The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics (Paperback))

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Summary: The hero of the heroic couplet.
Review: The rhymed couplet had been a part of English literature for centuries-- Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jonson and Donne had all written couplets. And Edmund Waller had hinted at the future power this verse form would have.

Yet John Dryden was the poet who made the heroic couplet the English equivalent of dactylic hexameter in ancient Greek and Latin. Though one of the most versatile of English authors, Dryden established the heroic couplet (and his reputation) through two genres: satire and translation.

With the restoration of Charles II to the throne, the English stage was empty (the Puritan Parliament had shut it down). Dryden worked long and hard to revive the theatre, and his efforts no doubt contributed to the success of Wycherley, Congreve and other Restoration dramatists. To this day, Dryden's many plays are neglected more than they deserve to be.

Still, to readers at home the best part of these plays-- some of them written entirely in couplets-- were the Prologues. The satiric bite and boisterous comedy in these short pieces is similar to the voice of the longer poems "MacFlecknoe" and "Absalom and Achitophel." They are highly entertaining and can be enjoyed apart from the actual plays.

"MacFlecknoe" is justly Dryden's most famous work. His language is remarkable for its freedom from archaic words. He is easier to read than poets from the Victorian era. Even more remarkable is the flexibility of his line. Largely for comic effect, the iambic pentameter of Dryden is always even, or smooth, yet never flat and unvaried. Above all, "MacFlecknoe" is a hilarious attack on the "dullness" of Dryden's literary rivals.

"Absalom and Achitophel" may not be the most enticing title readers will come across, but the work itself is a delight. Dryden had the odd position of being both the poet laureate to the king (later on, James II) and an outsider. He had converted to Catholicism (I believe out of conviction not convenience) and this poem was written in defense of the king. It is not, however, a bullying diatribe on behalf of the powerful. The king, you see, was rather too well known for his love of women, a comparison which Dryden decadently makes with King David:

In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd:
When Nature prompted, and no Law deni'd
Promiscuous use of concubine and bride;
Then, Israel's monarch, after Heaven's own heart,
His vigorous warmth did variously impart
To wives and slaves: and, wide as his command,
Scatter'd his Maker's image through the land.

These are some of the finest lines in all of English literature-- direct, musical, funny, learned, impetuous, yet restrained. Quite the contrast to the blank verse Milton was hammering out around that time.

It was only natural that Dryden, the heir of Juvenal and Persius, would render these Latin satirists into English couplets. Or was it? Translation was not the exalted form that epic and tragedy were-- not until Dryden got his hands on it. He did this because he enjoyed turning favorite passages from classical writers into English verse, and so that he might make a living after he had fallen out of favor with the government. In addition to Juvenal and Persius, he gave us wonderful versions of Ovid, Lucretius, Horace and Theocritus.

It was no accident that the hexameters in the epics of Homer and Virgil were the same form used in the satires of Juvenal, Horace and Persius. Longinus wrote that satire is little things made ridiculously large. Epic led to mock-epic. The pseudo-Homeric work "The Battle of the Frogs and Mice" is a good example. Dryden, who had established the closed rhymed couplet as the chief instrument of satire, also made it the main form for epic verse.

He did this through his translation of Virgil's works-- an accomplishment that ranks with the greatest in English literature-- and through another work too much neglected: "Fables Ancient and Modern." Here Dryden brings together-- not quite at random-- the first book of Homer's Iliad, a few tales from Chaucer, many more from Ovid, even some Boccaccio, and gives us an enthralling collection of verse.

Through sheer volume-- in addition to quality-- Dryden smoothed the English "numbers" (i.e. iambic meter) and modernized poetic diction. Pope may have written perfect couplets, taking the form to its highest level (and conclusion), yet Dryden's easy, free-flowing and generous spirit makes him every bit the equal of his eighteenth century heir.

Dryden's verse is learned, but not heavy. He was a classicist yet (unlike Milton) very much a man of his time. Far from displaying cold classical severity, his lines have the feel of perfumed Baroque excess, the flight of a tune by Purcell. While no Romantic, Dryden's couplets do gush with sensuality (which are not, of course, the same thing). There is good sense here, but a streak of eccentricity as well.

In other words, Dryden has everything to make him someone's favorite poet. That he closed the couplet and made it a deadly weapon for epic-- or mock-weapon for satire-- should not imply his works are cramped, claustrophobic, rigid pillars. By closing up the couplet, Dryden refreshed it, made it a thing of beauty and balance.

Reading Dryden is always a coffee house joy, not school room duty.