A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
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We need do no more than mention two or three very bad adaptations <strong>of</strong> plays<br />
<strong>of</strong> Shakspere to the Restoration taste in which Dryden had a hand; but his<br />
most enduring dramatic work is his 'All for Love, or the World Well Lost,'<br />
where he treats without direct imitation, though in conscious rivalry, the<br />
story which Shakspere used in 'Antony and Cleopatra.' The two plays afford<br />
an excellent illustration <strong>of</strong> the contrast between the spirits <strong>of</strong> their<br />
periods. Dryden's undoubtedly has much force and real feeling; but he<br />
follows to a large extent the artificial rules <strong>of</strong> the pseudo-classical<br />
French tragedies and critics. He observes the 'three unities' with<br />
considerable closeness, and he complicates the love-action with new<br />
elements <strong>of</strong> Restoration jealousy and questions <strong>of</strong> formal honor. Altogether,<br />
the twentieth century reader finds in 'All for Love' a strong and skilful<br />
play, ranking, nevertheless, with its somewhat formal rhetoric and<br />
conventional atmosphere, far below Shakspere's less regular but<br />
magnificently emotional and imaginative masterpiece.<br />
A word must be added about the form <strong>of</strong> Dryden's plays. In his comedies and<br />
in comic portions <strong>of</strong> the others he, like other <strong>English</strong> dramatists, uses<br />
prose, for its suggestion <strong>of</strong> every-day reality. In plays <strong>of</strong> serious tone he<br />
<strong>of</strong>ten turns to blank verse, and this is the meter <strong>of</strong> 'All for Love.' But<br />
early in his dramatic career he, almost contemporaneously with other<br />
dramatists, introduced the rimed couplet, especially in his heroic plays.<br />
The innovation was due in part to the influence <strong>of</strong> contemporary French<br />
tragedy, whose riming Alexandrine couplet is very similar in effect to the<br />
<strong>English</strong> couplet. About the suitability <strong>of</strong> the <strong>English</strong> couplet to the drama<br />
there has always been difference <strong>of</strong> critical opinion; but most <strong>English</strong><br />
readers feel that it too greatly interrupts the flow <strong>of</strong> the speeches and is<br />
not capable <strong>of</strong> the dignity and power <strong>of</strong> blank verse. Dryden himself, at any<br />
rate, finally grew tired <strong>of</strong> it and returned to blank verse.<br />
Dryden's work in other forms <strong>of</strong> verse, also, is <strong>of</strong> high quality. In his<br />
dramas he inserted songs whose lyric sweetness is reminiscent <strong>of</strong> the<br />
similar songs <strong>of</strong> Fletcher. Early in his career he composed (in pentameter<br />
quatrains <strong>of</strong> alternate rime, like Gray's 'Elegy') 'Annus Mirabilis' (The<br />
Wonderful Year--namely 1666), a long and vigorous though far from faultless<br />
narrative <strong>of</strong> the war with the Dutch and <strong>of</strong> the Great Fire <strong>of</strong> London. More<br />
important are the three odes in the 'irregular Pindaric' form introduced by<br />
Cowley. The first, that to Mrs. (i. e., Miss) Anne Killigrew, one <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Queen's maids <strong>of</strong> honor, is full, thanks to Cowley's example, <strong>of</strong><br />
'metaphysical' conceits and science. The two later ones, 'Alexander's<br />
Feast' and the 'Song for St. Cecilia's Day,' both written for a musical<br />
society's annual festival in honor <strong>of</strong> the patron saint <strong>of</strong> their art, are<br />
finely spirited and among the most striking, though not most delicate,<br />
examples <strong>of</strong> onomatopoeia in all poetry.<br />
Dryden's prose, only less important than his verse, is mostly in the form<br />
<strong>of</strong> long critical essays, virtually the first in <strong>English</strong>, which are prefixed<br />
to many <strong>of</strong> his plays and poems. In them, following French example, he<br />
discusses fundamental questions <strong>of</strong> poetic art or <strong>of</strong> general esthetics. His<br />
opinions are judicious; independent, so far as the despotic authority <strong>of</strong><br />
the French critics permitted, at least honest; and interesting. Most<br />
important, perhaps, is his attitude toward the French pseudo-classical<br />
formulas. He accepted French theory even in details which we now know to be<br />
absurd--agreed, for instance, that even Homer wrote to enforce an abstract<br />
moral (namely that discord destroys a state). In the field <strong>of</strong> his main<br />
interest, further, his reason was persuaded by the pseudo-classical<br />
arguments that <strong>English</strong> (Elizabethan) tragedy, with its violent contrasts<br />
and irregularity, was theoretically wrong. Nevertheless his greatness