Unit II The Seventeenth Century I--John Dryden

Unit II The Seventeenth Century I: Peacham, Drayton, Reynolds, Milton (Blamires, pp. 68-216)

Unit II The Seventeenth Century I: Peacham, Drayton, Reynolds, Milton (Blamires, pp. 68-216)

JOHN DRYDEN

(1631-1700)

I. His Critical Works

The following are the critical works of Dryden: -

1.An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

2.The Apology for Heroic Poetry.

3.The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy.

4.Preface to the Fables.

Dryden has also spoken about the nature and functions of poetry.

II. The Nature of Poetry.

 

Dryden upholds Aristotle’s definition that poetry is imitation. Poetry imitates:-

a.what was or is (facts past or present).

b.what is said or thought to be (popular beliefs and superstitions).

c.what ought to be (things in their ideal form).

  Dryden defends Shakespeare’s use of the supernatural when he says that poetry imitates ‘what is said or thought to be’.

II. The Function of Poetry.

Plato wanted poetry to instruct, Aristotle to delight, Horace to do both, and Longinus to transport. Dryden was familiar with all these definitions. He believed that the final end of poetry was delight and transport rather than instruction. He said that the poet is neither a teacher nor an imitator but a creator. He produces something new with life or nature as raw material. The poet’s fancy breathes new life into the shapeless material from life or nature.

III. Dryden also speaks about the different types of poetry.

a.Dramatic Poetry

Of the forms of poetry, drama claimed most of Dryden’s attention. During his period the French drama was at its best. In the French plays the unities were carefully observed. The English stage appeared inferior to the French. It was to establish the greatness of the English drama that Dryden wrote the Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Dryden’s aim in the book was to ‘vindicate the honour of our English writers’. Dryden also defended the practice of the English dramatists who mixed tragic and comic elements. “In nature joy and pain lie in close proximity to each other; and joy appears all the greater when it succeeds pain”. Therefore, Dryden believed that there is nothing wrong in mixing the tragic and the comic.

Dryden also defended the introduction of unpalatable and incredible scenes, such as battles and deaths on the stage. Classical French plays avoided this. Dryden saw nothing wrong in introducing battles, duels, and the like on the stage.

Dryden also did not accept the interpretation of the unities: that the plot should be simple, the time of action twenty-four hours, and the place the same throughout. In the first place, the unity of place is nowhere mentioned in Aristotle and even the Latin dramatist Terence violates the unity of time. It was the French who made them principles of the stage. There is logic in the unity of action which requires plot to be a unified whole. But Dryden believed that under plots could be introduced in the drama. He said that because of the lack of the subplot the French drama suffered bareness.

About the unity of time Dryden said that if the action of twenty-four hours could be represented in three hours, there was nothing wrong in increasing the plot-time a little more to allow for greater maturity of the plot. Similarly, the scene of the play need not be confined to one place. If the audience could imagine it to be a garden in the first act, it could also imagine it to be a camp in the next.  Ben Jonson himself removed the same scene from Rome into Tuscany in the same act, and from thence return to Rome in the next scene. Dryden considered the unities of time and place to be very rigorous. They left little scope for development of the plot and character.

b. TRAGEDY

Dryden’s definition of tragedy was not different from that of Aristotle. He defined it as “ an imitation of one, entire, great and probable action; not told but represented; which by moving in us fear and pity” purged those emotions from our minds.

