john dryden an essay on criticism

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Literary Criticism of John Dryden

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on November 17, 2017 • ( 4 )

John Dryden (1631–1700) occupies a seminal place in English critical history. Samuel Johnson called him “the father of English criticism,” and affirmed of his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) that “modern English prose begins here.” Dryden’s critical work was extensive, treating of various genres such as epic, tragedy, comedy and dramatic theory, satire, the relative virtues of ancient and modern writers, as well as the nature of poetry and translation. In addition to the Essay , he wrote numerous prefaces, reviews, and prologues, which together set the stage for later poetic and critical developments embodied in writers such as Pope , Johnson, Matthew Arnold , and T. S. Eliot .

Dryden was also a consummate poet, dramatist, and translator. His poetic output reflects his shifting religious and political allegiances. Born into a middle-class family just prior to the outbreak of the English Civil War between King Charles I and Parliament, he initially supported the latter, whose leaders, headed by Oliver Cromwell, were Puritans. Indeed, his poem Heroic Stanzas (1659) celebrated the achievements of Cromwell who, after the execution of Charles I by the victorious parliamentarians, ruled England as Lord Protector (1653–1658). However, with the restoration of the dead king’s son, Charles II , to the throne in 1660, Dryden switched sides, celebrating the new monarchy in his poem Astrea Redux ( Justice Restored ). Dryden was appointed poet-laureate in 1668 and thereafter produced several major poems, including the mock-heroic Mac Flecknoe (1682), and a political satire Absalom and Achitophel (1681). In addition, he produced two poems that mirror his move from Anglicanism to Catholicism: Religio Laici (1682) defends the Anglican Church while The Hind and the Panther , just five years later, opposes Anglicanism. Dryden’s renowned dramas include the comedy Marriage a la Mode (1671) and the tragedies Aureng-Zebe (1675) and All for Love, or the World Well Lost (1677). His translations include Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), which includes renderings of Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer.

Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy is written as a debate on drama conducted by four speakers, Eugenius , Crites , Lisideius , and Neander. These personae have conventionally been identified with four of Dryden’s contemporaries. Eugenius (meaning “well-born”) may be Charles Sackville , who was Lord Buckhurst, a patron of Dryden and a poet himself. Crites (Greek for “judge” or “critic”) perhaps represents Sir Robert Howard, Dryden’s brother-in-law. Lisideius refers to Sir Charles Sedley , and Neander (“new man”) is Dryden himself. The Essay , as Dryden himself was to point out in a later defense of it, was occasioned by a public dispute with Sir Robert Howard (Crites) over the use of rhyme in drama. In a note to the reader prefacing the Essay , he suggests that the chief purpose of his text is “to vindicate the honour of our English writers, from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French” (27). Yet the scope of the Essay extends far beyond these two topics, effectively ranging over a number of crucial debates concerning the nature and composition of drama.

The first of these debates is that between ancients and moderns, a debate that had intermittently surfaced for centuries in literature and criticism, and which acquired a new and topical intensity in European letters after the Renaissance, in the late seventeenth century. Traditionalists such as Jonathan Swift , in his controversial Battle of the Books (1704), bemoaned the modern “corruption” of religion and learning, and saw in the ancients the archetypal standards of literature. The moderns, inspired by various forms of progress through the Renaissance, sought to adapt or even abandon classical ideals in favor of the requirements of a changed world and a modern audience. Dryden’s Essay is an important intervention in this debate, perhaps marking a distinction between Renaissance and neoclassical values. Like Torquato Tasso and Pierre Corneille , he attempted to strike a compromise between the claims of ancient authority and the exigencies of the modern writer.

In Dryden’s text, this compromise subsumes a number of debates: one of these concerns the classical “unities” of time, place, and action; another focuses on the rigid classical distinction between various genres, such as tragedy and comedy; there was also the issue of classical decorum and propriety, as well as the use of rhyme in drama. All of these elements underlie the nature of drama. In addition, Dryden undertakes an influential assessment of the English dramatic tradition, comparing writers within this tradition itself as well as with their counterparts in French drama.

Dryden’s Essay is skillfully wrought in terms of its own dramatic structure, its setting up of certain expectations (the authority of classical precepts), its climaxing in the reversal of these, and its denouement in the comparative assessment of French and English drama. What starts out, through the voice of Crites, as promising to lull the reader into complacent subordination to classical values ends up by deploying those very values against the ancients themselves and by undermining or redefining those values.

Lisideius offers the following definition of a play: “ A just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind ” (36). Even a casual glance at the definition shows it to be very different from Aristotle’s: the latter had defined tragedy not as the representation of “human nature” but as the imitation of a serious and complete action; moreover, while Aristotle had indeed cited a reversal in fortune as a component of tragedy, he had said nothing about “passions and humours”; and, while he accorded to literature in general a moral and intellectual function, he had said nothing about “delighting” the audience. The definition of drama used in Dryden’s Essay embodies a history of progressive divergence from classical models; indeed, it is a definition already weighted in favor of modern drama, and it is a little surprising that Crites agrees to abide by it at all. Crites, described in Dryden’s text as “a person of sharp judgment, and somewhat too delicate a taste in wit” (29), is, after all, the voice of classical conservatism.

Crites notes that poetry is now held in lower esteem, in an atmosphere of “few good poets, and so many severe judges” (37–38). His essential argument is that the ancients were “faithful imitators and wise observers of that Nature which is so torn and ill represented in our plays; they have handed down to us a perfect resemblance of her; which we, like ill copiers, neglecting to look on, have rendered monstrous, and disfigured.” He reminds his companions that all the rules for drama – concerning the plot, the ornaments, descriptions, and narrations – were formulated by Aristotle, Horace, or their predecessors. As for us modern writers, he remarks, “we have added nothing of our own, except we have the confidence to say our wit is better” (38).

The most fundamental of these classical rules are the three unities, of time, place, and action. Crites claims that the ancients observed these rules in most of their plays (38–39). The unity of action, Crites urges, stipulates that the “poet is to aim at one great and complete action,” to which all other things in the play “are to be subservient.” The reason behind this, he explains, is that if there were two major actions, this would destroy the unity of the play (41). Crites cites a further reason from Corneille: the unity of action “leaves the mind of the audience in a full repose”; but such a unity must be engineered by the subordinate actions which will “hold the audience in a delightful suspense of what will be” (41). Most modern plays, says Crites, fail to endure the test imposed by these unities, and we must therefore acknowledge the superiority of the ancient authors (43).

