Question

Attempt a critique of Shakespeare’s ‘dramatic poesie’.

Answer 1

Dryden writes on Shakespeare's dramatic poesy "To begin with Shakespeare, he was the man who of all moderns and perhaps poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily when he describes anything you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation, he was naturally learned, he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature he looked inwards and found her there.I cannot where alike I were he so. I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat insipid, his comic with degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit and did not raise himself as high above the rest of the poets."

Some of Dryden's comments are repeated from earlier writers notably the assurance that Shakespeare's art was natural, this time used almost as an excuse to justify the awkward fact that he did not follow the classical rules as carefully as Johnson. He did not pull his punches when it came to describing what as Shakespeare's faults. He found Shakespeare's plots absurdly loose in construction and deplored bombast of his passionate speeches destiny and imaginary was not admired.

He is the very Janus of poets as he wears almost every where two faces and you have scarce begun to one even you despise the other. He shows love, passion and present situation in his work. Dryden said that Shakespeare is far above him he was quite conscious of both the weakness and greatness of Shakespeare.

Answer 2

hough he died in 1700, John Dryden is usually considered a writer of the 18th rather than the 17th century. Incredibly prolific, Dryden made innovative advances in translation and aesthetic philosophy, and was the first poet to employ the neo-classical heroic couplet and quatrain in his own work. Dryden’s influence on later writers was immense; Alexander Pope greatly admired and often imitated him, and Samuel Johnson considered him to have “refined the language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English poetry.” In addition to poetry, Dryden wrote many essays, prefaces, satires, translations, biographies (introducing the word to the English language), and plays. “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” was probably written in 1666 during the closure of the London theaters due to plague. It can be read as a general defense of drama as a legitimate art form—taking up where Sir Philip Sidney’s “Defence of Poesie” left off—as well as Dryden’s own defense of his literary practices. The essay is structured as a dialogue among four friends on the river Thames. The group has taken refuge on a barge during a naval battle between the English and the Dutch fleets. The four gentlemen, Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander (all aliases for actual Restoration critics and the last for Dryden himself), begin an ironic and witty conversation on the subject of poetry, which soon turns into a debate on the virtues of modern and ancient writers