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108-521: The first performance of Epicœne was, by Jonson's admission, a failure. Years later, however, John Dryden and others championed it, and after the Restoration it was frequently revived— Samuel Pepys refers to a performance on 6 July 1660, and places it among the first plays legally performed after Charles II 's restoration . The play takes place in London , primarily in the home of Morose. Morose

216-600: A libel case. Wood was eventually prosecuted for insinuations against the judicial integrity of the school of Clarendon. One of the two statements called in question was founded on information provided by Aubrey and this may explain the estrangement between the two antiquaries and the ungrateful account that Wood gives of Aubrey's character. It is now famous: "a shiftless person, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased. And being exceedingly credulous, would stuff his many letters sent to A. W. with folliries and misinformations, which would sometimes guid him into

324-443: A Roman Catholic priest, had no children themselves. Dates given are (acted/published) and unless otherwise noted are taken from Scott's edition. John Aubrey John Aubrey FRS (12 March 1626 – 7 June 1697) was an English antiquary , natural philosopher and writer. He was a pioneer archaeologist , who recorded (often for the first time) numerous megalithic and other field monuments in southern England, and who

432-561: A blast of wind, she rush'd away. Thus having pass'd the night in fruitless pain, I to my longing friends return again Dryden's translation is based on presumed authorial intent and smooth English. In line 790 the literal translation of haec ubi dicta dedit is "when she gave these words." But "she said" gets the point across, uses half the words, and makes for better English. A few lines later, with ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum; ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago , he alters

540-537: A committed admirer in George Saintsbury , and was a prominent figure in quotation books such as Bartlett's, but the next major poet to take an interest in Dryden was T. S. Eliot , who wrote that he was "the ancestor of nearly all that is best in the poetry of the eighteenth century", and that "we cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden." However, in

648-419: A dialogue in which four characters—each based on a prominent contemporary, with Dryden himself as 'Neander'—debate the merits of classical, French and English drama. The greater part of his critical works introduce problems which he is eager to discuss, and show the work of a writer of independent mind who feels strongly about his own ideas, ideas which demonstrate the breadth of his reading. He felt strongly about

756-682: A libretto by Stefan Zweig based on Jonson's play, premiered in Dresden . Major American revivals of Epicœne have been rare. In Washington D.C., the Shakespeare Theatre Company produced the play in 2003, with Daniel Breaker starring as Truewit. The play has been performed only twice in New York in recent years: once in the 1980s at Jean Cocteau Repertory theatre and in 2010 as part of the "Anybody But Shakespeare Classics Festival" by (re:) Directions Theatre Company. The play

864-428: A list of some 5,000 place-names, but managed to provide derivations for only a relatively small proportion of them: many are correct, but some are wildly wrong. The manuscript is now Bodleian MS Aubrey 5. The only work published by Aubrey in his lifetime was his Miscellanies (1696; reprinted with additions in 1721), a collection of 21 short chapters on the theme of "hermetick philosophy" (i.e. supernatural phenomena and

972-709: A message from the ghost of his wife, Creusa. iamque vale et nati serva communis amorem. ' haec ubi dicta dedit, lacrimantem et multa volentem dicere deseruit, tenuisque recessit in auras. ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum; ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno. sic demum socios consumpta nocte reviso Dryden translates it like this: I trust our common issue to your care.' She said, and gliding pass'd unseen in air. I strove to speak: but horror tied my tongue; And thrice about her neck my arms I flung, And, thrice deceiv'd, on vain embraces hung. Light as an empty dream at break of day, Or as

1080-584: A modern perspective) was flawed by the number of excisions Clark had made in the interests of "decency". In the 20th century, a number of more popular editions appeared, which often included the expurgated passages, but were in other respects far more selective: these included versions edited by John Collier (under the title The Scandal and Credulities of John Aubrey ; 1931), Anthony Powell (1949), Oliver Lawson Dick (1949), Richard Barber (1975), and John Buchanan-Brown (2000; with an introduction by Michael Hunter ). The most scholarly and complete edition, and now

1188-463: A pavement square of blue marble about 14" square; O RARE BEN JONSON." Of William Shakespeare : "His comedies will remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum [the ways of mankind]. Now our present writers reflect so much on particular persons and coxcombeities that twenty years hence they will not be understood." Aubrey also wrote of Francis Bacon that "he

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1296-415: A school for the children of the poor of the town. This became John Dryden's School, later The Orange School. Dryden was the dominant literary figure and influence of his age. He established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English poetry by writing successful satires, religious pieces, fables, epigrams, compliments, prologues, and plays with it; he also introduced the alexandrine and triplet into

1404-631: A son and heir to the Catholic King and Queen on 10 June 1688. When, later in the same year, James II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution , Dryden's refusal to take the oaths of allegiance to the new monarchs, William and Mary , left him out of favour at court. Thomas Shadwell succeeded him as Poet Laureate, and he was forced to give up his public offices and live by the proceeds of his pen. Dryden translated works by Horace , Juvenal , Ovid , Lucretius , and Theocritus ,

