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John Dryden‟S Marriage A-La-Mode : a Quest for Refining the Word and the English Dramatic World

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John Dryden‟S Marriage A-La-Mode : a Quest for Refining the Word and the English Dramatic World JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 18, 2020 JOHN DRYDEN‟S MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE : A QUEST FOR REFINING THE WORD AND THE ENGLISH DRAMATIC WORLD Slim Ourimi University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Suhar. Sultanate of Oman. Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT: English Restoration drama and more particularly Restoration comedies have gained much attention as compared with the tragedies of the age. Succeeding a ”golden” Shakespearian era, seventeenth century English drama also has many famous plays to its credit and John Dryden‟s comedy „Marriage a la Mode‟ is a very good example. This research article aims at highlighting the literary spirit of the English Restoration age through comedy writing. Also, it aims at reviewing the important role that John Dryden played as a seventeenth century English essayist, poet and playwright in his quest for refining the word and the English Dramatic world of the time. KEYWORDS: English Restoration drama, John Dryden, Marriage-a-la-Mode, comedy, romance, refinement, wit, farce, instruction, pleasure. 1. INTRODUCTION Structurally, plot is the predetermined pattern in which a writer organizes the events of a dramatic work. It is the “ordered arrangement of the incidents” as put by Aristotle in his On the Art of Poetry. [1] Aristotle held that a good plot is not “simple”, but rather “complex”, in the sense that it is marked by a change or even a reversal of “fortune” and should consist of a beginning, middle and an end. From an Aristotelian perspective, a plot should be judiciously constructed that the omission of a single incident will lead to the destruction of the unity of the text. This research article will demonstrate the extent to which John Dryden‟s comedy Marriage à-la-Mode is a good representation of a „refined‟ concept of comedy in the English Restoration age with regard to the unity of plot, the importance of “wit” and John Dryden‟s “ends” of writing about whether drama should teach or please. 2. UNITY OF PLOT IN MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE 2.1. PLOT SUMMARY Before starting with the importance of John Dryden‟s plot in Marriage-à-la-Mode and measuring its degree of conformity with the Aristotelian definition of “plot”, a summary of the play is worth starting with. Coming back to Sicily after his five-year tour, Palamede meets Doralice and falls in love with her. Yet, shortly after his encounter with his friend Rhodophil, Palamede finds out that Doralice is Rhodophil‟s wife. Palamede shows consistency to the agreement he made with Doralice who is to forget about Rhodophil, while Palamede has to forget about his future wife Melantha. Rhodophil has to bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion secretly before Palamede gets married to Melantha. After the “Grotto” scene which represents the first climax of the play, Rhodophil and Palamede are presented as two foes who attempt at assuming friendship for the sake of having access to their hoped-for mistresses: “While he looks on; I will storm the outworks of matrimony even before his face” [2], says Palamede in an aside in the “eating-house” scene. (M-à-la-M. IV. iii. 121). Whereas Melantha shows much indifference towards her partners and much interest in the courtly world, Doralice is ready to deceive Rhodophil in favour of Palamede for the mere reason that he is her husband and she is his wife. “Well, since thou art a Husband, and wilt be a Husband, I‟ll try if I can find out another!” says Doralice soliloquising in the third act after Rhodophil‟s exit. (M-à-la-M III. i. 100-1). In the last scene of Marriage-à-la- Mode, the quartet of the comic scene reach the end of their hide-and-seek game, yet none of their plans come to fruition. Palamede gets married to Melantha while Rhodophil rejoins Doralice. The two couples agree to live together in amity, not for a moral or ethical purpose, but as a fair strategy to avoid conflict and “hostility”: Palamede. Content say I. From henceforth let all acts of hostility cease betwixt us; and that in the usual form of treaties, as well by sea as by land, and in fresh waters. Doralice. I will add but one proviso, that who breaks the league, either by war abroad, or by negotiation at home, both the women shall revenge themselves by the help of the other party. (M-à-la-M. V. i. 425-32) 3948 JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 18, 2020 2.2. MARRIAGE-LA-MODE, A WAVERING PLOT BETWEEN HUMOUR AND ROMANCE Along with the comic plot, the romance plot in John Dryden‟s Marriage-à-la-Mode presents us with a