Absalom and Achitophel E-Book

John Dryden

• Herausgeber: Jester House Publishing
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 94

Beschreibung

Absalom and Achitophel is a landmark poetic political satire by John Dryden. The poem exists in two parts. The first part, of 1681, is undoubtedly by Dryden. The second part, of 1682, was written by another hand, most likely Nahum Tate, except for a few passages—including attacks on Thomas Shadwell and Elkanah Settle, expressed as Og and Doeg—that Dryden wrote himself. The poem is an allegory that uses the story of the rebellion of Absalom against King David as the basis for discussion of the background to the Monmouth Rebellion (1685), the Popish Plot (1678) and the Exclusion Crisis.

Leseprobe

Absalom and Achitophel

John Dryden

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL

First edition. July 8, 2014.

Copyright © 2014 John Dryden.

ISBN: 978-1498918701

Written by John Dryden.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Biography

To the Reader.

Part I.

Part II.

To the Reader.

A Key to Both Parts of Absalom and Achitophel.

Biography

John Dryden was a poet, literary critic and English playwright who dominated the literary life in England during the Restoration.

Dryden was born in the village of Aldwincle, near Oundle in Northamptonshire. He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden. In 1650 Dryden went to Trinity College, Cambridge where he would experience a return to the religious and political ethos of his childhood. Arriving in London during The Protectorate, Dryden got work with the Secretary of State Cromwell, John Thurloe. Shortly after he published his first important poem, Heroique Stanzas (1658), an elegy on the death of Cromwell, who is cautious and prudent in its emotional display. In 1660 Dryden celebrated the Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux, one authentic monarchical panegyric. In this work the interregnum is illustrated as a period of anarchy, and Carlos is seen as the restorer of peace and order.

As a critic and translator was essential to make publicly accessible English reader literary works in classical languages. Dryden died in 1700 and is buried in the Westminster Abbey. His poetry, patriotic, religious, and satirical, popularized the type of verse that will be the preferred Hendecasyllable of the eighteenth century, it was taken as a model by poets such as Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson.

To the Reader.

It is not my intention to make an apology for my poem: some will think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. The design I am sure is honest: but he who draws his pen for one party, must expect to make enemies of the other. For wit and fool are consequence of Whig and Tory; and every man is a knave or an ass to the contrary side. There is a treasury of merits in the Fanatic church, as well as in the Popish; and a pennyworth to be had of saintship, honesty, and poetry, for the lewd, the factious, and the blockheads: but the longest chapter in Deuteronomy has not curses enough for an Anti–Bromingham. My comfort is, their manifest prejudice to my cause will render their judgment of less authority against me. Yet if a poem have genius, it will force its own reception in the world. For there is a sweetness in good verse, which tickles even while it hurts; and no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him against his will. The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless extorted. But I can be satisfied on more easy terms: if I happen to please the more moderate sort, I shall be sure of an honest party, and, in all probability, of the best judges; for the least concerned are commonly the least corrupt. And I confess I have laid in for those, by rebating the satire (where justice would allow it), from carrying too sharp an edge. They who can criticise so weakly as to imagine I have done my worst, may be convinced, at their own cost, that I can write severely, with more ease than I can gently. I have but laughed at some men’s follies, when I could have declaimed against their vices; and other men’s virtues I have commended, as freely as I have taxed their crimes. And now, if you are a malicious reader, I expect you should return upon me that I affect to be thought more impartial than I am. But if men are not to be judged by their professions, God forgive you Commonwealth’s-men for professing so plausibly for the government. You cannot be so unconscionable as to charge me for not subscribing my name; for that would reflect too grossly upon your own party, who never dare, though they have the advantage of a jury to secure them. If you like not my poem, the fault may possibly be in my writing (though it is hard for an author to judge against himself); but more probably it is in your morals, which cannot bear the truth of it. The violent on both sides will condemn the character of Absalom, as either too favourably or too hardly drawn. But they are not the violent whom I desire to please. The fault on the right hand is to extenuate, palliate, and indulge; and to confess freely, I have endeavoured to commit it. Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have a greater for his heroic virtues; and David himself could not be more tender of the young man’s life, than I would be of his reputation. But since the most excellent natures are always the most easy, and, as being such, are the soonest perverted by ill counsels, especially when baited with fame and glory; it is no more a wonder that he withstood not the temptations of Achitophel, than it was for Adam not to have resisted the two devils, the serpent and the woman. The conclusion of the story I purposely forbore to prosecute, because I could not obtain from myself to show Absalom unfortunate. The frame of it was cut out but for a picture to the waist; and if the draught be so far true, it is as much as I designed.