1512-653: A student of the Middle Temple . He spent a pleasant time at Trinity in 1647, making friends among his Oxford contemporaries, and collecting books. He spent much of his time in the country. In 1649, Aubrey discovered the megalithic remains at Avebury , which he later mapped and discussed in his important antiquarian work Monumenta Britannica . He was to show Avebury to Charles II at the King's request in 1663. His father died in 1652, leaving Aubrey large estates, but with them some complicated debts. Aubrey said his memory

1620-528: A survey of Surrey . Aubrey carried out the work, but in the event Ogilby's project was curtailed, and he did not use the material. Aubrey, however, continued to add to his manuscript until 1692. The manuscript is now Bodleian MS Aubrey 4. In a much-revised form (with both additions and excisions) it was published by Richard Rawlinson as the Natural History and Antiquities of Surrey in five volumes in 1718–19. The Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme

1728-421: A survey of other early urban and military sites, including Roman towns, "camps" ( hillforts ), and castles; (3) a review of other archaeological remains, including sepulchral monuments, roads, coins and urns; and (4) a series of more analytical pieces, including four exercises attempting to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes. Of these last,

1836-516: A task which he found far more satisfying than writing for the stage. In 1694 he began work on what would be his most ambitious and defining work as translator, The Works of Virgil (1697), which was published by subscription . The publication of the translation of Virgil was a national event and brought Dryden the sum of £1,400. Dryden translated the Aeneid into couplets , turning Virgil's almost 10,000 lines into 13,700 lines; Joseph Addison wrote

1944-608: A wider appreciation of his contributions to scholarship. In the Doctor Who serial The Stones of Blood (1978)—which features a neolithic stone circle—the Fourth Doctor quips, "I always thought that Druidism was founded by John Aubrey in the seventeenth century as a joke. He had a great sense of humour, John Aubrey." In 2008, Aubrey's Brief Lives was a five-part drama serial on Radio 4. Writer Nick Warburton intertwined some of Aubrey's biographical sketches with

2052-485: Is a wealthy old man with an obsessive hatred of noise, going as far as to live on a street too narrow for carts to pass and make noise. He has made plans to disinherit his nephew Dauphine by marrying. This is due to the schemes and tricks Dauphine has played on him in the past. To combat this, Dauphine concocts a plan with Cutbeard, Morose's barber. Cutbeard presents Morose with a young (and supposedly) silent woman to marry. When Morose meets Epicœne, he tries to find out if she

2160-462: Is believed to be the first person to assert that English sentences should not end in prepositions because Latin sentences cannot end in prepositions. Dryden created the proscription against preposition stranding in 1672 when he objected to Ben Jonson 's 1611 phrase, 'The bodies that those souls were frighted from.' However, he did not provide the rationale for his preference. Dryden often translated his writing into Latin, to check whether his writing

2268-472: Is believed to have originated in Dryden's 1686 poem The Hind and the Panther , referring to the throne of God as a "blaze of glory that forbids the sight." What Dryden achieved in his poetry was neither the emotional excitement of the early nineteenth-century romantics nor the intellectual complexities of the metaphysicals . His subject matter was often factual, and he aimed at expressing his thoughts in

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2376-407: Is evidence that the play remained popular, as suggested by a Stationer's Register entry in 1612, which indicates the intention to publish a quarto of the play. The play influenced at least two minor plays before the interregnum: Peter Hausted 's Rival Friends (1631) and Jasper Mayne 's The City Match (1639). After the Restoration , Epicœne was frequently revived and highly appreciated; in

2484-479: Is for the passions; for (these) are begotten in the soul by showing the objects out of their true proportion.... A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth." While Dryden had many admirers, he also had his share of critics, Mark Van Doren among them. Van Doren complained that in translating Virgil's Aeneid , Dryden had added "a fund of phrases with which he could expand any passage that seemed to him curt." Dryden did not feel such expansion

2592-438: Is likely that he received his first education. In 1644 he was sent to Westminster School as a King's Scholar where his headmaster was Richard Busby , a charismatic teacher and severe disciplinarian. Having been re-founded by Elizabeth I , Westminster during this period embraced a very different religious and political spirit encouraging royalism and high Anglicanism . Whatever Dryden's response to this was, he clearly respected

2700-521: Is no longer credited. Unlike many of William Shakespeare 's plays, which would have been performed in the open aired Globe Theatre , this play's reliance on controlled sound would have required that it be performed in a small, contained venue like the Whitefriars Theatre . The intended audience of this play would have been wealthier than Shakespeare's crowd. This can be seen through the play's use of Latin phrases, which would have required

2808-458: Is not the women's fault; all of them are corrupted. He also tells Morose to kill himself instead of getting married. The couple are married despite the well-meaning interference of Dauphine's friend Truewit. Morose soon regrets his wedding day, as his house is invaded by a charivari consisting of Dauphine, Truewit, and Clerimont; a sea-captain named Otter and his wife; two stupid knights (La Foole and Daw); and an assortment of Collegiates. The house

2916-475: Is overrun with noise and clamor, much to Morose's chagrin. Worst for Morose, Epicœne quickly reveals herself to be a loud, nagging mate. Mistress Otter has a dominant personality compared to her husband. She has the same characteristics as Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew . She is intimidating and in charge of domestic resources. She shouts at him in front of Truewit and his friends and she tells him that he

