John Dennis was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
criticA critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
and dramatist.
Life
He was born in
Harrow, LondonHarrow is an area in the London Borough of Harrow, northwest London, United Kingdom. It is a suburban area and is situated 12.2 miles northwest of Charing Cross...
. He was educated at
Harrow SchoolHarrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...
and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1679. In the next year he was fined and dismissed from his college for having wounded a fellow-student with a sword. He was, however, received at
Trinity HallTrinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...
, where he took his M.A. degree in 1683.
After travelling in France and Italy, he settled in London, where he became acquainted with
DrydenJohn Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
, and close to
WycherleyWilliam Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.-Biography:...
, Congreve and the leading literary figures of his day; and being made temporarily independent by inheriting a small fortune, he devoted himself to literature. The
Duke of MarlboroughJohn Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Prince of Mindelheim, KG, PC , was an English soldier and statesman whose career spanned the reigns of five monarchs through the late 17th and early 18th centuries...
procured him a place as one of the queen's waiters in the customs with a salary of £20 a year. This he afterwards disposed of for a small sum, retaining, at the suggestion of
Lord HalifaxGeorge Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax PC was an English statesman, writer, and politician.-Family and early life, 1633–1667:...
, a yearly charge upon it for a long term of years. In the years prior to 1704 he reigned as one of the leading coffee house wits alongside Congreve.
One of his tragedies, a violent attack on the French in harmony with popular prejudice, entitled Liberty Asserted, was produced with great success at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1704. For Appius and Virginia (1709), he invented a new kind of thunder. The play was not a success and the management of the
Drury Lane TheatreThe Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
withdrew it. But later at a performance of
MacbethThe Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
there Dennis found the thunder produced by his method and said,
- That is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my thunder, but not my play.
According to
Brewer'sBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, sometimes referred to simply as Brewer's, is a reference work containing definitions and explanations of many famous phrases, allusions and figures, whether historical or mythical.-History:...
entry (under the headword thunder), this is the origin of the phrase, "to steal one's thunder".
Dennis is best remembered as the leading critic of his generation, and as a pioneer of the concept of the
sublimeIn aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...
as an aesthetic quality. After taking the
Grand TourThe Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
of the Alps he published his comments in a journal letter published as Miscellanies in 1693, giving an account of crossing the Alps where, contrary to his prior feelings for the beauty of nature as a "delight that is consistent with reason", the experience of the journey was at once a "pleasure to the eye as music is to the ear", but "mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair." The significance of his account is that the concept of the sublime, at the time a
rhetoricRhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
term primarily relevant to literary criticism, was used to describe a positive appreciation for horror and terror in aesthetic experience, in contrast to Ashley Cooper, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury,’s more timid response to the sublime.
Dennis appears to have reached a turning point in 1704, when, at the age of 47 he withdrew from city life. In the years following this he appears to have become increasingly marginalised, both from new developments in cultural life, and from a new generation on the literary scene. His Essay on Italian Opera in 1706 argues that the introspection encouraged by the sensuality of music, but particularly Italian opera, is harmful to public spirit at a time of war. In 1711 he fell out with both
Joseph AddisonJoseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
and
Alexander PopeAlexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
.
Dr. Johnson regarded Pope as the instigator of the latter dispute, his Essay on Criticism published mid-May 1711, having “attacked [Dennis, characterised as Appius] wantonly”, and provoking Dennis’ Reflections Critical and Satirical upon a late Rhapsody Called, an Essay upon Criticism, the following month. Dennis’ forensic skills as a critic enabled him to critique the flaws in the far younger poet’s observations, intended to show “that as there is a great deal of venom in this little gentleman’s temper, nature has very wisely corrected it with a great deal of dullness…as there is no creature in nature so venomous, there is nothing so stupid and so impotent as a hunch-back’d toad; and a man must be very quiet and very passive, and stand still to let him fasten his teeth and his claws, or to be supriz’d sleeping by him, before that animal can have any power to hurt him.” Lacerating pamphlets followed on both sides, culminating in Pope’s Dunciad, and in a scathing note in the edition of 1729 (Book I, 1, 106), which included an insulting epigram attributed to
Richard SavageRichard Savage was an English poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage , on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets....
, but now generally ascribed to Pope himself.
