden was England's first Poet Laureate and still remains an influential poet in the British literary canon. He has written some of the most valuable work that has emerged from Restoration England, to the extent that the period was It was written in in celebration of Saint Cecelia's day. The original ode was set to music by the musician Jeremiah Clarke, but, due to its relative obscurity at the Dryden himself acknowledged that his play All for Love is an imitation of William Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, which was written in the early s.
It is a heroic drama that follows many of the same story beats of Shakespeare's Anne Killigrew , published in , is an elegy written by John Dryden in the memory of Anne Killigrew, a British poet who lived between and As far as city-wide conflagrations go, the blaze that made its way And yet, this poem is not entirely of his own making. In addition to being a playwright and prodigious creator of unique poetic flights of fancy, Dryden began From Horace he chose several odes urging self-possession in the face of Fortune, and Epode 2, which he rendered with an obvious relish for the country life which Horace praises.
These are among his most eloquent works. A critical preface to the volume provided readers with a poetic and philosophical evaluation of these four writers, an example of the comparative criticism which increasingly featured in the prefatory essays to Dryden's translations. Though he had abandoned the commercial theatre, Dryden had not ceased to be interested in new developments on the stage, and in he drafted an ambitious operatic project on the subject of King Arthur.
Only its prologue was brought to fruition as the masque-like Albion and Albanius , performed before Charles II in late , and revised after the king's death for public performance at the Dorset Garden Theatre on 3 June printed the same year. The music by Louis Grabu was not well received, but this did not deter Dryden from collaborating subsequently with Henry Purcell.
When Sylvae was published in January , a profound change was happening in Dryden's religious thinking. His serious reflections on mortality, and on the use of his time and talents, which in various ways animated 'To the Memory of Mr Oldham' and the translations from Lucretius and Horace , show a poet engaged with spiritual matters at a more intimate level than the reasoned polemic exhibited in Religio laici.
His master Charles II had died on 6 February , converting or acknowledging an earlier secret conversion to Catholicism on his deathbed, and had been succeeded by his openly Catholic brother James.
In his pindaric ode Threnodia Augustalis , Dryden mourned the king who had brought the nation a good measure of peace and healing, and looked to his successor to add martial success to his brother's achievements.
Prophecy was not Dryden's forte. The motives for Dryden's conversion are unclear; the move certainly appeared expedient politically, but only if he thought that the new reign would be long-lasting and that Catholicism would flourish under James.
In fact, Dryden was one of many Catholics who thought that the new king's rapid and sometimes illegal promotion of Catholics to public office was rash and counter-productive. Moreover, if Dryden were really just a turncoat, he could have shifted political and religious allegiances again in , whereas his adherence to Catholicism and the Jacobite cause was maintained at considerable cost and some risk. Dryden had been buying religious and philosophical works including Catholic theology and polemic at book auctions in the early s, and whatever the spiritual and emotional causes of his conversion, intellectual reasons certainly played their part.
His own writing soon showed his new commitment: A Defence of the Papers argued for the authenticity of papers on Catholicism attributed to Charles II and to Anne Hyde, late duchess of York.
In June , just months before the revolution, Dryden celebrated the birth of the new Catholic heir in Britannia rediviva , heralding a new period of Catholic and Stuart governance.
His poetry seems now to have been rededicated to more moral and spiritual ends. In his memorial verses for the poet and painter Anne Killigrew he exclaimed:. But Dryden's major Catholic work was The Hind and the Panther , an allegorical poem in which the spotless white Hind representing the Church of Rome engages the beautiful but dangerous Panther the Church of England in theological discussion about the nature of the true church, the authority of tradition, and the need for individual reason to subordinate itself to pope and councils, thus reversing the position adopted in Religio laici.
Shared with the earlier poem, however, is a decided distrust of protestant sects, described here under the symbolism of wolves, bears, boars, and other animals. The poem shows strong imaginative and ratiocinative powers, and a clear grasp of contemporary apologetics on both sides, along with a gift for dialogue and a willingness to include theological and political criticism of Catholicism. One passage reveals a rarely seen visionary side to Dryden :.
But the essential incongruity of the allegory prompted the derision of many contemporaries, and the rapid change of political events stranded the poem on the wrong side of what would soon become a decisive ideological and historical watershed. After the flight of James II from England in December , and the accession of William and Mary in the following month, Dryden found himself in difficulty, and even in danger.
As a Catholic convert he risked, at worst, prosecution for treason; at best, double taxation and restrictions on his movement. Unable to take the oath of allegiance to the new sovereigns, he lost his offices as poet laureate and historiographer royal. Gallingly, he was succeeded by Shadwell , whose whig credentials appealed to the new regime. Though the laureateship had never brought in a steady income under Charles , James was a more regular paymaster, and the loss of this support brought severe financial problems for Dryden.
