Fran. I was chang'd from a little wit to be stark mad,

Almost for the same purpose.

Isa.
Your change is still behind,
But deserve best your transformation:
You are a jealous coxcomb, keep schools
of folly,

And teach your scholars how to break your own head.

Alib. I see all apparent, wife, and will change now

Into a better husband, and ne'er keep Scholars that shall be wiser than myself. Als. Sir, you have yet a son's duty living, Please you, accept it; let that your sor

John Dryden (1631-1700) was the leading literary man of the last quarter of the seventeenth century. He came of a Puritan family, and graduated at Cambridge. After the Restoration he transferred his loyalty from Oliver Cromwell's weak son Richard to Charles II, and at the accession of James Il he became а Roman Catholic. In such changes there was probably not so much time-serving as a desire to support a strong autocratic governmental system. It is certain that he was interested in politics, and liked to be on the winning side. In his literary work he was remarkable for his versatility; besides nearly thirty tragedies and comedies, he excelled in prose criticism, translation, and satirical, lyric, and narrative poetry. For many years he exercised a controlling influence on literature, and is generally recognized as the first great leader in the era of classicism.

Since poetry expresses both the ideals and the realities of the age which produces it, we should expect a strong contrast between the drama of the Elizabethan period and that of so different an age as the forty years or so of the Restoration period. The earlier form in large measure survived, since a dramatic form is too complex to be often renewed, but the spirit is greatly altered. In 1642 the Puritan parliament, always opposed to the stage, took advantage of the beginnings of the Civil War to close the theaters, and for eighteen years such performances as were given were rude and clandestine. Many other innocent amusements were proscribed, and the sober and ascetic spirit of Puritanism was at least theoretically supreme in the land. The era of the Puritan Revolution saw England's great experiment in a moral idealism compulsory for all. It produced a far-reaching effect, for to it more than to any other cause are due the differences which every one feels between English (and partly American) life and that of the whole of continental Europe. But on the whole it failed, and the violence of the reaction when Charles II's return released the tense spring is nowhere more apparent than in the drama. That of the Res

toration lacked the fine, steady, normal, masculine spirit of the greater Elizabethan dramatists their universality and depth of insight; it became contracted lengthwise and crosswise, became superficial and narrower. It was aristocratic rather than democratic, met the taste of a smaller part of the community; it exhibited the irresponsible life they led, and when it expressed moral ideality, this was sometimes an insincere, weak, and unnatural ideality. With all these limitations as to spirit and matter, technically and as to literary style the drama was never more brilliant. It does not fail in what it sets out to do, and from the point of view of moral and social history is unusually significant. All this is vividly shown in the comedy, but the serious plays, if understood, are quite as characteristic.

Dryden's Conquest of Granada, his greatest popular success (first performed in 1670, printed 1672), is the best example of a type of serious drama differing from tragedy in having a happy ending the "heroic play Though a relation can be seen to some of the Elizabethan dramas, and though he expressed obligation to D'Avenant's Siege of Rhodes, Dryden is regarded as the originator of the type. There is a certain amount of resemblance to the French classical drama of Corneille and Racine; and as in them the three "classical" unities (see page 46 above) were observed. But these plays were largely an attempt to bring into the drama the supposed manner and spirit of Greek and Italian epic, and especially of the prose romances of seventeenth-century France, such as those of la Calprenède, Gomberville, and Mlle. de Scudéry. Three romances by the last-named underlie respectively the three parts of the plot in The Conquest of Granada; which is also founded on a Spanish history of Granada. For this, like other "heroic plays," has a historical background, which was felt to impart a weighty dignity. The locality is always remote, classical, among the Aztecs or Peruvians, or as with this play among the orientals. This too, was felt to give a romantic dignity, and made less noticeable certain departures from nature and

pletest example in English of the Supermantype, of the will to power." Almanzor's

The plot is apt to be loose and episodic, with no prolonged suspense (opportunities for it are rejected), not working up to a crisis, not intimately growing out of the personalities, but accidental and successive, and made up of commonplace elements. Dryden was far from being a born dramatist. In all these plays the general formula for plot is the conflict between love and honor. In this play the plot is of three parts, well interwoven, dealing with the loves of Almanzor, Almahide, and Boabdelin, with those of Abdalla, Lyndaraxa, and Abdelmelech, and with those of Ozmyn and Benzayda. The Second Part is equally intricate, ending in the capture of Granada by the Spaniards, the death of Boabdelin, the prospective union of his widow Almahide with Almanzor, and the wholly unprepared-tor recognition of the latter as the long-lost son of the Duke of Arcos. The commonplaceness of the plot is somewhat concealed by the incessant bustling action, and the amorous framework by the constant drums and tramplings of conquests, the alarums and excursions of domestic malice and foreign levies. As a critic has well said, the play combines French artificial gallantry with the English love of sound and fury. The noisy motion was doubtless one reason for its popularity on the stage. There being no one point of deep interest, the focus of attention is constantly shifted. The outline of the play is narrative, epic, rather than dramatic.

