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    Absalom and Achitophel
    Absalom and Achitophel
    Absalom and Achitophel
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    Absalom and Achitophel

    By John Dryden

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    Absalom and Achitophel is a landmark poetic political satire by John Dryden. The poem exists in two parts. The first part, of 1681, is undoubtedly by Dryden. The second part, of 1682, was written by another hand, most likely Nahum Tate, except for a few passages—including attacks on Thomas Shadwell and Elkanah Settle, expressed as Og and Doeg—that Dryden wrote himself. The poem is an allegory that uses the story of the rebellion of Absalom against King David as the basis for discussion of the background to the Monmouth Rebellion (1685), the Popish Plot (1678) and the Exclusion Crisis.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJester House Publishing
    Release dateMar 17, 2016
    ISBN9781498918701
    Author

    John Dryden

    John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made England's first Poet Laureate in 1668.  Vinton A. Dearing was Professor of English and Computer Applications in Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles.  Alan Roper is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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      Absalom and Achitophel - John Dryden

      Achitophel.

      Biography

      John Dryden was a poet, literary critic and English playwright who dominated the literary life in England during the Restoration.

      Dryden was born in the village of Aldwincle, near Oundle in Northamptonshire. He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden. In 1650 Dryden went to Trinity College, Cambridge where he would experience a return to the religious and political ethos of his childhood. Arriving in London during The Protectorate, Dryden got work with the Secretary of State Cromwell, John Thurloe. Shortly after he published his first important poem, Heroique Stanzas (1658), an elegy on the death of Cromwell, who is cautious and prudent in its emotional display. In 1660 Dryden celebrated the Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux, one authentic monarchical panegyric. In this work the interregnum is illustrated as a period of anarchy, and Carlos is seen as the restorer of peace and order.

      As a critic and translator was essential to make publicly accessible English reader literary works in classical languages. Dryden died in 1700 and is buried in the Westminster Abbey. His poetry, patriotic, religious, and satirical, popularized the type of verse that will be the preferred Hendecasyllable of the eighteenth century, it was taken as a model by poets such as Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson.

      To the Reader.

      It is not my intention to make an apology for my poem: some will think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. The design I am sure is honest: but he who draws his pen for one party, must expect to make enemies of the other. For wit and fool are consequence of Whig and Tory; and every man is a knave or an ass to the contrary side. There is a treasury of merits in the Fanatic church, as well as in the Popish; and a pennyworth to be had of saintship, honesty, and poetry, for the lewd, the factious, and the blockheads: but the longest chapter in Deuteronomy has not curses enough for an Anti–Bromingham. My comfort is, their manifest prejudice to my cause will render their judgment of less authority against me. Yet if a poem have genius, it will force its own reception in the world. For there is a sweetness in good verse, which tickles even while it hurts; and no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him against his will. The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless extorted. But I can be satisfied on more easy terms: if I happen to please the more moderate sort, I shall be sure of an honest party, and, in all probability, of the best judges; for the least concerned are commonly the least corrupt. And I confess I have laid in for those, by rebating the satire (where justice would allow it), from carrying too sharp an edge. They who can criticise so weakly as to imagine I have done my worst, may be convinced, at their own cost, that I can write severely, with more ease than I can gently. I have but laughed at some men’s follies, when I could have declaimed against their vices; and other men’s virtues I have commended, as freely as I have taxed their crimes. And now, if you are a malicious reader, I expect you should return upon me that I affect to be thought more impartial than I am. But if men are not to be judged by their professions, God forgive you Commonwealth’s-men for professing so plausibly for the government. You cannot be so unconscionable as to charge me for not subscribing my name; for that would reflect too grossly upon your own party, who never dare, though they have the advantage of a jury to secure them. If you like not my poem, the fault may possibly be in my writing (though it is hard for an author to judge against himself); but more probably it is in your morals, which cannot bear the truth of it. The violent on both sides will condemn the character of Absalom, as either too favourably or too hardly drawn. But they are not the violent whom I desire to please. The fault on the right hand is to extenuate, palliate, and indulge; and to confess freely, I have endeavoured to commit it. Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have a greater for his heroic virtues; and David himself could not be more tender of the young man’s life, than I would be of his reputation. But since the most excellent natures are always the most easy, and, as being such, are the soonest perverted by ill counsels, especially when baited with fame and glory; it is no more a wonder that he withstood not the temptations of Achitophel, than it was for Adam not to have resisted the two devils, the serpent and the woman. The conclusion of the story I purposely forbore to prosecute, because I could not obtain from myself to show Absalom unfortunate. The frame of it was cut out but for a picture to the waist; and if the draught be so far true, it is as much as I designed.

      Were I the inventor, who am only the historian, I should certainly conclude the piece with the reconcilement of Absalom to David. And who knows but this may come to pass? Things

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