This, then, is the presentation of classical authority in Dryden’s text. It is Eugenius who first defends the moderns, saying that they have not restricted themselves to “dull imitation” of the ancients; they did not “draw after their lines, but those of Nature; and having the life before us, besides the experience of all they knew, it is no wonder if we hit some airs and features which they have missed” (44). This is an interesting and important argument which seems to have been subsequently overlooked by Alexander Pope , who in other respects followed Dryden’s prescriptions for following the rules of “nature.” In his Essay on Criticism , Pope had urged that to copy nature is to copy the ancient writers. Dryden, through the mouth of his persona Eugenius, completely topples this complacent equation: Eugenius effectively turns against Crites the latter’s own observation that the arts and sciences have made huge advances since the time of Aristotle. Not only do we have the collective experience and wisdom of the ancients to draw upon, but also we have our own experience of the world, a world understood far better in scientific terms than in ages past: “if natural causes be more known now than in the time of Aristotle . . . it follows that poesy and other arts may, with the same pains, arrive still nearer to perfection” (44).

Turning to the unities, Eugenius points out (after Corneille) that by the time of Horace, the division of a play into five acts was firmly established, but this distinction was unknown to the Greeks. Indeed, the Greeks did not even confine themselves to a regular number of acts (44–46). Again, their plots were usually based on “some tale derived from Thebes or Troy,” a plot “worn so threadbare . . . that before it came upon the stage, it was already known to all the audience.” Since the pleasure in novelty was thereby dissolved, asserts Eugenius, “one main end of Dramatic Poesy in its definition, which was to cause delight, was of consequence destroyed” (47). These are strong words, threatening to undermine a long tradition of reverence for the classics. But Eugenius has hardly finished: not only do the ancients fail to fulfill one of the essential obligations of drama, that of delighting; they also fall short in the other requirement, that of instructing. Eugenius berates the narrow characterization by Greek and Roman dramatists, as well as their imperfect linking of scenes. He cites instances of their own violation of the unities. Even more acerbic is his observation, following Corneille, that when the classical authors such as Euripides and Terence do observe the unities, they are forced into absurdities (48–49). As for the unity of place, he points out, this is nowhere to be found in Aristotle or Horace; it was made a precept of the stage in our own age by the French dramatists (48). Moreover, instead of “punishing vice and rewarding virtue,” the ancients “have often shown a prosperous wickedness, and an unhappy piety” (50).

Eugenius also berates the ancients for not dealing sufficiently with love, but rather with “lust, cruelty, revenge, ambition . . . which were more capable of raising horror than compassion in an audience” (54). Hence, in Dryden’s text, not only is Aristotle’s definition of tragedy violently displaced by a formulation that will accommodate modern poets, but also the ancient philosopher’s definition itself is made to appear starkly unrealistic and problematic for ancient dramatists, who persistently violated its essential features.

The next point of debate is the relative quality of French and English writers; it is Lisideius who extols the virtues of the French while Neander (Dryden himself) undertakes to defend his compatriots. Lisideius argues that the current French theatre surpasses all Europe, observing the unities of time, place, and action, and is not strewn with the cumbrous underplots that litter the English stage. Moreover, the French provide variety of emotion without sinking to the absurd genre of tragicomedy, which is a uniquely English invention (56–57). Lisideius also points out that the French are proficient at proportioning the time devoted to dialogue and action on the one hand, and narration on the other. There are certain actions, such as duels, battles, and deathscenes, that “can never be imitated to a just height”; they cannot be represented with decorum or with credibility and thus must be narrated rather than acted out on stage (62–63).

Neander’s response takes us by surprise. He does not at all refute the claims made by Lisideius. He concedes that “the French contrive their plots more regularly, and observe the laws of comedy, and decorum of the stage . . . with more exactness than the English” (67). Neander effectively argues that the very “faults” of the English are actually virtues, virtues that take English drama far beyond the pale of its classical heritage. What Neander or Dryden takes as a valid presupposition is that a play should present a “lively imitation of Nature” (68). The beauties of French drama, he points out, are “the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, because not animated with the soul of Poesy, which is imitation of humour and passions” (68).

Indeed, in justifying the genre of tragicomedy, Neander states that the contrast between mirth and compassion will throw the important scenes into sharper relief (69). He urges that it is “to the honour of our nation, that we have invented, increased, and perfected a more pleasant way of writing for the stage, than was ever known to the ancients or moderns of any nation, which is tragi-comedy” (70). This exaltation of tragicomedy effectively overturns nearly all of the ancient prescriptions concerning purity of genre, decorum, and unity of plot. Neander poignantly repeats Corneille’s observation that anyone with actual experience of the stage will see how constraining the classical rules are (76).

Neander now undertakes a brief assessment of the recent English dramatic tradition. Of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, he says, Shakespeare “had the largest and most comprehensive soul.” He was “naturally learn’d,” not through books but by the reading of nature and all her images: “he looked inwards, and found her there” (79–80). Again, the implication is that, in order to express nature, Shakespeare did not need to look outwards, toward the classics, but rather into his own humanity. Beaumont and Fletcher had both the precedent of Shakespeare’s wit and natural gifts which they improved by study; what they excelled at was expressing “the conversation of gentlemen,” and the representation of the passions, especially of love (80–81). Ben Jonson he regards as the “most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had,” and his peculiar gift was the representation of humors (81–82). Neander defines “humour” as “some extravagant habit, passion, or affection” which defines the individuality of a person (84–85). In an important statement he affirms that “Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Johnson was the Vergil, the pattern of elaborate writing” (82). What Neander – or Dryden – effectively does here is to stake out an independent tradition for English drama, with new archetypes displacing those of the classical tradition.

The final debate concerns the use of rhyme in drama. Crites argues that “rhyme is unnatural in a play” (91). Following Aristotle, Crites insists that the most natural verse form for the stage is blank verse, since ordinary speech follows an iambic pattern (91). Neander’s reply is ambivalent (Dryden himself was later to change his mind on this issue): he does not deny that blank verse may be used; but he asserts that “in serious plays, where the subject and characters are great . . . rhyme is there as natural and more effectual than blank verse” (94). Moreover, in everyday life, people do not speak in blank verse, any more than they do in rhyme. He also observes that rhyme and accent are a modern substitute for the use of quantity as syllabic measure in classical verse (96–97).

