Acknowledgments

The Newberry Library, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, and the graduate schools of Washington University and Northern Illinois University provided fellowships that helped me complete this book. An earlier version of the first part of chapter 2 appeared in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology under the title "Dryden and the Revolution of 1688: Political Parallel in Don Sebastian " (85 [1986], 346–365).

Several friends and colleagues have read parts of the book and offered useful comments, among them Anna Battigelli, Andrea Carlson, Bill Covey, Tom and Julie McCourt, Jody Ollenquist, Mary Sanders, Sean Shesgreen, and my wife, Lisa Chase Bywaters.

My greatest debt is to three of my teachers. John M. Wallace introduced me to the study of the relation between literature and history in seventeenth-century England, and has given me advice, encouragement, and assistance at several crucial moments. Carol Kay read the manuscript at various stages, always offering acute observations and helpful suggestions. Roughly a quarter of this book is drawn from a dissertation written under the direction of Steven N. Zwicker; all of it, however, has had the benefit of his detailed attention, his sharp and subtle intelligence, his sure understanding of Dryden, and his apparently limitless knowledge of seventeenth-century politics and culture. As a teacher, a scholar, and a critic he has provided me with an invaluable model for a career that would probably have foundered early without his generous aid. This book is gratefully dedicated to him.