1. Earl Miner, Dryden's Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), p. 289; Michael West, "Dryden's Ambivalence as a Translator of Heroic Themes," Huntington Library Quarterly , 36 (1973), 347-366, p. 365. [BACK]

2. Jay Arnold Levine, "John Dryden's Epistle to John Driden," JEGP , 63 (1964), 458-474, pp. 470-471; Thomas H. Fujimura, "The Personal Element in Dryden's Poetry," PMLA , 89 (1974), 1007-1023, p. 1021. [BACK]

3. Fujimura, "'Autobiography' in Dryden's Later Work," Restoration , 8 (1984), 17-29. [BACK]

1. Phillip Harth, in The Contexts of Dryden's Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1968), claims that in The Hind and the Panther Dryden is able to keep politics and religion separate from one another: "at any given moment in the poem he is dealing with 'Matters either Religious or Civil,' to use his own words, never with both topics simultaneously" (p. 229). Yet Harth's own version of Dryden's rhetorical purpose throughout the poem suggests a close connection between the two: "Dryden was attempting to persuade his Anglican readers to grant religious tolerance as well as political toleration to the members of his new church" (p. 49). If the Anglicans had not been threatening to rebel against a Catholic monarch, Dryden would have been less troubled by their unwillingness to concede that Catholic doctrine was "not unreasonable." Throughout the poem he insists upon a close relation between political and religious rebellion against just authority. [BACK]

2. Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second , ed. Charles Harding Firth (London: Macmillan, 1914), pp. 845-855. For more recent manifestations of this theory see C. V. Wedgwood, Poetry and Politics Under the Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 178; Donald R. Benson, "Theology

and Politics in Dryden's Conversion," Studies in English Literature , 4 (1964), 393-412, pp. 406-407; William Myers, "Politics in The Hind and the Panther," Essays in Criticism , 19 (1969) 19-33, passim . [BACK]

3. Earl Miner, ed. and Vinton A. Dearing, textual ed., The Works of John Dryden , vol. 3 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), p. 350. [BACK]

4. All citations to The Hind and the Panther are to Miner, ed., Works , 3. [BACK]

5. Harth (p. 261) notices this rhetorical strategy and finds analogues in contemporary Catholic apologetics. [BACK]

6. Miner, Dryden's Poetry (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1967), p. 192, briefly notes the significance of the order in which Dryden introduces his beasts and argues that the Panther is even worse than her fellows: "The introduction of the Panther only after the sectarian beasts . . . adversely affects our opinion of her. As the Wolf was worse then the Fox, the Panther is fiercest of all." But Dryden intends not only to compare bad parties with worse ones but also to taint popular parties with the reputation and principles of universally condemned ones. [BACK]

7. The Rhetoric of Aristotle , trans. Lane Cooper (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1932), 3.15.2. In attacking the Anglicans for Whiggish rebelliousness Dryden was in line with polemicists both before and after the Revolution. See for example A New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty (London, 1687) p. 8:

For my business is, to set forth in its own Colours the extraordinary Loyalty of these Men, who obstinately maintain a Test , contriv'd by the Faction to usher in the Bill of Exclusion. . . . And it is much admir'd even by some of her own Children, that the Grave and Matron-like Church of England , which values her self so much for her Antiquity, should be overfond of a new Point of Faith lately broach'd by a Famous Act of an Infallible English Parliament conven'd at Westminster , and guided by the Holy Spirit of Shaftsbury .

And A Lord's Speech without Doors (London, 1689; reprinted in An Answer to Two Papers , London, 1689, p. 6):

Believe me, My Lords, it is the boldest bid that ever Men made; I see Forty One was a Fool to Eighty Eight; and that we Church of England Protestants, shall cancel all the merits of our Fathers, overthrow the ground and Consequence of their most Exemplary Loyalty to King Charles the First and Second; render their Death, the Death of Fools ; trample their Memories and Blood under our Feet; subject our selves to the just Reproach of the

Phanaticks , whose Principles and Practices we have out-done, even to that King, that we forced upon them, and by our Example, had brought them to live well withal.

Dryden's attackers were well aware of his objects: see for example The Revolter (London, 1687); A Poem in Defence of the Church of England Written in Opposition to the Hind and the Panther (London, 1688); both are epitomized by Hugh Macdonald in John Dryden: A Bibliography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), item nos. 242, 253. [BACK]

8. Miner, ed., Works , 3:383, thinks this a reference to the Anglican reaction to persecution under Mary. It would seem, however, inconsistent with the Hind's purposes to taunt the Panther with a change in the right direction and to describe her royal daughter as a "butcher." [BACK]

9. This strategy has been remarked by Myers. He cites the allusion to Monmouth (II.281-282), argues that the Hind compares the Panther's jury of apostles to Shaftesbury's jury of City Whigs (II.242-243), and, rather inconsistently, compares the Panther's "attempt to mollify the Sects" to "Charles II's attempts to control Parliament" (II.272-274); and justly observes that "This is all calculated to make the Panther feel ill at ease. It is obviously disorienting for Tory High-Churchmen to be told that theologically they think like Whigs, that Anglican authority is as specious as Monmouth's legitimacy" (p. 26). He does not, however, seem to recognize its function in the poem, the purpose of which was, he thinks (before its author was surprised by the Declaration of Indulgence), ''to demonstrate the practical good sense of the Church allying herself with the Royal Party" (p. 25). In fact the references to Tory polemic in part II argue the political no less than the theological Whiggery of the contemporary Anglicans. Dryden had more political sense than to expect a triumphant alliance between the Anglicans and the court; and if he had expected such an alliance, he certainly had more polemic ability than to have supposed he could abuse the Anglicans into joining it. [BACK]

10. See Steven N. Zwicker, Politics and Language in Dryden's Poetry , pp. 144-145. [BACK]

11. All citations to The Medall are to The Works of John Dryden , vol. 2, ed. H. T. Swedenberg, Jr. and Vinton A. Dearing (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1972). [BACK]

12. See, for example, Poems on Affairs of State , vol. 3, ed. Howard H. Schless (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 408-409. [BACK]

13. See note 1, above. Harth provides a rather more complex account of Dryden's rhetorical purpose: "to isolate the Dissenters, renounce the actions of the more extreme Catholics, and question the motives of the more intransigent Anglicans in the expectation of arriving at some kind of accommodation between men of good will in the Anglican and Catholic

camps" (p. 50). If this was Dryden's purpose, his decision to represent the entire Anglican church as a single beast was unfortunate. [BACK]

14. See Zwicker, p. 150. [BACK]

15. For an analysis, to which I am much indebted, of Dryden's attitude towards his work in his later poetry, see Zwicker, chapters 5-7. [BACK]

16. Donald Wing, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England . . . 1641-1700 , 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945-1951), lists, under the heading "Aesop," eighteen Latin editions and as many editions of English translations, published between 1660 and 1700. For the generic status of fable in this period, see Thomas Noel, Theories of the Fable in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), and Annabel Patterson, "Fables of Power," in Politics and Discourse , ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 271-296. [BACK]

