Dryden's Exemplary Drama E-Book

Richard Seltzer

• Herausgeber: Seltzer Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 182

Beschreibung

Study of Dryden's "heroic" plays, which were immensely popular in his day (the Restoration) but are now very difficult to appreciate. Examining the meaning of the characters and their typical verbiage in the context of Dryden's time, the author seeks insight into the broader issue of changes in literary taste. He also touches on why Dryden and his contemporaries found Shakespeare primitive and unreadable, and why they felt his plays needed to be rewritten.

Leseprobe

DRYDEN'S EXEMPLARY DRAMA BY RICHARD SELTZER

A Study of: The Indian Queen, The Conquest of Granada, Aureng-Zebe, All for Love, Oedipus, and Don Sebastian

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Published by Seltzer Books. seltzerbooks.com

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offering over 14,000 books

feedback welcome: [email protected]

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Preface   

Introduction   

The Indian Emperor or the Conquest of Mexico   

Almanzor and Almahide or the Conquest of Granada   

Aureng-Zebe   

The Changing Hero   

All for Love or The World Well Lost   

Oedipus   

Don Sebastian

Footnotes   

Other Critical Works Consulted

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Preface

     "Certain it is that Nature is the same, and Man is the same: He

loves, grieves, hates, envies, has the same affections and

passions in both places, and the same springs that give them

motion. What mov'd pity there will here also produce the same

effect." (Thomas Rymer, Tragedies of the Last Age)1

By "here" Rymer means England, 1678. By "there" he means Athens c. 400 B.C. His contention is that since the nature of man is constant, the emotional response that a work of art produces on a man is an absolute scale by which to judge the work. In other words, a play that moved audiences in 400 B.C. should "produce the same effect" in 1678 or 1969, for "Man is the same". Therefore, rules can be discovered for how to produce desired effects, rules that would apply at all places and all times. These rules could then be used as guides for artists and tools for the critic.

Rymer had to explain why the plays of Fletcher, about which he was primarily writing, were extremely popular in 1678 despite the fact that they did not follow Aristotle's rules. Rymer contended that it was not the plays as Fletcher wrote them that pleased audiences, but rather that they pleased "upon account of Machines, actors, Dancers, and circumstances which are merely accidental to the Tragedy." (Spingarn, II, 184).

An over-emphasis on the rules leads to absurdities of critical judgment, leads on away from the initial assumption that a play should be judged on the basis of the effects it produces. A poor playwright strictly following the rules can produce a poor play, and a Shakespeare breaking those same rules can produce a great play. From this at least two conclusions can be drawn:

   * Shakespeare wrote great plays despite the fact that he broke the

rules; but they would have been even better had he followed the rules.    * The greatness of his plays is due to an organic, rather than a formal

unity; their greatness would be impaired by any attempt to revise them

to make them follow formal rules.

Restoration dramatists and critics favored the first conclusion. Modern critics favor the second.

Except for that conclusion in favor of rules, many would now agree with Rhyme's assumptions. For over two hundred years, Dryden's dramas have not been popular. They fail to move audiences. The conclusion arrived at is that their ephemeral popularity, depended like many Broadway hits, on "Machines, actors, Dancers, and circumstances where are merely accidental to the Tragedy."

Dryden is quite frequently in agreement with Rymer. In his prefaces, he discusses how well he has adhered to the rules and where a rule is broken, he explains what beauty or delight has been gained at the rule's expense. His critical opinions were in continual flux: he broke the rules with greater audacity in his early plays than in his later ones. But he seems to have taken the rules into account as guidelines throughout his career. He revised The Tempest (1667) along with Davenant, and Antony and Cleopatra (1677) and Troilus and Cressida (1679) on his own, bringing them into greater accord with the rules. However, Dryden disagreed with one of Rymer's fundamental assumptions:

     21) And one reason of that success [of Rollo, A King and No King,

and The Maid's Tragedy in particular, and, in general, of plays

which depart from the rules] is, in my opinion, this, that

Shakespeare and Fletcher have written to the genius of the age

and nation in which they lived; for tho' nature, as he objects,

is the same in all places and reason too the same, yet the

climate, the age, the dispositions of the people to whom a poet

writes may be so different that what pleased the Greeks would not

satisfy an English audience.

22) And if they proceeded upon a foundation of truer reason to

please the Athenians than Shakespeare and Fletcher to please the

English, it only shows that the Athenians were a more judicious

people; but the poet's business is certainly to please the

audience. ("Heads to an Answer to Rymer", 1677)2

Dryden amended the rules to fit his conception of the tastes of his audience. In particular, he believed that the English of his day had a propensity for variety and he frequently sacrifices unities for variety. In 1678 between All for Love (1677) and Troilus and Cressida (1679), Dryden revised Oedipus (the play Aristotle used a the model tragedy), giving it greater variety.

