Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/349

Shadwell eight characters not to be found in ‘L'Avare.’ In the preface, Shadwell says that Molière's part in the play had not suffered in his hands: ‘'Tis not barrenness of wit or invention that makes us borrow from the French, but laziness.’ ‘The Miser’ was dedicated to the Earl of Dorset. Nell Gwyn wrote: ‘My Lord of Dorset … drinks ale with Shadwell and Mr. Harris at the Duke's House all day long’ (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. vii. 3).

‘Epsom Wells,’ one of Shadwell's best plays in spite of its coarseness, was acted at Dorset Garden in 1672. Shadwell says, in the dedication to his patron the Duke of Newcastle, that the town was ‘extremely kind to it.’ Sir Charles Sedley wrote a prologue, and, according to Dryden, gave the author help in writing the play. In 1673 Shadwell constructed an opera out of Shakespeare's ‘Tempest,’ with the sub-title of ‘The Enchanted Island,’ which was given at Dorset Garden with much success, and printed in 4to (cf., i. 155). In the dedication (to Monmouth) of ‘Psyche,’ produced at Dorset Garden in February 1674, Shadwell alludes to the charge that others wrote the best parts of his plays. This opera, which is in rhymed verse, was based on Molière, and was played for about eight nights. The scenery cost 800l. ‘The Libertine,’ a tragedy with Don Juan as hero, and ‘The Virtuoso’ were brought out in 1676. In the dedication to the former, Shadwell replied to the charge of hasty writing preferred against him by Elkanah Settle [q. v.] in a postscript to ‘Love and Revenge,’ 1675; in ‘The Virtuoso’ he regretted that want of means prevented him devoting his whole time to the leisurely writing of ‘correct’ comedies. In ‘Timon of Athens,’ 1678, Shadwell spoke of the inimitable hand of Shakespeare, but added, ‘Yet I can truly say I have made it into a play.’ ‘The True Widow,’ produced in 1679 or perhaps 1678, and dedicated to Sedley, was not popular, though Shadwell was well satisfied with it. ‘The Woman Captain,’ 1680, was followed by ‘The Lancashire Witches,’ 1681, which was successful in spite of the efforts of a party who said that the character of the chaplain, Smerk, was an insult to the church of England. Much of the play was struck out by the licenser before it was acted, but it was afterwards printed in full (on its coarseness, cf. Spectator, No. 141).

In 1671 Shadwell referred to Dryden, in the preface to ‘The Humourists,’ as his ‘particular friend;’ he joined Crowne and Dryden in an attack on Settle's ‘Empress of Morocco’ in 1674, and in 1679 Dryden contributed a prologue to Shadwell's ‘True Widow.’ But in the preface to his first play (1668) Shadwell had written in opposition to views recently expressed in Dryden's ‘Essay of Dramatic Poesy,’ while in ‘The Virtuoso’ (1676) he sneered at contemporary dramatists, and Dryden must have felt that some of the remarks related to his writings and to ‘Aureng-Zebe’ in particular. There was, however, no open feud until 1682, when Dryden produced his second satire on Shaftesbury, ‘The Medal,’ prefaced by an epistle to the whigs. Shadwell replied with ‘The Medal of John Bayes: a Satire against Folly and Knavery,’ and with a prose ‘Epistle to the Tories,’ in which, as well as in the verse, he grossly libelled his opponent, both as poet and man, calling him an ‘abandoned rascal,’ ‘half wit, half fool.’ Shadwell is supposed also to have been the author of a rather less offensive satire, ‘The Tory Poets,’ 1682, in which Dryden is attacked, in company with Otway and others. Dryden took his revenge in ‘MacFlecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T. S.,’ published in October 1682, where Shadwell is represented as the literary son and successor of the poetaster Richard Flecknoe [q. v.] In this savage attack it was alleged that Shadwell was void of wit, and ‘never deviates into sense,’ and there were allusions to Shadwell's ‘mountain belly,’ slowness of composition, comparison of himself with Jonson, and the help he obtained from Sedley. A month later Dryden wrote another bitter attack in Nahum Tate's second part of ‘Absalom and Achitophel,’ where, under the name of Og, he described Shadwell as a drunken ‘mass of foul corrupted matter,’ and ridiculed his poverty and his habit of taking opium.

In the following year Shadwell and Thomas Hunt (1627?–1688) [q. v.] attacked Dryden in ‘Some Reflections upon the pretended Parallel in the play called the Duke of Guise,’ 1683, and Dryden retorted in the ‘Vindication of the Duke of Guise,’ in which reference was made especially to Shadwell's drinking habits and to his ignorance of the classics. Shadwell was again attacked in a scarce eulogy on Dryden, ‘The Laurel,’ 1685. It was not until 1687 that Shadwell, in a translation of the ‘Tenth Satire of Juvenal,’ dedicated to Sir Charles Sedley, and written as a counterblast to a translation by Dryden's friend, Henry Higden [q. v.], replied to ‘Mac Flecknoe.’ In this he rather proved his dulness by taking literally Dryden's reference to him as an Irishman. In conclusion he alleged that Dryden, when taxed with the authorship of the satire, ‘denied it with all the execrations he could think