Dryden merely followed Aristotle and Horace in his remarks on the tragic hero and the other characters in the tragedy. They had to unfold themselves in action and speech and to be true to life according to their sex, age and rank. The tragic hero must be able to excite fear and pity. Dryden had no use for the chorus; he found it only an obstacle. Dryden believed that the dramatist had to take into consideration his audience.

c.COMEDY

Dryden did not have much to say on comedy. Following Aristotle, he said that it was “ a representation of human life in inferior persons and low subjects”. The aim of comedy was to laugh people into good behaviour. Dryden believed that comedy was not aimed to punish the evil-doers. He stated that its aim is not to instruct but to delight. He wanted English comedy to be more refined than it was. Ben Jonson had believed in humours, but Dryden believed in the sheer “imitation of folly”. Dryden wanted refined laughter in the comedies and he asserted that there were few equals for Beaumont and Fletcher. Judgment was needed in wit and a comedy that purely depended on wit would defeat its own end.

d.EPIC

Dryden considered the epic to be superior to tragedy. “ What virtue is there in a tragedy, which is not contained in an epic poem, where pride is humbled, virtue rewarded, and vice punished; and those more amply treated than the narrowness of the drama can admit”, said Dryden. He added that tragedy had to leave out much and so failed to make the same impression as the epic. The effects of tragedy were also so violent to be lasting. Its shorter limit is a great handicap for the tragedy. Dryden commented that Aristotle seemed to have the opinion that a mushroom was greater than a peach “because it shoots up in the compass of a night”. Regarding the visual appeal of the tragedy Dryden made a few comments: -

1.It was the actor’s work as much as the poet’s. The poet alone could not claim credit for that.

2.The stage was handicapped to show many things – big armies for instance – which the epic beautifully rendered in words.

3.People had leisure to digest what they read in epics but they missed many things of a play in the performance.

Dryden again disagreed with Aristotle in insisting on a moral in the epic. ‘ For the moral was the first business of the poet, as being the ground work of his instruction’. The thoughts and words were the last parts, which gave beauty and colouring to the piece.

e. SATIRE

Dryden considered satire as a type of heroic poetry. He said that it should have a unity of design, confining itself to one subject. In other words, the poet should choose one vice or folly for his target. For satire Dryden preferred the heroic couplet. It allowed stateliness of expression and smoothness of numbers.

IV. DRYDEN’S VIEWS ON CRITICISM.

Dryden thought that the business of criticism is marked by catholicity of temper. He never believed in strict rules for literature. Dryden said that a writer wrote for his age and people, of which he himself was the product. Therefore he could not mechanically obey the rules of another country or age.

Yet Dryden valued the rules of Aristotle He also advocated a close study of the ancient models. He never wanted to imitate the rules blindly. But he wanted to recapture their magic, to treat them as a ‘torch to enlighten our passage’. The Elizabethans also treated the rules in a similar fashion. That is why Dryden liked the Elizabethans. While he merely admired Ben Jonson, he loved Shakespeare. He liked Shakespeare because in Shakespeare it was delight and not instruction that was important.

V. DRYDEN AS A CRITIC

Dr. Johnson considered Dryden as the father of English criticism as ‘the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition’. Before him there was occasional utterances on the critical art, as those of Sidney and Ben Jonson, and little of ‘critic-learning’ (a phrase used by Pope). There had been great writers in England but no great critic. As Dr. Johnson put it, “audiences applauded by instinct, and poets perhaps often pleased by chance”. With Dryden began a regular era of criticism. He showed the way to his countrymen to be as great critics as they had been poets – to know what makes for greatness in literature.

Dryden’s criticism is partly a restatement of the views of Aristotle, partly of French neo-classicism and partly of Longinus. From Aristotle he learnt a respect for rules. French neo-classicism taught him to prefer epic for tragedy. To Longinus he owed a respect for his own judgment. It is this last influence that made him impatient of rules. His tirade against the unities of time and place is of that nature.

But Dryden’s judgment is sometimes affected by what George Watson calls ‘cultural nationalism’ or a partiality for his own countrymen. Watson points out a glaring example from Essay of Dramatic Poesy, where “Dryden is out to prove that any English play is worth any two by a Frenchman”. But such blemishes are too few. Dryden’s criticism surpasses everything in length and depth.

Notes for MPhil students of Bharathiar University prepared by Dr. S. Sreekumar