Essay of Dramatick Poesie

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Essay of Dramatick Poesie

Essay of Dramatick Poesie by John Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of English Restoration to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden....
was published in 1668. It was probably written during the plague

Bubonic plague

Plague is a deadly infectious disease caused by the Enterobacteriaceae Yersinia pestis . Plague is a zoonotic, primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas....
year of 1666. Dryden takes up the subject that Philip Sidney

Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney became one of the Elizabethan era most prominent figures. Famous in his day in England as a poet, courtier and soldier, he remains known as the author of Astrophel and Stella , The Defence of Poetry , and The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia ....
had set forth in his Defence of Poesie (1580) and attempts to justify drama as a legitimate art form.

The treatise is a dialogue

Dialogue

A dialogue is a conversation between two or more people. It is also a literary form in which two or more parties engage in a discussion....
between four speakers: Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander. The four speakers represented the Earl of Dorset

Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset

Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset and 1st Earl of Middlesex was an English poet and courtier, son of the Richard Sackville, 5th Earl of Dorset ....
, Sir Robert Howard

Robert Howard (playwright)

Sir Robert Howard was an English playwright and politician, born to Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire and his wife Elizabeth....
, Sir Charles Sedley

Charles Sedley

Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet , was an England wit, dramatist and politician....
, and Dryden himself.

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Essay of Dramatick Poesie by John Dryden

John Dryden

Bubonic plague

Philip Sidney

Dialogue

Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset

Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset and 1st Earl of Middlesex was an English poet and courtier, son of the Richard Sackville, 5th Earl of Dorset ....
, Sir Robert Howard

Robert Howard (playwright)

Sir Robert Howard was an English playwright and politician, born to Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire and his wife Elizabeth....
, Sir Charles Sedley

Charles Sedley

Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet , was an England wit, dramatist and politician....
, and Dryden himself. On the day that the English

England

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
fleets begin to fight in the mouth of the Thames

River Thames

The Thames is a major river flowing through southern England. While best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows through several other towns and cities, including Oxford, Reading, Berkshire and Windsor, Berkshire....
, the four friends get on a boat to watch the battle. As the battle subsides, the four men speak of French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
and English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
drama. In particular, they are concerned with the French neo-classical obsession with obeying the classical unities

Classical unities

The classical unities or three unities are rules for drama derived from a passage in Aristotle's Poetics . In their neoclassicism form they are as follows:...
prescribed by Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
's Poetics (through its interpretation by the Italian renaissantist school of criticism). They also discuss the usefulness and admissibility of rhyme in drama. The general argument is that the unities should be obeyed where possible but discarded where necessary. The speakers contrast Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an England English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satire plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist , and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his Lyric poetry poems....
, who wrote "regular" plays that obeyed all the Classical rules, with William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
, who flouts the unities and breaks decorum with great abandon. Dryden decides on the side of Shakespeare.

In terms of literary theory

Literary theory

Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes?in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense?considerations of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social prophecy,...
, Dryden was attempting to justify specifically drama, as opposed to epic

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
or tragedy

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
. As with his prefaces, Dryden seeks to establish a ground whereby the English stage, which had abandoned the strict divisions of Classical theory, could have legitimacy.

External links

(1668 text, edited by Jack Lynch)