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UNIT 7 JOHN DRYDEN:MAC FLECKNOE John Dryden: Mac Flecknoe

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UNIT 7 JOHN DRYDEN:MAC FLECKNOE John Dryden: Mac Flecknoe UNIT 7 JOHN DRYDEN:MAC FLECKNOE John Dryden: Mac Flecknoe Structure 7.0 Objectives 7.1 Introduction 7.2 JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) 7.3 MAC FLECKNOE (1682) 7.4 Let Us Sum Up 7.5 Suggested Reading 7.6 Answers to Self-Check Exercises 7.0 OBJECTIVES Our aim in this unit is to examine John Dryden’s poem Mac Flecknoe,a poem which goes beyond critical sniping to a rage at the deathliness of human stupidity. This unit will also discuss briefly the biographical and historical background of John Dryden, the poet. Our intention in this unit is also to show how far whatever Dryden wrote was almost automatically suggested by events in his contemporary life. 7.1 INTRODUCTION This unit will briefly introduce the poet John Dryden, paying special attention to the manner in which his writings were generally conditioned by the historic events of his society. As you already know, John Dryden was appointed Poet Laureate in 1668 and Histriographer Royal in 1670. But on the accession of James II to the English throne, Dryden became a Catholic, and refusing to abandon his new faith after 1688, he was stripped of the Laureateship and other royal appointments. So this unit will highlight the criss-cross of attractions and revulsions that gradually emerged in John Dryden, the man and the poet. This unit will then go on to examine John Dryden’s MacFlecknoe(1682) through relevant extracts and see how the poem defines by negatives and discrepencies, undoes epic pretensions by playing with the mock-heroic and lets dullness express itself. 7.2 JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) John Dryden was born at Aldwinkle All Saints, Northamptonshire in 1631. His father, the Rev. Erasmus Dryden, the third son of the Baronet, Sir Erasmus, was Rector of Aldwinkle All Saints. Dryden’s mother was Mary Pickering, daughter of the Rector of Aldwinkle All Saints. Both the Drydens and the Pickerings were well-to-do families with Puritan leanings and sympathies. Young Dryden was educated at Oundle and later at Westminster under the famous headmaster Dr. Busby. His first attempts at verse composition date from this period. He then proceeded to Cambridge and, after a stay of four years, left the university in 1657 and settled in London about the same year. 7 The Long Eighteenth Arriving in London, Dryden devoted himself to politics and literature. He Century became secretary to Sir George Pickering, his cousin on his mother’s side who stood high in the Protector, Cromwell’s favour. The death of Cromwell in 1658 gave Dryden his first opportunity to appear in the limelight by publishing a copy of verses to deplore the event. The Heroic stanzas on the Death of the Lord Protectorwas published early in 1659, and it inaugurated the poetical and political career of John Dryden. After nearly eighteen months of anarchy, Charles II who had been spending much of his exile in France, where he was attracted towards French Literature of the day dominated by a brilliant set of writers, actuated by Classical models, ascended the throne of England. Nothing daunted the young poet John Dryden who quickly got over his discomfiture by ingratiating himself with the Royalists and by bringing out his Astraea Redux(a poem on the happy restoration and return of the sacred majesty Charles II) in 1660, in sharp contrast with his very recent eulogy of and Elegy on the death of Cromwell produced in so indecent a haste. This was followed by a coronation poem APanegyric on the King’ sCoronation(April 1661) and the Epistle to Lord Chancellor (New Year’s Day 1662). All these early poems were written in heroic couplets. In November 1662, Dryden became a Member of the newly founded Royal Society which began to exact from all the members “a close, naked, natural way of speaking”. But Dryden was foremost a poet, and, in poetry, he was primarily a craftsman. This “man of letters” was also a dramatist, critic and translator, and his life was largely controlled by economic exigencies and dependence on the Court. He cherished as his first ambition as an artist the making of good verse. It is worth noting here that nearly everything that Dryden wrote was almost automatically suggested by events in his contemporary life. The first group of Dryden’s poems was brought to a close by Annus Mirabilis(1667) In 1670, Dryden was made Histriographer Royal in the Court of Charles II. After some time, he found in the aims and