His solution was to return to the theatre, for which he had last written in His first new play was the tragedy Don Sebastian staged 4 December , printed , a powerful drama whose themes of friendship, loyalty, true kingship, and love thwarted by destiny carried contemporary resonances. Dryden was treading carefully, not concealing his opinions and principles, but working primarily through indirections and implications. In dedicating the printed play to the earl of Leicester , he reflected on how the truly happy man is he ' who centring on himself, remains immovable, and smiles at the madness of the dance about him ' Works , More outspoken was the prologue which Dryden provided in May for a revival of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Prophetess , which glanced sarcastically at William III's expedition to Ireland, and was immediately suppressed.
It circulated widely in manuscript, however. Less controversial was his second play under the new order, the comedy Amphitryon staged and printed October Then Dryden turned to refurbishing old material: King Arthur staged May or June , and immediately printed had its origins in the end of Charles II's reign in the project which produced Albion and Albanius. Now he presented it as an opera with music by Purcell.
The two men had a strong mutual regard: Purcell supplied music for revivals of several plays by Dryden , including The Indian Queen , and Dryden drafted a preface for Purcell when his music for The Prophetess was printed in When Purcell died in Dryden published an eloquent memorial ode. Dryden's interest in music is evident not only in his accomplished songs, but also in his two contributions to the St Cecilia's day festival, A Song for St Cecilia's Day, and Alexander's Feast, or, The Power of Musique , the latter being perhaps his single most admired poem through the eighteenth century.
In the s Dryden's health was often indifferent though he still enjoyed visits to his relatives in Northamptonshire and he had to enlist the help of Thomas Southerne to complete his play Cleomenes staged April , printed the following month.
The association with Southerne was one of several professional friendships through which Dryden encouraged the work of younger writers. Dryden also contributed a poem to the same volume, in which he hailed Congreve as his successor, and in the 'Dedication' to Examen poeticum he specially commended Congreve's abilities as a translator of Homer.
Congreve would act as an honest broker between Dryden and Tonson in negotiating the contract for the translation of Virgil , and would check Dryden's work on the Aeneid against the Latin. Kneller would paint two portraits of Dryden now in the National Portrait Gallery and Trinity College, Cambridge , and Dryden's own interest in the visual arts is clear not only in the images from painting and architecture in his poetry, but also in his translation of Du Fresnoy's De arte graphica Presiding at Will's Coffee House, Dryden was the dominant figure in the London world of arts and letters.
If the drama was one means of continuing his career, translation was the other, and here the collaboration with Tonson bore fruit in remarkable ways. The two earlier volumes of miscellanies were followed by a third, Examen poeticum , to which Dryden contributed translations from Ovid's Metamorphoses and Homer's Iliad , and a preface which includes some outspoken if generalized comments on the corruption of governments.
But important as these translations were in their own right, they were overshadowed by the more systematic projects which the two men also had in hand. In October Tonson published The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis … [and] Aulus Persius Flaccus dated , which assembled a complete translation of Juvenal's satires by various hands numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, and 16 being by Dryden himself, 7 by his son Charles , and 14 by his son John , a complete translation of Persius by Dryden alone, and a substantial preface, the 'Discourse concerning the original and progress of satire' , in which Dryden presented a history of the genre, a critique of its principal Latin practitioners, and reflections on its modern use.
While these were translations rather than imitations, and generally preserved the original Roman allusions, there are a number of turns of phrase which reflect satirically on William III. Doubtless both the tragic pessimism of Juvenal's tenth satire, and Persius's Stoicism in the face of Neronian terror, had a contemporary resonance for him. No reader of Juvenal's third satire could avoid hearing the translator's voice in these lines:.
The tragi-comedy Love Triumphant staged January , published March was Dryden's final work for the stage: on 15 June that year he signed a contract with Tonson to translate the whole of the works of Virgil , and the task was to occupy him for more than three years.
The Works of Virgil was in many respects a remarkable undertaking, especially for a man in indifferent health, conscious of his advancing age: he was reported to be suffering from brain cancer as he worked on it.
Artistically, and in its sheer length, it was an extraordinary challenge, but it provided Dryden with much attractive material, even if he eventually came to think Homer more congenial. The Georgics , with their technical discussions of agriculture and their vision of the rural cycle, appealed to Dryden the countryman: the precision of his vocabulary here, and the imaginative empathy which he brings to the farmer's life, are much underrated.
And the Aeneid taxed him with its range of heroic incident, strong emotion, and vivid visual imagination. Though often raiding his predecessors for happy turns of phrase or useful interpretations, Dryden's translation is a masterpiece which rarely flags, and often rises to heights of eloquence and tragic reflection.
Into this text Dryden poured his feelings about exile, the loss of empire and the cost of creating it anew, the wasting of young talent, and dreams of restoration, without making his translation simply a Jacobite allegory.
Commercially, too, it was a bold venture, for Tonson developed the arrangement which he had pioneered successfully with his Paradise Lost , and published the work by subscription.
Patrons who subscribed 5 guineas had their titles and arms engraved on one of the plates reused from Ogilby's Virgil , while the 2 guinea subscribers were listed in the preliminaries. Though Dryden resisted Tonson's plan to dedicate the work to William III , it was truly a cross-section of the nation which lent its support, for the list reveals backing from people of various political persuasions, professions, and social classes.