Were I the inventor, who am only the historian, I should certainly conclude the piece with the reconcilement of Absalom to David. And who knows but this may come to pass? Things were not brought to an extremity where I left the story: there seems yet to be room left for a composure; hereafter there may be only for pity. I have not so much as an uncharitable wish against Achitophel, but am content to be accused of a good-natured error, and to hope with Origen, that the devil himself may at last be saved. For which reason, in this poem, he is neither brought to set his house in order, nor to dispose of his person afterwards as he in wisdom shall think fit. God is infinitely merciful; and his vicegerent is only not so, because he is not infinite.

The true end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction. And he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender, than the physician to the patient, when he prescribes harsh remedies to an inveterate disease; for those are only in order to prevent the chirurgeon’s work of an Ense rescindendum, which I wish not to my very enemies. To conclude all; if the body politic have any analogy to the natural, in my weak judgment, an act of oblivion were as necessary in a hot distempered state, as an opiate would be in a raging fever.

1 See ‘Life’ for explanation for circumstances; and the key at the close of the poem, for the real names of this satire.

Part I.

— Si propiùs stes

Te capiet magis —

In pious times, ere priestcraft 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,

Scatter’d his Maker’s image through the land. 10

Michal, of royal blood, the crown did wear;

A soil ungrateful to the tiller’s care:

Not so the rest; for several mothers bore

To god-like David several sons before.

But since like slaves his bed they did ascend,

No true succession could their seed attend.

Of all the numerous progeny was none

So beautiful, so brave, as Absalom:

Whether inspired by some diviner lust,

His father got him with a greater gust; 20

Or that his conscious destiny made way,

By manly beauty to imperial sway.

Early in foreign fields he won renown,

With kings and states allied to Israel’s crown:

In peace the thoughts of war he could remove,

And seem’d as he were only born for love.

Whate’er he did, was done with so much ease,

In him alone ’twas natural to please:

His motions all accompanied with grace;

And Paradise was open’d in his face. 30

With secret joy indulgent David view’d

His youthful image in his son renew’d:

To all his wishes nothing he denied;

And made the charming Annabell2 his bride.

What faults he had (for who from faults is free?)

His father could not, or he would not see.

Some warm excesses which the law forbore,

Were construed youth that purged by boiling o’er;

And Amnon’s murder by a specious name,

Was call’d a just revenge for injured fame. 40

Thus praised and loved, the noble youth remain’d,

While David undisturb’d in Sion reign’d.

But life can never be sincerely blest:

Heaven punishes the bad, and proves the best.

The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murmuring race,

As ever tried the extent and stretch of grace;

God’s pamper’d people, whom, debauch’d with ease,

No king could govern, nor no god could please;

(Gods they had tried of every shape and size,

That god-smiths could produce, or priests devise): 50

These Adam-wits,3 too fortunately free,

Began to dream they wanted liberty;

And when no rule, no precedent was found,

Of men by laws less circumscribed and bound;

They led their wild desires to woods and caves,

And thought that all but savages were slaves.

They who, when Saul was dead, without a blow,

Made foolish Ishbosheth the crown forego;

Who banish’d David did from Hebron bring,

And with a general shout proclaim’d him king: 60

Those very Jews, who, at their very best,

Their humour more than loyalty express’d,

Now wonder’d why so long they had obey’d

An idol monarch, which their hands had made;

Thought they might ruin him they could create,

Or melt him to that golden calf — a state.

But these were random bolts: no form’d design,

Nor interest made the factious crowd to join:

The sober part of Israel, free from stain,

Well knew the value of a peaceful reign; 70

And, looking backward with a wise affright,

Saw seams of wounds dishonest to the sight:

In contemplation of whose ugly scars,

They cursed the memory of civil wars.

The moderate sort of men thus qualified,

Inclined the balance to the better side;

And David’s mildness managed it so well,

The bad found no occasion to rebel.

But when to sin our biass’d nature leans,

The careful devil is still at hand with means; 80

And providently pimps for ill desires:

The good old cause revived a plot requires.

Plots, true or false, are necessary things,

To raise up commonwealths, and ruin kings.

The inhabitants of old Jerusalem