Underlying Neander’s argument in favor of rhyme is an observation fundamental to the very nature of drama. He insists that, while all drama represents nature, a distinction should be made between comedy, “which is the imitation of common persons and ordinary speaking,” and tragedy, which “is indeed the representation of Nature, but ’tis Nature wrought up to an higher pitch. The plot, the characters, the wit, the passions, the descriptions, are all exalted above the level of common converse, as high as the imagination of the poet can carry them, with proportion to verisimility” (100–101). And while the use of verse and rhyme helps the poet control an otherwise “lawless imagination,” it is nonetheless a great help to his “luxuriant fancy” (107). This concluding argument, which suggests that the poet use “imagination” to transcend nature, underlines Neander’s (and Dryden’s) departure from classical convention. If Dryden is neoclassical, it is in the sense that he acknowledges the classics as having furnished archetypes for drama; but modern writers are at liberty to create their own archetypes and their own literary traditions. Again, he might be called classical in view of the unquestioned persistence of certain presuppositions that are shared by all four speakers in this text: that the unity of a play, however conceived, is a paramount requirement; that a play present, through its use of plot and characterization, events and actions which are probable and express truth or at least a resemblance to truth; that the laws of “nature” be followed, if not through imitation of the ancients, then through looking inward at our own profoundest constitution; and finally, that every aspect of a play be contrived with the projected response of the audience in mind. But given Dryden’s equal emphasis on the poet’s wit, invention, and imagination, his text might be viewed as expressing a status of transition between neoclassicism and Romanticism.

Dryden’s other essays and prefaces would seem to confirm the foregoing comments, and reveal important insights into his vision of the poet’s craft. In his 1666 preface to Annus Mirabilis , he states that the “composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit . . . is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer” (14). He subsequently offers a more comprehensive definition: “the first happiness of the poet’s imagination is properly invention, or finding of the thought; the second is fancy, or the variation, deriving, or moulding, of that thought, as the judgment represents it proper to the subject; the third is elocution, or the art of clothing or adorning that thought, so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words: the quickness of the imagination is seen in the invention, the fertility in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expression” (15). Again, the emphasis here is on wit, imagination, and invention rather than exclusively on the classical precept of imitation.

In fact, Dryden was later to write “Defence of An Essay on Dramatic Poesy ,” defending his earlier text against Sir Robert Howard ’s attack on Dryden’s advocacy of rhyme in drama. Here, Dryden’s defense of rhyme undergoes a shift of emphasis, revealing further his modification of classical prescriptions. He now argues that what most commends rhyme is the delight it produces: “for delight is the chief, if not the only, end of poesy: instruction can be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only instructs as it delights” (113). And Dryden states: “I confess my chief endeavours are to delight the age in which I live” (116). We have come a long way from Aristotle, and even from Sidney, who both regarded poetry as having primarily a moral or ethical purpose. To suggest that poetry’s chief or only aim is to delight is to take a large step toward the later modern notion of literary autonomy. Dryden goes on to suggest that while a poet’s task is to “imitate well,” he must also “affect the soul, and excite the passions” as well as cause “admiration” or wonder. To this end, “bare imitation will not serve.” Imitation must be “heightened with all the arts and ornaments of poesy” (113).

If, in such statements, Dryden appears to anticipate certain Romantic predispositions, these comments are counterbalanced by other positions which are deeply entrenched in a classical heritage. Later in the “Defence” he insists that “they cannot be good poets, who are not accustomed to argue well . . . for moral truth is the mistress of the poet as much as of the philosopher; Poesy must resemble natural truth, but it must be ethical. Indeed, the poet dresses truth, and adorns nature, but does not alter them” (121). Hence, notwithstanding the importance that he attaches to wit and imagination, Dryden still regards poetry as essentially a rational activity, with an ethical and epistemological responsibility. If the poet rises above nature and truth, this is merely by way of ornamentation; it does not displace or remold the truths of nature, but merely heightens them. Dryden states that imagination “is supposed to participate of Reason,” and that when imagination creates fictions, reason allows itself to be temporarily deceived but will never be persuaded “of those things which are most remote from probability . . . Fancy and Reason go hand in hand; the first cannot leave the last behind” (127–128). These formulations differ from subsequent Romantic views of the primacy of imagination over reason. Imagination can indeed outrun reason, but only within the limits of classical probability. Dryden’s entire poetic and critical enterprise might be summed up in his own words: he views all poetry, both ancient and modern, as based on “the imitation of Nature.” Where he differs from the classics is the means with which he undertakes this poetic project (123). Following intimations in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s Poetics , he suggests in his Parallel of Poetry and Painting (1695) that what the poet (and painter) should imitate are not individual instances of nature but the archetypal ideas behind natural forms. While adhering to this classical position, he also suggests that, in imitating nature, modern writers should “vary the customs, according to the time and the country where the scene of the action lies; for this is still to imitate Nature, which is always the same, though in a different dress” ( Essays , II, 139). This stance effectively embodies both Dryden’s classicism and the nature of his departure from its strict boundaries.

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An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Main Frame of Dryden’s Literary Criticism

Victoria Bilge Yılmaz

John Dryden, a great poet of the 17th century English literature, has left a tremendous stamp in literary criticism with his An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), an essay that includes a frame of his literary output. Providing such important aspects for literary criticism like ideas about plays and poetry, Dryden works on the elaboration of Englishness in literature. He claims that it is high time contemporary English authors and critics elevated their literature above that of the ancients and the French. By stressing on the importance of rhyme in poesy, Dryden argues that English plays are better than those in France because they have richer plot and livelier characters. This study will focus on Dryden’s Essay and the frame of literary criticism that this Essay puts forward. It will also analyse Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis (1667), All for Love (1677), “Mac Flecknoe” (1678-79), and Absolom and Achitophel (1681) in terms of these works’ reflection of the Essay’s main outline. The study will conclude that what Dryden comes with in his Essay is the precise and clear picture of his talent as a poet and literary critic.