3024-666: Is particularly noted for his systematic examination of the Avebury henge monument. The Aubrey holes at Stonehenge are named after him, although there is considerable doubt as to whether the holes that he observed are those that currently bear the name. He was also a pioneer folklorist , collecting together a miscellany of material on customs, traditions and beliefs under the title "Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme". He set out to compile county histories of both Wiltshire and Surrey , although both projects remained unfinished. His "Interpretation of Villare Anglicanum" (also unfinished)

3132-441: Is really a silent woman, testing her obedience. He tells her not to succumb to the temptations of the court and tells her about the virtues of silence. Under the assumption that his fiancée, Epicœne, is an exceptionally quiet woman, Morose excitedly plans their marriage. Unbeknownst to him, Dauphine has arranged the whole match for purposes of his own. At the same time there is an alliance of women with intellectual pretensions called

3240-426: Is sullying her image. It appears that she had great options in life but she ended up settling for him. Desperate for a divorce, Morose consults two lawyers (who are actually Dauphine's friends Cutbeard and Otter in disguise), but they can find no grounds for ending the match. Finally, Dauphine promises to reveal grounds to end the marriage if Morose agrees to give him his inheritance. The agreement made, Dauphine strips

3348-536: The Ashmolean Museum : they are now in the Bodleian Library, as MSS Aubrey 6–8. As private, manuscript texts, the "Lives" were able to contain the richly controversial material which is their chief interest today, and Aubrey's chief contribution to the formation of modern biographical writing. When he allowed Anthony Wood to use the texts, however, he entered the caveat that much of the content of

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3456-714: The Earl of Rochester , a notorious womaniser. Rochester responded by hiring thugs who attacked Dryden whilst walking back from Will's Coffee House (a popular London coffee house where the Wits gathered to gossip, drink and conduct their business) to his house on Gerrard Street. At around 8 pm on 18 December 1679, Dryden was attacked in Rose Alley behind the Lamb & Flag pub , near his home in Covent Garden . Dryden survived

3564-648: The Naturall Historie was published by John Britton in 1847 for the Wiltshire Topographical Society. The Antiquities were published (again, with certain omissions) by John Edward Jackson in 1862 as Wiltshire: the Topographical Collections of John Aubrey . In 1673, the royal cosmographer and cartographer John Ogilby , planning a national atlas and chorography of Britain, licensed Aubrey to undertake

3672-577: The Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux , an authentic royalist panegyric . In this work the Interregnum is illustrated as a time of chaos, and Charles is seen as the restorer of peace and order. After the Restoration, as Dryden quickly established himself as the leading poet and literary critic of his day, he transferred his allegiances to the new government. Along with Astraea Redux , Dryden welcomed

3780-694: The Welsh Marches . His maternal grandfather, Isaac Lyte, lived at Lytes Cary Manor , Somerset, now owned by the National Trust . Richard Aubrey, his father, owned lands in Wiltshire and Herefordshire. For many years an only child, he was educated at home with a private tutor, he was "melancholy" in his solitude. His father was not intellectual, preferring field sports (hunting) to learning. Aubrey read such books as came his way, including Bacon 's Essays , and studied geometry in secret. Aubrey

3888-451: The "Lives" in the early morning while his hosts were sleeping off the effects of the night before. These texts were, as Aubrey entitled them, Schediasmata , "pieces written extempore, on the spur of the moment". Time after time, he leaves marks of omission in the form of dashes and ellipses for dates and facts, inserting fresh information whenever it is presented to him. The margins of his notebooks are dotted with notes-to-self, most frequently

3996-452: The (prose) prefaces for each book, and William Congreve checked the translation against the Latin original. His final translations appeared in the volume Fables Ancient and Modern (1700), a series of episodes from Homer , Ovid , and Boccaccio , as well as modernised adaptations from Geoffrey Chaucer interspersed with Dryden's own poems. As a translator, he made great literary works in

4104-503: The 1970s did the full breadth and innovation of his scholarship begin to be more widely appreciated. He published little in his lifetime, and many of his most important manuscripts (for the most part preserved in the Bodleian Library ) remain unpublished, or published only in partial form. Aubrey was born at Easton Piers or Percy, near Kington St Michael , Wiltshire, to a long-established and affluent gentry family with roots in

4212-520: The Addition, I also hope, are easily deduc'd from Virgil's Sense. They will seem (at least I have the Vanity to think so), not struck into him, but growing out of him. (5:529) In a similar vein, Dryden writes in his Preface to the translation anthology Sylvae : Where I have taken away some of [the original authors'] Expressions, and cut them shorter, it may possibly be on this consideration, that what

4320-726: The King's health in Interregnum Herefordshire, but with equal enthusiasm attended meetings in London of the republican Rota Club . In 1663, Aubrey became a member of the Royal Society . He lost estate after estate due to lawsuits, until 1670 when he parted with his last piece of property and ancestral home, Easton Piers. From this time he was dependent on the hospitality of his numerous friends; in particular, Sir James Long, 2nd Baronet , and his wife Lady Dorothy of Draycot House, Wiltshire. In 1667, Aubrey had made