characteristically idealistic and refined vision of human existence. Written in rhymed couplets, the passages between Leonidas, a well-behaved lover and Palmyra, an innocent fairy daughter of the usurped king Polydamas, provide us with an idealized love story that is much reminiscent of those old medieval stock tales where the lover has to walk himself through a series of inescapable hurdles to finally reach his beloved. Coming from a simple country life, Palmyra and Leonidas experience the artificiality and frustration of the courtly world. Hermogenes tells all the truth about Palmyra as the daughter of Polydamas, with the purpose of upstaging Leonidas who is the rightful heir in kingship. Very much reminiscent of Don Rodrigue in Pierre Corneille‟s Le Cid, Leonidas becomes determined to fight Polydamas for the restoration of his father‟s throne, which has put him in an unavoidable conflict with Palmyra. Like Chimène in Pierre Corneille‟s Le Cid, Palmyra becomes torn between her father and lover. “I meant that if you hazarded your life, or sought my father‟s,” says Palmyra with bitterness, “ne‟r to be your wife.” (M-à-la-M. IV. i. 87-88). The scheme of Leonidas against the King is found out overnight. However, no sooner has he been arrested by the king‟s guards than Leonidas manages to set himself free, fight back and win against the usurper and his party. After his restoration, Leonidas shows tolerance toward Polydamas, who in turn shows consent to the new King‟s marriage with Palmyra. John Dryden‟s application of a theory of the comic is representative of a „refined‟ concept of comedy in English seventeenth century drama. This new way of comedy that Dryden tried to illustrate in Marriage-à-la-Mode is to have two concurrent and converging plots; the amorous scenes of the quartet are interspersed with the love-and- honour scenes that are performed by the romantic lovers, yet with more emphasis on the comic plot or the pleasant theme of the humorous sex duel or intrigue. The comic scenes of Marriage-à-la-Mode are beautifully written and John Dryden takes much care to weave them with the romance plot through a more refined dramatic style free of any farce or unnatural humor. In this comedy, Dryden shows a clear cut with the conventional self-contained plots where episodes are often connected by the presence of a central character. Sutherland puts it: “He writes, not only with more comic assurance than ever before, but with one of the most thoughtful treatments of sex and marriage that Restoration comedy can show. With its witty repartee, its engaging impudence, its critical precision of phrase, and the comic force of its situations, this is comedy without any admixture of farce.” [3] This is what Dryden himself expressed in his Preface to An Evening‟s Love, or the Mock Astrologer while contrasting comedy and farce. Whereas comedy “consists, though of low persons, yet of natural actions and characters […] farce, on the other hand consists of forced humours, and unnatural events.” [4] 3. „WIT” IN JOHN DRYDEN‟S MARRIAGE-A-LA-MODE Far from being a farce, John Dryden‟s comedy Marriage-la-Mode is a play of “wit” par excellence. Despite the burlesque shafts of George Villiers‟ The Rehearsal against Marriage-à-la-Mode as well as Gerard Langbaine‟s scathing criticism, John Dryden ranks this comedy as “the best of [ his] comedies” [5] in his Dedicatory Epistle to the Earl of Rochester. It is a play that owes much to the new pattern of Restoration comedies, with the intention to “follow the new mode, which they begin and treat‟em with a room and couch within,” (LL.34-35) [6], as Dryden states his Prologue to Marriage-à-la-Mode. True, Dryden‟s comedy owes much to the Fletcherian mixture of the comic and the “serious” genres and so are some of his other dramatic works like Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen (1667), or The Spanish Friar, or the Double Discovery (1679), but it is far from that “little of humour as Fletcher shows” or from that “little of love and wit as Jonson” [7]. Rather, Marriage-à-la-Mode is a mixed play between “wit” and “humour”, which distances it from the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. In accounting for the lack of “judgement” necessary to follow Ben Jonson‟s way of the “humour”, John Dryden provides us with one of the basic reasons for the transition from the English Jacobean comedy of humours to the Restoration comedy of ”wit” intrigue and manners. In his Defence of the Epilogue and shortly after his definition of refinement as “An improvement of our Wit, Language, and Conversation: or an alteration in them for the better” [9], Dryden goes as far as to show how “Wit,” “Language” and “Conversation” are „refined‟ in comparison with those of the “last Age”: “I will therefore only observe to you, that the Wit of the last age, was yet more incorrect than their language.
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