Summary 1

http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/absalom-and-achitophel.html

Absalom and Achitophel: John Dryden - Summary and Critical AnalysisAbsalom and Achitophel published anonymously in November 1681, is one of the finest English political satires. It was intended by Dryden to rouse popular feeling against Shaftesbury and to secure his indictment.

The essential theme of the poem is the origin of several fractions against the government and the king as the Popish plot of the Titus Oates. Dryden explains the political condition of England at the beginning of the poem. The rest of the poem deals with the beginning of rebellion under the leadership of Shaftsbury whose speeches are calculated to persuade the Duke of Monmouth (Absalom) to lead a revolt against his father, King (David). The replies of Absalom are also set forth in the poem. The power of the poem essentially lies in the mechanism of Biblical allegory. Every contemporary character is given a Biblical name. The principal political personages are: Monmouth (Absalom); Shaftesbury the false tempter (Achitophel); the Duke of Buckingham (Zimri); Charles II (David); Titus Oates (Corah); Slingsby Bethel, Sheriff of London (Shimei).

The English nation is Israel and English men are the Jews. The political situation in England is paralleled with the rebellion of the Jews against their king David. We may analyze the evolution of the thought in the poem as follows. David and Absalom (Charles II and Monmouth) are described in Line 1-44. Monmouth, who later became the leader of the rebels, is praised by Dryden here as a warlike youth: in peace, the thoughts of he could remove war and seemed as he were only born for love. The problem of political succession is thus initially posed.

The condition of Israel (England is next described lines 45-84. The continuous parallelism between the Biblical incident and British Politics should be borne in mind). The plot inspired by the priests is dealt in lines 85-149. Although the plot was discovered and suppressed it led to the creation of serious factions. One such faction was led by the false Achitophel whose satirical picture is given in lines 150-229. He approaches Absalom. In a long speech Achitophel persuades Absalom to champion the public cause and to save the “religion, commonwealth and liberty.”After Absalom’s first reply to Achitophel follow a series of satirical portraits of the latter’s followers. They are Zimri, Shimei and Corah. Here the poem has the characteristic of an epic. The list of Achitophel’s followers is similar to the epic catalogue in Milton’s Paradise Lost Book I (lines 490-680).

Absalom supported by followers like Shimei and Corah, secures a wide and popular following. His first public speech (lines 693-722) sets forth the grounds of rebellion and promises the people a peaceful and prosperous reign and “Religion and redress

of grievances” which as Dryden says are: “Two names that always cheat and always please”.

Dryden discusses the political issue at length (lines 752-810). Conservative political doctrines are set forth with admirable skill. Dryden’s ability to conduct an argument in verse is most apparent here. He opposes all change in political life. He distrusts the public “rout”. If the authority of the king is questionable on the basis of the sovereignty of the public will, then by that very principle the authority of any government (even that's a popular one) can be challenging. The many may err grossly as the few. It is also erroneous to plead that political succession must conform to popular will. Kings have their right to determine the question of succession, just as Adam’s action has bound the whole of posterity. Here Dryden is expressing his own convictions, and is not simply supporting a party-cause.

Absalom and Achitophel is the finest of English political satires. Its powerful appeal is derived from its Biblical parallelism and the series of satirical portraits of unsurpassed excellence. The mechanism of the Biblical parallel helps Dryden to reconcile the scholarly tradition with the popular traditions of satire. This reconciliation makes the poem at once a literary work and a popular piece of wide appeal. All in all, as a political satire, Absalom and Achitophel derives its force from the series of the satiric portrayals of the politicians of his time.

Summary 2

http://archive.udmercy.edu:8080/handle/10429/454

Satire and the satirists have been in evidence in all ages of the world's history. Satire has always ranked as one of the cardinal divisions of literature, and it has been distinctly cultivated by men of genius. This was especially true in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the classics were esteemed on authority as models . This type of writing may have historical as well as literary and ethical values. Smeaton says: "The satiric denunciation of a writer burning with indignation at some social wrong or abuse, is capable of reaching the very highest level of literature. "1 John Dryden's satires fit into this category. His Absalom and Achitophel is the greatest political satire in our literature, and the rest of his satires are very highly esteemed. Dryden has justly been regarded as England's greatest satirist, and the epoch of Dryden has been fittingly styled the "Golden Age of the English Satire." It is the object of this thesis to exhibit his contribution to the satiric Domain" by considering the meaning of satire, Dryden's interpretation of satire, the special qualities which distinguish Dryden's satiric spirit, and the modifications of that spirit as they are shown in his political satire, Absalom and Achitophel. The absence of any established criteria as a basis for the study of satire is a difficult y which must be recognized and met at the very outset. This paper does not attempt, by any means, to fill this gap. For Professor Tucker and Professor Alden have quite satisfactorily succeeded in establishing criteria or terminology that might serve for