This paper is in basic agreement with Dryden's notion of shifting tastes. Though the nature of man does not change, what man expects to find in a work of art does change. A work that does not operate in accord with the current conception of what is good literature will be considered bad literature until popular taste shifts again in its favor.

Metaphysical poetry went through a relatively recent resurrection, and it is conceivable that Dryden's drama may one day have similar good fortune.

But despite shifts in taste, the nature of man has remained constant within the range of written history. Therefore, if one can determine the contemporary assumptions on which Dryden's dramas are based, it should be possible to acquire a taste for these dramas.

We will try to identify those assumptions by considering criticisms and justifications of drama in Dryden's time, and the nature of the audience Dryden tried to please. Then we will consider in detail The Indian Emperor (1665), The Conquest of Granada (1670), Aureng-Zebe (1675), All for Love (1677), Oedipus (1678), and Don Sebastian (1689), focusing attention on their structure, trying to establish a basis for appreciating such works and judging their merit on their own terms.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------

     Perhaps the Parson stretch'd a point too far,

when with our Theatres he wag'd a War.

-- Epilogue to Vanbrugh's The Pilgrim, 17003

     He therefore that undertakes an Heroick Poem, which is to exhibit

a venerable and amiable Image of Heroick vertue, must not only be

the Poet, to place and connect, but also the Philosopher, to

furnish and square his matter, that is, to make both Body and

Soul, colour and shadow of his Poem out of his own Store: which

how well you have performed I am now considering.

-- Thomas Hobbes, "Answer to Davenant's Preface to Gondibert,

1650, in Spingarn, II, 60

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction

In the mid-seventeeth century, the assumptions on which heroic and tragic drama were based seem to have been shaped as a response to criticisms from science and religion. The differences with science were settled by a sort of treaty defining spheres of interest and activity. The differences with religion were never satisfactorily settled, drama allying itself with the Court as opposed to the Puritan part in self-defense.

In his History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (1667), Thomas Sprat outlined the purpose of the Society:

"... to make faithful Records, of all the Works of Nature, or

Art, which can come within their reach: that so the present Age,

and posterity, may be able to put a mark mark on the Errors,

which have been strengthened by long prescription: to restore the

Truths, that have lain neglected: to push on these, which are

already known, to more various uses: and to make a way more

passable, to what remains unreveal'd. This is the compass of

their Design. And to accomplish this, they have indeavor'd, to

separate the knowledge of Nature, from the colours of Rhetorick,

the devices of Fancy, or the delightful deceit of Fables." 4

In The Author's Apology for Heroic Poetry and Poetic License (1677), Dryden, who ws a charter member of the Society, was careful to distinguish between what is literally real and the world described in poetry (of which dramatic poetry is a subset):

"But how are poetical fictions, how are hippocentaurs and

chimeras, or how are angels and immaterial substances to be

imaged; which, some of them, are things quite out of nature;

others, such whereof we can have no notion? This is the last

refuge of our adversaries; and more than any of them have yet had

the wit to object against us. The answer is easy to the first

part of it; the fiction of some beings which are not in nature

(second notions, as the logicians call them) has been founded on

the conjunction of two natures, which have a real separate

being... And poets may be allowed the like liberty for describing

things which really exist not, if they are founded on popular

belief." (Ker, I 186-187) 5

In general, Dryden says of poetry:

     "You are not obliged, as in History, to a literal belief of what

the poet says; but you are pleased with the image, without being

cozened by the fiction." (Ker, I, 185)

In other words, poetry not only makes no pretense of literal reality, but also attempts "something more excellent." By this is not meant just reality artistically ordered, or events that though they never did happen could have happened. Reality is not just imitated in poetry, but rather is morally heightened. The poet is in the position of teacher rather than perceiver and recorder.  He not only indicates what "may" be done, but also "teaches... what ought to be done". What is essential is not the seeming reality of the event recorded, but rather the moral basis by which the poem is ordered.

William Prynne's Histriomastrix: or the Actor's Tragedie 6 (1633) is a compendium of Puritan arguments on the immorality of drama. This work seems to have had a dual purpose:

   * To awaken true Believers to the moral dangers of attending, or acting

in plays;    * To convince those in power that it is to the benefit of the State to

suppress drama, and if that should fail, to discredit a ruling power

that sanctioned drama.

