John Dryden, "MacFlecknoe," "Annus Mirabilis," Criticism

Genre: Verse satire ("Mac"), commendatory or "public" verse ("Annus"), and prose essay.

Characters:   "MacFlecknoe" is the mocking Scottish form for "son-of-Flecknoe," and the character stands for Thomas Shadwell, whose pretention to be taken for the inheritor of Ben Jonson's poetic tradition Dryden skewers by making him the son of Richard Flecknoe, a poet even Shadwell would see was dull.  Other characters represent contemporary or recent poets (Heywood, Decker, Shirley, Fletcher), or they are allegorical, part of the epic "machinery of the gods" by which Dryden mocks Shadwell, making him inherit the throne of Nonesense.   "Annus Mirabilis" personifies London as a Queen in ways that strongly evoke the late Elizabeth I, but in the context of Dryden's imperial vision, she is courted now by merchant fleets who bring her jewels and other trade goods from the Empire's far-flung colonial "suitors." 

Summary:

• "MacFlecknoe" traces its "hero"'s rise to stupidity in verse deliberately mimicking the style of and alluding to the Aeneid and other epics.  Like the Odyssey, it starts in a kind of Olympus, only it's the realm of Nonsense, until recently ruled by Flecknoe.  The dying king of dullness searches for a successor and, by virtue of his vices (as it were) MacFlecknoe (Shadwell) gets the nod.  The rest of the poem develops by a pattern of mock praise of poetic vices wherein "success" is failure and the slightest deviation from the stultifying norm is a clear sign that somebody's got poetic talent.
• "Annus Mirabilis" salutes London upon her survival of the plague and the Great Fire (in 1666), looking back to the Civil War as a fatal flirtation with factionalism and forward to a time of imperial dominion over "the British ocean" and the new colonies of India and the rest of Asia.
• "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy" was written two years after the Restoration and the reopening of the theaters, trying to call the English to a new sense of poetic tradition that would take the best of the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets and infuse it with a sense of neoclassical balance, clarity, and profundity.
  • His critique of Bad poets begins with the Metaphysicals, which he defines by their most notorious example, John Cleveland.   The exotic, Mannerist images with which Donne and Herbert populated their similes and metaphors could become enormously irritating and distracting when used by poets with less skill and less serious intention.  The other sort of poets he condemns are the Dull, who affect classical balance to a fault, making the counting of syllables their primary occupation rather than the expression of noble sentiment.   How does Dryden understand the "job" of being an Author and how does this affect the standards he applies to other poets in his criticism?
  • His definition of "wit" emphasizes using common words rather than new coinages or words borrowed from other languages (vs. Milton, for example, though he names Cleveland as his archetypal bad example).  For a historical discussion of the development of comedy as a genre, click here.
  • His "Shakespeare vs. Jonson" comparison contrasts the former's appeal to Nature as a model for his characters with the latter's use of classical models.  Famous is Dryden's praise of Shakespeare for having "the largest and most comprehensive soul," which enabled WS to sympathize with and represent anything in Nature, but it is a Nature he found when he "looked inwards" (2117).  This reminds us of Sidney in A&S #1, and the notion that human nature is grounded in some unmoveable knowledge which it is sin or folly to deny, to ignore, or to seek to improve (Faustus, Satan, Mosca).   Shakespeare's comedy is faulted for its "clenches" (puns), but he is generally praised as the best of his generation in their one judgment.  Jonson is praised as one who was best when a satirist, and whose classical knowledge was wholely digested in his art rather than merely decorating it: "[H]e hat done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law [but h]e invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him" (2118).   This passage commonly is used when distinguishing poetic adaptation of the tradition from mere plagiarism.  Also, Dryden faults Jonson's attempt to "Romanize our tongue" with Latin loan words (2118).
• "The Author's Apology for Heroic Poetry and Heroic License" defends the heights of expression demanded by the epic form, and mentions Milton specifically as a descendent of Homer and Virgil in the line of those whose extraordinary tasks required extraordinary language (vs. his recommendation of "easy" diction above).  Nature, however, is to be the poet's first and foremost source for imitation, though imitation of other great poets may help to form the poet's style.  Continuing his attempt to define "wit," Dryden says it "is a propriety of thoughts and words; or, in other terms, thought and words elegantly adapted to the subject" (i.e., high words for high subjects, and low words for low ones).  This principle could be used to defend the diction of both Milton and Rochester.
• "A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire" calls for more subtlety and art from satirists, who are accused of mere name-calling and abuse.  The function of well-written satire is defended as inoffensive to the witty and insensible to the fools, since the wisdom of the former compels them to admit their follies and the stupidity of the latter usually prevents them from realizing they're the topic of the satire.  His comparison between butchers and the legendary executioner is famous.  [HINT!] However, test this measure of good satire against the effects you encounter in Mac Flecknoe.  Is there a way to explain this poem's savage attack on Shadwell by thinking about its publication history?  What is the difference between published, "public" satires and those circulated in private among readers who would exclude the satire's target(s)?
• "The Preface to Fables Ancient and Modern" contains one of the most extended praises of Chaucer in early literature, after Spenser's invocation of Faerie Queene, Canto II.  Chaucer is held up as the English Homer or Virgil, a founder of the national literature, though his rhyming is not commended (also see Sidney).  Against those who tried to argue that Chaucer's verse was metrically regular (i.e., iambic pentameter instead of four-stress), he argues that "common sense" is the best guide for the poet and critic, and suggests "that equality of numbers in every verse which we call heroic" (i.e., the heroic couplet) "was either not known, or not always practiced in Chaucer's time" (2122).  He was the first reader of Chaucer took into account the possibility of historical changes in poetic technique, and in that sense is the ancestor of all Chaucerian scholars, for which, let us honor him, though he was deaf to the "great vowel shift."  Dryden also praises Chaucer as he did Shakespeare for his "wonderful comprehensive nature" (2122).  He also suggests that the tales were suited to their tellers and revealed dramatically their inner lives, a thesis which remained largely unchallenged until David Benson's Chaucer's Drama of Style (in 1986).  His final contribution to Chaucer scholarship is his observation that readers of the whole of Canterbury Tales tend to fall into a bemused meditation on the richness of the human condition, rather than seeing any thesis or dramatic concentration one might follow to achieve a comic or tragic catharsis, leading him to exclaim "here is God's plenty" (2122).  In effect, Chaucer threatens to overwhelm Dryden's neoclassical critical vocabulary.  Go Geoff!