the treatment of satire as a genre. An effort is made to define satire only in general terms as an introduction and as an aid to the reader. Any study of satirical poetry in England is rendered difficult by a confusion of terms. If we look into A New English Dictionary, we will note that satire comes from the Latin word "satira, later form of satura" meaning a medley. As a specific application of satura (medley), satire was "in early use a discursive composition in verse treating of a variety of subjects, in classical use a poem in which prevalent follies or vices are assailed with ridicule or with serious denunciation." Dr. Johnson's Dictionary gives the following definition: "Satire (Lat. satira) Poem of a moral character (as such opposed to lampoon), wherein vice or folly is either ridiculed, or censured with irony." These definitions give us a general idea of the term. But to understand satire a more detailed clarification will prove helpful. Professor Tucker gives us quite an adequate explanation when he says that the confusion of terms lies in the really triple meaning of the word satire. “As given in the dictionary, satire, in one sense, is an abstract term cognant with ridicule; as when we say, ‘Satire has accomplished revolutions.’ A second meaning refers to a literary form that has for its object destructive criticism, as when we say…” Mac Flecknoe is a Satire on Shadwell. In this double meaning there is no confusion, for a distinction is simplified by the mere use of a capital letter when the word “satire” is used to denote a literary form. “But, unfortunately, a double meaning lurks in the first and more abstract signification of the word …. Here two things are confused: the satirical spirit, an intangible, abstract some thing that underlies and inspires what we commonly call satire--or ridicule --or invective; and satire itself, which is merely the concrete manifestation of the satiric spirit in literature.” Clarification of terms would involve a long discussion and many illustrations, but for our purpose it is sufficient to bear in mind that “…. the term satirical spirit always refers to a point of view; the word satire to a concrete but general embodiment of that point of view in literature; and the Satire (capitalized) to the literary form or the genre, as well as to any particular example of the genre.” Thus, we may say, the satirical spirit is enthusiastic; Dryden's satire is directed against the Whigs; Dryden made a great contribution to the Satire; Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel is a Satire of great importance. Worcester defines formal satire as: “…. a poem of short or middling length, designed to express the author's disapprobation of political, social, or personal actions, condition or qualities written in heroic couplet, in real or fancied imitation of one or more of the Roman satirists; its prevailing tone may be one of gross invective, satiric invective, or burlesque ….” Dryden, on the other hand, in his Essay on Satire quotes with approval Heinsius's definition of satire, and evidently means formal satire. Heinsius (in his dissertation on Horace) defines satire thus: “Satire is a kind of poetry, without a series of action, invented for the purging of our minds; in which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things besides, which are produced from them in every man, are severely reprehended; partly dramatically, partly simply, and sometimes in both kind of speaking; but for the most part, figuratively, and occultly; consisting in a low familiar way, chiefly in a sharp and pungent manner of speech; but partly~ also, in a facetious and civil way of jesting; by which either hatred, or laughter, or