4428-553: The Ladies Collegiates. They are married women who live away from their husbands and speak their minds. They talk about how women can use sex to control their husbands. Truewit, hoping to secure his friend's inheritance, attempts to persuade Morose that marriage would not be good for him. Truewit says that no matter what, Morose will find himself unhappy in marriage, regardless of whether she is pretty, ugly, rich, poor, or even if Morose loves her. Truewit tells Morose that it

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4536-497: The Latin " quaere ". This exhortation, to "go and find out" is often followed. In his life of Thomas Harcourt , Aubrey notes that one Roydon, a brewer living in Southwark , was reputed to be in possession of Harcourt's petrified kidney: "I have seen it", he writes approvingly; "he much values it". Aubrey himself valued the evidence of his own eyes above all, and he took great pains to ensure that, where possible, he noted not only

4644-614: The Lives was "not fitt to be let flie abroad" while the subjects and the author were still living. Aubrey's relationship with Wood was to become increasingly fraught. Aubrey asked Wood to be "my index expurgatorius": a reference to the Church's list of banned books, which Wood seems to have taken not as a warning, but as a licence to simply extract pages of notes to paste into his own proofs. In 1692, Aubrey complained bitterly that Wood had mutilated forty pages of his manuscript, perhaps for fear of

4752-471: The acquaintance of Anthony Wood at Oxford, and when Wood began to gather materials for his Athenae Oxonienses , Aubrey offered to collect information for him. From time to time he forwarded memoranda in a uniquely casual, epistolary style, and in 1680 he began to promise the work Minutes for Lives , which Wood was to use at his discretion. Aubrey died of an apoplexy while travelling, in June 1697, aged 71, and

4860-475: The attack, offering £50 for the identity of the thugs placed in the London Gazette , and a Royal Pardon if one of them would confess. No one claimed the reward. Dryden's greatest achievements were in satiric verse: the mock-heroic Mac Flecknoe , a more personal product of his laureate years, was a lampoon circulated in manuscript and an attack on the playwright Thomas Shadwell . Dryden's main goal in

4968-656: The audience to possess advanced education in order to understand all of the jokes and references. The play premiered at the Whitefriars Theatre in either December 1609 or January 1610, and was originally performed by the Children of the Queen's Revels. The cast was led by Nathan Field (who may have played either Truewit or Dauphin). Little heed is now given to the Victorian critic F. G. Fleay's hypothesis that Jonson himself played Morose. Jonson hinted to William Drummond that

5076-488: The comic duel between La Foole and Daw is usually seen as an echo of the mock-duel between Viola and Aguecheek in Shakespeare 's Twelfth Night . Some more local details are also borrowed from the classical misogynistic tradition. Truewit's speeches condemning marriage borrow from Ovid 's Ars Amatoria and Juvenal's Satire VI . John Aubrey 's claim that Morose was modelled on Elizabethan businessman Thomas Sutton

5184-582: The concourse of Westminster Hall , coming back after lunch to find them changed), he recorded an inaccurate and bawdy anecdote about Chaloner's death, but subsequently found it to be in fact about James Chaloner . Aubrey let the initial story stand in his text, while highlighting the error in a marginal note. In 1680, Aubrey began work on his collection of biographical sketches, which he entitled "Schediasmata: Brief Lives". He presented them to Anthony Wood in 1681 but continued to work on them until 1693, when he deposited his manuscripts (in three folio volumes) in

5292-529: The consent of the parents is noted on the licence, although Lady Elizabeth was then about twenty-five. The couple met after 1660, when Dryden began lodging in London with her brother, Sir Robert Howard, son of the earl of Berkshire. The marriage lasted until his death, but there is little evidence about how they lived as a couple. A small estate in Wiltshire was settled upon them by her father. The lady's intellect and temper were apparently not good; her husband

5400-481: The county's natural history. Some of his interim observations were read to the Royal Society in 1668 and 1675–6. In 1685 Aubrey recast the work, now modelling it on Robert Plot 's Natural History of Oxford-shire (published in 1677); and it was effectively finished by 1690–91, when he transcribed a fair copy. Shortly afterwards the Royal Society commissioned another transcript, at a cost of £7. In 1693 Aubrey asked his brother William Aubrey and Thomas Tanner to bring

5508-445: The county. His erstwhile friend and fellow-antiquary Anthony Wood predicted that he would one day break his neck while running downstairs in haste to interview some retreating guest or other. Aubrey was an apolitical Royalist , who enjoyed the innovations characteristic of the Interregnum period while deploring the rupture in traditions and the destruction of ancient buildings brought about by civil war and religious change. He drank

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5616-493: The course of a lengthy analysis, Dryden calls it "the pattern of a perfect play." The play was one of the first to be performed in London after the theatres reopened in 1660. Samuel Pepys 's diary records several viewings of the play. The first, in early summer of 1660, seems likely to have been among the first plays performed after Charles II 's return to London. Pepys saw the play again in January 1661, with Edward Kynaston in

5724-417: The dominant poetic form of the 18th century. Alexander Pope was heavily influenced by Dryden and often borrowed from him; other writers were equally influenced by Dryden and Pope. Pope famously praised Dryden's versification in his imitation of Horace 's Epistle II.i: "Dryden taught to join / The varying pause, the full resounding line, / The long majestic march, and energy divine." Samuel Johnson summed up