17. Aesop's Fables with His Life in English, French, and Latin , 2nd ed. (London, 1687). [BACK]

18. See Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion (Cambridge, 1925; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1960), 1:238-272, passim . [BACK]

19. The generic precedents of The Hind and the Panther have been the object of much excellent but rather confusing scholarly attention. The two fullest accounts are in Miner, Dryden's Poetry , pp. 144-175, and Sanford Budick, Dryden and the Abyss of Light (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 191-237. Miner places the poem in a number of traditions of which the most important are sacred zoography, beast fable, and discontinuous tropology; Budick thinks it "an adaptation of allegorical Holy Writ—of the complex beast fable of Daniel" (p. 227). Both offer excellent support for their conflicting views, and the controversy between them has not much clarified matters (see The Times Literary Supplement , 3 April 1969, p. 371; 1 May 1969, p. 466; 22 May 1969, p. 559; 3 July 1969, p. 730). Both, further, have contributed to our understanding of the poem; and Budick's work, by showing how Dryden turns against the Protestants antipapist polemic based on Daniel, advances our knowledge of its polemic strategies. Dryden himself, however, establishes the genre within which he means the poem to be read at the beginning of part III: whatever his sources, he wants his audience to see the poem not as discontinuous tropology or Old Testament prophecy but as Aesopian fable in the tradition of Chaucer and Spencer. [BACK]

20. See Zwicker, pp. 150-153. [BACK]

21. See Miner, ed. Works , 3:449, 456. [BACK]

22. "An Apology for the Church of England, with Relation to the Spirit of Persecution, for Which She Is Accused," in A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts , ed. Walter Scott (London, 1813), 9:175. On the

same page Burnet remarks that the papists' ''little finger must be heavier than ever our loins were" (cf., The Hind and the Panther , part III.691). [BACK]

23. See, for example, Poems on Affairs of State , 3:183-206, and passim . [BACK]

24. Reasons Against Repealing . . . the Test , p. 4. [BACK]

25. The Spanish Fryar , in The Works of John Dryden , ed. Walter Scott and George Saintsbury (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1883), 6:442. [BACK]

26. This explains the "confusion over imagery of flight" that D. W. Jefferson finds in the poem ("The Poetry of The Hind and the Panther ," MLR , 79 (1984), 32-44, p. 42). It is appropriate to Dryden's polemic purposes that the Catholics be seen as victims of forces they cannot control. [BACK]

27. Anne Barbeau Gardiner, in "Dryden's Britannia Rediviva : Interpreting the Signs of the Times in June 1688," HLQ , 48 (1985), 257-284, concentrates on this aspect of Dryden's poem. She justly remarks that lines 267-303 constitute an appeal to the country "to support the king's toleration"; but the heavy emphasis throughout the poem on divine intervention strongly suggests that Dryden has despaired of a human solution to England's political woes. His account of politics is cast entirely in general terms of sin and repentance, justice and mercy. [BACK]

1. For a bibliography of such attacks, see Hugh Macdonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), nos. 199 ff. [BACK]

2. Macdonald, nos. 248 ff. [BACK]

3. The Works of John Dryden , vol. 15, ed. Earl Miner and George R. Guffey (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1976). All references are to this edition. [BACK]

4. Several critics have found political meaning in Don Sebastian . John Robert Moore, "Political Allusions in Dryden's Later Plays," PMLA , 72 (1958), 36-42, lists, often quite accurately, several such allusions in the play but does not deal with their relation to one another or participation in a coherent whole. He identifies Dryden's Mobile with the London populace, Dorax with James's deserters, Benducar with Sunderland, the Mufti with the Anglican clergy, and Muley-Moloch with "the infatuated James." William Myers, Dryden (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1973), repeats many of Moore's discoveries, notes the similarity of Sebastian's subjects to the Jacobites, but then dismisses these political allusions as only pointing to "symptoms of deeper, more distressing confusions at the heart of the human condition,'' p. 130. John Loftis, The Spanish Plays of Neoclassical England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973) has ex-

plored the play's similarities to Calderon's El principe constante , and so remarked its Catholicism. Miner finds in the play only a general "exploration of the uncertainty attendant on man as a political creature" (p. 406), and discounts any specific contemporary application. Irvin Ehrenpreis, in Acts of Implication (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1980), p. 49, observes the similarity between Sebastian and James. Others have attempted to interpret the play's themes and structure without reference to its political application: John A. Winterbottom, "Hobbesian Ideas in Dryden's Tragedies," JEGP , 57 (1958), 665-683; Bruce King, '' Don Sebastian : Dryden's Moral Fable," Sewanee Review , 70 (1962), 651-670; Eric Rothstein, Restoration Tragedy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967). [BACK]

5. See Arthur Mainwaring, "Tarquin and Tullia," in Poems on Affairs of State , 5:47-54, for a similar list of James's virtues, which ends with the couplet, "In sum, how godlike must his nature be / Whose only fault was too much piety." [BACK]

6. As Miner remarks in his commentary on the play in Works , 15:389. [BACK]

7. In two articles to which I am much indebted, "Dryden and History: A Problem in Allegorical Reading," ELH , 36 (1969), 265-290, and " 'Examples Are Best Precepts': Readers and Meanings in Seventeenth Century Poetry," Critical Inquiry , 1 (1974), 173-190, John Wallace traces the effect on seventeenth-century poetry of contemporary habits of reading history for lessons that might be applied to current politics. Dryden is here making use of these habits to sharpen his readers' association of Sebastian with James. I now believe that my disagreement with Wallace in a note to the original version of this chapter ("Dryden and the Revolution of 1688: Political Parallel in Don Sebastian,'' JEGP , 85 (1986), 346-365, pp. 348-349) is based on a misreading of his articles. Wallace does indeed allow for the possibility (which in this note I reserve to myself) that writers may control their reader's political applications, as Dryden does here and throughout his late career. [BACK]

8. So called by the Convention Parliament. For Jacobite ridicule of this view of James's departure, see the poems cited by William J. Cameron in Poems on Affairs of State , vol. 5 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 57-60. [BACK]

9. "Dryden and History," p. 281. [BACK]

10. The Dear Bargain (n.p., n.d.), p. 24. For other examples, see An Address to the Nobility, Clergy, and Gentlemen of Scotland : "it will entail a War upon posterity" (p. 3); Some Reflections upon His Highness the Prince of Orange's Declaration (n.p., 1688): "for if they change Masters, they Entail Blood upon their Children about the Title of the Crown" (p. 2); A Lord's Speech Without Doors : "God defend us and our Children after us from the ill Consequences of what has been done, and prevent the

rest" (p. 3); Reflections upon our Late and Present Proceedings , in A Tenth Collection of Papers Relating to the Present Juncture of Affairs in England (London, 1689): "What we do now will transmit its good or ill Effects to after Ages, and our Children yet unborn, will in all probability, be happy or miserable, as we shall behave our selves in this great Conjuncture. . . . But if we do ingage in wrong Counsels, and build upon false Foundations, instead of a Blessing we may leave a Curse to our Posterity" (p. 1). [BACK]

