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]

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]