John Dryden , an Essay of Dramatic Poesy , Annus Mirabilis , All for Love , Absolom and Achitophel

Alexander, M. (2000). A history of English literature. London: Macmillan Foundations.
Corns, T. N. (2007). A history of seventeenth-century English literature. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Dryden, J. (1993). Absolom and Achitophel. Norton anthology of English literature. Vol. I, Sixth Ed. New York: WW Norton and Company.
Dryden, J. All for Love. Retreived from http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2062/pg2062.html on 28 December 2020.
Dryden, J. Annus Mirabilis Retreived from http://www.online-literature.com/dryden/poetical-works-vol1/8/ on 28 December 2020.
Dryden, J. (1889). An Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/essayofdramaticp00dryduoft?ref=ol#page/16/mode/2up 3 February 2021.
Dryden, J. (1993). Mac Flecknoe. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. I, Sixth Ed. New York: WW Norton and Company.
Frank, M. (2004). Gender, theatre and the origins of criticism: From Dryden to Manley. Cambridge University Press.
Zwicker, S. N. (1998). John Dryden. The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650-1740, (pp. 185-203). Cambridge University Press.

John Dryden’in Dramatik Poesy, Bir Deneme Adlı Eserinde Edebi Eleştiri ve Üslup Değerlendirmesi

17. yüzyıl İngiliz edebiyatının önemli yazarlarından olan John Dryden’ın edebi yapıtlarının ana çerçevesini Dramatik Poesy, Bir Deneme (1668) adlı eseri oluşturmaktadır. Bu eser edebi eleştiride büyük bir iz bırakmıştır. Oyun ve şiir ile ilgili önemli fikirlerini bu eserinde ortaya koyan Dryden, İngilizlerin edebiyata katkılarını ve önemini vurgulamaktadır. Dryden, İngiliz edebiyatının, eski çağlar ve devamındaki Fransız edebiyatlarından daha üstün görülmesi için vaktin geldiğini savunmaktadır. Dryden, edebiyatta şiirdeki kafiyenin önemine dikkat çekerken, İngiliz tiyatro oyunlarının Fransız tiyatro oyunlarından daha iyi olduğunu da iddia etmektedir. İngiliz oyunlarının konu-olay örgüsünün daha zengin ve karakterlerin daha canlı olduklarını vurgulamaktadır. Bu çalışma, Dryden’in Deneme’si ve bu Deneme’nin öne sürdüğü edebi eleştiriyi ele almaktadır. Ayrıca bu çalışmada Dryden’ın Annus Mirabilis (1667), Her Şey Aşk Uğruna (1677), “Mac Flecknoe” (1678-79) ve Absolom ve Akitofel (1681) adlı eserleri de edebi eleştiri çerçevesinde incelenecektir. Dryden’ın Deneme’de öne sürdüğü fikirlerin aslında şairin şiir ve edebi eleştiri bakımından kendi yeteneklerinin yansıması olduğu, örneklerle ortaya konulacaktır.

John Dryden , Dramatik Poesy , Bir Deneme , Annus Mirabilis , Her Şey Aşk Uğruna , Absolom ve Akitofel

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DRYDEN AS THE FATHER OF ENGLISH CRITICISM

() , , (), –

Dryden as the father of English criticism by Dr. Johnson with an emphasis on the author’s style and the criticism is the most important concern in this paper. John Dryden is rightly considered as “the father of English Criticism”. He was the first to teach the English people to determine the merit of composition upon principles. With Dryden, a new era of criticism began. Before, Dryden, there were only occasional utterances on the critical art. (E.g. Ben Jonson and Philip Sidney) Though Dryden’s criticism was of scattered nature; he paid attention to almost all literary forms and expressed his views on them. Except An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden wrote no formal treatise on criticism. His critical views are found mostly in the prefaces to his poetical works or to those of others.

Keywords: Dryden , English , criticism

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Criticism : the major texts

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John Dryden As The Father Of English Criticism

John Dryden has occupied an important position in the world of English literary criticism. He is known as “the father of English criticism”. This title “the father of English criticism” has been conferred upon him by Dr. Jonson, and later critics have without hesitation endorsed this judgement, For instance, Prof. Saintsbury observed that ‘Dryden set the fashion of criticising just as Shakespeare set the fashion of dramatising.” This remark of the great critic does not conflict with his own observation that Ben Jonson was, in many respects, the first critic of England. “Jonson. with his neo-classic temper, his concern for craftsmanship and polish. and his sense of involvement in the literary scene of his day. Foreshadows in some respects, both Dryden and Pope.” Dryden inherited the liberal classicism of Ben Jonson, but his critical range is far wider and his temper more tolerant, modest and urban than that of his pugnacious predecessor. Johnson’s criticism is brief, sketchy and meager in output, and Dryden in consequence, with a more diverse literary tradition behind him, and a much greater critical output remains the true father of practical criticism in England. His own changing tastes and interests helped to make him responsive to different kinds of literary skill and of artistic conventions, thus giving him that primary qualification of the good practical critic- the ability ot read the work under consideration with full and sympathetic understanding.

Freedom from personal bias or prejudice, catholicity of taste and broadness of outlook have generally been accepted as the cardinal virtues. But it must be said to the credit of John Dryden that he was the first example of the qualities in England. His practical criticism set a noble model before his successors, which has not lost its lusture till this day. He still remains a slanding embodiment of certain qualities which are of abiding significance in the field of practical criticism. These qualities may be described as a sturdy independence in matter of literary judgement, sensitiveness to literary values in whatever form or guise they are found to be present a genuine love for the true poetic quality or excellence united to a capacity for communicating it to others with contagious warmth and enthusiasm; wide and full informed acquaintance with diverse literary works of different ages and nationalities, and an easy control over all the effective modes and tools of practical or judicial criticism comparative. historical, analytical and psychological, a freedom from pedantry, a becoming modesty, combined with an intellectual daring and sleepless vigilance to detect elements of dross which often lie intermixed with purest gold in the works even of the greatest and best known masters; and last of all, a subtle argumentative skill, with a flexible and trenchant style.