11. For examples of Jacobite censure of the deserters of James, see Poems on Affairs of State , 5:52-99. [BACK]

12. In The Poems of John Dryden , ed. James Kinsley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 1012. [BACK]

13. In his note on these lines, Miner remarks the "similarity to the presentation of the Jews in Absalom and Achitophel ," and refers us to lines 45-66. He goes on to say, however, that "The similarity suggests no particular attack on the English of 1689; it reflects Dryden's estimate of the mass of people everywhere" (p. 441). The genius of the Moors, however, is presented as national character, not human nature, and we have within the play itself a mass of people of which this is not true: the Portuguese. I do not know why we should suppose that Dryden would have hesitated to attack the English in 1689 for having done what he attacks them in 1681 for merely threatening to do. [BACK]

14. Works , 3:134, 373. [BACK]

15. A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts , vol. 3 (London, 1748), p. 363; "A Dialogue Between the Ghosts of Russell and Sidney," in Poems on Affairs of State , 4:139-143. See also The Dear Bargain (n.p., n.d.): "If [William] doe these things in the Infancy of his Power, against those who set him up, what may we expect from him, should his Reign continue?" (p. 24); A Remonstrance and Protestation . . . against Deposing . . . King James the Second (London, 1689): "It is evident to the whole World, that the present State of the Kingdom is a State of Force ; and that after all the pretence of Property, there is no Law in England but the Long Sword ; and that upon this Foundation our present Architects are raising the Fabrick of their New Government " (p. 5). [BACK]

16. Miner finds no source for this character; see Works , 15:429. [BACK]

17. "Tarquin and Tullia," ll. 1-4. [BACK]

18. See, for example, "Tarquin and Tullia," "The Coronation Ballad," and "The Female Parricide," in Poems on Affairs of State , 5. The lack of filial piety of which both William and Mary might be accused was a favorite topic of Jacobite polemicists. William ''undertakes a War against his Unkle, and Father-in-Law, whom he knows to have as undoubted a Right to his Crown, as any King in Christendom" ( The Dutch Design Anatomiz'd , London, 1688, p. 9); James's "Nephew and Son in Law, and

His own Daughter, without any Remorse are placed in his Throne" ( An Address to the Nobility, Clergy, and Gentlemen of Scotland , n.p., n.d., p. 3); William's "Design is to be King. Now how this is practicable, and a Rightful King alive, his Uncle and his Wives Father, through whom only he can pretend any Interest; And besides this an Heir apparent, the Prince of Wales , who hath a Prior and Incontestable Title, I leave" to the gentry, clergy, and lawyers ( Some Reflections upon His Highness the Prince of Orange's Declaration , n.p., 1688, p. 2)

King Lear and his Daughters is perhaps but a Fable, and Tullia 's Father was but a Slave by Birth, and an Intruder into the Royal Family; but the paternal Love of King James towards his Daughters is as true as it is unparallel'd; his Care in their Education, Marriages, and Provisions for them are Demonstrations of it. The Honours conferred by him, upon their Mother's House, and their Proximity to the Throne, deserved some Returns of Gratitude; but how they have been made, and what was expected from Obligation and filial Duty, the World now seeth and judgeth. I need say no more, let Nature speak the rest in all who read this. ( The Dear Bargain , p. 20)

James himself fell in with this view: he asks his subjects to consider "what Treatment they shall find from him, if at any time it may serve his Purpose, from whose Hands a Sovereign Prince, an Uncle, and a Father could meet with no better Entertainment" ( His Late Majesty's Letter to the Lords and Other of his Privy Council , in A Ninth Collection of Papers Relating to the Present Juncture of Affairs in England , London, 1689, p. 12). [BACK]

19. See John Wallace, "John Dryden's Plays and the Conception of a Heroic Society," in Culture and Politics from Puritanism to the Enlightenment , ed. Perez Zagorin (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 113-134, for a discussion of the importance in this scene, in Don Sebastian , in Dryden's plays, and in Restoration society, of gratitude and the flow of benefits between the king and his subjects. The topic of ingratitude also appears frequently in Jacobite polemic, sometimes in language similar to Dorax's. See, for example, The Lord's Speech without Doors , in which the author censures the deserters of James for having broken "our warm and repeated Vows, to take his Fate, and dye at his Feet" (p. 6). [BACK]

20. "Tarquin and Tullia," 11. 22-23. [BACK]

21. "Pandora's Box," quoted in Poems on Affairs of State , 5:62. [BACK]

22. Miner supposes that the Buzzard here represents William rather than Burnet. Nothing in these lines is, however, inconsistent with Burnet's

character or actions except the words "prince" and "king," and these are easily explained as part of the satire: the clergy act as "kings'' and "princes" when they ought to act as clergy and leave politics to the court, here represented by the Landlord ( Works , 3:454-55). [BACK]

23. Burnet's vindictiveness and self-interest, and his habit of slandering and betraying his patrons, are frequently described in satiric poems of 1689. See, for example, "Tarquin and Tullia," "Suum Cuique," and "Burnet's Character," and the notes on these poems, in Poems on Affairs of State , 5. [BACK]

24. See J. P. Kenyon, "The Earl of Sunderland and the Revolution of 1688," Cambridge Historical Journal , 11 (1955), 272-296, for a discussion of the origin, progress, and inaccuracy of this interpretation of Sunderland's behavior. [BACK]

25. Macaulay, History , pp. 1206-1208, provides a full account of these riots. This was a popular topic of Jacobite polemic, though various writers drew various conclusions about the ultimate effect of the counterrevolutionary forces that must inevitably confront a usurper. The closest to Dryden is perhaps the author of A Letter to a Member of the Convention , who both remarks on the number of recent revolutions and hints at the possibility of a restoration brought about by the treachery of William's supporters:

The Revolutions of State have been so quick and sudden of late, that all prudent Men will be cautious how they try Experiments, which are commonly dangerous and uncertain, but especially in matters of Government, which depend on the good liking of free and moral Agents, and when so many Hundred Thousands are to be satisfied, you can never guess at the prevailing Opinion, by the major Vote of a Convention.

How many Discontents, think you, may arise between the Nobility and Gentry, who attend the new Court? Every Man will think he has some Merit, and expect some marks of Favour to have his share of Honour, and Power, and Profit, and yet a great many more must miss, than those who speed, and many of those who are Rewarded, may think they han't their Deserts, and be discontented to see others preferred before them; and those whose expectations are disappointed, are disobliged too, and that is a dangerous thing when there is another, and a rightful King to oblige; for Duty and Discontent together, to be revenged if a new King, and to be reconciled to an old One, will shake a Throne which has so sandy a Foundation.