indignation, is moved.” Briefly, Dryden's theory is that all virtues are to be praised and recommended to practice, and all vices reprehended, and made either odious or ridiculous; otherwise, there is a fundamental error in the whole design. Dryden from the standpoint of the literary artist, says in his Essay on Satire, "The nicest and the most delicate touches of satire consist in fine raillery." Dryden's dictum for designing a perfect satire is “that it ought only to treat of one subject; to be confined to one particular theme; or at least to one principally. If other vices occur in the management of the chief, they should only be transiently lashed, and not be insisted on, so as to make a design double." Another rule comprehended under this unity of theme is that the satirist is "bound, and that ex officio, to give his reader some one precept of moral virtue , and to caution him against some particular vice or folly." Other subordinate virtues may be recommended under the chief head; other vices or follies may be scourged, besides that which he principally intends.” But he is chiefly to inculcate one virtue, and insist on that." This has not been a universal law for satire, nevertheless, it is highly respected by many reliable critics. Later in the treatise we shall see how Dryden adheres to his principles. His Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1692) was written after his great Satires (1681-1687), but the same principles were well set in his mind . Numerous unjust attacks have been launched against Dryden by some critics. Are their conjectures true? Prejudices and assumptions, and not true evidence played an important role here. To understand Dryden's satire, it is necessary to take into consideration his cast of mind, as well as, the events of his time. With this intellectual insight we shall agree that his thoughts and his craftsmanship are superb. He seems to fit into Newman's dictum: "The style of a great author will be the faithful image of his mind, and this no less in oratory than in poetry." Great authors have great thought; for thought and speech are inseparable. Why question Dryden's sincerity? "Dryden has succeeded in making eternally interesting and entertaining his own private beliefs, just as Shakespeare has succeeded in arousing our interest in his own love for a dark- eyed lady, long since dead." A consideration of Dryden's satiric spirit as it is shown in Absalom and Achitophel involves an investigation of the objects of his attacks, whether individuals, classes, or institutions, and a discussion of the relation of his satire to contemporary society and politics; what he tried to do and how he succeeded. It also necessitates a study of the methods he utilized, and the manner he was inclined to assume. Therefore, Chapter II will deal with Dryden's cast of mind, his intellectual milieu, his honesty, and his consistency. Chapter III will treat the political background of the central problem of his poem. Chapter IV will contain the analysis of Absalom and Achitophel, analyzed politically, satirically and poetically. Lastly, a summary will be presented of the characteristics which distinguish his satiric spirit and make his work distinctive and unique.

Summary 3

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/absalom-and-achitophel

England in 1678 was suddenly plunged into fearful confusion by the Popish Plot. Titus Oates, the perjurer, warned the administration, and deposed on oath before a London magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, that the Roman Catholics were plotting to murder the King and establish the supremacy of their religion by force of foreign arms. Godfrey's murder, a few weeks after Oates's deposition, seemed to confirm the accusations and the country was thrown into a state of panic. The men arraigned by Oates were seized and tried, and fifteen of them were executed. Oates's collection of brazen lies was dashed with just enough truth to make it plausible to a bewildered and frightened people.

The Earl of Shaftesbury, the leader of the Whig party, quickly became Oates's patron. He shrewdly realized that the intense popular feeling roused against the Catholics by Oates's disclosures could be used to force the King to exclude his brother, James, Duke of York, an avowed Catholic, from the succession to the throne. He proposed to replace the Duke of York by the King's illegitimate but personable son, James, Duke of Monmouth. He attempted to secure his aim by introducing into Parliament in 1680 the Exclusion Bill. The Bill easily passed the Commons but was narrowly defeated in the Lords. Its defeat was primarily due to the eloquence of the Earl of Halifax--the Jotham of this poem--who had supported Shaftesbury until the danger of his extreme policy had become obvious. The Court, who knew that at bottom Halifax was an enemy of the Duke of York, was thankful but not grateful to him for his intervention, and Dryden, faithfully reflecting the Court's sentiments, gave him only cursory praise.

The King prorogued, and then dissolved, Parliament in January 1681, in order to save his brother, but he knew that as soon as he summoned a new Parliament, which he must do quickly were he to obtain supplies essential to government, the Exclusion Bill would be introduced again by the Whigs. He could only defend himself against this threatened attack by finding an alternative source of revenue; and, in March 1681, immediately before the meeting of the new Parliament, he concluded a secret agreement with Louis XIV by which he obtained a subsidy in return for his acquiescence in French foreign policy. Shaftesbury prepared for the new Parliament by stirring up popular agitation and even by plotting an armed rising, which, he hoped, would force the King's hand if he still proved recalcitrant. Parliament met at Oxford--a place chosen by the King to prevent Shaftesbury's London mobs from intimidating the members--but after it had sat for a few days, the King, freed from dependence on it by Louis's subsidy, and rightly judging that the Whigs' excesses

had alienated every moderate sentiment in the country, dissolved it without warning on March 28.

This dextrous stroke destroyed Shaftesbury's ascendancy. The Whig leader was arrested and sent to the Tower on July 2, and while he lay there waiting trial on a charge of high treason, Dryden, it is said at the King's suggestion, wrote this poem. It appeared on about November 17 and its obvious intention was to prejudice the people against Shaftesbury. It was eagerly read but it did not affect the issue. The bill of indictment against Shaftesbury on a charge of high treason was brought before, and thrown out by, a London jury on November 24, 1681.

Dryden adapts for his poem the biblical story of David and Absalom (II Samuel 13-18), transposing English events and characters into biblical or pseudobiblical ones. The chief transcriptions are indicated in the following key. The use of a biblical Concordance will show the aptness of many of his parallels.