Dennis had fallen out with
AddisonJoseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
in April 1711, over an essay that contained a good-humoured rejection of the notion of poetic justice in The Spectator, No. 40. His analysis of Addison’s highly successful patriotic tragedy in the Remarks upon Cato (1713) returned to this subject, and while Dennis’ motivation may have been partly personally motivated, his criticism remains acute and sensible, and is quoted at considerable length by
JohnsonSamuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
in his Life of Addison.
According to Thomas Macaulay (Life and Writings of Addison, p. 215)
PopeAlexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
seized the opportunity to respond on Addison’s behalf “venting his malice under the show of friendship”, with The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the strange and deplorable frenzy of John Dennis ... (1713). The pamphlet was full of personal abuse, exposing Dennis's foibles, but offered no defence of Cato, and Addison repudiated any connivance in this attack, and indirectly notified Dennis that when he did answer his objections, it would be without personalities.
However, Dennis's day as a leading figure on the London literary scene was over. He gained the nickname of “Furius”, while his enthusiasm for the terrible sublime was mocked. The apocryphal tale regarding his petitioning the Duke of Marlborough to have a special clause inserted in the Treaty of Utrecht to secure him from French vengeance, if true, suggests growing paranoia. (Marlborough joked that although he had been a still greater enemy of the French nation, he had no fear for his own security!)
Dennis outlived his annuity from the customs, and his last years were spent in great poverty. Bishop Atterbury sent him money, and he received a small sum annually from Sir
Robert WalpoleRobert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
. A benefit performance was organized at the Haymarket (18 December 1733) on his behalf, for which Pope wrote an ill-natured prologue, which the actor and sentimental playwright
Colley CibberColley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style...
(another victim of Pope’s invective) recited. Dennis died within three weeks of this performance, on 6 January 1734.
Dennis’ works were published in 1702, Select Works (2 vol.) in 1718, and Miscellaneous Tracts, the first volume only of which appeared, in 1727. Although Johnson was to call for a complete edition of Dennis’ works, this was not undertaken until 1938 (Edward Niles Hooker, The Critical Works of John Dennis (Baltimore, 1938).
For a contemporary account of Dennis see
Theophilus CibberTheophilus Cibber was an English actor, playwright, author, and son of the actor-manager Colley Cibber.He began acting at an early age, and followed his father into theatrical management. In 1727, Alexander Pope satirized Theophilus Cibber in his Dunciad as a youth who "thrusts his person full...
's Lives of the Poets, Vol. 4; for a nineteenth century view see Isaac Disraeli's essays on Pope and Addison in the Quarrels of Authors, and On the Influence of a Bad Temper in Criticism in Calamities of Authors; for a contemporary account see the Preface and Introduction to Edward Niles Hooker’s The Critical Works of John Dennis’’.
Major Essays
- Remarks ... (1696), on Blackmore's epic of Prince Arthur.
- Letters upon Several Occasions written by and between Mr. Dryden, Mr. Wycherley, Mr. Moyle, Mr. Congreve and Mr Dennis, published by Mr Dennis (1696).
- two pamphlets in reply to Jeremy Collier
Jeremy Collier was an English theatre critic, non-juror bishop and theologian.-Life:Born in Stow cum Quy, Cambridgeshire, Collier was educated at Caius College, University of Cambridge, receiving the BA and MA . A supporter of James II, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and...
's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English StageIn March of 1698, Jeremy Collier published his anti-theater pamphlet, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage; in the pamphlet, Collier attacks a number of playwrights: William Wycherley, John Dryden, William Congreve, John Vanbrugh, and Thomas D’Urfey...
.
- The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry (1701), perhaps his most important work.
- The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), in which he argued that the ancients owed their superiority over the moderns in poetry to their religious attitude.
- Essay on the Operas after the Italian Manner (1706).
- Essay upon Publick Spirit (1711), in which he inveighs against luxury, and servile imitation of foreign fashions and customs.
- Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare in Three Letters (1712).
Dramatic Works
- A Plot and No Plot (1697)
- Rinaldo and Armida (1698)
- Iphigenia (1700)
- Liberty Asserted (1704)
- Gibraltar (1705)
- Orpheus and Eurydice (1707)
- Appius and Virginia (1709)
- Comical Gallant (1702) (adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor)
- The Invader of His Country (1705) (adaptation of Coriolanus)
External links
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