These comments were reprinted in A Second Collection of Papers Relating to the Present Juncture of Affairs , (London, 1689) pp. 20, 22. Some expect a military dictatorship: "We are inevitably in a State of Force ; for what is gotten by Force, must by Force be maintained; and let us flatter our selves what we will, it is not a Vote of parliament, but the nature of the thing that will prevail: They that make the Change, must and will use Force for own Security, whatever becomes of Ours" ( A Remonstrance and Protestation , p. 13).

It is to be hoped I am not alone, but that the Eyes of all seeing Men are opened by the Smart of what they feel; and I appeal to their Consciences to judge which is most reasonable, or is likely to be most beneficial to us; To keep a Government built upon the most destructive Principles to the Peace and Tranquility of the Nation, that ever was contrived by the most pernicious Machiavels in the world; viz. the Original Contract with the People; a Government raised by Parricide and Usurpation, entred into by Violation of his own Declaration, supported by the Overthrow of all our Laws Sacred and Civil, and the Perjury of the Nation. A government . . . which drives furiously on arbitrary Principles, and cannot long subsist without breaking into that Tyranny we suffered under the Rump and Cromwell . ( The Dear Bargain , London, n.d., p. 24)

Others expect anarchy: the revolutionaries would "undermine the Government both in Church and State, and reduce us to a state of Nature, wherein the People are at Liberty to agree upon any Government, or none at all" ( Reflections upon Our Late and Present Proceedings , in A Tenth Collection of Papers Relating to the Present Juncture of Affairs in England , London, 1689, p. 4).

Sir, the Horror & Amazement every thinking man must fall under, in his Reflections on the confusion & consternation the Kingdom of England was reduced to, upon the King's being necessitated to withdraw himself in January 1688, is certainly unexpressible, No age having produced so sudden a change from a Regular Government to an uncontrouled Liberty , and Anarchy . An Ominous presage of the dissolution of our ancient Hereditary Monarchy, and the inevitable ruine and fatallity following on it. ( An Old Cavalier Turned a New Courtier , n.p., n.d., p. 1) [BACK]

26. A production scheduled for 30 April 1690 was for some reason delayed. See Earl Miner's brief discussion of the date of the play in The Works of John Dryden , vol. 15, ed. Miner and George R. Guffey (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1976), p. 460. [BACK]

27. Works , 15:223-224. All citations of Amphitryon are to this edition. [BACK]

28. Miner, citing Malone, refers us to Tom Brown's The Late Converts Expos'd: Or The Reasons of Mr. Bays's Changing his Religion (1690), in Works , 15:473. [BACK]

29. Quoted in Miner, Works , 15:473. [BACK]

30. Ehrenpreis ( Acts of Implication , pp. 39-42) briefly discusses these allusions, and on the strength of them introduces, as "larger possibilities" over which he is "tempted to brood," the similarities between the competition in the play for Alcmena and in politics for the throne. [BACK]

31. William Cameron, in Poems on Affairs of State , vol. 5 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), notes the public reaction to "William's baffling refusal to trust any but a few chosen men with his political or private opinions" (p. 38); and the absoluteness and illegitimacy of William's rule were of course the bases of contemporary attack on his government and are in evidence throughout this volume. [BACK]

32. Margaret Kober Merzbach, in "The Third Source of Dryden's Amphitryon ," Anglia 73 (1955), 213-214, has shown that Dryden adapted this discussion from a scene in Heywood's The Silver Age . [BACK]

33. See J. R. Jones, The Revolution of 1688 in England (London: Widenfield and Nicolson, 1972), pp. 313-314. Compare the protests in contemporary polemic:

When so many, out of Zeal for the preservation of the Protestant Religion , either actually Contributed their Assistance to the Prince, or tamely yeilded to the common Inclination of the Multitude; it was out of confidence, that the Prince designed nothing, but what he had published in his Declaration . . . to Solicite the King to Call a free Parliament , & by it to secure our Religion and Properties . ( An Address to the Nobility , p. 10)

Had his Highness only pretended to come to deliver the King from Evil Counsellor , and to Engage him further into the Interest of England and Europe , that he might not seem a Property to a few ill Men of narrow ends, the Prince of Orange had less needed an Apology with some others; But to over-look the King, a Lawful King, the Father of his Princess, in whose Right he can only pretend to come, and instead of the Kings Name, to use in

England the Style of WE and US, Commanding, Preferring, Advancing, Rewarding, Punishing, having of Parliaments , and setling the Nation; And last of all, that he will then send back his Army , which sheweth he intends to stay behind himself, Can declare nothing else to us, but that his Design is to be King. ( Some Reflections upon his Highness the Prince of Oranges Declaration , pp. 1-2)

[William's] Errand (as we are told) was to Preserve our Religion and Laws, and Just Succession of the Royal Line . This only could have made us endure an Action we should else have hated; presuming our Kings Loss, should have been His Gain; and our Yielding, our Victory : But since we behold, to our unspeakable Grief, that our Condescension is Treacherously abused to private Ends; and that shew of our Disloyalty not made a Remedy to the Government, but a Ruine to our King, and an Infamy to our selves, to serve the turn of some Mens Avarice and Ambition. ( A Remonstrance and Protestation , pp. 6-7) [BACK]

34. See Gerald M. Straka, "The Final Phase of Divine Right Theory in England, 1688-1702," English Historical Review , 77 (1962), 638-658: "The theory of providential delivery, full of biblical and historical precedent and imagery, became the favorite theme of Revolution church oratory, casuistry, and biblical exegesis, and during William's reign assumed as much importance in church writings as the subject of nonresistance enjoyed after the overthrow of Cromwell's Commonwealth in 1660" (p. 642). [BACK]

35. See Poems on Affairs of State , 5:238-258. [BACK]

36. Cited in Straka, Anglican Reaction to the Revolution of 1688 (Madison, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1962), p. 74:

We ought in most profound prostration, to magnify the goodness of God to us in it: to him belongs the Glory of it, for his hand has wrought this Salvation for us. Some may mention their Chariots, and some their Horses, but we ought only to mention the name of the Lord our God. It will not at all derogate from the Honour of our Great Deliverer, to consider him as the Instrument, whom God has so highly exalted, in bringing about so great a work by his means, and so to direct our Homage and Adoration to the Original of this and all our other Blessings.

