John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  Let all black tempests cease, And let the troubled ocean rest: Let all the sea enjoy as calm a peace, As where the halcyon builds her quiet nest. To your prisons below, Down, down you must go: You in the earth’s entrails your revels may keep; But no more till I call shall you trouble the deep. [Winds fly down.

  Now they are gone, all stormy wars shall cease; Then let your trumpeters proclaim a peace.

  Amph.Tritons, my sons, your trumpets sound, And let the noise from neighbouring shores rebound.

  Chorus. Sound a calm. Sound a calm. Sound a calm. a calm. Sound a calm.

  [Here the Tritons, at every repeat of Sound a calm, changing their figure and postures, seem to sound their wreathed trumpets made of shells.

  A symphony of music, like trumpets, to which four Tritons dance.

  Nept.See, see, the heavens smile; all your troubles are past, Your joys, by black clouds, shall no more be o’ercast.

  Amph.On this barren isle ye shall lose all your fears, Leave behind all your sorrows, and banish your cares.

  Both.{And your loves and your lives shall in safety enjoy; {No influence of stars shall your quiet destroy.

  Chorus {And your loves, &c. of all.{No influence, &c. [Here the Dancers mingle with the Singers.

  Ocean.We’ll safely convey you to your own happy shore, And your’s and your country’s soft peace will restore.

  Tethys.To treat you, blest lovers, as you sail on the deep, The Tritons and sea-nymphs their revels shall keep.

  Both.{On the swift dolphins’ backs they shall sing and shall play; {They shall guard you by night, and delight you by day.

  ChorusOn the swift, &c. of all.And shall guard, &c. [Here the Dancers mingle with the Singers.

  [A dance of twelve Tritons.

  Mir. What charming things are these?

  Dor. What heavenly power is this?

  Prosp. Now, my Ariel, be visible, And let the rest of your aërial train Appear, and entertain them with a song, And then farewell, my long-loved Ariel.

  SCENE III.

  — Changes to the Rising Sun, and a number of Aërial Spirits in the Air; Ariel flying from the Sun, advances towards the Pit.

  Alon. Heaven! What are these we see?

  Prosp. They are spirits, with which the air abounds In swarms, but that they are not subject To poor feeble mortal eyes.

  Anto. O wondrous skill!

  Gonz. O power divine!

  Ariel, and the rest, sing the following Song.

  Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip’s bed I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the swallow’s wings I fly, After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

  Song ended, Ariel speaks, hovering in the air.

  Ariel. My noble master! May theirs and your blest joys never impair! And for the freedom I enjoy in air. And for the freedom I enjoy in air. I will be still your Ariel, and wait On airy accidents that work for fate. Whatever shall your happiness concern, From your still faithful Ariel you shall learn.

  Prosp. Thou hast been always diligent and kind. Farewell, my long-loved Ariel! thou shalt find I will preserve thee ever in my mind. Henceforth this isle to the afflicted be A place of refuge, as it was to me: The promises of blooming spring live here, And all the blessings of the ripening year. On my retreat let heaven and nature smile, And ever flourish the Enchanted Isle. [Exeunt.

  EPILOGUE.

  Gallants, by all good signs it does appear, That sixty-seven’s a very damning year, For knaves abroad, and for ill poets here.

  Among the muses there’s a general rot, The rhiming monsieur, and the Spanish plot: Defy or court, all’s one, they go to pot.

  The ghosts of poets walk within this place, And haunt us actors wheresoe’er we pass, In visions bloodier than King Richard’s was.

  For this poor wretch, he has not much to say, But quietly brings in his part o’th’ play, And begs the favour to be damned to-day,

  He sends me only like a sheriff’s man here, To let you know the malefactor’s near, And that he means to die, en cavalier.

  For, if you should be gracious to his pen, The example will prove ill to other men, And you’ll be troubled with them all again.

