Dryden's Prologues

[Image source: Wikipedia . The Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens (Whitefriars) was the new river-front theatre built in 1671 for the Duke's Company, for whom Dryden wrote. The "Duke" was Charles II's brother, the Duke of York, who became James II in 1685. (The site had been cleared of other buildings by the 1666 fire. It lay beside Dorset Stairs, which allowed members of the audience to arrive by boat, so they didn't have to pass through the shady district of Alsatia.) This 19th-century engraving is based on a drawing made shortly before the building was demolished in 1709. Both John Dryden and Aphra Behn (another Duke's Company author) lived close by.]


I've been reading my way through the 60 double-column pages of Prologues and Epilogues in my copy of the collected poems of John Dryden. I think they're a pretty good way of diving more deeply into his work. These poems are often funny, often salacious, unbuttoned, not too demanding, and of course fairly short. They're all in heroic couplets, the form Dryden made his own. They tell us a lot about Restoration theatre, culture and politics, and they tell us a bit about Dryden, too.

The idea of these prologues, formally, is to commend the play to the audience. But of course no prologue or epilogue can really save a play. So, more often than not, these poems tend to mix compliment with satire; to switch between abject grovelling and outrageous swagger; to cheerfully insult the gentlemen, the ladies, the court, the city, the country, the critics, the play, the actors and the author. Some of the hits are harmless and some of them sting (or sound as if they do); but it's all part of the act.

And after all our judging Fops were serv'd,
Dull Poets too should have a Dose reserv'd,
Such Reprobates as, past all Sence of Shaming,
Write on, and nere are satisfy'd with Damming,
Next, those, to whom the Stage does not belong,
Such whose Vocation only is to Song,
At most to Prologue ; when for Want of Time
Poets take in for Journeywork in Rhime. (1)

Dryden himself evidently "took in" for plenty of "Journeywork": he wrote prologues not only for his own plays, but for many others too. I wonder if it was really a matter of income or, more likely, that kind of mutual burnishing of reputation that still occurs when, for example, a supposedly eminent writer is invited to introduce a supposedly promising newcomer; the basic mechanism of any literary establishment.

Gallants, a bashful Poet bids me say
He's come to lose his Maidenhead to-day.
Be not too fierce, for he's but green of Age,
And ne're till now debauch'd upon the Stage.
He wants the suff'ring part of Resolution,
And comes with blushes to his Execution.
E're you deflow'r his Muse, he hopes the Pit
Will make some Settlement upon his Wit.
Promise him well, before the Play begin ;
For he wou'd fain be cozen'd into Sin. (2)

The poems diverge into sex talk on the faintest of pretexts. Deflowering, cuckoldry, prostitution, the pox, rape, masturbation (both male and female), impotence, the young and incompetent, the old and fumbling, prudes and hypocrites, insatiable wives and serially roving husbands, experimentation and playing with gender roles; it's all here.

Yes, there's a lot of masculine sniggering going on, but it isn't just smut. Here for the first time were theatrical occasions where women were on the stage as well as in the audience. Often, these prologues/epilogues were designed to be given by women actors. Dryden was helping to build a social consensus around tolerance and honesty between the sexes; admittedly within a rather narrow sphere of the upper classes. But this achievement of his age was a great one; that tradition of honesty, or at least the aspiration to honesty, survived Victorian repression and still underlies the social interrogations of today, especially in feminism and queer studies.

Another constant resource of these poems is nationalism. Usually that means attacking the character of other nations, though naturally the poems often aim a back-handed swipe at the English.

But ev'n your Follies and Debauches change
With such a Whirl, the Poets of your Age
Are tyr'd, and cannot score 'em on the Stage,
Unless each Vice in short-hand they indite,
Ev'n as notcht Prentices whole Sermons write.
The heavy Hollanders no Vices know,
But what they us'd a hundred years ago ;
Like honest Plants, where they were stuck, they grow ;
They cheat, but still from cheating Sires they come ;
They drink, but they were christen'd first in Mum.
Their patrimonial Sloth the Spaniards keep,
And Philip first taught Philip how to sleep.
The French and we still change ; but here's the Curse,
They change for better, and we change for worse ;
They take up our old trade of Conquering,
And we are taking theirs, to dance and sing ; ... (3)

The Scots are mocked for their poverty:

Lac'd Linen there would be a dangerous Thing ;
It might perhaps a new Rebellion bring ;
The Scot who wore it wou'd be chosen King. (4)

Of the Irish, he tastefully remarks:

You have beheld such barbarous Macs appear
As merited a second Massacre ;
Such as like Cain were branded with Disgrace,
And had their Country stampt upon their Face. (4)

The "first" massacre that Dryden had in mind was not, as we might imagine, the English massacres of Catholics under Cromwell and others, but the 1641 rebels' massacre of Protestant Ulster settlers (which had received far more publicity in England).

Perhaps it's as well to point out that this seemingly ferocious assault is occasioned by nothing more than Dryden's company appearing at "the Act" [the annual festivities at the end of the Oxford academic year, subsequently replaced by the Encaenia], which a year or two earlier had seen some performances by a Dublin troupe, invited by the Duke of Ormonde.