From A Sermon Preached . . . before His Highness the Prince of Orange, the 23rd of December, 1688, by Gilbert Burnet (London, 1689), pp. 18-

19. Burnet's sermon was notorious enough to have been mocked in a Jacobite Pamphlet: "And that any of us should be Sainted for his Treachery, and numbred among the Heroes for our running away, cannot surely be the Lord's doing , let Dr. Burnet say what he will," The Lord's Speech Without Doors , p. 3. But Williamite polemic of the months between the Revolution and the probable date at which Dryden completed Amphitryon is filled with references to Providence: see A Sermon Preached at St. Paul's Covent Garden on the day of Thanksgiving Jan. XXXI 1688. For the Great Deliverance of this Kingdom by the Means of His Highness the Prince of Orange from Popery and Arbitrary Power. By Simon Patrick (London, 1689); A Sermon preached at Lincolns-Inn Chappel on the 31th of January, 1688, Being the Day Appointed for a Publick Thanksgiving to Almighty God for having made his Highnes the Prince of Orange the Glorious Instrument of the Great Deliverance of this Kingdom from Popery and Arbitrary Power. By John Tillotson (London, 1689); Seasonable Reflections, on a Late Pamphlet, Entituled, a History of Passive Obedience since the Reformation (London, 1689): "God had delivered us from our dangers, and the dismal miseries which hung over our heads, he has given us a Deliverer, an excellent Prince, under whom our Laws, our Rights, our Fortunes, our Lives, our Religion are all secure" (pp. 2-3); The Case of Allegiance in our Present Circumstances Consider'd (London, 1689):

Salus Populi Suprema Lex (n.p., 1689): "God from Heaven presents [William and Mary] to us, and the highest necessity determines us to acquiesce in his good pleasure" (p. 6). [BACK]

37. Lines 117-120, in The Poems of John Dryden , ed. James Kinsley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), vol. 4. For comment on the political reference of these lines see Kinsley, Poems , 4:2080, and "Dryden's Character of a Good Parson and Bishop Ken," RES , n.s. 3 (1952), 155-158. [BACK]

38. The clearest instance is "To my Honour'd Kinsman," in which Dryden identifies himself with his country gentleman cousin; but he

makes similar gestures as early as 1687, in The Hind and the Panther , III.235-244. [BACK]

39. James D. Garrison, "Dryden and the Birth of Hercules," SP , 77 (1980), 180-201. This is, to be sure, only one part of a complex and interesting argument about the play. Garrison rightly calls our attention to the play's satire and invites us to look for its objects in English politics of the 1690s. Indeed, he makes some approach toward finding them there. Noting II.ii.83-87 and V.i.144 (see above, pp. 84-85), he says, "For a moment, then, we are invited to see in the Jupiter-Alcmena-Amphitryon triangle an allusion to the political struggle between William (false Amphitryon) and James (true Amphitryon), vying to occupy the bed of England (Alcmena)" (p. 194). But he does not remark Dryden's careful preparation for and manipulation of this parallel in I.i, and he soon draws back from the implications of his discovery: ''the context that invites us to see the topicality of the triangle in the first place also provides the key to its meaning. In the public poetry of James II's reign, Dryden had identified the true monarch with the virtue of justice and the loyal subject with the virtue of faith, and it is by emphasis on these specific human qualities that the topical allusions become meaningful in the play" (p. 194). Garrison goes on to apply this system of faith and justice—which is drawn, significantly, not from the politics of the 1690s, but from "the public poetry of James II's reign" (specifically Threnodia Augustalis and Brittania Rediviva )—to Jupiter's adultery and Phaedra's self-interested dealings, at length arriving at the conclusion that Dryden has rejected the "optimistic vision" of the 1660s. [BACK]

40. "On the Late Metamorphosis" (1690), ll. 52-57, in Poems on Affairs of State , 5:151. Joined with the theory of providential deliverance in the writings of Burnet, Lloyd, and other prominent Williamites was the theory derived from Grotius of a "just war": see Mark Goldie's "Edmund Bohun and Jus Gentium in the Revolution Debate, 1689-93," Historical Journal , 20 (1977), 569-586, esp. pp. 582-585. [BACK]

41. " 'Tis the way to be Popular, to Whore and Love. For what dost thou think old Saturn was depos'd, but that he was cold and impotent; and made no court to the fair Ladies" (I.i.235-237). These lines have occasioned considerable speculation on Dryden's topical satire. Frank Harper Moore, in The Nobler Pleasure (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), pp. 198-199, constructs upon them, and upon Jupiter's philandering, a parallel with Charles II, which Garrison rightly questions as "decidedly irrelevant to 1690" (p. 192). Nevertheless, it hardly seems appropriate to the Jupiter/William parallel, for however James may have been "cold and impotent" in his later years, William was not known for making "court to the fair Ladies" (I.i.237): indeed, he was

regularly satirized as a homosexual. If there is a reference to Charles here, the most recent monarch known to "whore and love" on a notable scale, it may perhaps serve as a contrast to William, who, as he is no more "popular" than James, may share his fate. [BACK]

42. Howard Erskine-Hill, "Literature and the Jacobite Cause," in Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689-1759 , ed. Eveline Cruickshanks (Edinburgh: James Donald Publishers, 1982), pp. 49-69, notes (p. 49) that the Jacobite view of William as a conqueror "found early expression in the polemical and sensational image of rape." [BACK]

43. Garrison makes note of many of these allusions; however, he does not connect them with the Revolution or the Jupiter/William parallel. Rather he presents Gripus as "the perversion of ideal justice" and Phaedra as "the perversion of Alcmena's ideal faith" (p. 197), and so fits them, not without some strain, into his system. [BACK]

44. Molière's Sosie declares that "Le véritable Amphitryon/Est L'Amphitryon où l'on dine" (III.v); but Dryden's "Lawfully begotten Lord" hints at his political purpose here. [BACK]

45. Quoted in William Cobbett, Parliamentary History of England (London, 1806-20), 4:10, 15. [BACK]

1. A History of the Tory Party 1640-1714 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 288. See also Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Times , 6 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1833), 4:151-152. For a brief but representative list of Jacobite grievances, see An Old Cavalier Turned a New Courtier (n.p., n.d.): At the Revolution

It was not . . . consider'd what an entailed War was like to succeed even after the death of the King, betwixt the Prince of Wales and the issue of the Princesses, which can have no termination, without restoring him the Crown, to whom of right it doth belong. They foresaw not the strength of France , nor what a Thorn Ireland would be in our side, or that the Dutch would rob us of our Trade, and that Transportation and Pestilential Diseases, would sweep away so many Thousands of our Sea-men and Souldiers, nor could divine that our Merchants should lose so many Millions by Storm and Surprise. They had no apprehensions that the Country should not onely be Fleeced by quarter and Taxes, but be reduced to a very Skeleton, and the Forreign Beare-skins and Thrum Caps should suck the marrow out of our Bones. (P. 3) [BACK]

2. Poems on Affairs of State , vol. 5, ed. William J. Cameron (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 234. Dryden wrote his ''Character of Polybius" for Sheeres's 1693 translation of that historian. [BACK]

3. Poems on Affairs of State , 5:232; Henry Horwitz, Parliament, Policy, and Politics in the Reign of William III , p. 62. [BACK]

4. The Parliamentary History of England , ed. William Cobbett (London, 1809), 5:659-662. [BACK]

5. H. C. Foxcroft, The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, Bart. First Marquis of Halifax , 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1898), 2:143. [BACK]

