John Dryden (1631-1700) and the theory of tragedy

Dryden was born in Northampshire and educated in Westminster School (providing him with an excellent education in the classics) and in Trinity College, Cambridge. During his relatively long life, he exercised his talent in almost all poetic genres (including comedy and tragedy), besides becoming – as Dr. Johnson put it – “the father of English criticism”. His best output is in satirical verse but he was popular as a playwright, too. In 1658 he commemorated Cromwell in “Heroic Stanzas” but in 1660 he already greeted the returning Charles with

“Astraea Redux” and became a whole-hearted royalist, monarchist and conservative. In 1668 he was appointed “poet laureate”. Through his marriage with Lady Elizabeth Howard, he was constantly on the fringes of court society and in 1670 he became – like Racine, later in his life – “Historiographer Royal”. In 1685 he converted to Catholicism (less out of conviction than to please the ascending James II) but after the “glorious revolution” of 1688 (establishing the joint rule of William of Orange [William III] and Mary II) he was deprived of his laureateship and his government post and had to live entirely by his pen, doing mostly translations. He died relatively forgotten.

Concerning tragedy, Dryden, throughout his life, is wavering between the “genius of Shakespeare” (which he readily admitted, adored and tried to imitate) and French classicism (the chief exponent of which in Restoration England was Thomas Rhymer). In his Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668) he does recognise what is reasonable and authoritative in French classicist practice. The major topics are the three unities, the mixture of tragedy and comedy and rhyme in French plays. He concludes that the pseudo-classicists are measurably good and to be followed, if possible, but Shakespeare is great without these rules, too. In his middle period (especially in the late 70s) he is more favourable to Shakespeare than ever and it is rather in the last twenty years of his life that he returns to the French principles. When he criticises Shakespeare severely (as, e.g. in the Preface to his Troilus and Cressida [1679]), he points out weaknesses in coherence and unity of structure but he praises his excellence in presenting character and passion.

Dryden’s most original contribution to the theory of tragedy is in The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy (1679). He starts the discussion of the normative principles with respect to which tragedies may later be judged by recalling the Aristotelian definition, which he gives in the following form: “it [tragedy] is the imitation of one entire, great, and probable action;

not told, but represented; which, by moving in us fear and pity, is conducing to the purging of those passions in our minds. More largely thus: Tragedy describes of paints an action, which action must have all the proportions above named”. It is clear that this is a conflation of the Aristotle’s various accounts, scattered throughout The Poetics. However, to include “the

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probable” and to omit “the necessary” is (both by Aristotelian and by Corneillean standards) a licence, and it is interesting that Dryden puts the ‘seat’ of catharsis into our minds (this is, undoubtedly, an influence of rationalism). Then he emphasises the importance of single action (i.e. one plot-line); he claims that not only does a comic sub-plot ruin the tragic main plot (which, as he admits here himself, is the case in his own Marriage á la Mode) but two different and independent actions distract the attention. The “single-action” requirement, he remarks, condemns all of Shakespeare’s history plays, which are, thus, rather chronicles than tragedies. He also refers to Terence as someone who of course introduced the double action not in tragedy but in comedy.

Then Dryden dutifully goes through all the Aristotelian categories: natural beginning, middle and end; great personalities, probable action, yet admirable and great; historical truth is not absolutely necessary but “likeness of truth” is; “likeness of truth” means that something is more than barely possible (or probable), and “probable” is which happens “oftener than it misses” (this is very close to Corneille’s definition of “the probable”). He admits – as Corneille does, too, when he talks about “extraordinary probability” – that the most difficult task, with respect to the construction of the plot is, to invent a probability and make it wonderful because “the wonderful” carries the element of greatness and probability includes the element of “the reasonable” (which here means practically ‘the credible’, i.e. the verisimilitude in French classicism). Then he goes on to define the “general end of all poetry”: “to instruct delightfully” (dulce et utile – Horace). He contrasts – as Sidney did – poetry with philosophy: the latter instructs but through “precept” (doctrine., principle), which is not delightful. The particular instruction belonging to tragedy is “to purge the passions by example”.

Then Dryden takes a closer look at catharsis: the predominant vices that are to be purged are (on the basis of Aristotle and Rapin, a commentator): “pride and want of commiseration”. Corneille emphasises that our fear originates in our similarities with the falling tragic hero, Dryden underscores that fear comes out of our realisation that “no condition is privileged from the turn of fortune” – fall is more unpredictable and this is what we fear. Dryden includes hamartia (the tragic “flaw” in the character) here but he does not explain it – as Corneille does – as an excess of passion but rather as a fact about the tragic hero, which we should interpret as an example: when we see that even the most virtuous are not exempt of misfortunes, we feel pity. Thus, Dryden, tries to define fear and pity as reactions which are already in the process of being purged from us (thus, from the point of view of the audience); Corneille is more interested in the hero and tries to explain how in him the tragic flaw gets generated (through an excess of passion, e.g. love). Then Dryden wants to give some content to our feelings during catharsis: we become “helpful to, and tender over, the distressed”, which he classifies as “the most god-like” of moral virtues. Thus, for Dryden, tragedy is a vehicle of moral perfectionism, in which we participate primarily with our minds – Corneille rather describes catharsis as the result of an almost animal-like avoidance of both fear and pity.