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21 John Dryden

Mr. Saidul Haque

About the Module:

This module provides a critical overview of Dryden’s literary genius. Dryden, an influential figure of the Restoration period in English literature encounters negotiates his allegiance to diverse political and religious factions of the time. This module will then critically locate Dryden’s literary output in such a turbulent historical time frame. Focusing on Dryden’s political verse satire, mock-heroic poems, restoration comedies, heroic dramas, religious polemics, lyrics, translations, and critical writings, this module will give an idea about Dryden’s literary genius along with providing a primary sketch of the Restoration period in English literature.

“I confess my chief endeavours are to delight the age in which I live” (Defense of An Essay on Dramatic Poesy 116)

Introduction

John Dryden (1631-1700), a leading writer of the Restoration Age in English literature, mastered the art of traversing a variety of literary expressions- heroic tragedy, comedy, verse satire, translations and literary criticism. Similar to his literary career, he changed his allegiance and views several times in his personal life too. Being allied to the Puritan party, he wrote his impressive ‘Heroic Stanzas’ (1659) on the death of Cromwell, the Lord Protector, but he readily adjusted himself with the Royalist climate of the Restoration. He wrote Astrae Redux in 1660 to welcome back the monarch, followed by the Panegyric to His Sacred Majesty . Again, in his later years Dryden shifted his religious allegiance from an Anglicism to Catholicism.

The poet who wrote poems like Religio Laici (1682) defining the king’s religion in Anglican terms changed his views when James II, a Catholic supporter , had occupied the throne in 1685 after Charles II’s death. He wrote The Hind and the Panther (1687) supporting Catholic views. Dryden was then not a writer segregated from the realpolitik of the time but very much rooted in the real historical, political and religious conflicts of the time. The fact that he adapted himself to the varying modes of his time, has led to many controversies and speculations about his sycophantic and opportunist nature. He was even blamed as nothing more than a political propagandist. But beyond all this debates about his shifting allegiance, Dryden was just negotiating with several conflicts that politics and history imposed on the writer’s function.

Paul J. Korshin has rightly summed up the predicament of Dryden’s literature. According to Korshin, Dryden’s ‘public’ poems are produced on thorny issues of political, theological and literary ideology and therefore there is a constant play of dispute, dissent and contestation leading to the ‘poetics of concord’ (qtd. in Grover xxviii). It is on the literary plane that several historical and political issues of the time is debated and discussed. Dryden’s contribution in this discursive domain of literature is beyond doubt here. Amidst this concordant scenario, Dryden denied extremism and fixity of any kind and became flexible both in his public life as well as in his movement across different genres of literature. He became an exponent of the golden mean in art, politics and morality.

Dryden’s Early Career

Dryden’s literary career started at a significant political moment in England. His first important poem with Puritan inclinations, which he called Heroic Stanzas , was written in 1659 on the death of Oliver Cromwell. But the very next year he aligned himself with Royalist and wrote Astrea Redux (The Return of Justice, 1660) celebrating Charles II’s restoration to the throne. In 1661 Dryden wrote To his Sacred Majesty, a Panegyric on his Coronation followed by Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders (1666). “The latter poem defends the year of the Great Fire and Great Plague against the fatalist notions of divine retribution by exalting England’s King, navy, Royal Society and future progress in epic quatrains” (Grover xxix). This poem also celebrates English naval victories over the Dutch. These early poems were basically eulogy of certain Royal figures in heroic couplets. According to Grover, most of Dryden’s early poems “helped in shaping and disseminating the ideology of the Court through the use of a clear monarchist typology which represents the monarchist heroic ideal as morally normative, bounteous, stable, restorative, patriarchal and divinely ordained” (xxix).

Grover further argues that Dryden’s subject of panegyric revolved around diverse personalities like Cromwell, Charles, Augustus, and King David (from the Old Testament), but the “typological framework” of using “scriptural or classical analogy” and “a prophetic, messianic sort of vision” (xxix) remained constant. This vision was not abstract as such; rather this was rooted in the contemporaneity and historicity of the time. This vision also dismissed “sedition, fanaticism” and excess of any kind as anarchist threat to political and social stability (Grover xxix). This view goes well also with his later poems like verse satires.

Dryden’s Comedies

Dryden was made Poet Laureate in 1668 on the death of Sir William Davenant. In 1670 he was appointed Historiographer Royal also. During the period between 1668 and 1680, Dryden turned to play writing. He popularized the Restoration genre of the ‘heroic tragedy’ as well as the comedies of manners. After a long Puritan ban on theatre productions, theatres were reopened with restoration of monarchy and drama became popular with the aristocracy and populace. According to David Daiches, “Dryden’s early comedies were modeled on the Spanish comedies of intrigue, sometimes with serious or melodramatic scenes in rhyming couplets in addition to Jonsonian humours and love-disputes and wit-combats” (545). Dryden’s comedies include The Wild Gallant (1663), The Rival Ladies (1664), Secret Love (1667) and Sir Martin Mar-all . Marriage a la Mode (1672) is the most durable of his earlier comedies. Here the plot humorously explores the Restoration attitude to morality, marriage, sex and virtue. The play portrays a situation where A’s wife is B’s mistress and B’s fiancée is A’s mistress; but by continuous cunning contrivance, everyone turns virtuous in the end and through mutual agreement they subscribe to conventional morality. Dryden also tried his hand in the reproduction of Shakespeare’s plays and dramatized a section of Milton’s Paradise Lost (as ‘The State of Innocence’). In 1668 appeared An Evening’s Love , an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest . Again in 1679 Dryden came up with two other reworking of Shakespeare- Troilus and Cressida and Oedipus with Nathaniel Lee. Dryden’s career as comedy writer was not very fruitful and he himself proclaimed: “I know I am not so fitted by nature to write comedy…Reputation in them is the last thing in which I shall pretend” (Defense of An Essay on Dramatic Poesy 116)

Dryden’s Heroic Plays

David Daiches claims that “the Restoration was an unheroic age, and perhaps that is why its conception of heroism was so artificial and inflated” (549-550). But in spite of the artificiality and extravagance, rhymed heroic play reigned supreme during this period. The form was introduced by Sir William Davenant and popularized by Dryden. In his Essay on Heroic Plays which Dryden wrote as a preface to The Conquest of Granada , defends heroic play by asserting that “an heroic poet is not tied to a bare representation of what is true, or exceeding probable; but…he might let himself loose to visionary objects, and to the representation of such things, as depending not on sense, and therefore not to be comprehended by knowledge, may give him a freer scope for imagination” (qtd. in Daiches 550). The heroic plays banked on an exalted heroic figure having a loud and declamatory style sometimes rising to passionate extravaganza. These plays employ the bombastic rhetoric of rhymed couplet. Dryden’s The Indian Emperor (1665), Tyrannick Love, or, The Royal Martyr (1669), The Conquest of Granada (in two parts, 1669, and 1670), and Aurengzebe (1675), exhibit his huge contribution to Restoration heroic play. In Tyrannick Love , Dryden is excessively theatrical while portraying the lust of Emperor Maximin and the martyrdom of St. Catherine.