6. Foxcroft, 2:138-139. [BACK]

7. Foxcroft, 2:456. [BACK]

8. King Arthur is called a "dramatic opera" on its title page and has been described with other works of its age and genre as a "semi opera" and a ''play with music." In calling it simply a "play," I advance no theory of its genre; I mean merely to use the least cumbersome of available terms. [BACK]

9. The Works of John Dryden , ed. Sir Walter Scott, rev. ed. George Saintsbury, vol. 8 (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1882), p. 137. All citations to King Arthur and Cleomenes are to this edition. [BACK]

10. For the reaction to Beachy Head see Poems on Affairs of State , vol. 5, ed. William Cameron (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 226-230, especially "A Long Prologue to a Short Play," a poem critical of naval management written about October 1690 by Dryden's friend Sir Henry Sheeres. For a satire written in 1691 on the impotence of the navy, see "The English Triumphs at Sea," pp. 392-394. Even William's supporters recognized the inadequacy of the fleet. See for example Reflections upon the Occurences of the Last Year (London, 1689), p. 8:

If . . . we take a Prospect of the Progress of our Affairs at sea , we shall find . . . the two famous Nations for Action at Sea, not onely baffled by the sole Power of France , but our losses in Men by Sickness and Mortalities greater than by Fight , and in our Merchandise and Trade, not less than our Expences: And, as if the Power of our Enemies were not enough to annoy us, after all, (if the Complaints of our Merchants and their Mariners be true,) our Ships have been made a Prey by those who should have been their Guard and Convoy, and were imployed for that Purpose.

See also The Management of the Present War against France Consider'd (London, 1690); A Modest Enquiry into the Causes of the Present Disasters in England. And who they are that brought the French Fleet into the English Channel (London, 1690): "To see the French Masters at Sea , and the English Glory thus sunk in the eyes of all Christendom by a

Complication of Disasters , cannot but raise the Curiosity of all true Lovers of their Countrey to enquire into the Source and Cause of so important Events" (p. 1); Henry Maydman, Naval Speculations (London, 1691): England must "reassume her ancient Glory and Prowess , in her Naval Affairs , and command of the Narrow- Seas , which we have lost in a great degree; or at least eclipsed . . . the which, if not gained speedily, I fear it may prove too late afterwards" (sig. A). [BACK]

11. This humble submission to authority was originally countered by a parenthetical reference to the commendable manner in which Dryden surrendered the laureateship rather than alter his principles. See Fredson Bowers, "Dryden as Laureate: the Cancel Leaf in 'King Arthur'," TLS , 10 April 1953, p. 244. [BACK]

12. Sir Walter Scott, in The Works of John Dryden , vol. 8 (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1884), p. 127; Roberta F. Brinkley, Arthurian Legend in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1932), p. 144. The most extreme expression of this view is James D. Merriman's, in The Flower of Kings: A Study of Arthurian Legend in England Between 1485 and 1835 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1973), p. 63: "The final effect of the whole—to use the word loosely—with its compounding of sentimentalized blindness and exposed innocence, rhetorical passions and febrile eroticism, resembles a slightly sticky marshmallow sundae laced with absinthe and sprinkled with cantharides." In "The Impossible Form of Art: Dryden, Purcell, and King Arthur," Studies in the Literary Imagination , 10 (1977), 125-144, Michael W. Alssid attempts with dubious success to apply to the opera various New Critical notions of thematic manipulation and self-reflexiveness. [BACK]

13. Samuel Kliger, in The Goths in England: A Study of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 192-193, sees the Britons as Royalists and the Saxons as Democrats, and suggests that the opera recommends a reconciliation of the two parties. Robert E. Moore, in Henry Purcell and the Restoration Theatre (London: Heinemann, 1961), p. 72, and Franklin B. Zimmerman, in Henry Purcell, 1659-1695: His Life and Times (London: Macmillan, 1971) agree that Arthur represents William, though Zimmerman casts some doubt on Dryden's sincerity. Eugene M. Waith, in "Spectacles of State," SEL , 13 (1973), 317-330, places King Arthur in the masque tradition of compliment to the reigning king. Joanne Altieri, in "Baroque Hieroglyphics in Dryden's King Arthur, PQ , 61 (1982), 431-451, finds in the conclusion of the opera a celebration of mercantile values, in which she suspects some undercurrent of irony. [BACK]

14. Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 289-319. Price lists five "humorous juxtapositions" in King Arthur , and together they make up a rather miscellaneous set. First is the

juxtaposition of the Saxon chorus of sacrifice with the song "I call ye all," in which the Saxons are invited to drink in Woden's Hall—Price remarks that "the solemn sacrifice becomes a bacchanal" (p. 299). There may well be some intentional deflation here; certainly there is quite a lot in the sacrifice itself. However, Ethel Seaton, in Literary Relations of England and Scandinavia in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), p. 257, has shown that "I call ye all'' is an imitation of "the Death Song of Rangnar Lothbrok" in Aylett Sammes Britannia Antiqua Illustrati ; it is therefore perhaps merely a display of Dryden's antiquarian learning. Next Price finds that ''The Arcadian vision of guiltless pleasure" presented before Emmeline and Matilda by the Kentish shepherds "is blurred by a reminder of the possible consequences of pre-marital sex" (p. 299). Next, in the famous Frost Scene, Purcell's music makes us feel the suffering of the cold genius, which is then ridiculed by Cupid's response. The remaining ironies occur in the prophetic masque at the end of the opera, and they are, I think, certainly crucial to Dryden's meaning. Price remarks that the "holy composition ['For Folded Flocks'] is followed by the Jolly, blasphemous folk-song 'Your hay it is mowed'" (p. 314), and that William's authority is undercut in the Grand Chorus by Dryden's reference to his "Scepter'd Subjects" (p. 316). In his new biography of Dryden, published since I wrote my own account of the play, James A. Winn follows Price in finding contradictory parallels; and adds much of his own. I coincide with Winn in seeing in Philidel a reflection of Dryden, and in finding opposition protest against the war in the Dedication and the play. See John Dryden and His World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 448-451. [BACK]

15. See for example Some Reflections upon His Highness the Prince of Orange's Declaration (n.p., 1688): War "is his Passion; his Education has been under that Discipline, and his Skill is in Martial Affairs. He told his Father (he now Invades) nine years ago, This his Army had cost him 1300 Lives to bring it to that Discipline it was in. A story that we, who talk of Magna Charta's, Trials by Juries , and Habeas-Corpus-Laws , may at leisure think upon" (p. 12). [BACK]

16. For Alssid (p. 135), this stanza shows that "the Britons are sceptical . . . of their small achievements." The Britons do indeed sing the stanza, but that it does not express their point of view is clear from a change in pronouns—"we" in the first stanza becomes "they" in the second—and from the contrast between the second stanza and the fourth, in which the Britons' view is clearly expressed: "Now the victory's won, / To the plunder we run: / We return to our lasses, like fortunate traders, / Triumphant with spoils of the vanquished invaders" ( Works , 8:151). [BACK]

