John Dryden and Thomas Shadwell were contemporaries and rival poets during the Restoration. They disagreed on almost everything: the heritage of the poet Ben Jonson, their preferred styles of wit, the purpose of comedy, and so on. They also had diametrically-opposite political leanings: Shadwell was a Whig, while Dryden was an avowed monarchist.
All of these many differences gave great cause to Dryden to lampoon Shadwell. This he did to spectacular effect in his groundbreaking satirical mock epic, MacFlecknoe (1682). The name of this satire was based on the real-life poet Richard Flecknoe, whom Dryden associated with poetic dullness. By comparing Flecknoe with Shadwell, Dryden, with extraordinary success, used Flecknoe as a stalking horse from behind which he assailed Shadwell.
As stated earlier, MacFlecknoe is a mock epic. Like a good mock epic, it uses the elevated style of classical Greek and Roman poems to ridicule the object of the author’s contempt. All heroes of classical poems had one defining characteristic: cunning is Odysseus’, wrath is Achilles’, and in the case of Flecknoe (and by extension, Shadwell’s), it was dullness. In one quick, sweeping blow, Dryden appropriates and then subverts the concept of a defining characteristic by assigning to Flecknoe, and Shadwell, a negative defining characteristic as his sole virtue.
The poem works as well as it does because of the sophisticated juxtaposition of the lofty, classical literary style with the Easter egg-like quality of the negative nouns and adjectives used to describe the mock hero.
Dryden also used literary inversion and absurdity with extraordinary effect to attack Shadwell indirectly, as demonstrated in the following lines:
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Sh------ never deviates into sense.
By accusing other poets of pretending to be meaningful, Dryden seems to be damning them. In the next line, Dryden deploys his skills in inversion to devastating effect: he says that Shadwell is unlike them, with no such vice of pretension to make meaning. Shadwell just never makes sense!
This satirical bait-and-switch is a recurring theme throughout the poem, as we later see Dryden channeling Flecknoe in the following line:
Sh------ alone my perfect image bears
A key aspect of satire is to use praise as a way of criticizing, damning with faint praise, as Alexander Pope would put it. Dryden’s opinion of Flecknoe is as clear as daylight: Dryden thinks Flecknoe is dull and stupid! And by using fanciful language and sentence construction to let us know that Flecknoe believes Shadwell to be his literary heir, Dryden delicately lets us know that he thinks Shadwell is equally dull and stupid too!
All of these many differences gave great cause to Dryden to lampoon Shadwell. This he did to spectacular effect in his groundbreaking satirical mock epic, MacFlecknoe (1682). The name of this satire was based on the real-life poet Richard Flecknoe, whom Dryden associated with poetic dullness. By comparing Flecknoe with Shadwell, Dryden, with extraordinary success, used Flecknoe as a stalking horse from behind which he assailed Shadwell.
As stated earlier, MacFlecknoe is a mock epic. Like a good mock epic, it uses the elevated style of classical Greek and Roman poems to ridicule the object of the author’s contempt. All heroes of classical poems had one defining characteristic: cunning is Odysseus’, wrath is Achilles’, and in the case of Flecknoe (and by extension, Shadwell’s), it was dullness. In one quick, sweeping blow, Dryden appropriates and then subverts the concept of a defining characteristic by assigning to Flecknoe, and Shadwell, a negative defining characteristic as his sole virtue.
The poem works as well as it does because of the sophisticated juxtaposition of the lofty, classical literary style with the Easter egg-like quality of the negative nouns and adjectives used to describe the mock hero.
Dryden also used literary inversion and absurdity with extraordinary effect to attack Shadwell indirectly, as demonstrated in the following lines:
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Sh------ never deviates into sense.
By accusing other poets of pretending to be meaningful, Dryden seems to be damning them. In the next line, Dryden deploys his skills in inversion to devastating effect: he says that Shadwell is unlike them, with no such vice of pretension to make meaning. Shadwell just never makes sense!
This satirical bait-and-switch is a recurring theme throughout the poem, as we later see Dryden channeling Flecknoe in the following line:
Sh------ alone my perfect image bears
A key aspect of satire is to use praise as a way of criticizing, damning with faint praise, as Alexander Pope would put it. Dryden’s opinion of Flecknoe is as clear as daylight: Dryden thinks Flecknoe is dull and stupid! And by using fanciful language and sentence construction to let us know that Flecknoe believes Shadwell to be his literary heir, Dryden delicately lets us know that he thinks Shadwell is equally dull and stupid too!
1 comment:
Not apt to the title. Lack of explanation about imagery. Can do better.
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