‘London, thou great emporium of our Isle’: Dryden writing the city Samuel James Burton Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English September 2019 ii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Samuel James Burton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Ó The University of Leeds and Samuel James Burton iii Acknowledgements This thesis began life as a weekly essay written in Michaelmas term 2013 for a special author paper on John Dryden. The original essay was little more than two thousand words in length, looking principally at Dryden’s two direct addresses to London in Annus Mirabilis and The Medall. That it transformed into a doctoral thesis owes much to the enthusiasm generated by Peter McCullough. My greatest debt is to my doctoral supervisor, Paul Hammond, for his constant guidance, encouragement and diligence. I must afford thanks for his seemingly endless patience with the most burdensome of students. Catherine Batt was also a source of sage counsel at moments of difficulty. This thesis would not have been possible without the generosity of Kate and Jason Gatenby, as well as the School of English at the University of Leeds. For helpful guidance and suggestions, I thank the staff of the Beinecke Library, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Brotherton Library, London Metropolitan Archives, Nottingham University Library, and Staffordshire Record Office. I am grateful to Alessio Mattana, Charles Roe, Matthew Blaiden, and Nathan Hunt for invaluable cordiality and conversation. Emma Walshe has proved herself a conscientious proof-reader (of course, any errors that remain are entirely my own responsibility). For their hospitality and companionship, thanks are due to Cordelia Fish and Julia Brunton. Finally, the gratitude I owe to my family is more than can be adequately expressed here. iv Abstract John Dryden spent his professional life living and writing in London. As well as the implicit or explicit setting, subject or structuring principal for a substantial volume of his corpus, London is a condition of aesthetic production for Dryden’s poems, plays and prose. This thesis contributes to our understanding of Dryden’s centrality to the development of metropolitan literary culture in the Restoration period. Unlike existing criticism, it treats Dryden’s urban modernity as a discrete subject rather than as being incidental to his other literary preoccupations. The thesis draws on the whole range of Dryden’s writing – verse, prose, and plays – but also includes discussion of the representation of London in the work of other Restoration poets and dramatists when they provide illuminating comparative material. An introductory chapter outlines the extent of our biographical knowledge of Dryden’s attachment to London. Some space will be reserved for an abbreviated political history of Westminster and the City of London during the Civil Wars and Restoration of the monarchy, as well as outlining the urban and demographic development of the capital across the seventeenth century. Chapter two explores how metropolitan readers interacted with networks of manuscript and print circulation. Specific consideration is given to how sites of sociability affected the transmission of Dryden’s work. The third chapter looks at the social and cultural development of the ‘Town’ as a built environment and discursive space, principally through the analysis of the prologues, epilogues, and dedications prefixing his drama. The remaining chapters of the thesis look at particular texts – or clusters of texts – chronologically rather than thematically. Chapter four deals with the modes of civic government made possible by the purgative burning of the City of London in Annus Mirabilis. The subject of the fifth chapter is Mac Flecknoe: in particular, it looks at the political, social and literary allusiveness of the poem’s topography, along with its structural debt to the Lord Mayor’s Show and civic pageantry. Chapter six deals with Dryden’s partisan polemic during the Restoration crisis of government. It asks how the offices and institutions of City government, street politics and populism influenced the writing of His Majesties Declaration Defended, Absalom and Achitophel, The Medall, and The Duke of Guise. Some observations are made on the mythological triumph of the Stuart monarchy over the City of London in Albion and Albanius in a brief coda. The final chapter looks at the ways in which translation offered an alternative path for the displaced representation of London, especially after Dryden fell from political favour and lost sources of patronage after the events of the 1688-9 Revolution. Chiefly, the texts under consideration are ‘The Third Satire of Juvenal’ and Virgil’s Aeneis. v CONTENTS List of Maps and Illustrations vi Note on Texts and Abbreviations vii Note on Conventions viii Introduction 1 1. Dryden’s Textual London 31 2. Dryden as Poet and Spokesman for the Town 64 3. Civic Identity in the Aftermath of the Great Fire 80 4. Mac Flecknoe and the ‘Suburbian Muse’ 115 5. London and the Restoration Crisis of Government 130 Coda: London’s Second Restoration in Albion and Albanius 185 6. Cities in Translation 189 Conclusion 217 Bibliography 220 vi List of Maps and Illustrations 1. Anonymous, Londinum feracissimi Angliae Regni metropolis (1572). London, British Library, Maps Crace Port. 1.12. Ó British Library. 