5832-488: The essay on architecture, "Chronologia Architectonica", written in 1671, was the most detailed, and (although in its unpublished state it remained little known) is now regarded as a highly perceptive milestone in the development of architectural history. The manuscript of Monumenta Britannica is now Bodleian MSS Top.Gen.c.24 and 25. An edition of the first three parts (reproduced, following unorthodox editing principles, partly in facsimile , and partly in printed transcript)

5940-425: The female costume from Epicœne, revealing that Morose's wife is, in fact, a boy, and therefore their marriage cannot be upheld. Morose is dismissed harshly, and the other ludicrous characters are discomfited by this revelation; Daw and Foole, for instance, had claimed to have slept with Epicœne. Jonson utilised a variety of sources to write Epicœne. While most details of characterisation and plot are his own invention,

6048-420: The final resting places of people, but also of their portraits and papers. Though his work has frequently been accused of inaccuracy, this charge is misguided. In most cases, Aubrey simply wrote what he had seen, or heard. When transcribing hearsay , he displays a careful approach to the ascription of sources. For example, in his life of Thomas Chaloner (who, Aubrey notes, was himself fond of spreading rumours in

6156-407: The form. In his poems, translations, and criticism, he established a poetic diction appropriate to the heroic couplet— Auden referred to him as "the master of the middle style " —that was a model for his contemporaries and for much of the 18th century. The considerable loss felt by the English literary community at his death was evident in the elegies written about him. Dryden's heroic couplet became

6264-578: The general attitude with his remark that "the veneration with which his name is pronounced by every cultivator of English literature, is paid to him as he refined the language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English poetry." His poems were very widely read, and are often quoted, for instance, in Henry Fielding 's Tom Jones and Johnson's essays. Johnson also noted, however, that "He is, therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not often pathetic; and had so little sensibility of

6372-525: The headmaster and would later send two of his sons to school at Westminster. As a humanist public school, Westminster maintained a curriculum which trained pupils in the art of rhetoric and the presentation of arguments for both sides of a given issue. This is a skill which would remain with Dryden and influence his later writing and thinking, as much of it displays these dialectical patterns. The Westminster curriculum included weekly translation assignments which developed Dryden's capacity for assimilation. This

6480-452: The literal translation "Thrice trying to give arms around her neck; thrice the image grasped in vain fled the hands," in order to fit it into the metre and the emotion of the scene. In his own words, The way I have taken, is not so streight as Metaphrase, nor so loose as Paraphrase: Some things too I have omitted, and sometimes added of my own. Yet the omissions I hope, are but of Circumstances, and such as wou'd have no grace in English; and

6588-480: The married state but also celebrations of the same. Thus, little is known of the intimate side of his marriage. Lady Elizabeth bore three sons, one of whom (Erasmus Henry) became a Roman Catholic priest. With the reopening of the theatres in 1660 after the Puritan ban , Dryden began writing plays. His first play The Wild Gallant appeared in 1663, and was not successful, but was still promising, and from 1668 on he

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6696-576: The material. A controversial book for its time, "Lives" bluntly mocked the scandalous lives of eminent figures. For instance, Aubrey wrote of John Milton : "His complexion exceeding faire—he was so faire that they called him the Lady of Christ's College." He wrote of William Butler : "The Dr. lying at the Savoy in London, next the water side where was a balcony look't into the Thames, a patient came to him that

6804-414: The most precise and concentrated manner. Although he uses formal structures such as heroic couplets, he tried to recreate the natural rhythm of speech, and he knew that different subjects need different kinds of verse. In his preface to Religio Laici he says that "the expressions of a poem designed purely for instruction ought to be plain and natural, yet majestic... The florid, elevated and figurative way

6912-457: The most successful one-man production ever seen, with Dotrice giving over 1800 performances across forty years on both sides of the Atlantic. For many, the play became an essential means of understanding a "vanished time" and one version of it. Aubrey scholars, however, have sometimes seen the production as over-emphasising its subject's eccentricities and lack of organisation, to the detriment of

7020-623: The nation rather than the self, and the Poet Laureate (as he would later become) is obliged to write a certain number of these per annum. In November 1662, Dryden was proposed for membership in the Royal Society , and he was elected an early fellow. However, Dryden was inactive in Society affairs and in 1666 was expelled for non-payment of his dues. On 1 December 1663, Dryden married the royalist sister of Sir Robert Howard —Lady Elizabeth. Dryden's works occasionally contain outbursts against

7128-462: The new regime with two more panegyrics: To His Sacred Majesty: A Panegyric on his Coronation (1662) and To My Lord Chancellor (1662). These poems suggest that Dryden was looking to court a possible patron, but he was to instead make a living in writing for publishers, not for the aristocracy, and thus ultimately for the reading public. These, and his other nondramatic poems, are occasional—that is, they celebrate public events. Thus they are written for

7236-573: The occult), including "Omens", "Prophesies", "Transportation in the Air", "Converse with Angels and Spirits", "Second-Sighted Persons", etc. Its contents mainly comprised documented reports of supernatural manifestations. The work did much to bolster Aubrey's posthumous reputation as a superstitious and credulous eccentric. Aubrey's papers also included "Architectonica Sacra"; and "Erin Is God" (notes on ecclesiastical antiquities). Aubrey's "Adversaria Physica"