  TYRANNICK LOVE

  OR, THE ROYAL MARTYR

  The “Royal Martyr” is one of Dryden’s most characteristic productions. The character of Maximin, in particular, is drawn on his boldest plan, and only equalled by that of Almanzor, in the “Conquest of Granada.” Indeed, although, in action, the latter exhibits a larger proportion of that extravagant achievement peculiar to the heroic drama, it may be questioned, whether the language of Maximin does not abound more with the flights of fancy, which hover betwixt the confines of the grand and the bombast, and which our author himself has aptly termed the Dalilahs of the theatre. Certainly, in some of those rants which occasionally burst from the emperor, our poet appears shorn of his locks; as for example,

  Look to it, Gods; for you the aggressors are: Keep you your rain and sunshine in your skies, And I’ll keep back my flame and sacrifice; Your trade of heaven will soon be at a stand, And all your goods lie dead upon your hand.

  Indeed, Dryden himself acknowledged, in the Dedication to the “Spanish Friar,” that some verses of Maximin and Almanzor cry vengeance upon him for their extravagance, and heartily wishes them in the same fire with Statius and Chapman. But he pleads in apology, that he knew they were bad enough to please, even when he wrote them, although he is now resolved no longer to seek credit from the approbation of fools. Johnson has doubted, with apparent reason, whether this confession be sufficiently ample; and whether the poet did not really give his love to those enticing seducers of his imagination, although he contemned them in his more sober judgment. In the Prologue, he has boldly stated and justified his determination to rush forwards, and hazard the disgrace of a fall, rather than the loss of the race. Certainly a genius, which dared so greatly as that of Dryden, cannot always be expected to check its flight upon the verge of propriety; and we are often hurried along with it into the extravagant and bombast, when we can seldom discover the error till a second reading of the passage. Take, for example, the often quoted account of the death of Charinus;

  With a fierce haste he led our troops the way; While fiery showers of sulphur on him rained; Nor left he, till the battlements he gained: There with a forest of their darts he strove, And stood, like Capaneus defying Jove. With his broad sword the boldest beating down, While fate grew pale, lest he should win the town, And turned the iron leaves of its dark book, To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook: Till sought by many deaths, he sunk, though late, And by his fall asserted doubtful fate.

  Although this passage, upon examination, will be found to contain much tumid bombast, yet, like others in the same tone, it conveys, at first, a dark impression of grandeur and sublimity, which only vanishes on a critical examination. Such passages, pronounced with due emphasis on the stage, will always meet with popular applause. They are like the fanciful shapes into which a mist is often wreathed; it requires a near approach, and an attentive consideration, to discover their emptiness and vanity. On the other hand, we meet with many passages in Maximin, where the impression of sublimity becomes more deep, in proportion to the attention we bestow on them. Such is the speech of St Catharine to her mother:

  Could we live always, life were worth our cost; But now we keep with care what must be lost. Here we stand shivering on the bank, and cry, When we should plunge into eternity. One moment ends our pain; And yet the shock of death we dare not stand, By thought scarce measured, and too swift for sand: ’Tis but because the living death ne’er knew, They fear to prove it, as a thing that’s new. Let me the experiment before you try, I’ll show you first how easy ’tis to die.

  In the same scene occurs an instance of a different kind of beauty, less commonly found in Dryden. The tender description given by Felicia of her attachment to her child, in infancy, is exquisitely beautiful.

 
The introduction of magic, and of the astral spirits, who have little to do with the catastrophe, was perhaps contrived for the sake of music and scenery. The supernatural has, however, been fashionable at all periods; and we learn, from a passage in the dedication to “Prince Arthur,” that the Duchess of Monmouth, whom Dryden calls his first and best patroness, was pleased with the parts of airy and earthy spirits, and with that fairy kind of writing, which depends upon the force of imagination. It is probable, therefore, that, in a play inscribed to her husband, that style of composition was judiciously intermingled, to which our poet knew the duchess was partial. There is much fine description in the first account of the wizard; but the lyrical dialogue of the spirits is rather puerile, and is ridiculed, with great severity, in the “Rehearsal.”

  Mr Malone has fixed the first acting of this play to the end of 1668, or beginning of 1669. It was printed in 1670, and a revised edition came forth in 1672.