In The Conquest of Granada , Almanzor, a noble stranger, arrives to fight for the Moorish ruler Boabdelin. Almahide, betrothed to Boabdelin, falls in love with the stranger, Almanzor, but repulses his advance. Boabdelin is jealous of Almanzor but needs his heroic power. Finally the Spaniards invade the Moorish kingdom and kill Boabdelin. It is revealed that Almanzor is of noble Spanish birth and he marries Almahide. Theme of love, lust, valour and honour run through these plays. Aureng-Zebe is interesting because of its setting in Oriental land like the previous one. An air of exoticism prevails in these plays by Dryden.

Set in Mogul India, it displays the love of Aureng-Zebe for Indamora, a captive queen. Their love becomes entangled with the politics of the court. The Mogul emperor, Shah Jehan (Aureng-Zebe’s father) and Morat, another son by his second wife Nourmahal also start pursuing Indamora. Despite this, Aureng-Zebe remains loyal to his father and when the struggle for throne led to the deaths of both Morat and Nourmahal, Shah Jehan rewards Aureng-Zebe by abandoning his feelings for Indamora. According to Daiches, “ Though there is much extravagant ranting in Dryden’s heroic plays, and though his heroic situations often tremble on the brink of the absurd and sometimes fall over, the plays are put together with cunning, showing, it might perhaps be said, a first-rate craftsman working in a dubious mood” (551). The protagonists of the plays were elevated to such romantic and superhuman heights that they appeared nonsensically unrealistic, but at the same time the heroic and grand theme of valour and honour becomes consonant with the extravagance. According to Arthur C. Kirsch, “Aureng- Zebe is like no other hero in Dryden’s previous plays.

Before Aureng-Zebe Dryden’s heroes had been distinguished by their capacity for passion, frequently expressed in rant, by their primitivistic if not primitive natures (both Montezuma and Almanzor are characterized as children of nature), and by their constant desire to prove their worth in love as well as in war. None of them were temperate men:…as Almanzor made clear, “because I dare.” (Conquest of Granada, Part 2, sig. N2) They lived not by virtue, in any conventional sense, but by their pride. They conformed only to their own most extravagant conceptions of individual power, to what Corneille and other French writers termed la gloire , and like the Cornelian heroes, they sought not approval but admiration” (162). But Dryden takes a slight turn in this kind of conceptualization of the hero while writing Aureng-Zebe. “In Morat’s case even the antinomy of love and honor itself begins to be sapped at its roots, for he gives up an honor which, though corrupted, still bears the marks of the old heroic grandeur; and he gives it up for love. This is the first time in all of Dryden’s drama that love and honor constitute a real antithesis, and the victory of love in this context spells the end of the heroic play” (Kirsch 167).

Dryden had gradually begun to be dissatisfied with extravaganza of heroic plays. He was satirized by Rochester and his heroic style was also mocked in The Rehearsal (1671), a burlesque play by Buckingham. Dryden attempted writing in blank verse first in All for Love, or The World Well Lost (1678). This is a rewriting of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra . Dryden has mellowed down heroic extravaganza by this time. Everett H. Emerson, Harold E. Davis and Ira Johnson in their essay, “Intention and Achievement in All for Love” have argued that “The theme of All for Love is the conflict of reason and honor with passion in the form of illicit love. From the preface it seems that Dryden wished to show how Antony, torn between these two, chooses unreasonable, passionate love and is consequently punished for his denial of reason” (84).

Verse Satires

By the year 1681, Dryden turned towards writing his most popular and well known political verse satires. Absalom and Achitophel (1681) contributed to the public debate of the time in the form of verse satire. Adhering to his allegiance for Charles II and a legitimized and settled government, he countered the Whig plot of excluding Charles II’s heir and brother James from succession to the throne on the ground that he was a Roman catholic and replacing Charles’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth to assert his claims. Protestant Whig agitation in favour of Duke of Monmouth was led by the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Duke of Buckingham. Dryden capitalized on the biblical story of the rebellion of Absalom against his father King David and applied to the contemporary events. Charles II is compared to King David, Monmouth is represented as Absalom, the evil Counselor Achitophel is here Shaftesbury and Buckingham as Zimri. Dryden appropriated the Old Testament story to establish sacred truth in the whole political event. This kind of revolt is also parallel to Adam’s revolt against God as a consequence of his surrender to temptations of Devil. Dryden elevated the poignancy of the satire by bringing parallels between divine and royal personages. In Dryden’s hand a political satire like Absalom and Achitophel banking on the temporal theme of party politics became a poetic and universal piece of art. Moreover, Dryden raised the political satire from its usual plane of coarseness to the epical grandeur by incorporating the medium of allegory.

It is often claimed that when Shaftesbury was brought before the Grand Jury for his conspiracy against the monarch, Dryden was asked, probably by the King himself, to write a poem in opposition to the flood of pamphlets favoring the Whig side. The picture Dryden presents in the poem is then official side of the scenario. The political intention of the poem is clear when the concluding speech from the throne presents the constitutional position to the readers very artfully:

Would they impose an heir upon the throne?

Let Sanhedrins be taught to give their own.