He quoted Stephen Gosson's comment in The School of Abuse (1578):

     "As long as we know our selves to be flesh beholding those

examples in Theaters which are incident to flesh, we are taught

by other men's examples how to fall. And they that come honest to

a Play may depart infected." (pp. 360-361)

Later, Prynne himself said:

     "It is evident that by Saint Augustine's resolution: that

State-playes incurably vitiate and desperately corrupt, if not

subvert mens manners; and so bring ruine to the State that

suffers them... (p. 475)

Men "are taught by other mens examples," and the influence of the bad examples in drama are of such significance that "the State that suffers them" is brought to ruin. The theater audience is described as utterly depraved:

     What are they but the very filth, the crosse, the scumme of the

Societies and places where they live? the very Mothes, the Drones

and Cankerwormes of the Common-weale? the shame and blemish of

Religion? the most putred, scandalous, noxious, and degenerate

branches both of Church and State, which should be spued out, be

lopped off from both, had they their just demerits?" (p. 145)

This is Prynne's ideal conception of a theater audience; for if the State tolerates drama, only the most depraved should attend.

"... it is most evident: that it hath been alwayes a most

infamous thing for Kings and Emperours to act Playes or Masques

either in private or publike; or to sing, or dance upon a Stage

or theatre; or to delight in Playes and Actors." (p. 858)

Since Charles I and Henrietta Maria did in fact take part in Masques and "delight in Playes", Prynne's remarks were considered seditious. He was sent to the Tower and had part of his ears lopped off. 7

The Puritans, enemies of both Court and Stage, closed the theaters from 1642 to 1660. In exile in Paris, Davenant, playwright and author of the last of the Caroline masques, formulated a theory of the proper relation between Court and poetry, a theory which seems in direct response to criticisms like Prynne's.

Davenant quotes Plato's Republic:

     "If any Man, having ability to imitate what he pleases, imitate

in his Poem both good and evil, let him be reverenc'd as a sacred

and admirable, and pleasant Person; but be it likewise known, he

must have no place in our Common-wealth. And yet before his

banishment he allows him the honor of a Diadem, and sweet Odours

to anoint his head; and afterwards says: Let us make use of more

profitable, though more severe and less pleasant Poets, who can

imitate that which is for the honor and benefit of the

Common-wealth." (Preface to Gondibert, 1650, Spingarn, II, p. 52)

If man learns by example, then the examples in poetry should be primarily "good". The good examples of such a "more severe" poetry could be of great significance in service to the State. He spends the bulk of his essay examining the "Four chief aids of Government":

     "Thus we have first observ'd the Four chief aids of Government:

Religion, Armes, Policy, and Law, defectively apply'd, and then

we have found them weak by an emulous war amongst themselves: it

follows next we should introduce to strengthen those principal

aids (still making the people our direct object) some collateral

help, which I will safely presume to consist in Poesy."

(Spingarn, II, p. 44)

His high hopes are based on the limited appeal of this sort of writing, that it is directed specifically at a courtly audience.

     "I may now believe I have usefully taken from the Courts and

Camps the patterns of such as will be fit to be imitated by the

most necessary men; and the most necessary men are those who

become principall by prerogative of blood, which is seldom

unassisted with education, or by greatnesse of minde which in

exact definition is Vertue. The common crowd, of whom we are

hopelesse, we desert, being rather to be corrected by laws, where

precept is accompanied with punishment, then to be taught by

Poesy; for few have arriv'd at the skill of Orpheus or at his

good fortune, whom we may suppose to have met with extraordinary

Grecian Beasts, when so successfully he reclaim'd them with his

Harp. Nor is it needfull that Heroick Poesy should be levell'd to

the reach of Common men: for if the examples it presents prevail

upon their Chiefs, the delight of IMitation (which we hope we

have prov'd to be as effectuall to good as to evil) will rectify,

by the rules which those Chiefs establish of their own lives, the

lives of all that behold them; for the example of life doth as

much surpasse the force of Precept as Life doth exceed Death."

(Spingarn, II, p. 14)

Davenant agrees with Prynne as to the depravity of the "common crowd". Therefore, he argues, poetry should be addressed to the select few who are by education or "Vertue" capable of learning by poetic examples. Since these select few are in fact, he assumes, "those who become principall by prerogative of blood"; and since, by nature, the higher man is imitated by the lower, examples of "vertue" would be dispersed throughout society by the powerful examples of life provided by the Court. Since these same select few are at the same time the "most necessary men" in the state, directly addressing moral instruction at them is the most efficient method of improving the State. Since Courts are already the most morally elevated section of society, it is from "Courts and Camps" that the poet takes the "patterns" of his exemplars.

Hobbes, in his answer to Davenant's preface, characterizes "Court, City, and Country" in such a way that the social differences are also moral differences, with the Court as the most morally elevated section of society. He divides poetry into genres on the basis of which of these "three Regions of mankinde" serves the poet as pattern for his characters.