methods of the Whig intriguers a subject made to his hand. Soon the big question arose: who should succeed Charles II? The anti-Catholics led by the brilliant and unprincipled Shaftesbury tried to set aside the succession of James, the Catholic brother. The infamous Popish plot of Titus Oates and the tragi-comic attempts to place Monmouth on the English throne were incidents in the conspiracy. But before the final collapse, Shaftesbury was arrested and sent to the Tower. These were the circumstances in which Part I of Absalom and Achitophel appeared in 1681. Part Ii of Absalom and Achitophel,of which only a little is Dryden’s (much is Nahum Tate’s) appeared in 1682. Both were anonymous. By giving his satire a Biblical setting and presenting Monmouth and Shaftesbury as the rebellious Absalom encouraged by the wily counsellor Achitophel respectively, Dryden caught the ears of the Whig and Puritan citizens of London who had been Shaftesbury’s strongest supporters. Yet another invective against Shaftesbury came out in The Medalin 1682. Dryden’s contribution of some two hundred lines of abuse in Part II of Absalom and Achitophel is worth commenting on very briefly. The sketches of the “Heroically mad” Elkanah Settle (Doeg) and of Thomas Shadwell (Og) have a vicious palpability about them. Shadwell (?1642-1692) became the object of Dryden’s satire purely as a result of his political affiliations, but more directly as 8 a result of an increasing unfriendly rivalry in the theatre. Shadwell’s operatic John Dryden: Mac Flecknoe adaptation of The Tempest; The Enchanted Isleof 1679 was a particularly galling success. Dryden’s bitter distaste for the flippancy and shoddiness of Shadwell’s work as a poet reached its peak in the lampoon which he had begun in 1670s but published only in 1682, Mac Flecknoe or A Satyr upon the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S. Dryden’s Odes and lyrical poems of the last fifteen years (1685-1700) form the last outstanding group. Here we have inspiration struggling to express itself, with an attention to style that is often too minute. The Song for St. Cecilia’s Day(1687) composed in the heat of his recent conversion to Roman Catholicism, is pure in form and has a communicative musical beauty and sweetness. But his conversion from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism at a time when the latter was in favour at the Court, laid him open to suspicion as to his sincerity. And in 1688 when King James II was driven from England by the Great Revolution which gave the throne to the Protestant William and Mary, Dryden lost all his offices including the Laureateship and the pension that had been conferred on him of late. Ironically enough, Thomas Shadwell was appointed as the new Poet Laureate. But still undaunted, John Dryden in his sixty seventh year once more devoted himself to classical literature which inspired him to undertake translations from the Latin of Juvenal, Perseus and Virgil – all of which opened up fresh sources of income. In 1697 came out Alexander’s Feast containing his best known poems including the Second Ode.His modernizations of Chaucer and Boccaccio under the title of Fables,and the translation of the Classics were two pieces of literary work (published in 1699) which were particularly suited to his temperament. Six months after the publication of his Fables,Dryden died in 1700. Thus Dryden’s literary achievements were enormous. And though in verse the next generation was to improve upon his model, the model was actually his. He is almost as strong in blank verse as he is in his chosen instrument, the heroic couplet. In non-dramatic verse, he has scarcely left any kind of poetry unattempted except the epic proper. His satirical and didactic poems can be regarded as among the most successful attempts ever made to conduct arguments and deliver attacks in a polished metrical form. A clear thinker, he has pondered over the rules of his art, and has sought them in the works of the ancients, in those of the French. His various essays, prefaces, epistles, prologues and epilogues inaugurate in England modern literary criticism, and propound, not without certain strong personal touches the doctrine of Classicism then in the opening stage. Self-check Exercise I a) Name the poem which inaugurated the poetical and political career of John Dryden. ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... 9 The Long Eighteenth Century b) When did Dryden become a Member of the newly founded Royal Society? ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................................
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