A King’s at least a part of government,

And mine as requisite as their consent;

Without my leave a future king to choose,

Infers a right the present to depose…

The law shall still direct my peaceful sway,

And the same law teach rebels to obey:

Votes shall no more established power control-

Such votes as make a part exceed the whole:…( Absalom and Achitophel 975-980,991-994)

It is also interesting to note that the King’s enemies are represented in an unfavorable light and the Royal party is sympathetically portrayed. The king is portrayed as a benign figure who is being harmed by some mischievous subjects and he is determined to protect his faithful followers. His justification for having a bastard son is also presented very tactfully:

In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,

Before polygamy was made a sin;

When man on many multiplied his kind,

Ere one to one was cursedly confined;

When nature prompted, and no law denied

Promiscuous use of concubine and bride;

Then Israel’s monarch after heaven’s own heart,

His vigorous warmth did variously impart

To wives and slaves; and, wide as his command,

Scattered his maker’s image through the land. ( Absalom and Achitophel 1-10)

Some critics would also argue that Dryden is here defending the King’s sexual promiscuity but with an ironical tone. Dryden’s argumentative movement in the satire taking cues from Biblical sources is characteristic of his poetic art. Dryden is quite successful in elevating the local issues into a universal satire. Absalom and Achitophel is then sprinkled with mixed traditions-part history and propaganda, part satire, part heroic and part eulogy.

A trail of satires followed over this incident. When Shaftesbury was acquitted from the charge of high treason, the Whigs struck a medal to celebrate the victory. This gave Dryden impetus to write his next satire, The Medal (1682) which was a savage attack on Shaftesbury, “where the couplets lash and sting” (Daiches 567):

But thou, the pander of the people’s hearts

(O crooked soul and serpentine in arts!)

Whose blandishments a loyal land have whored,

And broke the bonds she plighted to her lord,…(Qtd in Daiches 567)

This poem again provoked a spate of counter-attacks of which Thomas Shadwell’s The Medal of John Bayes was the sharpest. Dryden retaliated with his next satire, MacFlecknoe (1682). Dryden here lampoons his literary rival and arch-enemy, Thomas Shadwell in a mock-heroic manner. The ‘Succession of the State’ is a common theme in both Absalom and Achitophel and MacFlecknoe . But while the monarchy in the first one was the real world of kingship, here it is it is the monarchy of bad poetry and nonsense literature. “Alan Roper locates the use of this analogy ‘between affairs in the kingdom of letters and affairs in the kingdom of England’ to a humanistic concept arising in an old tradition of the commonwealth of poets and the republic of letters. Thus the ‘vocabulary of politics provide[s] a rich source of metaphor for literary discussion’, especially in a period of such political debate” (Grover xxx). The aged Richard Flecknoe, a Catholic priest and a dull writer, has long ruled the literary Empire of absolute nonsense. Seeking a successor, Flecknoe chooses the perfect heir, the playwright Shadwell:

Sh- alone my perfect image bears,

Mature in dullness from his tender years:

Sh-alone, of all my sons, is he

Who stands confirm’d in full stupidity.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,

But Sh-never deviates into sense…. ( MacFlecknoe 15-20)

Drawing allusions from classical, Christian, literary and historical sources, Dryden shatters Shadwell’s image. As Ascanius was Rome’s other hope, Shadwell is the hope of the empire of dullness. As Hannibal swore eternal enmity with Rome, similarly Shadwell waged eternal war against wit. While Greek musician, Arion was saved by dolphins in the sea with his celestial music, Shadwell’s monstrous playing of flutes attracted only puny fishes. Just as Elijah’s mantle falling on Elisha gave him prophetic bliss, so the mantle of Flecknoe shrouding Shadwell, bestowed on him twice the stupidity of Flecknoe. Whereas Eijah ascends to heaven by a whirlwind, Flecknoe’s descent produces a ‘subterranean’ wind implying scatological humour. Every heroic couplet draws on a pattern of inflation and deflation to bring out Shadwell’s stupidity. Dryden imagines a grotesque coronation ceremony in which Shadwell takes over the charge of the kingdom of nonsense. Shadwell holds ‘potent ale’ instead of ‘Ball’ and in his other hand Flecknoe’s “Love’s Kingdom” instead of the Sceptre.

While the ball and the scepter might have represented power and authority and while potent ball might have procreated, he has in his hand ‘potent ale’ which causes sleep and produces neither offspring nor literature. The coronation ceremony is shifted to a location known as Grub Street associated with poor poets and publishers, hack writers, prostitutes, poor actors and asylums. Instead of Persian carpet the path to the throne was covered with torn and unsold works of worthless writers including Shadwell’s own works. Dryden here portrays Shadwell as the ultimate epitome of bad poetry. Shadwell is the great monarch of thoughtless majesty who never deviates into sense and whose rationality is fogged by foolishness. Dryden makes Shadwell’s existence a complete non-entity in this mock-heroic satire. Dryden through his satire has created a history of inferior literature and geography of folly. The poem moves from a personal attack on Shadwell to a prototype of an absolute dullness and barrenness. By associating Shadwell’s lineage to Norwich and Newcastle, both of which are peripheral parts of England and also ascribing his heredity to Flecnoe, a poet from Ireland and finally measuring Shadwell’s kingdom till Barbadoes, a distant uncivilized colonized territory, Dryden is constructing a powerful binary between the centre and the periphery; between himself and his point of attack; between high culture and popular culture.

Dryden’s Religious Polemic

Dryden also wrote two poems with contradictory approach involving theological discussion. In 1682 he wrote Religio Laici or A Layman’s Faith: A Poem defending king’s religion in Anglican terms. According to William Myers, this poem negotiates “between the Church as an institution, the Bible as an inspiration, and reason and grace as mutually supporting divine gifts” (104). This poem favors Christian religion over any belief in Deism and emphasizes the primary importance of the Bible as a guide to salvation. His another theological poem, The Hind and the Panther (1687) was written under very different circumstances and a changed faith. When James II acceded to the throne after Charles II’s death, he supported Catholicism and marginalized the Anglicans. Dryden like many others became Roman Catholic sometime in 1685 or 1686. “This act has been regarded as gross time-serving, and it has been defended as a natural development of Dryden’s earlier quest for “unsuspected ancients” and an “omniscient” or infallible church” (Baugh 728).