7344-1006: The older languages available to readers of English. Dryden died on 12 May 1700, and was initially buried in St. Anne's cemetery in Soho, before being exhumed and reburied in Westminster Abbey ten days later. He was the subject of poetic eulogies, such as Luctus Brittannici: or the Tears of the British Muses; for the Death of John Dryden, Esq. (London, 1700), and The Nine Muses . A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates Dryden at 43 Gerrard Street in London's Chinatown . He lived at 137 Long Acre from 1682 to 1686 and at 43 Gerrard Street from 1686 until his death. In his will, he left The George Inn at Northampton to trustees, to form

7452-637: The originals. However, several of Wordsworth's contemporaries, such as George Crabbe , Lord Byron , and Walter Scott (who edited Dryden's works), were still keen admirers of Dryden. Besides, Wordsworth did admire many of Dryden's poems, and his famous "Intimations of Immortality" ode owes something stylistically to Dryden's " Alexander's Feast ". John Keats admired the Fables , and imitated them in his poem Lamia . Later 19th-century writers had little use for verse satire, Pope, or Dryden; Matthew Arnold famously dismissed them as "classics of our prose". He did have

7560-666: The paths of errour". A large part of the "Lives" was published in 1813 as Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries . A near-complete transcript, Brief Lives , Chiefly of Contemporaries, Set Down by John Aubrey, Between the Years 1669 and 1696 , was edited for the Clarendon Press in 1898 by the Rev. Andrew Clark . This remained the standard edition for scholarly use for many years, but (from

7668-557: The play failed; he mentioned certain verses calling the title appropriate, since the audience had remained silent at the end. A report from the Venetian ambassador shows that at least one person spoke up in response to the play: Arbella Stuart , who complained of a personal reference to a recent intrigue involving the prince of Moldavia . Whatever trouble this complaint may have caused was apparently smoothed over by Stuart's subsequent marriage to William Seymour. Despite these issues, there

7776-460: The posts of Poet Laureate (1668) and historiographer royal (1670). When the Great Plague of London closed the theatres in 1665, Dryden retreated to Wiltshire where he wrote Of Dramatick Poesie (1668), arguably the best of his unsystematic prefaces and essays. Dryden constantly defended his own literary practice, and Of Dramatick Poesie , the longest of his critical works, takes the form of

7884-453: The power of effusions purely natural, that he did not esteem them in others. Simplicity gave him no pleasure." Readers in the first half of the 18th century did not mind this too much, but later generations considered Dryden's absence of sensibility a fault. One of the first attacks on Dryden's reputation was by William Wordsworth , who complained that Dryden's descriptions of natural objects in his translations from Virgil were much inferior to

7992-495: The project to completion, but despite their best intentions they failed to do so. The manuscript of the Naturall Historie is now Bodleian MSS Aubrey 1 and 2. The Royal Society's copy, which includes material (mainly on supernatural phenomena) that Aubrey afterwards removed from his own manuscript, is now Royal Society MS 92. The surviving manuscript of the Antiquities is now Bodleian MS Aubrey 3. A highly selective edition of

8100-427: The relation of the poet to tradition and the creative process, and his best heroic play Aureng-zebe (1675) has a prologue which denounces the use of rhyme in serious drama. His play All for Love (1678) was written in blank verse, and was to immediately follow Aureng-Zebe . Dryden's poem "An Essay upon Satire" contained a number of attacks on King Charles II , his mistresses and courtiers, but most pointedly on

8208-462: The religious poems Religio Laici (1682), written from the position of a member of the Church of England; his 1683 edition of Plutarch's Lives Translated From the Greek by Several Hands in which he introduced the word 'biography' to English readers; and The Hind and the Panther , (1687) which celebrates his conversion to Roman Catholicism . He wrote Britannia Rediviva celebrating the birth of

8316-542: The result of influence exercised on his behalf by his cousin the Lord Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering . At Cromwell's funeral on 23 November 1658 Dryden processed with the Puritan poets John Milton and Andrew Marvell . Shortly thereafter he published his first important poem, Heroic Stanzas (1659), a eulogy on Cromwell's death which is cautious and prudent in its emotional display. In 1660 Dryden celebrated

8424-423: The same essay, Eliot accused Dryden of having a "commonplace mind". Critical interest in Dryden has increased recently, but, as a relatively straightforward writer ( William Empson , another modern admirer of Dryden, compared his "flat" use of language with Donne 's interest in the "echoes and recesses of words" ), his work has not occasioned as much interest as Andrew Marvell 's, John Donne 's or Pope's. Dryden

8532-549: The scenario originates from two orations by Libanius : in one, a groom in Morose's situation argues for permission to commit suicide to escape his marriage, while in the other an elderly miser plans to disinherit a nephew who laughed at him. The coup de théâtre of Epicœne's unveiling, while traditionally viewed as derived from the Casina of Plautus , is closer both in spirit and in execution to Il Marescalco of Aretino . Finally,

8640-459: The spectacle. In 1650 Dryden went up to Trinity College, Cambridge . Here he would have experienced a return to the religious and political ethos of his childhood: the Master of Trinity was a Puritan preacher by the name of Thomas Hill who had been a rector in Dryden's home village. Though there is little specific information on Dryden's undergraduate years, he would most certainly have followed