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE.

  PROLOGUE.

  DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

  ACT I.

  ACT II.

  ACT III.

  ACT IV.

  ACT V.

  EPILOGUE

  TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE,

  JAMES,

  DUKE OF MONMOUTH AND BUCCLEUGH,

  ONE OF HIS MAJESTY’S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY-COUNCIL; AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, &c.

  Sir,

  The favourable reception which your excellent lady afforded to one of my former plays[L], has encouraged me to double my presumption, in addressing this to your grace’s patronage. So dangerous a thing it is to admit a poet into your family, that you can never afterwards be free from the chiming of ill verses, perpetually sounding in your ears, and more troublesome than the neighbourhood of steeples. I have been favourable to myself in this expression; a zealous fanatick would have gone farther, and have called me the serpent, who first presented the fruit of my poetry to the wife, and so gained the opportunity to seduce the husband. Yet, I am ready to avow a crime so advantageous to me; but the world, which will condemn my boldness, I am sure will justify and applaud my choice. All men will join with me in the adoration which I pay you; they would wish only I had brought you a more noble sacrifice. Instead of an heroick play, you might justly expect an heroick poem, filled with the past glories of your ancestors, and the future certainties of your own. Heaven has already taken care to form you for an hero. You have all the advantages of mind and body, and an illustrious birth, conspiring to render you an extraordinary person. The Achilles and the Rinaldo are present in you, even above their originals; you only want a Homer, or a Tasso, to make you equal to them. Youth, beauty, and courage (all which you possess in the height of their perfection) are the most desirable gifts of heaven: and heaven is never prodigal of such treasures, but to some uncommon purpose. So goodly a fabric was never framed by an Almighty architect for a vulgar guest. He shewed the value which he set upon your mind, when he took care to have it so nobly, and so beautifully lodged. To a graceful fashion and deportment of body, you have joined a winning conversation, and an easy greatness, derived to you from the best, and best-beloved of princes. And with a great power of obliging, the world has observed in you a desire to oblige, even beyond your power. This, and all that I can say on so excellent and large a subject, is only history, in which fiction has no part; I can employ nothing of poetry in it, any more than I do in that humble protestation which I make, to continue ever

  Your Grace’s most obedient

  And most devoted servant,

  John Dryden.

  PREFACE.

  I was moved to write this play by many reasons: Amongst others, the commands of some persons of honour, for whom I have a most particular respect, were daily sounding in my ears, that it would be of good example to undertake a poem of this nature. Neither were my own inclinations wanting to second their desires. I considered that pleasure was not the only end of poesy; and that even the instructions of morality were not so wholly the business of a poet, as that the precepts and examples of piety were to be omitted. For, to leave that employment altogether to the clergy, were to forget that religion was first taught in verse, which the laziness, or dulness, of succeeding priesthood, turned afterwards into prose; and it were also to grant (which I never shall) that representations of this kind may not as well be conducing to holiness, as to good manners. Yet far be it from me to compare the use of dramatick poesy with that of divinity: I only maintain, against the enemies of the stage, that patterns of piety, decently represented, and equally removed from the extremes of superstition and profaneness, may be of excellent use to second the precepts of our religion. By the harmony of words we elevate the mind to a sense of devotion, as our solemn musick, which is inarticulate poesy, does in churches; and by the lively images of piety, adorned by action, through the senses allure the soul; which while it is charmed in a silent joy of what it sees and hears, is struck, at the same time, with a secret veneration of things celestial: and is wound up insensibly into the practice of that which it admires. Now if, instead of this, we sometimes see on our theatres the examples of vice rewarded, or, at least, unpunished; yet it ought not to be an argument against the art, any more than the extravagances and impieties of the pulpit, in the late times of rebellion, can be against the office and dignity of the clergy.

  But many times it happens, that poets are wrongfully accused; as it is my own case in this very play; where I am charged by some ignorant or malicious persons, with no less crimes than profaneness and irreligion.