Issues and Research Sources:

1. "MacFlecknoe" was originally circulated in manuscript and apparently never was intended for mass publication.
   • Does that give Dryden any defense against charges that he violates any of his own rules for satire?

   Note that the essay on satire (above) praises the character "Zimri" from Absolom and Achitophel--see p. 1804-5, ll. 544ff., for that excellent and accurate characterization of George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, who was forced to admit the truth of it.

   • What does it do for a culture when people can be brought to admit their follies and repent their crimes?
   • What role does art have in that task today?
2. "MacFlecknoe" plays with the epic conventions in a manner known as "mock heroic," in which high style and the typical poetic strategies of the epic are used to satirize far lower subjects than the hero's defense or destruction of a mighty city, or his reclamation of his birthright.  Compare the poem's opening lines, as they evoke Flecknoe's past greatness (page 2100, ll. 1-10), with Beowulf's opening lines on the Spear-Dane's mythic founder's great achievements (page 32, ll. 1-11).  Dryden's poem also evokes the Roman historians of the Imperial Family by reference to Caesar Augustus, and he refers directly to Virgil's Aeneid in constructing MacFlecknoe's dubious "virtues."  How might these English and Latin allusions affect Shadwell's claim to be Jonson's heir in the neoclassical line of poetic creation?
3. How does "Annus Mirabilis" view the English past?  What key events does it draw attention to as the steps by which she arrived at this turning point in her history?   What does that suggest about how Dryden might have structured and taught English 211 if it were offered in 1668?
4. Compare the London-as-"Maiden Queen" (1185) simile with Marlowe's and Ralegh's evocations of pastoral courtship in "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (989) and "The Nymph's Reply" (879).  Who was the real "Maiden Queen" of England's past and how does Dryden's poem use her reign to evoke the New London after the fire?  How does Dryden use the "Courtship" and "Promise of Rich Presents" motifs to suggest what the future holds for England's capital, and what does that suggest about the shift of values which has overtaken the world of Marlowe and Ralegh?  (Another comparison could be made, in English 212, with the dressing of Belinda in Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," especially Canto 1, ll. 121-148.)
5. In the excerpts chosen by the Norton editors, "Annus Mirabilis" concludes with a distinctly river- and ocean-oriented, naval view of London's place in the world.  Previous empires centered in Macedonia (Alexander) and Rome depended on armies and land-travel to conquer and maintain their colonies.  The new European imperial powers conquered by means of sea-power, using navies to subdue and exploit distant cultures.  How does the land-bound view of the world differ in its assumptions about stability and power from the ocean-bound view?  Click here for a QuickTime video of the rotating Earth composed from weather satellite photographs.  (University College of London, Geomatic Engineering)
6. Can you see patterns of though emerging in Dryden's criticism that make him identifiable as a man of his era?  Of all those possible attitudes toward poetic experiment, poetry's place in culture, the worth of previous poets, and their meaning to his contemporaries, what did Dryden contribute to the study of English that you might find continued in the current structure of Goucher's English Department, the major, and English 211, in particular?
7. As an Englishman, Dryden identified something important about the English poets' use of classical models which, he said, made the English superior to the French, who preferred a "just imitation" with emphasis on balance, rather than the English "high" or "lively" imitation with an emphasis on "sweep of action" (in parts of the "Essay" you weren't assigned).  He defends the Elizabethan greats, like Shakespeare, on the grounds that their failure to observe this or that neoclassical rule for writing resulted in a greater work, one more conforming to real Nature than to secondary models derived from literature.
   • How might you compare this with Sidney's view of the artist's position, and with Plato's?
8. Dryden's faith in Nature suggests that he did not believe that Nature was "fallen" and corrupted.  This marks a welcome change from the increasingly negative views of humanity and Nature we see in the Mannerists like Donne and Herbert.
   • Can you find reasons why he should think so in "Annus Mirabilis," and might there be any hazards in his reasoning?

   Especially consider what Aphra Behn will show the English twenty years later in Oroonoko.   Dryden's religious epistemology represents a type of doctrine sometimes called "fideism," a reliance on faith rather than reason for religious matters so as to unplug morality from the hard facts about society and nature which were being discovered by science.  This later becomes rationalized by the "Deists" like Leibniz, who argued that God's role in the universe was reasonably demonstrable (though by circular logic) and that, therefore, this was the best of all possible worlds (since God, the omnipotent, would have done better if He could).

   • Does this suggest any dangers for the coming "Age of Enlightenment," as the Eighteenth Century sometimes is called?

   Hint: in Pope's "Essay on Man" (1733), he concludes:

   All Nature is but art, unknown to thee;
   All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
   All discord, harmony not understood;
   All partial evil, universal good:
   And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite
   One truth is clear: Whatever is, is RIGHT.

   (ll. 287-292--see pp. 2554-61 for longer extracts of the whole poem)

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