John Dryden

John Dryden was born on August 9, 1631 in the Vicarage of Aldwinkle All Saints in Northamptonshire, England (DISCovering Authors 1). He was a cute, young boy who was described as “short, stout, and red-faced” (Britannica 8). His father was a countryman, and both his parents were very fond of Parliament siding with the Parliament Party against the King (Britannica 1). He was eleven years old when the war broke out between the royalist forces and the revolutionary forces, and that is when his life began to change. It was the start of a period of time when England became a republic ruled by Parliament.

His parents were well known around the town, and had a lot of connections with wealthy people. Because of those connections, they were able to find a scholarship so that he could attend Westminster School at a very young age (DISCovering Authors 1). His Professor, Richard Busby, provided him with an education (DISCovering Authors 1). It was here that he published his first poem, Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings (DISCovering Authors 1). This poem had special meaning for him because it was about one of his good friends who died of small pox. At the age of 19, he was elected to attend Trinity College in Cambridge. Dryden graduated in 1654 while earning a Bachelor of Arts degree (Britannica 1). A few months after his graduation, he received some very bad news- his father had died suddenly. He then became in charge of his family and the small estate where he grew up (DISCovering Authors 1).

In 1658, his career was revived and he began to write once again. His first work was an elegy called Heroique Stanzas, which was about the death of Cromwell, and detailed how he was such a brave English statesman (DISCovering Authors 1). He began writing poetry in 1660 in the form of Neoclassical (Wasserman 40). That same year, he was granted a couple of patents from Charles II for a theatre. However, the plays were not too successful. Two years later, the theater was closed by the Puritans (Britannica 1).

Dryden published Astraea Reddux in 1660 which was the most successful and prominent of all his poems. Along with others, they wrote a poem to welcome Charles II as he was being restored to the throne. It contained more than three hundred lines in rhymed couplet (Britannica 1). In 1662, he read and enjoyed John Milton’s Paradise Lost, but he had a hard time understanding the book. So he decided that he would alter his writing into rhymed drama. He took all of his thoughts and made it the exact opposite of Milton’s (Cyclopedia 535).

The next year, on December 1, he married the youngest daughter of Thomas Howard, Lady Elizabeth Howard, who was one of his friend’s sisters (DISCovering Authors 2). Around the same time, he was starting to be viewed as a dramatist. In 1663, he wrote his first play, The Wild Gallant. It was performed at the Royal Theater and was one of his first comedies with a humorous dialogue (DISCovering Authors 2). The play unfortunately did not have a long run. That same year, he was made a member of the Royal Society which he was very happy to accept (DISCovering Authors 2). He and his wife then decided to start their family and had three sons, Charles, John, and Erasmus, all exactly one year apart (Britannica 1). The theaters that he worked for were all closed down by June of that year due to the bubonic plague (Wasserman 21). He moved his family to Charlton, Wiltshire, in the summer of 1665, mainly because they were trying to avoid the plague that was being spread everywhere (Wasserman 55). Dryden also decided to change his form of writing into a more proper form of drama. He produced The Indian Queen. Since it was so successful and popular, he wrote the sequel a year later, called The Indian Emperor (DISCovering Authors 2).

After all these changes, he wrote his longest poem ever in 1667. It is called Annus Mirabilis which dealt in part with the victory that the English fleet had over the Dutch. It also concerned the experiences of those who survived the Great Fire of 1666 (Britannica 1). The next year, he became very interested with Sir William Davenant, the inventor of the heroic play. He then published his greatest piece of criticism called Of Dramatick Poesie (DISCovering Authors