Summary 4

http://www.bartleby.com/218/0121.html

It would not serve any purpose to dwell upon the general morigeration of Dryden, who, in this as in other respects, was “hurried down” the times in which he lived, to the leaders of politics and fashion, to the king’s ministers, favourites and mistresses, or upon the flatteries which, in dedications and elsewhere, he heaped upon the king himself, and upon his brother the duke. The attempts, however, which have been made to show that his pen was “venal”—in any sense beyond that of his having been paid for his compliments, or, at least, for a good many of them—may be said to have broken down; and the fact that he may have received payment from the king for writing The Medal does not prove that he was inspired by the expectation of personal profit when he first attacked the future medallist in Absalom and Achitophel. 51

In undertaking the composition of this great satire, whether or not at the request of Charles II, Dryden had found his great literary opportunity; and, of this, he took advantage in a spirit far removed from that of either the hired bravos or the spiteful lampooners of his age. For this opportunity he had been unconsciously preparing himself as a dramatist; and it was in the nature of things, and in accordance with the responsiveness of his genius to the calls made upon it by time and circumstance, that, in the season of a great political crisis, he should have rapidly perceived his chance of decisively influencing public opinion by an exposure of the aims and methods of the party of revolution. This he proposed to accomplish, not by a poetic summary of the rights of the case, or by a sermon in verse on the sins of factiousness, corruption and treason, but by holding up to the times and their troubles, with no magisterial air or dictatorial gesture, a mirror in which, under a

happily contrived disgvise, the true friends and the real foes of their king and country should be recognised. This was the “Varronian” form of satire afterwards commended by him, with a well warranted self-consciousness, as the species, mixing serious intent with pleasant manner, to which, among the ancients, several of Lucian’s Dialogues and, among the moderns, the Encomium Moriae of Erasmus belong. “Of the same kind is ‘Mother Hubberd’s Tale’; in Spenser, and (if it be not too vain to mention anything of my own) the poems of ‘Absalom’ and ‘MacFlecknoe.’” 78 52

The political question at issue, in the troubled times of which the names “whig” and “tory” still survive as speaking mementoes, was that of the succession of the Catholic heir to the throne, or of his exclusion in favour of some other claimant—perhaps the king’s son Monmouth, whom many believed legitimate (the Absalom of the poem). For many months, Shaftesbury, who, after serving and abandoning a succession of governments, had passed into opposition, had seemed to direct the storm. Two parliaments had been called in turn, and twice the Exclusion bill had been rejected by the lords. Then, as the whig leader seemed to have thrown all hesitation to the winds, and was either driving his party or being driven by it into extremities from which there was no return, a tremor of reaction ran through the land, the party round the king gathered confidence, and, evidence supposed sufficient to support the charge having been swept in, Shaftesbury was committed to the Tower on a charge of high treason. It was at this time of tension, while a similar charge was being actually pressed to the gallows against a humbler agent of faction (the “Protestant joiner” Stephen College), that Dryden’s great effort to work upon public opinion was made. Part I of Absalom and Achitophel, which seems to have been taken in hand quite early in 1681, was published on 17 November in that year. Shaftesbury, it is known, was then fearing for his life. A week later, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, the bill was ignored by the Middlesex grand jury. Great popular rejoicing followed, and a medal was struck in Shaftesbury’s honour, representing the sun emerging from the clouds, with the legend Laetamur. But, this momentary triumph notwithstanding, the game was all but up; and, within a few months, Monmouth, in his turn, was under arrest, and Shaftesbury a fugitive in Holland. 53

Without a mention of this well known sequence of events, the fact might, perhaps, be overlooked that part I of Absalom and Achitophel 79 is complete in itself, being intended to help in producing a direct result at a given moment, and that it is in no sense to be regarded as a mere instalment of a larger whole, or as an introduction to it. Part II was a mere afterthought, and, being only to a relatively small extent by Dryden, should, in the first instance, be left out of consideration. 54