  The part of Maximin, against which these holy critics so much declaim, was designed by me to set off the character of St Catharine. And those, who have read the Roman history, may easily remember, that Maximin was not only a bloody tyrant, vastus corpore, animo ferus, as Herodian describes him; but also a persecutor of the church, against which he raised the Sixth Persecution. So that whatsoever he speaks or acts in this tragedy, is no more than a record of his life and manners; a picture, as near as I could take it, from the original. If, with much pains, and some success, I have drawn a deformed piece, there is as much of art, and as near an imitation of nature, in a lazar, as in a Venus. Maximin was an heathen, and what he speaks against religion, is in contempt of that which he professed. He defies the gods of Rome, which is no more than St Catharine might with decency have done. If it be urged, that a person of such principles, who scoffs at any religion, ought not to be presented on the stage; why then are the lives and sayings of so many wicked and profane persons, recorded in the Holy Scriptures? I know it will be answered, That a due use may be made of them; that they are remembered with a brand of infamy fixed upon them; and set as sea-marks for those who behold them to avoid. And what other use have I made of Maximin? have I proposed him as a pattern to be imitated, whom, even for his impiety to his false gods, I have so severely punished? Nay, as if I had foreseen this objection, I purposely removed the scene of the play, which ought to have been at Alexandria in Egypt, where St Catharine suffered, and laid it under the walls of Aquileia in Italy, where Maximin was slain; that the punishment of his crime might immediately succeed its execution.

  This, reader, is what I owed to my just defence, and the due reverence of that religion which I profess, to which all men, who desire to be esteemed good, or honest, are obliged. I have neither leisure nor occasion to write more largely on this subject, because I am already justified by the sentence of the best and most discerning prince in the world, by the suffrage of all unbiassed judges, and, above all, by the witness of my own conscience, which abhors the thought of such a crime; to which I ask leave to add my outward conversation, which shall never be justly taxed with the note of atheism or profaneness.

  In what else concerns the play, I shall be brief: For the faults of the writing and contrivance, I leave them to the mercy of the reader. For I am as little apt to defend my own errors, as to find those of other poets. Only, I observe, that the great censors of wit and poetry, ei
ther produce nothing of their own, or what is more ridiculous than any thing they reprehend. Much of ill nature, and a very little judgment, go far in finding the mistakes of writers.

  I pretend not that any thing of mine can be correct: This poem, especially, which was contrived, and written in seven weeks, though afterwards hindered by many accidents from a speedy representation, which would have been its just excuse.

  Yet the scenes are every where unbroken, and the unities of place and time more exactly kept, than perhaps is requisite in a tragedy; or, at least, than I have since preserved them in the “Conquest of Granada.”

  I have not everywhere observed the equality of numbers, in my verse; partly by reason of my haste; but more especially, because I would not have my sense a slave to syllables.

  It is easy to discover, that I have been very bold in my alteration of the story, which of itself was too barren for a play; and that I have taken from the church two martyrs, in the persons of Porphyrius, and the empress, who suffered for the Christian faith, under the tyranny of Maximin.

  I have seen a French play, called the “Martyrdom of St Catharine:” But those, who have read it, will soon clear me from stealing out of so dull an author. I have only borrowed a mistake from him, of one Maximin for another; for finding him in the French poet, called the son of a Thracian herdsman, and an Alane woman, I too easily believed him to have been the same Maximin mentioned in Herodian. Till afterwards, consulting Eusebius and Metaphrastes, I found the Frenchman had betrayed me into an error, when it was too late to alter it, by mistaking that first Maximin for a second, the contemporary of Constantine the Great, and one of the usurpers of the eastern empire.

  But neither was the other name of my play more fortunate; for, as some, who had heard of a tragedy of St Catharine, imagined I had taken my plot from thence; so others, who had heard of another play, called “L’Amour Tyrannique,” with the same ignorance, accused me to have borrowed my design from it, because I have accidentally given my play the same title; not having to this day seen it, and knowing only by report that such a comedy is extant in French, under the name of “Monsieur Scudery.”