8748-494: The standard curriculum of classics, rhetoric, and mathematics. In 1654 he obtained his BA, graduating top of the list for Trinity that year. In June of the same year Dryden's father died, leaving him some land which generated a little income, but not enough to live on. Returning to London during the Protectorate , Dryden obtained work with Oliver Cromwell 's Secretary of State, John Thurloe . This appointment may have been

8856-403: The standard edition for reference purposes, is Kate Bennett (ed.), Brief Lives with An Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers (2 volumes, Oxford, 2015), which was described on publication by Michael Hunter as "the edition we have been waiting for". The "Lives" present a number of difficult editorial problems as to what should be included or excluded, and how best to present

8964-534: The title role. In 1664, Pepys saw the play at the Theatre Royal with Elizabeth Knepp in the title role; this was probably the first performance in which a woman played Epicœne. Over the next century, a number of celebrated actresses, including Anne Oldfield and Sarah Siddons , performed the part. Siddons, however, was directly associated with the play's departure from the stage. David Garrick and George Colman 's updated version (1752), featuring Siddons,

9072-434: The work into two separate projects, on the antiquities and the natural history of the county respectively. The work on the antiquities (which he entitled Hypomnemata Antiquaria ) was closely modelled on Dugdale, and was largely finished by 1671: Aubrey deposited his draft in the Ashmolean Museum in two manuscript volumes. Unfortunately, one of these was withdrawn by his brother in 1703 and subsequently lost. He then turned to

9180-471: The work is to "satirize Shadwell, ostensibly for his offenses against literature but more immediately we may suppose for his habitual badgering of him on the stage and in print." It is not a belittling form of satire, but rather one which makes his object great in ways which are unexpected, transferring the ridiculous into poetry. This line of satire continued with Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and The Medal (1682). His other major works from this period are

9288-421: The work. Aubrey began work on compiling material for a natural historical and antiquarian study of Wiltshire in 1656. Independently, in 1659, a self-appointed committee of Wiltshire gentry determined that a county history should be produced on the model of William Dugdale 's Antiquities of Warwickshire . It was agreed that Aubrey would deal with the northern division of the county. Aubrey chose to divide

9396-421: Was "not tenacious" by 17th-century standards but from the early 1640s he kept thorough (if haphazard) notes of observations in natural philosophy, his friends' ideas, and antiquities. He began to write "Lives" of scientists in the 1650s. In 1659, Aubrey was recruited to contribute to a collaborative county history of Wiltshire , leading to his unfinished collections on the antiquities and the natural history of

9504-539: Was Aubrey's collection of material on customs, traditions, ceremonies, beliefs, old wives' tales and rhymes—or what today would be termed folklore . It was compiled over many years, but written up between 1687 and 1689. The manuscript came into the hands of White Kennett , and as a result it is not with Aubrey's other collections in the Bodleian: it is in the British Library , as Lansdowne MS 231. An edition

9612-510: Was a Pederast ." At somewhat greater length, Aubrey also wrote a life of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (author of Leviathan ), entitled "The Life of Mr Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury": this is now Bodleian MS Aubrey 9. It is often grouped with the Brief Lives , but is really a separate and self-contained work. It served as the basis for Richard Blackburne's Latin biography, Vitae Hobbianae auctarium , published in 1681. The life of Hobbes

9720-517: Was a disastrous failure. Bonnell Tyler , echoing Reformation comments on the play, condemned Morose as ludicrously unnatural, and other reviewers were no kinder. Garrick replaced Siddons with a boy, responding to complaints that a female Epicœne was ludicrous. The revamped casting did not save the production, and Epicœne vanished from the boards for over a century, a victim of the falling popularity of non-Shakespearean Renaissance dramas. In 1935, Richard Strauss 's opera Die schweigsame Frau , with

9828-459: Was a fault, arguing that as Latin is a naturally concise language it cannot be duly represented by a comparable number of words in English. "He...recognized that Virgil 'had the advantage of a language wherein much may be comprehended in a little space' (5:329–30). The 'way to please the best Judges...is not to Translate a Poet literally; and Virgil least of any other' (5:329)." For example, take lines 789–795 of Book 2 when Aeneas sees and receives

9936-466: Was a scientific commonplace book, which by 1692 amounted to a folio "an inch thick". It is lost, although extracts have survived in the form of copies. Aubrey wrote two plays, both comedies intended for Thomas Shadwell . The first has not survived; the second, "Countrey Revell", remained unfinished. In 1967, English director Patrick Garland created a one-man show, Brief Lives , based on Dick's edition of Aubrey's work. Starring Roy Dotrice , it became

10044-457: Was adapted for radio by the BBC and featured Marius Goring, Laidman Browne, Gabriel Wolf, Norman Shelley, Vivienne Chatterton, June Tobin, and David Spenser. John Dryden John Dryden ( / ˈ d r aɪ d ən / ; 19 August [ O.S. 9 August] 1631 – 12 May [ O.S. 1 May] 1700) was an English poet, literary critic , translator, and playwright who in 1668