17. See Howard Erskine-Hill, "Literature and the Jacobite Cause," in Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689-1759 , ed. Eveline

Cruickshanks (Edinburgh: James Donald Publishers, 1982), p. 49. In the speech quoted above, Halifax warns that "No Prince can bee so chast as that it is adviseable to tempt him to committ a rape," Foxcroft, p. 139. [BACK]

18. A History of the English Church and People , trans. Leo Sherley Price, rev. ed. R. E. Latham (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 58. [BACK]

19. Henry Purcell , p. 312. [BACK]

20. The author of The Dutch Design Anatomized (London, 1690), for example, thus illustrates his assertion that William will bring in "a medley of Nations" that will "ravage and despoil our Country": ''When Vortigern called in the Saxons to his aid, for a while they seemed content with Pay, and some Portion of Quarters; but finding the pleasure and riches of our Country so far exceed their own Habitations, they soon opened a passage for new recruits, and not only expelled the Britains the Country, but after an Infinite effusion of Blood, laid all the Cities, Burghs, Castles, and Fortresses in Ashes" (pp. 14-15); the author of The Dear Bargain (n.p., n.d.) claims of the Dutch:

Doubtless we shall find them equally Conservators of our Properties, and of our Religion, such as the Normans were to the Saxons , and the Saxons in their turn had been to the Britons : The first under the Conquerour of this Man's fatal Name, had but one landing place, and made all England his own; the other under Hengist and Horsa , with but the sixth part of the number of our present Invaders, having got Possession of the Isle of Thanet , yet by little and little brought over so many from the same Shoar from whence our new Recruits are coming, that they entirely reined the British Monarchy (p. 23). [BACK]

21. In addition to Feiling, Horwitz, and Burnet, cited above, see David Ogg, England in the Reigns of James II and William III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), pp. 297-303. [BACK]

22. Henry Purcell , p. 314. [BACK]

23. Henry Purcell , pp. 316-317. [BACK]

24. See Charles Ward, The Life of John Dryden (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), pp. 253-254 for a full account of these events. [BACK]

25. See Ward, p. 254, and The Letters of John Dryden , ed. Charles Ward (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1942), p. 49. Winn also mentions this request and remarks briefly that in view of it Dryden "acted inprudently" in writing Cleomenes ( Dryden , pp. 451-452). [BACK]

26. This is not entirely true of the most famous parallel of the age, Absalom and Achitophel ; but this poem is in many ways a special case.

For a more representative use of overt parallel see Dryden and Lee's The Duke of Guise . [BACK]

27. Anne Barbeau Gardiner, in a paper delivered at the MLA Conference on 27 December 1986, reads Cleomenes in light of contemporary Jacobite poetry, in which the English are portrayed as ingrates and degenerates; and thus identifies Dryden's Egyptians with them. It is not, however, likely that Dryden would depict his countrymen as backward during a Revolution. In all his works since the exclusion crisis, he had described them as inconstant to their leaders, and in the Dedication of Eleanora , written soon after Cleomenes , he makes a point of protesting this inconstancy. J. Douglas Canfield, in a paper delivered at the ASECS Conference on 24 April 1988, also considers Cleomenes an expression of unambiguous Jacobitism. The only dissent from this view is Judith Sloman's, who suggests, in a work published since I wrote my own account, that "The play salvages James as an object of personal admiration and loyalty while admitting the virtual impossibility of seeing him as a focus of concrete political action" ( Dryden: The Poetics of Translation , Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), pp. 45-46. [BACK]

28. James Macpherson, Original Papers Containing the Secret History of Great Britain (London, 1775), I:233. [BACK]

29. Letters, p. 252. [BACK]

1. Quoted from The Poems of John Dryden , ed. James Kinsley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). Further citations to Fables are to this edition: poetry is cited by line number, prose by page number. [BACK]

2. For full analysis of the political meaning of this poem see Jay Arnold Levine, "John Dryden's Epistle to John Driden," JEGP , 63 (1964), 450-474, p. 471; and Elizabeth Duthie, "'A Memorial of My Own Principles': Dryden's 'To My Honor'd Kinsman'." ELH , 47 (1980), 682-704. [BACK]

3. The Letters of John Dryden , ed. Charles E. Ward (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1942), p. 121. [BACK]

4. Letters, p. 120. [BACK]

5. Letters, pp. 123-124. [BACK]

6. Letters, p. 135. [BACK]

7. Arthur W. Hoffman, John Dryden's Imagery (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1962), pp. 130-131; Reuben A. Brower, "Dryden and the Invention of Pope," in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature: Essays in Honor of Alan Dugald McKillop , ed. Carroll Camden (Chicago: University of Chicago Press for William Marsh Rice University, 1963), 211-233, p. 211; Earl Miner, Dryden's Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), p. 226; George Watson, "Dryden and the

Jacobites," TLS , 16 March 1973, 301-302, p. 302; Thomas H. Fijimura, "Dryden's Virgil: Translation as Autobiography," SP , 80 (1983), 67-83, p. 83. Brower justly observes that "the figure of the 'retired' poet . . . was a cultural metaphor, not a simple fact" (p. 212), but he does not speculate on Dryden's purpose in invoking this metaphor. William J. Cameron, in ''John Dryden's Jacobitism," in Restoration Literature: Critical Approaches , ed. Harold Love (London: Methuen, 1972), 277-308, is unusual in giving the late Dryden a public message. He argues that Dryden's purpose in the late work, especially the Aeneis , was to urge passive obedience to William on the Jacobites. [BACK]

8. See, for example, Levine, pp. 470-471, and Achsah Guibbory, The Map of Time (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), pp. 245-247. Guibbory provides an interesting analysis of changes in Dryden's view of history throughout his career, with which I am in substantial agreement, though I see these changes as rhetorical rather than ideological. [BACK]

9. Quoted from The Works of John Dryden , vol. 4, ed. William Frost, A. P. Chambers, and Vinton Dearing (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1974), p. 363. All citations of the Dedication of Examen Poeticum are to this edition. [BACK]

10. Poems , ed. Kinsley, 1. 916. All citations to Dryden's Virgil are to this edition: poetry is cited by line number, prose by page number. [BACK]

11. Levine, p. 471. [BACK]

12. The Works of John Dryden , vol. 3, ed. Earl Miner and Vinton Dearing (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 1. 181. All citations of Eleonora are to this edition. [BACK]

13. Steven N. Zwicker, Politics and Language in Dryden's Poetry: The Arts of Disguise (Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 181-182. [BACK]

14. The Works of John Dryden , ed. Sir Walter Scott, rev. ed. George Saintsbury, vol. 8 (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1882), p. 427. All citations of Love Triumphant are to this edition. [BACK]

15. Thomas H. Fujimura, "The Personal Element in Dryden's Poetry," PMLA , 89 (1974), 1007-1023, pp. 1007-1008. See also "Dryden's Virgil" (cited above) and "'Autobiography' in Dryden's Later Work," Restoration , 8 (1984), 17-29. [BACK]