Some gave support in kind, by lending him books and providing hospitality in quiet country houses where he could write undisturbed. The work was widely regarded and not only in England as a great cultural achievement; soon Dryden was making corrections for a second edition in The financial arrangements for the Virgil were not without their problems, for neither Dryden nor Tonson thought that the other was delivering exactly what they had agreed.
Feathers were ruffled on both sides. But the bond between poet and publisher survived: Dryden translated book 1 of the Annals for Tonson's collaborative Tacitus ; on 20 March he signed a contract for what would be his final work, the Fables Ancient and Modern ; and in October he was seeking patronage for a complete translation of Homer. Dis aliter visum : Dryden's health was failing, and only the first book of the Iliad was completed, to be included in the Fables in This collection prefaced with another example of Dryden's brilliant comparative criticism assembled versions of Homer , Chaucer , Ovid , and Boccaccio , demonstrating his mastery of diverse voices and tones, his narrative and argumentative skills, his philosophical vision and psychological insight.
The Homeric translation catches the brutality of war and rapacious rulers; Ovid and Boccaccio provide opportunities to explore the mind under the stress of passion; while the poems from Chaucer show a gift for gentler ironies. In 'Of the Pythagorean philosophy' from Ovid's Metamorphoses 15 Dryden brings a precise and vivid imagination to this exploration of change in the natural world, and in Theseus's speech at the end of 'Palamon and Arcite' from Chaucer's 'The Knight's Tale' he interpolates a vision of man's place in a troubled but divinely ordered universe:.
Dryden lived long enough to see the Fables praised by the town, but died of gangrene on 1 May apparently intestate , and was buried the following day in St Anne's Church, Soho. Belatedly, friends and patrons rallied to arrange a more appropriate funeral, for on 13 May he was reburied in Chaucer's grave in Westminster Abbey.
Two volumes of memorial verses, Luctus Britannici and The Nine Muses both , attested to his standing, and it is notable that the latter volume was entirely by women admirers. His greatest success lay in two areas. The one was topical satire, for Mac Flecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel effected a metamorphosis of contemporary characters into new guises from which, in the collective memory, they never wholly escaped.
The other was the art of translation, to which he came rather late in life. Though he is capable of many tones, and delighted in finding modern voices for originals as diverse as Homer and Chaucer , there is a recurring philosophical thread in these translations, for it was in this medium that Dryden asked his most profound questions—about men and gods, about desire and honour, about fortune, and the mutability of life.
He had a conspicuous talent for dialogue, often casting his arguments in the form of debates, whether on critical matters in the essay Of Dramatick Poesie , or theological ones in The Hind and the Panther. But, paradoxically, he was not a great dramatist, though he wrote some great scenes and some good plays. As a critic he pioneered comparative criticism, and a civilized, conversational prose style, reforming the syntax of our prose at the same time as he was perfecting the rhyming couplet as the dominant form for English verse, fashioning it into an instrument for argument, giving it a rhythmical variety and tonal range which no one has matched.
After his early service of the protectorate, Dryden was a loyal supporter of the Stuarts , and a believer in the divine right of kings; but he was too intelligent not to see the comic disparity between man and office, and a sense of the absurdity of rulers runs through his work from Tyrannick Love to 'The first book of Homer's Ilias '. A thoughtful if not a zealous Christian, he was widely read, appreciated the theological complexities and contradictions of his age, and recognized the strength of the alternatives to his own position; indeed, in his translations of Lucretius and Ovid he suspends his own beliefs sufficiently to present his readers with a faithfully imaginative version of classical philosophies.
Like his mentor Montaigne , he was both sincere in his convictions, and aware of the fragility of human reason and selfhood: ' As I am a Man, I must be changeable … An ill dream, or a Cloudy day, has power to change this wretched Creature, who is so proud of a reasonable Soul, and make him think what he thought not yesterday ' Works , His next poem, Religio laici , while nominally a defense of the authority of the English Church, was in effect also a satire on the unreason of all who dissented.
At this time Dryden became a Catholic and in wrote a public apology for his new religion, The Hind and the Panther. Although his enemies accused him of accommodating his faith to that of his king in order to secure preferment, there is no evidence that James influenced Dryden's conversion.
His adherence to his new faith after cost him the laureateship. During James's short reign Dryden was occupied primarily with poetry. He translated selections from Latin poets such as Virgil, Horace, and Lucretius. Cecilia's Day. In , when William III appointed Shadwell poet laureate, Dryden was forced to return to the theater to earn a living.
He produced a number of plays— Don Sebastian , Amphitryon , and Cleomenes —none of which was notably successful.
He then turned to translating, which proved more profitable. His greatest translations were probably the Satires of Juvenal and Persius , the Works of Virgil , and the Fables , a collection of tales from Ovid, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Geoffrey Chaucer. He was the first English author to earn his living by his writing. Dryden died on May 1, The standard biography of Dryden is Charles E.
Ward, The Life of John Dryden John Dryden — Portrait: Sir Godfrey Kneller, Related Poets. Jonathan Swift. Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter. Teach This Poem.
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