It is undisputed that he remained a devout Catholic till his death and stuck to his faith in William III’s reign, a time of anti-Catholicism at the cost of his material disadvantages. Dryden writes The Hind and the Panther in the mode of allegorical beast fable justifying his way into Catholicism. The Milk-white Hind symbolizes the Roman Church; the Panther is the Anglican Church and other dissenting sects are also in the form of animals. The first part presents discursive reflections on the problems faced by these allegorical persons. “The Lion (the King) commands the fiercer beasts to allow the timid Hind to approach the watering place-an allegory of the recent Declaration of Indulgence (April, 1687)” and thereafter the Hind’s timidity lessens (Baugh 728). The second part is a polemical dialogue between the Hind and the Panther representing the views of the two different sects. In Part Three of the poem, “the Panther relates the story of the Swallows who were destroyed because they followed the ill counsels of the Martins (the extremists in the Roman clergy, whose influence on James II Dryden perhaps feared), and the Hind retorts with the fable of the Buzzard (Bishop Burnet), which shows the savageness of the extreme Anglican party” (Baugh 728).

Dryden’s Lyrics

Dryden was also a lyric poet of considerable ability. Some of his famous odes include To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew , On the Death of Mr Henry Purcell , Song for St Cecilia’s Day , Alexander’s Feast . Some of these lyrical odes were also set to music.

Dryden’s Art of Translations

With the 1688 revolution, Dryden’s Poet Laureateship ended and he devoted himself primarily on translations of Juvenal, Horace, Virgil, Plutarch, Ovid and others. In Sylvae , he attempted Lucretius, Theocritus and some small pieces of Horace. While commenting upon Dryden’s translation skill, A.C. Baugh writes, “He was in all this drudgery industrious, conscientious, and, thanks to long practice, usually apt, elegant, vigorous, and spirited in his renditions” (731).

Dryden’s Contribution to Literary Criticism:

The masterpiece in Dryden’s oeuvre of critical prose is the Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668). It is written as a debate on drama voiced by four speakers, Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander. “In form it is a Ciceronian dialogue” (Baugh 716). The four speakers identified as Dryden’s contemporaries present diverse points of view. The first speaker, Crites (Greek for “judge” or “critic”) defends the ancients; Eugenius (meaning well-born) defends the superiority of contemporary English drama; Lisideius prefers French drama to English and glorifies Elizabethan drama to that of the early Restoration period; and Neander (“new man”), who most nearly is Dryden himself defends the English as opposed to the French and defends the use of rhyme in plays. For Dryden, rhyme is more natural and effective than blank verse in serious plays, where the subjects and characters are great.

The essay was occasioned by a public dispute with Sir Robert Howard over the use of rhyme in drama. This essay is a also critical intervention in the debate between the claims of the ancient authority and exigencies of the modern writer. As Lisideius defines a play as “A just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind” (36).This is a clear divergence from classical model as Aristotle said nothing about “passions and humours” and there was no point of “delighting” the audience. While defending the excellence of English drama over the French drama Neander or Dryden comments that a play should be “lively imitation of nature” (68) but the French drama’s aesthetics lies in “the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, because not animated with the soul of poesy, which is imitation of humour and passions” (68). Dryden also provides a favorable account of English dramatic tradition in the hands of Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Shakespeare. Dryden’s discourses on classical “unities”, classical distinction between various genres, on satires and his ideas of modernity are scattered in the prefaces and epilogues of most of his writings ranging from The Conquest of Granada to The Spanish Friar .

Dryden belonged to an age which was troubled with controversies and different kind of factions. Dryden’s lifelong involvement with literature and culture of the period made him qualified to comment upon the general state of the arts and letters of the time as well as on the contemporary historical conditions. His long literary life is a commentary on his time-a time of class, party, faction. He was scorned by several of his contemporaries. His reply to them sharpened into brilliant satires. He changed allegiances again and again but this fluctuation made him skilled to air his voice from different approaches and formed diverse polemics. Dr. Johnson’s comment aptly evaluates Dryden’s literary contributions : “What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus, may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry embellished by Dryden, ‘lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit,’ he found it brick, and he left it marble”(155). Dryden lived through an age when monarchical succession had twice been broken and restored and therefore Dryden’s literary output demands a critical engagement with the aesthetics and politics of the Restoration period in England.

Baugh, Albert C, et al. A Literary History of England . London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 2003. Print.
Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature . Vol.II. New Delhi: Random House India, 2007. Print.
Dryden, John. “Defense of An Essay of Dramatic Poesy. ” Essays of John Dryden . Ed. W.P.Ker. Vol. I. New York: Russell and Russell, 1961.Print.
Emerson, E.H.,et al. “ Intention and Achievement in All for Love .” College English 17.2 (Nov., 1955): 84-87.Web. JSTOR.15 Oct 2017.
Grover,Madhu, ed. MacFlecknoe . By John Dryden. Delhi: Worldview, 2008. Print.
Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the Poets . Ed. Roger Lonsdale. Vol II. New York: OUP, 2006.Print.
Kirsch, A.C. “The Significance of Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe.” ELH 29.2 (Jun., 1962): 160-174. Web. JSTOR.15 Oct 2017.
Walker, Keith , ed. John Dryden: The Major Works . New York: OUP, 2003. Print.

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John Dryden, Restoration, and Neoclassicism: Samples of Prescriptive Criticism in English Literature

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Literary criticism implies the intellectual capacity to evaluate and understand the literary text, the analysis of particular works being the main aim of literary criticism, but, though achieved by most of the critics prior to the twentieth century, in English background criticism has started with some purposes which are alien to the nature of critical act. For instance, Sydney defends, Dryden prescribes, Pope reflects and prescribes, Fielding introduces a new genre and Wordsworth a new type of poetry, etc. English criticism during the neoclassical period was a complex and multi-voiced phenomenon, represented by a large number of critics and writer-critics who developed a reflexive but above all normative and prescriptive critical discourse. John Dryden and his Of Dramatic Poesie, An Essay would better show the condition of English criticism in Restoration. The first half of the eighteenth century was dominated by the neoclassical ideas expressed by Alexander Pope in An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man; the second half of the century was governed by the personality of Dr Samuel Johnson and his influential Lives of the Poets and Dictionary of the English Language. The most prescriptive critical voice in English literature belonging to the neoclassical period is that of John Dryden, as to be equalled perhaps only by Alexander Pope. To reveal the essence of prescriptive criticism as explaining and giving rules as well as showing the direction for literary production with regards to the critical discourse of Dryden and that of Pope represents the purpose of this study.

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