10152-432: Was also to be exhibited in his later works. His years at Westminster were not uneventful, and his first published poem, an elegy with a strong royalist feel on the death of his schoolmate Henry, Lord Hastings, from smallpox, alludes to the execution of King Charles I , which took place on 30 January 1649, very near the school where Busby had first prayed for the King and then locked in his schoolboys to prevent their attending

10260-516: Was appointed England's first Poet Laureate . He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romantic writer Sir Walter Scott called him "Glorious John". Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather

10368-623: Was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, would not appear so shining in the English; and where I have enlarg’d them, I desire the false Criticks would not always think that those thoughts are wholly mine, but that either they are secretly in the Poet, or may be fairly deduc’d from him; or at least, if both those considerations should fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he were living, and an Englishman, they are such as he wou’d probably have written. On 1 December 1663, Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard (died 1714) at St Swithin's, London , and

10476-488: Was buried in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalen, Oxford . Aubrey approached the work of the biographer much as his contemporary scientists had begun to approach the work of empirical research by the assembly of vast museums and small collection cabinets. Collating as much information as he could, he left the task of verification largely to Wood, and thereafter to posterity. As a hanger-on in great houses, he had little time and little inclination for systematic work, and he wrote

10584-425: Was concise and elegant, Latin being considered an elegant and long-lived language with which to compare; then Dryden translated his writing back to English according to Latin-grammar usage. As Latin does not have sentences ending in prepositions, Dryden may have applied Latin grammar to English, thus forming the rule of no sentence-ending prepositions, subsequently adopted by other writers. The phrase "blaze of glory"

10692-578: Was contracted to produce three plays a year for the King's Company in which he became a shareholder. During the 1660s and 1670s, theatrical writing was his main source of income. He led the way in Restoration comedy , his best-known work being Marriage à la Mode (1673), as well as heroic tragedy and regular tragedy, in which his greatest success was All for Love (1678). Dryden was never satisfied with his theatrical writings and frequently suggested that his talents were wasted on unworthy audiences. He thus

10800-681: Was educated at the Malmesbury grammar school under Robert Latimer. (Latimer had numbered the philosopher Thomas Hobbes among his earlier pupils, and Aubrey first met Hobbes, whose biography he would later write, at Latimer's house.) He then studied at the grammar school at Blandford Forum , Dorset. Aubrey entered Trinity College, Oxford , in 1642, but his studies were interrupted by the English Civil War . His earliest antiquarian work dates from this period in Oxford. In 1646 he became

10908-429: Was grievously tormented with an ague. The Dr. orders a boat to be in readiness under his window, and discoursed with the patient (a gent) in the balcony, when on a signal given, 2 or 3 lusty fellows came behind the gent, and threw him a matter of 20 feet into the Thames. This surprise absolutely cured him." Of Ben Jonson : "He lies buried in the north aisle in the path of square stone … with this inscription only on him, in

11016-508: Was included in Clark's 1898 edition of Brief Lives , but not in Bennett's 2015 edition. The Monumenta Britannica was Aubrey's principal collection of archaeological material, written over some thirty years between about 1663 and 1693. It falls into four parts: (1) "Templa Druidum", a discussion of supposed "druidic" temples, notably Avebury and Stonehenge ; (2) "Chorographia Antiquaria",

11124-511: Was making a bid for poetic fame off-stage. In 1667, around the same time his dramatic career began, he published Annus Mirabilis , a lengthy historical poem which described the English defeat of the Dutch naval fleet and the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was a modern epic in pentameter quatrains that established him as the preeminent poet of his generation, and was crucial in his attaining

11232-423: Was published by John Fowles and Rodney Legg in two volumes in 1980–82. This edition has, however, been criticised for doing Aubrey "less than justice" on various grounds: for a failure to consolidate what were essentially drafts and working notes into a coherent whole, for silent omissions and rearrangements, for inadequate and occasionally inaccurate annotation, and for the omission of the important fourth part of

11340-479: Was published by James Britten for the Folklore Society in 1881. It was more satisfactorily re-edited in 1972 by John Buchanan-Brown. Aubrey's Interpretation of Villare Anglicanum (its preface dated 31 October 1687) was the first attempt to devote a work entirely to the subject of English place-names . It is, however, unfinished (or, as Gillian Fellows-Jensen observes, "hardly begun"). Aubrey compiled

11448-492: Was the first attempt to compile a full-length study of English place-names . He had wider interests in applied mathematics and astronomy, and was friendly with many of the greatest scientists of the day. Aubrey was the author of Brief Lives , a collection of short biographical pieces. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, thanks largely to the popularity of Brief Lives , Aubrey was regarded as little more than an entertaining but quirky, eccentric and credulous gossip. Only in

11556-417: Was the rector of All Saints . He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Barone t (1553–1632), and wife Frances Wilkes, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. He was a second cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift . As a boy, Dryden lived in the nearby village of Titchmarsh , where it

11664-440: Was treated as an inferior by those of her social status. Both Dryden and his wife were warmly attached to their children. They had three sons: Charles (1666–1704), John (1668–1701), and Erasmus Henry (1669–1710). Lady Elizabeth Dryden survived her husband, but reportedly lost her wits after becoming a widow. Although some have historically claimed to be from the lineage of John Dryden, his three children, one of whom became

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