16. Works , 3:231. All citations of the Dedication of Eleonora are to this edition. [BACK]

17. Donald R. Benson, in "Space, Time, and the Language of Transcendence in Dryden's Later Poetry," Restoration 8 (1984), 10-16, notes Dryden's emphasis on transcendence but sees it as the effect of a "general ontological shift" in progress during Dryden's age. For a more detailed and rather different reading of politics in Eleonora , see Anne Barbeau Gardiner, "Dryden's Eleonora : Passion for the Public Good as a Sign of the Divine Presence," SP , 84 (1987), 95-117. [BACK]

18. Works , 3:501. [BACK]

19. Dryden's late digressiveness has been remarked by Zwicker, who explains it as a strategy of disguise and a principle of aesthetics. See Politics and Language , pp. 62-63. [BACK]

20. Works , 4:65. All citations of the Discourse of Satire are to this edition. [BACK]

21. Miner, Dryden's Poetry , p. 287. [BACK]

22. For a discussion of Dryden's definition of audience and other rhetorical strategies in his prefaces, see Zwicker, pp. 35-69. [BACK]

23. Extended discussions of topical allusions in the translations are to be found in the works cited above by Watson, Cameron, Fujimura, Zwicker, Sloman, and Roper. Several such allusions are noted in Kinsley's edition. [BACK]

24. There have been several attempts to find thematic and structural coherence in Fables . See Miner, Dryden's Poetry , pp. 287-323, Sloman, Dryden , and "An Interpretation of Dryden's Fables," ECS , 4 (1971), 199-211, and James D. Garrison, "The Universe of Dryden's Fables," SEL , 21 (1981), 409-423. Cedric D. Reverand II, in Dryden's Final Poetic Mode: The Fables (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), also reduces Fables to a kind of unity: he finds in them systematic self-contradiction that neatly advances ''subversion" as the final value for Dryden in the 1690s. [BACK]

25. Judith Sloman, in Dryden: The Poetics of Translation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), pp. 3-25. Sloman's contention that the translations somehow embody Dryden's own thought on a wide array of political, religious, philosophical, and aesthetic subjects cannot be disproven, but it is too dependent on arbitrary interpretation of evidence to be convincing. For example, to construct her argument about the philosophical coherence of Fables , Sloman must argue that we read Homer ironically, Ovid straightforwardly, and Boccaccio metaphorically: we are to reject the values of epic (p. 165), accept Ovid's version of Pythagoras's beliefs on time as a direct expression of Dryden's own view (p. 155), and understand Guiscardo's heart in Sigismonda and Guiscardo as symbolic of the eucharist (p. 185). [BACK]

26. Alan Roper, in Dryden's Poetic Kingdoms (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), pp. 165-184, provides an excellent discussion of politics in "To Congreve." The fullest analysis of "To Kneller" is Earl Miner's in "Dryden's Eikon Basilike: To Sir Godfrey Kneller ," in Seventeenth-Century Imagery: Essays on Uses of Figurative Language from Donne to Farquhar , ed. Miner (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1971), 150-167. The longest discussion of politics in Alexander's Feast is Bessie Proffitt's in "Political Satire in Dryden's Alexander's Feast, TSLL , 11 (1970), 1307-1316: a briefer but more

likely account is Howard Erskine-Hill's in "John Dryden" in History of Literature in the English Language, Vol. 4 Dryden to Johnson , ed. Roger Lonsdale (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1971), 23-59, pp. 50-51. [BACK]

27. See Miner's commentary in Works , 4:748. Some critics, most notably Cedric D. Reverand in "Dryden on Dryden in 'To Sir Godfrey Kneller'," PLL , 17 (1981), 164-180, argue that Dryden accuses Kneller of compromising his artistic integrity to serve the court. But in the poem, Dryden places the blame squarely on the court; indeed, it is impossible to tell from the poem alone that Kneller enjoys more court favor than Dryden. [BACK]

28. Dryden's Poetry , pp. 268-269. [BACK]

29. "John Dryden," p. 51. [BACK]

30. John Dawson Carl Buck, in "The Ascetic's Banquet: The Morality of Alexander's Feast," TSLL , 17 (1975), 573-589; Ruth Smith, in "The Argument and Contexts of Dryden's Alexander's Feast," SEL 18 (1978), 465-490; and Robert P. Maccubin, in "The Ironies of Dryden's 'Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique': Texts and Contexts," Mosaic 18 (1986), 34-47, all suggest that Timotheus is meant to appear morally irresponsible in his manipulation of Alexander. I do not find this argument convincing: nowhere in the poem is Timotheus's moral standing presented for judgment; at the end he is clearly judged according to aesthetic standards and found worthy. [BACK]

31. Unlike the Dedication of the Aeneis , the politics of which has been discussed at some length in the works cited above by Watson, Cameron, and Zwicker, the Discourse of Satire has been treated almost exclusively as a critical treatise. Michael Seidel, in Satiric Inheritance: Rabelais to Sterne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 143-144, notes that in discussing Horace as a court poet Dryden is thinking both of his opposition to William and his former service to Charles; and Edward P. Nathan, "The Bench and the Pulpit: Conflicting Elements in the Augustan Apology for Satire," ELH , 52 (1985), 375-396, suggests that in describing Augustus' extension of Lex laesae Majestatis Dryden is attacking contemporary censorship of literature. [BACK]

32. See George R. Noyes, ed. The Poetical Works of Dryden , 2d ed. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1950), p. 1011, and Poems , ed. Kinsley, p. 2040, for Dryden's borrowing here from Le Bossu. [BACK]

33. The analogy between Dryden-Virgil and Augustus-William has been analyzed by Cameron, Fujimura, in "Personal Element," and, most notably, by Zwicker, to whose account I am much indebted. [BACK]

34. Several critics have discussed the application of the Augustus-Aeneas parallel to William. Watson and Cameron suggest that Dryden is advocating obedience to William; Zwicker argues more plausibly that Dryden condemns Aeneas for William's crimes. I think that contrast is at

least as important here as resemblance: Dryden follows Virgil in celebrating Aeneas and condemns William by enforcing the difference between the pious Trojan and the English parricide. [BACK]

35. Jean Regnauld de Segrais, Traduction de l'Éneïde de Virgile (Paris, 1668), 1:38. [BACK]

36. Politics and Language , p. 188. [BACK]

37. Politics and Language , p. 188. [BACK]

1. Charles Ward, The Life of John Dryden (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), p. 292. [BACK]

2. Reprinted in Drydeniana X: Late Criticism, 1688-98 (New York: Garland, 1975). [BACK]

3. Luke Milbourne, Notes on Dryden's Virgil (London, 1698; rpt. New York, Garland, 1974), p. II. All citations are to this reprint. [BACK]

4. A Tale of a Tub and The Battel of the Books , ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 246. All citations of these works are to this edition. [BACK]