John Dryden

 I am sore wounded but not slain
I will lay me down and bleed a while
And then rise up to fight again

                                             _John Dryden

Life 

Born 9 August,1631

Died 12 may , 1700

"Dryden is the greatest literary figure of the Restoration " 

Dryden was born in the village of aldwinkle, Northamptonshire in 1631. His family were prosperous people, who brought him up in the strict puritan faith, and sent him first to the famous westminister school and then to Cambridge. He made excellent use of his opportunities and studied eagerly, becoming one of the best educated men of his age , especially in the classics. 

Though of remarkable literary taste , he showed little evidence of his literary ability up to the age of thirty. By his training and family connections he was allied to the Puritan party and his only well-known work of this period

 The Heroic stanza"

Was written on the death of Cromwell,

His grandeur he derived from heaven alone,

For he was great ere fortune made him so,

And wars ,like mists that rise against the sun,

Made him but greater seem, not greater now.

In this four lines, taken almost at random from the 'heroic stanzas', we have an epitome of the thought, the preciseness , and the polish that mark all is literary work.

This this poem made Dryden well known and he was in a fair way to come to new poet of puritanism when the Restoration made a complete change in his methods he had to come London for a literary life and when the royalists were again in power he placed himself promptly on the winning side.

Dryden's life contains so many conflicting elements of greatness and littleness that the biographer is continually taken away from the facts, which are his chief concern , to judge motives , which are manifestly outside his knowledge and business . Judged by his own opinion of himself , as expressed in the numerous preface to his works.

 

Dryden was the soul of candour, writing with no other master than literature, and with no other object than to advance the walfare of his age and nation.

Works of Dryden

Absalom and Achitophel

Mac flecknoe

The hind and the panther

Astraea redux

Palamon and arcite

The numerous dramatic works of Dryden are best left in that obscurity into which they have fallen. Now and then they contain a bit of excellent lyric poetry, and in All for Love, another version of Antony and Cleopatra, where he leaves his cherished heroic couplet for the blank verse of Marlowe and Shakespeare, he shows what he might have done had he not sold his talents to a depraved audience. On the whole , reading his plays is like nibbling at a rotting apple,even the good spots are affected by the decay , and one ends by throwing the whole thing into the garbage can, where most of the dramatic works of this period belong.

The controversial and satirical poems are on a higher plane, though , it must be confessed, dryden's satire often strike us as cutting and revengeful , rather than witty.  

The best known of these , and a masterpiece of its kind , is

Absalom and Achitophel

Characters 

David = The third king of Israel

Absalom= Duke of Monmouth, illegitimate son of David and protagonist

Achitophel= first earl of Shaftesbury

Saul = Oliver Cromwell

David's brother= James II 

Corah = Titus Oates , priest

Shimei= the most powerful of Achitophel's men

Zimri = king of Israel for seven days

The Pharoah= leader of Egypt and David's ally

Ishbosheth = Saul's son. And king of Israel 

Jonas = William Jonas

Zodoc = 

Barzillai=  David's most trusted friend 

Which is undoubtedly the most powerful political satire in English language. Taking the Bible story of David and Absalom, he uses it to ridicule the Whig party and also to revenge himself upon his enemies. Charles ii appeared as King David ,his natural son, the Duke of Monmouth, who was mixed up in the rye house plot, paraded as Absalom, Shaftesbury was Achitophel, the evil counselor, and the Duke of Buckingham was satirized as zimri. 

The poem had enomoruos political influence, and raised Dryden, in the opinion of his contemporaries, to the front rank of English poets. Two extracts from the powerful characterizations of Achitophel and zimri are given here to show the style and spirit of the whole work.

The poem also references the Popish Plot and the Monmouth Rebellion .

Many miscellaneous poems of Dryden, the curious reader will get an idea of his sustained narrative power from the,

Annus mirabilis

The best expression of Dryden's literary genius, however is found in 'Alexander's feast' , which is most enduring ode, and one of the best in our language.

Biblical background

 The story of Absalom's rebellion against his father, King David, is told in the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Second Book of Samuel The beautiful Absalom is distinguished by his extraordinarily abundant hair, which is thought to symbolise his pride When David's renowned advisor, Achitophel joins Absalom's rebellion, another advisor, Hushai, plots with David to pretend to defect and give Absalom advice that plays into David's hands. The result is that Absalom takes the advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, goes home and hangs himself. Absalom is killed (a after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on" The death of his son, Absalom, causes David enormous personal grief.

Prose and criticism

As prose writer Dryden had a very marked influence on our literature in shortening his sentences, and especially in writing naturally, without depending on literary ornamentation to give effect to what he is saying. If we compare his prose with that of Milton, or Browne, or Jeremy Taylor, we note that Dryden cares less for style than any of the others, but takes more pains to state his thought clearly and concisely, as men speak when they wish to be understood. The classical school, which followed the Restoration, looked to Dryden as a leader, and to him we owe largely that tendency to exactness of expression which marks our subsequent prose writing.

Dryden also rapidly developed his critical ability, and became the foremost critic of his age .

His criticisms instead of being published as independent works ,were generally used as prefaces or introductions to his poetry.

The best known of these criticisms are

• The preface to the fables
• Of Heroic plays
• Discourse on satire
• Essay of Dramatic poesy

Dryden's another great work named

The hind and the panther

Language: English

Genre: religious poem

Publisher: Jacob Tonson

The Hind and the Panther

 A Poem, in Three Parts (1687) is an allegory in heroic couplets by John Dryden. At some 2600 lines it is much the longest of Dryden's poems, translations excepted, and perhaps the most controversial. The critic Margaret Doody has called it "the great, the undeniable, sui generis poem of the Restoration era, It is its own kind of poem, it cannot be repeated and no one has repeated it.

T