     "As Philosophers have divided the Universe, their subject, into

three Regions: Celestiall, Aeriall, and Terrestriall, so the

Poets (whose worke it is, by imitating humane life in delightful

and measur'd lines, to avert men from vice and incline them to

vertuous and honorable actions) have lodg'd themselves in the

three Regions of mankinde: Court, City, and Country,

correspondent in some proportion to those three Regions of the

World. For, there is in Princes and men of conspicuous power,

anciently called Heroes, a lustre and influence upon the rest of

men resembling that of the Heavens; and an insincereness,

inconstancy, and troublesome humor of those that dwell in

populous Cities, lie the mobility, blustring, and impurity of the

Aire; and a plainness, and though dull, yet a nutritive faculty

in rurall people, that endures a comparison wit the Earth they

labour.

     "From hence have proceeded three sorts of Poesy: Heroique,

Scommatique, and Pastorall. Every one of these is distinguished

again in the manner of Representation, which sometimes is

Narrative, wherein the Poet himself relateth, and sometimes

Dramatique, as when the persons are every one adorned and brought

upon the Theater to speak and act their own parts. There is

therefore neither more nor less than six sorts of Poesy. For the

Heroique Poem narrative, such as is yours [i.e., Davenant's

Gondibert] is called an Epique Poem. The Heroique Poem Dramatique

is Tragedy. The Scommatique Narrative is Satyre, Dramatique is

Comedy. The Pastorall narrative is called simply Pastorall,

anciently Bucolique; the same Dramatique, Pastorall Comedy. The

Figure therefore of an Epique Poem and of a Tragedy ought to be

the same, for they differ no more but in that they are pronounced

by one or many Persons." (Spingarn, II, p. 54-55)

Heroic poems and plays are to use Heroes of the Court, "Princes and men of conspicuous power" as patterns for their dramatic Heroes. These dramatic Heroes are in turn designed to delight and instruct the same group of Court Heroes who served as models.

In his dedication to the Siege of Rhodes Davenant sums up his effort, as a response to religious criticism, to ennoble drama:

     Dramatic poetry meets with the same persecution now, from such who

esteem themselves the most rein'd and civil, as it ever did from the

barbarous. And yet whilst those virtuous enemies deny Heroic Plays to

the gentry, they entertain the people with a seditious Farce of their

won counterfeit gravity. But I hope you will not be unwilling to

receive (in this poetical dress) neither the beieg'd nor the

besiegers, since they come without their vices: for as others have

purg'd the stage from corruptions of the art of the drama, so I have

endeavour'd to cleanse it from corruptions of manners; nor have I

wanted to care to render the ideas of greatness and virtue pleasing

and familiar." 8

In his essay "Of Heroique Playes" (1672), (the Preface to The Conquest of Granada), Dryden cites Davenant's Siege of Rhodes as the forerunner of the English heroic play, and discusses Davenant's "Preface to Gondibert" (1650) along with Hobbes' response to that preface. He agrees with Davenant and Hobbes as to the nature and function of this new, "more severe", court-oriented drama:

     "... Poets, while they imitate, instruct. The feign'd Heroe inflames

the true; and the dead vertue animates the living. Since, therefore,

the world is govern'd by precept and Example; and both these can only

have influence from those persons who are above us, that kind of Poesy

which excites to vertue the greatest men, is of greatest use to human

kind." (p. 15)

     "... an Heroick Play ought to be an imitation, in little of an Heroick

Poem." (p. 20)

The relation between Court and Poetry which Davenant and Hobbes envisioned in theory  was partially realized in the years soon after the REstoration. Court audiences attended Dryden's dramas in which Heroes with "greatnesse of minde" performed in exemplary fashion. In his dedications, Dryden addressed members of the Court as modern-day Heroes, as the patterns he used for his dramatic Heroes. Waith considers the relationship between the playwright and his audience as seen in these dedications:

     "The first of these heroic dedications makes a noteworthy point: "The

favour which heroic plays have lately found upon our theatres, has

been wholly derived to them from the countenance and approbation they

have received at court. The most eminent persons for wit and honour in

the royal circles having so far owned them, that they have judged no

way so fit as verse to entertain a noble audience, or to express a

noble passion..." (Indian Emperor II, 285). There is nothing new in

the idea that Dryden addressed his plays to a courtly audience, but

not enough has been made of the significance of his emphasis upon the

fitness of the plays for his audience... Ideally, the spectators in

the theater would also possess the heroic inclinations which he

ascribes to his patrons, and in fact they may often have been as nobly

inclined as the actual persons to whom Dryden dedicated the plays. As

to the readers, the dedication shows them clearly enough what

sentiments they are expect to have, and  puts them in the position of

measuring up to the author's expectations. In the dedications, then,