Dryden's rabble-rousing against the Dutch was more seriously intended:

The doteage of some Englishmen is such,
To fawn on those who ruine them, the Dutch.
They shall have all rather than make a War
With those who of the same Religion are.
The Streights, the Guiney Trade, the Herrings too,
Nay, to keep friendship, they shall pickle you.
Some are resolv'd not to find out the Cheat,
But Cuckold-like, love him who does the Feat :
What injuries soe'r upon us fall,
Yet still the same Religion answers all :
Religion wheedled you to Civil War,
Drew English Blood, and Dutchmens now wou'd spare. (5)

This was in 1673. There was indeed a third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-74), which the English lost. One consequence was that Mary, the Duke's eldest daughter, married William of Orange (in 1677). Dryden had to be a bit more circumspect about the Dutch after that.

The "Streights" was the Straits of Gibraltar, contested between the Dutch and English, both of whom wanted to pass through it to trade with Smyrna.

The "Guiney Trade" was the trade along the west coast of Africa, which supplied slaves for the West Indies and gold for Europe. The Dutch and English were fighting for control of that, too.

Most galling was the substantial wealth the Dutch gained from their herring trade after discovering how to preserve the fish. Their main fishing grounds were just off the east coast of England in what we call the North Sea but Dryden had called "the British Ocean". The English tried to set up their own herring industry, but never made a great success of it.

But did Dryden himself realize that these commercial interests were really just pretexts, and that the destruction of the Dutch Republic was one of the intended outcomes of the 1670 Treaty of Dover between Charles II and Louis XIV? Probably not; it was a closely guarded secret. Anyway, Dryden's loyalty to his royal masters required some impressive demonstrations of how to tack with the wind. As time went by, both they and he became more embattled, and I could sense it, reading through the poems chronologically. Not that the poems wish to spell it out: for instance, you could easily read the Prologue to the Duchess on her Return from Scotland (1682) without gaining any sense of the violent controversy that still raged around James' marriage to the charming Mary of Modena.

But for all that can be said against him, there is a kind of honesty in Dryden. He isn't a confessional poet, but in the unbuttoned intimacy of the prologue form he doesn't mind letting us see his feelings. As things increasingly went against his party we hear something different from the splenetic fireworks, something more like moroseness, fury (in the attacks on Whigs in the 1680s), anxiety, resignation ...


*

Here's a complete prologue, one I particularly like for its fertile combination of imagery as well as its incidental literary interest.

PROLOGUE TO CIRCE.
Were you but half so wise as you're severe,
Our youthfull Poet shou'd not need to fear ;
To his green years your Censures you would suit,
Not blast the Blossom, but expect the Fruit.
The Sex that best does pleasure understand
Will always chuse to err on t'other hand.
They check not him that's aukard in delight,
But clap the young Rogues Cheek, and set him right.
Thus heartn'd well, and flesh't upon his Prey,
The youth may prove a man another day.
Your Ben and Fletcher, in their first young flight,
Did no Volpone, no Arbaces write ;
But hopp'd about, and short Excursions made
From Bough to Bough, as if they were afraid,
And each were guilty of some Slighted Maid.
Shakespear's own Muse her Pericles first bore ;
The Prince of Tyre was elder than the Moore.
'Tis miracle to see a first good Play ;
All Hawthorns do not bloom on Christmas-day.
A slender Poet must have time to grow,
And spread and burnish as his Brothers do.
Who still looks lean, sure with some pox is curst,
But no Man can be Falstaff-fat at first.
Then damn not, but indulge his stew'd Essays,
Encourage him, and bloat him up with Praise,
That he may get more bulk before he dies.
He's not yet fed enough for Sacrifice.
Perhaps, if now your Grace you will not grudge,
He may grow up to write, and you to judge. (6)

Volpone : 1605-06, well into Jonson's career as a dramatist.

Arbaces : The lead character in A King and No King, by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (1611), from the peak period of their collaboration.

Slighted Maid : A play by Sir Robert Stapylton, from 1663. Dryden didn't think much of it.

Pericles : Dryden was mistaken about the sequence, but it's understandable. The naïve-looking Pericles is actually one of Shakespeare's later plays (1607-08), but it survives only in a ruined text, and most scholars now think that the first three acts are by George Wilkins. Interesting testament to the already high reputation of Othello (1602-03?), here representing Shakespeare's mature achievement.

stew'd : a nice image, but an inadvertent one. Scholars are agreed that the word must be an error: suggested emendations include "rude" and "sterv'd".

Hawthorns : Normally flowered in May (with global warming, it's now April).  The "Glastonbury Thorn", var. 'Biflora', also puts out flowers at Christmas.

burnish : "Of the human frame: to grow plump, or stout, to spread out; to increase in breadth" (OED burnish v.2, now obsolete.)



*

1. Epilogue to Troilus and Cressida, or Truth Found Too Late (1679). It's spoken by a character from the play, the railer Thersites.
2. A Prologue. Written in 1689, published 1693. The poem's occasion and its "bashful Poet" aren't recorded.
3. Prologue to The Spanish Fryar, or The Double Discovery (1681)
4. (Second) Prologue to the University of Oxford (1681).
5. Prologue to Amboyna, or The Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants (1673).
6. Prologue to Circe (1677). The play was by Charles Davenant. Two versions of the prologue survive; this is the second.