Dryden then devotes some space to how much the hero must be virtuous and asks if villains can become tragic heroes (as e.g., Euripides’s Phaedra). Dryden would not like to banish villains from the stage altogether but the tragic hero should be basically virtuous, yet he cannot be absolutely perfect, either, because there is no purely angelic creature in Nature;

there are “alloys” of frailty allowed to be put into the hero and thus we shall find his punishment to be complying with the principle of poetic justice; however, because of his predominating good virtues, we shall also pity his fall. Thus, there should be room for both punishment and for pity.

Here Dryden refers to two authorities: Bossu says that the great poets are to be imitated in as many ways as possible; and Rapin claims that, as a general pattern of tragedy,

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the presence, and the intricate relationship between, pity and fear is enough and the rest should be added according to the customs of the age; so – Dryden suggests – Shakespeare and Fletcher are to be imitated to the point they themselves “copied” (imitated, followed) the excellencies of dramatic poetry; we, in a somewhat similar way, copy the foundations of the design and not the “superstructure” (religion, custom, idioms of language, etc.) This clearly indicates that Dryden subscribes to a from of essentialism: the culture- and tradition-bound superstructure can be separated from the underlying and ‘ageless’ substance.

Dryden agrees with Aristotle that the plot is the most important element of tragedy but right after the plot comes the moral of the work, the precept of morality you would like to

“insinuate into the people” (e.g. that union preserves the Commonwealth and discord destroys it [this is the ‘moral’ of The Conquest of Granada, Dryden claims], or that no man is to be accounted as happy before his death [exemplified, Dryden says, in Sophocles’s Oedipus]).

The alleged relationship between action and moral is, for Dryden, once more essentialist and hierarchical: moral directs the whole action of the play to one centre; the action (fable, plot) is the (particular) example built upon the moral, which, in turn, confirms the truth of it to our experience. So the logical order, according to Dryden, is: ‘(abstract and already existing) moral truth –-> plot as example –-> the this way tested truth of a moral principle’. However, he claims, the compositional, actual order is not like this: the persons (dramatic characters) are to be introduced when the action (plot) is designed – they should not be ‘ready’ before we start making the plot (plot –-> moral truth manifested in character –-> tested moral truth).

Here comes the most important part of the treatise with respect to the basis of critical judgement to be applied when the quality of a tragedy should be decided. This basis is the manners of the people in the drama: manners are inclinations (natural or acquired), which move us to (good or bad) actions; today we would say that manners are ‘motives’. Dryden

‘translates’ the relationship between manners and actions into the “cause-and-effect’ pattern:

he says that there should be no effect (action) without cause (manner), for example to make somebody more a villain than he has reason to be is to create an effect which is stronger than the cause.

What exactly the manners are is learnt from philosophy, ethics and history; manners are distinguished according to complexion (choleric, phlegmatic, etc.), to differences of age, sex, climate, to the quality of the person, to the character’s present (particular) situation, etc.

The requirements concerning manners are as follows:

(1) manners should be apparent in the dramatic characters: the ‘place’ to make them manifest is action and discourse.

(2) manners are to be in harmony with (major) character-traits, e.g. a person endowed with the dignity of a king must ‘discover’ in himself majesty, magnanimity, jealousy of power, etc.

(3) resemblance is also a requirement for manners: by this Dryden means that if the characters on stage are also known from history or from tradition (which, as opposed to comedy, is the usual state of affairs in tragedy), then the playwright cannot go against at least the most general traits of the figure, e.g. Ulysses cannot be choleric or Achilles patient – Dryden, as opposed to Corneille, does not analyse the extent of possible deviations

(4) manners should be constant and equal: they should be “maintained the same” through the whole design (the requirement of coherence in character-traits)

So, as we can see, Dryden approaches the quality of tragedy primarily from the point of view of the dramatic characters, Corneille rather from the unities, probability versus necessity, etc., so rather from those features which pertain to the structure (the design) of the drama.

According to Dryden, a character thus becomes the composition of qualities which are not contrary to one another (one can be liberal and valiant but not liberal and covetous). Vice

and passion are there in all men yet the tragic hero must have much more virtue than vice (this is Dryden’s favourite idea).

The requirement thus set up for manners will be the basis of our critical evaluation of drama: e.g. when we consider the several qualities of manners (whether they are suitable to age, sex, country, climate, etc.), we are able to tell whether the author has really followed Nature. Dryden accuses French authors of making their heroes thoroughly French, irrespective of the age and the geographical position (e.g. in Medieval Spain or in ancient Greece everybody is still typically French in the 17^th century way). A good example of the required ‘realism’ is Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Another of the excellencies of Shakespeare is that in his plays the manners of the persons are apparent: this applies to Ben Jonson, too but not to Fletcher. These can be learned by the poet. However, there is a quality he must be born with: the ability to describe the passions of his characters (anger, hatred, love, ambition, jealousy, revengefulness, etc. – yet not pity and fear: the latter two are in the audience and not in the characters!). But, besides talent, the poet must also be skilled in moral philosophy (‘the philosophy of man’, as opposed to the ‘philosophy of science’). In describing passions, even Shakespeare is sometimes at fault, yet not in the passions fitting the characters but in the manner of expressing them: Shakespeare “often obscures his meaning by his words”; “the fury of his fancy often transported him beyond the bounds of judgement” – he cannot say anything without a metaphor. Thus, the false measure of vehemence is not recommended.

It is obvious that Dryden is not only obsessed with certain norms but he is one of their first creators: norms are established with respect to (moral) philosophy and with respect to Nature and history – a kind of ‘realism’ is demanded and this will also save the poet from extremes, providing him with the ‘golden means’. Criticism is the application of norms to individual pieces of art.