DRYDEN
168
DRTDEN
are not meanly so. There is no attack on royalty and
no mention of Cromwell's religion. Dryden always
was in favour of authority and of peace from civil
strife, and consequently when disorders broke out upon
Cromwell's death, he, with the rest of the nation, wel-
comed the return of Charles II. He celebrated the
king's return with his poem of "Astraea Redux"
(1660), in which he already showed his mastery of the
rhjaned couplet. Then followed his poems on the
"Coronation" (1661); "To Lord Clarendon" (1662);
"To Dr. Charleton" (1663); "To the Duchess of
York" (1665); and "Annus Mirabilis" (1667). His
great prose "Essay on Dramatick Poesie" appeared in
1668. Meantime, in 1662, Dryden had been elected to
the Royal .Society, and on 1
December, 1663, he wis
married to Lady Elizabeth
Howard, eldest daughter ot
the Earl of Berkshire.
In 1662 he began his dra- matic career with " The W ild Gallant", a comedy of hu- mours, influenced by Spanish sources. In 1663 appeired "The Rival Ladies", a ti igi- comedy, also from aSpini^h model. To this Dryden pre fi.xed the first of the famou' prefaces in which he laid dow n his principles of dramatu criticism. "The Indian Em peror", a heroic plaj hl^ first original drama, appe irc 1 in 166.5. In 1667 he pro duced " The Maiden Queen ' a comedy in which somi blank verse is seen alongsKli of the rhymed couplet and prose; "Sir Martin Mar ill ' a prose comedy based on "L'Etourdi" of Moliere an(' an adaptation of "The Temp est" with Davenant. "Tht Mock .Astrologer " ( 1 668) w as an imitation of " Le femt astrologue" of Thomas Cor- neille, influenced by Moliere 's "Depit amoureux". .\bout this time Dryden entereil mtn an agreement with the King^ Theatre Company. Accord ing to this he was to produce three plays a year, for w hich he w as to receiv e one and one-quarter shares out of a total of twelve and three- quarters. In the winter of 1668-9, "Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr", a rhymed heroic tragedy, was played, and in 1670 his greatest heroic tragedy, the first and second parts of " Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada".
Dryden wa.s given the degree of M. A. by the Arch- bi.shop of Canterbury in 1668; in 1670 he was made poet laureate and royal historiographer, which brought liiin an annual income of £200. In 1671 he was satir- ized in "The Rehearsal", a play written by Bucking- ham, Butler, and others. "Marriage k la Mode", a comedy in prose and rhyme, was played in 1672, as well as "The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery", a prose comedy, interspersed with a little blank verse. ".AinljOjTia" (1673) was a prose tragedy on the sub- ject of the Dutch outrages, and "The State of Inno- cence" (1674) was an unsuccessful attempt to treat the theme of Paradise Lost. "Aurengzebe" (1676) i.s a rhymed tragedy in which the run-on lines show a tendency toward blank verse, which becomes triumph- ant in tile next play, "All for Love" (1678). This is Dryden 's masterpiece, a play based on the story of Anthony and Cleopatra which he wrote to satisfy his
own standards. It is a play worthy of comparison
with Shakespeare's "Anthony and Cleopatra", sur-
passing it in unity of time and motive, and in the part
of Ventidius adding one of the great characters of the
English drama. "Limberham" (1678), a prose com-
edy, was unsuccessful and was withdrawn after three
nights. After the production of "CEdipus", a tragedy
in blank verse written in collaboration with Lee in
1679, Dryden seems to have quarrelled with the King's
Company, and his next play, "Troilus and Cressida",
(1679), an adaptation in blank verse and prose of
Shakespeare's play, was produced by the Duke's Com- i
pany. With the "Spanish Friar" (1681) he closed
for I timt his drimatic career. He had in the mean-
time suffered as well as prof-
ited by his fame. The Earl
of Rochester, suspecting
thit Drjden had aided Lord
Mulgrave in his attack on
Rochester in the " Essay on
Satire", caused Dryden to be
be iten by hired ruffians as he
passed through Rose Street,
Covent Garden, while re-
turning from Will's coffee
house to his own house in
Gerrard Street. It is char-
acteristic of the unfair at-
titude taken by Drj'den's
enemies that this cowardly
assault was held by them to
reflect upon his character.
In November, 1681, Dry- den began, in the first part of "Absalom and .Achito- ] hel", the series of satires ill tht rhymed couplet which phced him at the head of English satirical poets. \bsilom and Achitophel" w IS the most important lit- ei ir> expression of the party which prevented the ex- clusion of the Duke of York from the succession to the throne. It is also one of the greatest of English satires, ( specially in its portraiture of the characters of the Duke iif Monmouth and the Earl c f Shaftesbury, both of w horn the author has repre- sented allegoricallv in the title of the poem. Then fol- lowed, m March, 1682, "The Medal", an a.ssault upon Shaftesbury. These poems occasioned many attacks on Drj'den, and to one of them, the " Medal of John Bayes " by Thomas Shadwell, Dryden replied, in October, 1682, by "Mac Flecknoe", a vigorous satire which dismissed Shadwell as the "last great prophet of tautology". In November, 1682, appeared the second part of "Absa- lom and Achitophel", in which Nahuni Tate collabo- rated. In "Religio Laici" (1682) Dryden presented an argument for the faith of the Church of England, and in 1685, on the death of Charles II, he wrote an ode called "Threnodia .4ngustalis". In 1684 at Charles' request he had also translated "The History of The League" from the French of Maimbourg. Dryden's position at the death of Charles was not an enviable one. His income from play-writing had ceased, his pensions were not regularly paid, though they were continued by James II, and in answer to his - appeal for some of the arrears, which amounted to £1000 in 1683, he had received £75 and an appoint- ment as collector of customs of the port of London, the emoluments of which oflSce are not known. He was converted to Catholicism in 1686. This step was the natural outcome of his investigation into theology,
