![]() ![]() Reading a text involved no successive movement, as one could read forward and backward as one pleased. In his preface to A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1667), Dryden considered two types of “reading” and means of deriving meaning when he differentiated reading at home from watching a play in the playhouse, describing them as two distinct activities. ![]() His prose essays, particularly his critical essays on literature, addressed concerns that would soon issue forth particularly in the development of the novel as genre with its mixture of the actual and fictive. ![]() This and other of Dryden’s works influenced the neoclassical age following the Glorious Revolution. His most successful tragedy, All for Love: Or, The World Well Lost (performed in 1677 published in 1678), attributed the rise of Octavius Caesar (later Augustus Caesar) to the weakness and emotionalism of Antony, who was selfishly swayed by his love for Cleopatra. Dryden followed The Wild Gallant (performed in 1663 published in 1669) with a number of dramatic works, including comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, and operas. His association with Howard led to Dryden’s writing his first play for the Theatre Royal company, housed in a building constructed by Howard and his partner Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683) soon after London theaters reopened after an eighteen-year ban. Due to his association with Charles II, Dryden was the first poet to be named poet laureate of England and was also made historiographer, a position that came with a large income. While having adapted to the Commonwealth, Dryden more directly benefitted from the Restoration, particularly through his friendship with such Royalists as the playwright Sir Robert Howard (1623-1698), who was also Dryden’s brother-in-law. He later celebrated Charles II’s leadership through the Great Fire of London in Annus Mirabilis (1667). And after the Restoration, Dryden acclaimed Charles II as the herald and ruler of such peace, lauding the high and the heroic. This poem reinforces classical (Roman) hierarchies, hailing as great the men who can lead society from disorder to harmony, the men who fight to end fighting in peace. John Dryden reached adulthood during the Commonwealth indeed, he dedicated his Heroic Stanzas (1659) “to the Glorious Memory of Cromwell,” shortly after Cromwell’s death. ![]()
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