64

This point bears equally on the most characteristic feature of the heroic play, its treatment of personality. Here too its nature and origin is rather epic than dramatic. As in the epic, the characters are of the highest rank. Dryden stated that his originals for Almanzor were Homer's Achilles and Tasso's Rinaldo. Almanzor, however, did not perfectly please contemporary critics. To us it seems more odd to censure him as perfect pattern of heroic virtue," a temner of kings," who changes sides, than to earp at him for performing impossibilities - he falls short of, and exceeds, the conventional notion of his kind. Dryden makes the defence that heroic plays are not subject to the laws of probability, and that, being a foreigner, Almanzor was bound to neither of the Moorish factions. The hero's very first words, as he goes to aid one of them, are

I cannot stay to ask which cause is best:
But this is so to me because opprest;

and later he declares,

46

no con

True, I would wish my friend the juster side; But, in the unjust, my kindness more is tried.

66

But heroic arrogance is not exhibited merely for its own sake. Almanzor's chief virtues Dryden meant to be a frank and open nobleness of nature, an easiness to forgive his conquered enemies, and to protect them in distress; and, above all, an inviolable faith in his affection." He towers above the world of men that his subjection to woman and love may be more flattering and delightful. Love is the giant's only weakness; what a tribute to love! Love is at first sight, but as constant as it is sudden. An etiquette controls it, even if repented of. Almahide, though loving Almanzor, feels as much bound by her betrothal to the weak Boabdelin as by her marriage-vow, and must be faithful not only to his person but to his memory; at the end of Part II she dedicates a year's widowhood to les convenances. What a tribute to the virtue of constancy and loyalty, when even the almighty Almanzor is kept waiting! But if love and honor hopelessly conflict, usually honor goes to the wall. Boabdelin prefers his love to his crown.

per

Hardly less important than the characters, in the mind of Dryden and his auditors, were the "sentiments," the views and ideals discoursed upon. Some of these plays devote much space to arguments and controversies among the characters, as here in the second act. The ideals are mainly of love and honor; "betwixt their love and virtue they are tost; 99 honor being partly glory and partly a rigid sense of propriety. In each case the ideal is a thoroughly individualistic one; the love is passion, and the honor is largely selfish virtue. Though occasionally a sonage is so Quixotic as to contemplate killing himself to spare another the guilt of killing him, of patriotism there is scarcely a hint. "Honor is what myself and friends I owe," Almanzor announces. "L'état c'est moi" is the principle of all of them. With an empire of eight hundred years nearing its fall the Moors think only of private revenge, private ambition, and private passion. as elsewhere Dryden sacrificed nature and breadth to intensity. Yet insight is not wholly wanting; a passage in Part II has often been quoted:

A blush remains in a forgiven face:
It wears the silent tokens of disgrace.
Forgiveness to the injur'd does belong;

Here

But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong.

Such passages, and even rhodomontade and commonplace, gain impressiveness by Dryden's matchless style. Not always great as an imaginative poet, or as a dramatist, he was a master of dramatic rhetoric, unsubtle, bold. His verse sweeps one along like a wave on its rhythmic rise and fall, with endless nerve and verve and never a sign of faltering; it reads aloud superbly. The form of verse is, as regularly in the heroic plays, the ten-syllable couplet, the "heroic couplet," treated with some variety, such as occasional short lines. His lyric gift enabled him also to introduce charming songs, which contrast with the masculine march of the other verse, and also sometimes with its high moral tone.

An artificial idealism, in a word, is what this play embodies. There is plenty of idealism in Shakespeare, but it comes from a heightening of human nature as it is; his people are merely more fully and intensely what they are than they would be in life. Dryden's are not imitated from life, but from the vague ideals of the unideal, artificial aristo

crats for whom he wrote. The reality of these people appears in the comedy of the age. Sexual morality and personal honor were at a low ebb; in these plays they are lauded in an unreal and exaggerated manner. Because such people cared little for ideals, these serious plays are artificial. They are the somewhat perfunctory homage which Res toration vice paid to virtue. Their artificiality links them closely to another highly artificial dramatic type, which grew up about the same time and from much the same origin the opera. Both were felt to be independent of nature and probability, both were remote and aristocratic, both were simple and conventional in their elements, both dealt largely with the heroic and with love. The sonorous lyric verse which is the accompaniment of Dryden's plays in a sense takes the place of the music which is that of the opera. The spirit of The Conquest of Granada therefore still survives on the boards of the operahouse.