DRYDEN, JOHN. — The most representative poet of Restoration England, born at Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, in the latter half of 1631, died in London on 1 May 1700.
An opportunist in politics, he sang of Cromwell’s death in Heroic Stanzas (1658) and of the return of Charles II in Astrea Redux (1660). He then devoted himself to the theatre, which was fashionable at the time and served as a weapon of reaction against Puritanism: notable works include The Indian Emperor (1665), Annus mirabilis (1666), and The Conquest of Granada (1670). In 1681 he turned to satire, historical in content and aristocratic in manner: well known is Absalon and Achitophel, directed against the Duke of Monmouth; more violent is Mac Plecknoe. In 1681 he wrote the work later repudiated, Religio laici, in which he asserts that religion alone offers man the possibility of escaping earthly anguish and attaining the divine, and proclaims the sovereignty of the Anglican Church. When, during the reign of James II, he converted to Catholicism, he wrote The Hind and Panther (1687): an allegorical poem in the form of a fable, in which the hind, representing the Catholic Church, withdraws from the other animals (the hare: Quakers; the monkey: freethinkers; the boar: Anabaptists; etc.) and discusses the religious problems of the time with the panther (the Anglican Church).
Very interesting is the adaptation The Fall of Man, in which D., having obtained Milton’s permission to dramatize Paradise Lost in order to defend it against hostile criticism, treated the same religious problem, but in a sense contrary to that of the author of the poem: “To dogma he opposes doubt; to Milton’s materialized infinity, which confines the universe within the most pronounced anthropomorphism, he opposes scepticism, which reduces the individual’s life to a dream and to a passing phenomenon in time and space; finally, to the Πάντα καλά λίγο of the Old Testament, he opposes his profound pessimism and the undisputed reality of universal suffering” (G. Fornelli, La restaurazione inglese nell'opera di J. D., Firenze 1932, p. 46).
In an age of troubled events, D., a humanist and Catholic, wished and knew how to rise above discord and factions, in order to gain a higher and more serene view of ideas and events.