Absalom and Achitophel veils its political satire under the transparent disguise of one of the most familiar episodes of Old Testament history, which the existing crisis in English affairs resembled sufficiently to make the allegory apposite and its interpretation easy. The attention of the English public, and, more especially, that of

the citizens of London, with whom the decision of the immediate political issue lay, was sure to be arrested by a series of characters whose names and distinctive features were borrowed from the Old Testament; and the analogy between Charles II’s and David’s early exile and final triumphant establishment on the throne was a commonplace of restoration poetry. Indeed, the actual notion of an adaptation of the story of Achitophel’s wiles as “the Picture of a wicked Politician” was not new to English controversial literature; in 1680, a tract entitled Absalom’s Conspiracy had dealt with the supposed intentions of Monmouth; and a satire published in 1681, only a few months before Dryden’s poem, had applied the name Achitophel, with some other opprobrious names, to Shaftesbury. For the rest, Dryden, with the grandezza habitual to him, was careless about fitting the secondary figures of his satire exactly with their Scriptural aliases, or boring the reader by a scrupulous fidelity or even consistency 80 of detail. 55

Absalom and Achitophel remains the greatest political satire in our literature, partly because it is frankly political, and not intended, like Hudibras, by means of a mass of accumulated detail, to convey a general impression of the vices and follies, defects and extravagances, of a particular section or particular sections of the nation. With Dryden, every hit is calculated, and every stroke goes home; in each character brought on the scene, those features only are selected for exposure or praise which are of direct significance for the purpose in hand. It is not a satirical narrative complete in itself which is attempted; the real dénouement of the piece falls not within, but outside, its compass; in other words, the poem was to lead up, as to an unavoidable sequitur, to the trial and conviction of its hero. The satirist, after the fashion of a great parliamentary orator, has his subject and his treatment of it well in hand; through all the force of the invective and the fervour of the praise, there runs a consciousness of the possibility that the political situation may change. This causes a constant self-control and wariness in the author, who is always alive to his inspiration and never unmindful of his cue. Instead of pouring forth a stream of Aristophanic vituperation or boyish fun in the vein of Canning, he so nicely adapts the relations of the more important of his characters to the immediate issue that the treatment, both of the tempter Achitophel and of the tempted Absalom, admitted of manipulation when, before the appearance of the poem in a second edition, 81 the condition of affairs had changed. 56

Chapter and verse could, without difficulty, be found for every item in Johnson’s well known panegyric of Absalom and Achitophel in his Life of Dryden. The incomparable brilliancy of its diction and versification are merits which, to be acknowledged, need only to be mentioned. Still, its supreme excellence lies in its descriptions of character, which, no doubt, owed something to his dramatic practice, and more to the development which this kind of writing had experienced during a whole generation of English prose literature, reaching its full height in Clarendon. Dryden’s exquisite etchings cannot be compared with the finest of the full-length portraits from the hand of the great historical writer; but, thanks, no doubt, in part, to the Damascene brightness and keenness into which the poet had

tempered his literary instrument, and thanks, also, to the imaginative insight which, in him, the literary follower of the Stewarts, was substituted for the unequalled experience of their chosen adviser, Clarendon, the characters of the poem live in the memory with unequalled tenacity. How unmistakably is the pre-eminence of Achitophel among the opponents of the royal government signalised by his being commissioned, like his prototype 82 when charged with the temptation and corruption of mankind, to master the shaken virtue of Absalom! Yet, when the satire proceeds from the leader to the followers, what composite body of malcontents was ever analysed, even by a minister driven to bay, with surer discernment and more perfect insight? The honest whigs, the utilitarian radicals, the speculators who use party for their private ends, the demagogues and mob-orators who are the natural product of faction—all are there; but so, too, are the republicans on principle, headed by survivors of the fanatics who believed in their own theocracy. Of course, the numerical strength of the party is made up by the unthinking crowd that takes up a cry—in this case, the cry “No Popery.” Of the chiefs of the faction, for the most part, a few incisive lines, or even a damning epithet, suffice to dispose; but there are exceptions, suggested by public or by private considerations. In the latter class, Dryden’s own statement obliges us to include Zimri (Buckingham)—a character which he declares to be “worth the whole poem.” 83 What he says of his intentions in devising this masterpiece of wit, and of his success in carrying them into execution, illustrates at once the discretion with which he applied his satirical powers, and the limitation which his nature, as well as his judgment, imposed upon their use. Moral indignation was not part of Dryden’s satirical stock. 84 Even the hideously true likeness of Titus Oates (Corah) preserves the accent of sarcasm which had suited the malicious sketch of Shimei, the inhospitable sheriff of the city; it is as if the poet’s blame could never come with so full a tone as the praise which, in the latter part of the poem, is gracefully distributed among the chief supporters of the crown. The poem ends with a speech from king David, only in part reproducing the speech of Charles II to the Oxford parliament (March, 1681), of which the king is said to have suggested the insertion.