Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/511

Rh demand, he did not write many more heroic plays in rhyme. Perhaps the ridicule of The Rehearsal had destroyed their popularity. His next tragedy, Amboyna, an exhibition of certain atrocities committed by the Dutch on English merchants in the East Indies, put on the stage to inflame the public mind in view of the Dutch war, was written, with the exception of a few passages, in prose, and those passages in blank verse. An opera which he wrote in rhymed couplets, called The State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man, an attempt to turn part of Paradise Lost into rhyme, as a proof of its superiority to blank verse, was prefaced by an apology for heroic poetry and poetic licence, and published in 1674, but it was never acted. The redeeming circumstance about the performance is the admiration professed by the adapter for his original, which he pronounces "undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced." Dryden is said to have had the elder poet's leave "to tag his verses." Aurengzebe was Dryden's last rhymed tragedy. In the prologue he confessed that he had grown weary of his long-loved mistress rhyme. But the stings of The Rehearsal had stimulated him to do his utmost to justify his devotion to his mistress. He claims that Aurengzebe is "the most correct" of his plays, and it is certainly superior, both in versification and in moderation of language, to its predecessors. It was acted in 1675, and published in the following year.

If Dryden had died in 1676, at the age of forty-five, he would have left a very inconsiderable name behind him. The fray between him and might have been looked upon as a passage at arms between equals. After the production of Aurengzebe he seems to have rested for an interval from writing, enabled to do so, probably, by an additional pension of £100 granted to him by the king. During this interval he would seem to have reconsidered the principles of dramatic composition, and to have made a particular study of the works of. The fruits of this appeared in All for Love, or the World Well Lost, a version of the story of Antony and Cleopatra, produced in 1678, which must be regarded as a new departure in his dramatic career, a very remarkable departure for a man of his age, and a wonderful proof of undiminished openness and plasticity of mind. In his previous writings on dramatic theory, Dryden, while admiring the rhyme of the French dramatists as an advance in art, did not give the same praise to the regularity of their plots; he was disposed to give the preference to the irregular structure of the Elizabethan dramatists, as being more favourable to variety both of action and of character. But now he abandoned rhyme, and, if we might judge from All for Love, and the precepts laid down in his Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, the chief point in which he aimed at excelling the Elizabethans was in giving greater unity to his plot. He upheld still the superiority of Shakespeare to the French dramatists in the delineation of character, but he thought that the scope of the action might be restricted, and the parts bound more closely together with advantage. All for Love and Antony and Cleopatra are two excellent plays for the comparison of the two methods. Dryden gave all his strength to All for Love, writing the play for himself, as he said, and not for the public. Carrying out the idea expressed in the title, he represents the two lovers as being more entirely under the dominion of love than Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeare's Antony is moved by other impulses than the passion for Cleopatra; it is his master motive, but it has to maintain a struggle for supremacy; "Roman thoughts" strike in upon him even in the very height of the enjoyment of his mistress's love, he chafes under the yoke, and breaks away from her of his own impulse at the call of spontaneously reawakened ambition. Dryden's Antony is so deeply sunk in love that no other impulse has power to stir him; it takes much persuasion and skilful artifice to detach him from Cleopatra even in thought, and his soul returns to her violently before the rupture has been completed. On the other hand, Dryden's Cleopatra is so completely enslaved by love for Antony that she is incapable of using the calculated caprices and meretricious coquetries which Shakespeare's Cleopatra deliberately practises as the highest art of love, the surest way of maintaining her empire over her great captain's heart. It is with difficulty that Dryden's Cleopatra will agree, on the earnest solicitation of a wily counsellor, to feign a liking for Dolabella to excite Antony's jealousy, and she cannot keep up the pretence through a few sentences. The characters of the two lovers are thus very much contracted, indeed almost overwhelmed, beneath the pressure of the one ruling motive. And as Dryden thus introduces a greater regularity of character into the drama, so he also very much contracts the action, in order to give probability to this temporary subjugation of individual character. The action of Dryden's play takes place wholly in Alexandria, within the compass of a few days; it does not, like Shakespeare's, extend over several years, and present incessant changes of scene. Dryden chooses, as it were, a fragment of an historical action, a single moment during which motives play within a narrow circle, the culminating point in the relations between his two personages. He devotes his whole play, also, to those relations; only what bears upon them is admitted. In Shakespeare's play we get a certain historical perspective, in which the love of Antony and Cleopatra appears in its true proportions beneath the firmament that overhangs human affairs. In Dryden's play this love is our universe; all the other concerns of the world retire into a shadowy, indistinct background. If we rise from a comparison of the plays with an impression that the Elizabethan drama is a higher type of drama, taking Dryden's own definition of the word as "a just and lively image of human nature," we rise also with an impression of Dryden's power such as we get from nothing else that he had written since his Heroic Stanzas, twenty years before.

It was twelve years before Dryden produced another tragedy worthy of the power shown in All for Love. Don Sebastian was acted and published in 1690. In the interval, to sum up briefly Dryden's work as a dramatist, he wrote Œdipus (1678) and The Duke of Guise (1683) in conjunction with ; Troilus and Cressida, 1679; The Spanish Friar, 1681; Albion and Albanius, an opera, 1685; Amphitryon, 1690. In Troilus and Cressida he follows Shakespeare closely in the plot, but the dialogue is rewritten throughout, and not for the better. The versification and the language of the first and the third acts of Œdipus, which with the general plan of the play were Dryden's contribution to the joint work, bear marked evidence of his recent study of Shakespeare. The plot of Don Sebastian is more intricate than that of All for Love. It has also more of the characteristics of his heroic dramas; the extravagance of sentiment and the suddenness of impulse remind us occasionally of The Indian Emperor; but the characters are much more elaborately studied than in Dryden's earlier plays, and the verse is sinewy and powerful. It would be difficult to say whether Don Sebastian or All for Love is his best play; they share the palm between them. Dryden's subsequent plays are not remarkable. Their titles and dates are—King Arthur, an opera, 1691; Cleomenes, 1692; Love Triumphant, 1694.

Soon after Dryden's abandonment of heroic couplets in tragedy, he found new and more congenial work for his favourite instrument in satire. As usual the idea was not original to Dryden, though he struck in with his majestic step and energy divine, and immediately took the lead.