2. George Vertue, a retrospective plan of London’s fortifications during the Civil War (1738). London, British Library, Maps Crace Port. 1.39. Ó British Library. 3. Anonymous, view of the execution of Charles I in front of the Banqueting House, Palace of Whitehall (1649). London, London Metropolitan Archives, p751825x. Ó London Metropolitan Archives. 4. Anonymous, view of Charles II’s royal procession into the City of London through one of the triumphal arches (1660). London, London Metropolitan Archives, p749332x. Ó London Metropolitan Archives. 5. Anonymous drawing of the interior of a London coffeehouse (c. 1690). London, British Museum, 1931, 0613.2. Ó Trustees of the British Museum. 6. Wenceslaus Hollar, a bird’s-eye-view etching of the west central neighbourhoods of London (c. 1660-1666). London, British Museum, Q, 6.136. Ó Trustees of the British Museum. 7. Anonymous, oil on canvas painting of the Great Fire of London (1666). London, Guildhall Art Library, accession number 1379. Ó Guildhall Art Library. 8. Robert Pricke, engraved map of the extent of the City of London’s destruction during the Great Fire (1667). London, British Library, Maps Crace Port. 2.52. Ó British Library. 9. Sir Christopher Wren, reduced version of Wren’s plan for rebuilding of the City of London (1749). London, London Metropolitan Archives, k1268905. Ó London Metropolitan Archives. 10. John Evelyn, plan for rebuilding the City of London featuring twelve interconnecting squares and piazzas (1666). London, British Library, Maps Crace 17.8. Ó British Library. 11. David Loggan, engraved plate of the first triumphal arch on Leadenhall Street, printed in John Ogilby’s The Entertainment of His Most Excellent Majestie Charles II (1662). London, Victoria and Albert Museum, E.571-1890. Ó Victoria and Albert Museum. 12. [Richard Blome], plan of the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate Without, published in John Strype’s first annotated edition of Stow’s A Survey of London (1720). London, British Library, Maps Crace Port. 16.1.(1.). Ó British Library. 13. ‘The Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope, Cardinalls, Jesuits, Fryers &c. through the City of London, November the 17th, 1679’ (1680). London, British Museum, 1849, 0315.68. Ó Trustees of the British Museum. vii Note on Texts and Abbreviations Unless otherwise stated, quotations of Dryden’s writings are from The Works of John Dryden, ed. H.T. Swedenberg et al., 20 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956- 2000), cited by short title as Works. I use the California Dryden as it is the only complete old- spelling edition of his works. Poems are cited by line parenthetically in the text; plays by act, scene, and line number; prose works by volume and page number. I also make reference to The Poems of John Dryden, ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins, 5 vols. (Harlow: Longman, 1995-2005) for the editorial matter, abbreviated to Poems. Scriptural quotations are from the Authorised King James Bible, the translation of the Bible most familiar to Dryden. Wherever possible, I quote Latin and Greek authors in the seventeenth-century editions Dryden is most likely to have used. Abbreviations De Krey, London and the Restoration Gary De Krey, London and the Restoration, 1659-1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Works The Works of John Dryden, ed. H.T. Swedenberg et al., 20 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956-2000) Poems The Poems of John Dryden, ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins, 5 vols. (Harlow: Longman, 1995-2005) Letters The Letters of John Dryden, ed. Charles E. Ward (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1942) Harris, London Crowds Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) Milton, Prose Works The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953-82) ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography OED Oxford English Dictionary Pepys, Diary The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols. (London: G. Bell, 1970-1983) POAS Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714, ed.