Thematic Study of ‘Absalom and Achitophel’
John Dryden :
Dryden the poet is best known today as a satirist, although he wrote only two great original satires: Mac Flecknoe (1682) and The Medall (1682). His most famous poem, Absalom and Achitophel (1681) contains several brilliant satiric portraits.
Born in Northamptonshire, England, on August 9, 1631, John Dryden came from a landowning family with connections to Parliament and the Church of England. He studied as a King’s Scholar at the prestigious Westminster School of London, where he later sent two of his own children. There, Dryden was trained in the art of rhetorical argument, which remained a strong influence on the poet's writing and critical thought throughout his life.
John Dryden is rightly considered as “the father of English Criticism”. He was the first to teach the English people to determine the merit of composition upon principles. With Dryden, a new era of criticism began. Before Dryden, there were only occasional utterances on critical art.
Religion- Biblical effect :
In the process of adjusting the political events and the biblical narrative to each other, Dryden only partially renders the biblical text, as he acknowledges in "To the Reader".
By referencing only the biblical characters to maintain his allegory, Dryden accomplished his purpose, which was to comment on the folly of the political clash between the Protestant Whigs and Catholic Tories. Reflecting his traditional middling position that tended toward compromise in the fairness with which he treated both factions, Dryden included positive passages about characters on both sides of the issue. Nevertheless he supported the Royalist cause. By 1681 the Royalists seemed to take the upper hand in the clash after Charles executed a tactical move to relocate Parliament to Oxford, where he would have more power over its members in isolation from London’s rebellious forces. The people eventually lost faith in the pro-Monmouth group, and Charles remained absolute ruler, never again convening Parliament, until his sudden death from kidney infection in 1685. Ironically while on his deathbed Charles secretly called a priest to minister to him. He converted to Catholicism and received the last rites, and his Catholic brother, the duke of York, became James II of England.
Dryden’s choice of the Bible as allegory proved appropriate for his era. Most educated individuals agreed that the Bible could be used as a type of gloss to reveal truths civic, as well as religious. No one else, however, had seen the artistic possibilities in the way Dryden did. The parallel story, as Earl Miner explains, granted a sense of action that the poetry itself lacked. The rhyming couplets in Dryden’s lines framed only three incidents from the story of David’s retention of rule. In the first, Achitophel tempts Absalom to overthrow his father. In the second, the two together tempt the Jews to participate in a revolt. And in the third, David makes a moving speech to his reunited subjects, concluding with the lines, “For lawful power is still superior found; / When long driven back, at length it stands the ground.” In this couplet, Dryden expressed the belief, which a struggle with his own religious allegiance eventually confirmed, that the tradition of the Catholic Church gave it a strength his culture badly needed.
Power and Ambition:
Power and ambition drive the plot of John Dryden’s poem “Absalom and Achitophel.” King David of Israel has all the power in theory, but in practice, he has little ambition. According to Achitophel, the King’s deceitful counsellor, David is lacking “manly force,” and he gives in too easily to the people. The King is “mild” and hesitant to draw blood, and Achitophel, in his own ambition for increasing power, sees David as weak. “But when should people strive to break their bonds,” Achitophel says to David’s son Absalom, “If not when kings are negligent or weak?” The Jews of Israel “well know their power,” Achitophel maintains, and it is the perfect time to assert that power and overthrow David’s rule. Absalom, too, is ambitious and gains power through war, and, after Achitophel’s influence, Absalom has ambition to ascend his father’s throne. With the portrayal of power and ambition in “Absalom and Achitophel,” Dryden ultimately argues that while some ambition of power is good and even admirable, attempting to take power that rightfully belongs to the King is a deadly sin.
Although Absalom’s ambitions of power are reasonable at first, he, too, grows greedy and eventually sets his sights on overstepping the King through dishonest means.
Dryden will later compare Achitophel’s words to snake venom, making a strong connection to the temptation by Satan in the Garden of Eden. He uses equally strong words for the son, Absalom, “that unfeathered, two legged thing, a son” who “In friendship false, implacable in hate, Resolv’d to ruin or to rule the state.”
Dryden also wants his audience to understand that the monarch’s pampered existence includes fearsome responsibilities.
David, who from the first is said to behave "after Heaven's own heart " in begetting his own offspring, is consistently referred to by other Israelites, not by the priests, as exemplifying godly - not just kingly - behaviour. In attempting to make himself seem reasonable and devoted to the state's welfare, Achitophel craftily grants divine approval of David's position and power as king as the starting point of his own attempt to convince Absalom to rebel. The political function and controversial flavour of the passage, how ever, have not been properly emphasised.
Satire :
In making David the subject of his parallel history, " Dryden presents the prototype for monarchy in Israel , a monarchy represented as both divinely sanctioned and humanly problematic.
This satirised admiration of David is the sign of the status quo of benevolent licentiousness; it also isolates David from some kinds of criticism. In these lines, Dryden side steps intervention by priests, the group whose members by definition interpret and manage everyone's relation to the supreme, divine power.
A second and related advantage of Dryden's system for the purposes of the title's satire is that it establishes David as the public exemplar, albeit a satirised one, of the proper relation to God, a point Dryden reinforces throughout the poem.
Through the use of satire and allegory in “Absalom and Achitophel,” Dryden ultimately argues that the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis were devious ploys to divert the rightful order of succession and prevent James II from ascending the throne. According to Dryden, the poet is neither a teacher nor a bare imitator – like a photographer – but a creator, one who, with life or Nature as his raw material, creates new things altogether resembling the original. According to him, poetry is a work of art rather than mere imitation.
The Erosion of the Value and Power of Poetry :
One of the unintended themes of Dryden’s poem is how it has become one of the supreme illustrations of how much the perceived value of poetry has decreased in contemporary times. When the published poem hit the streets, Dryden created a bull market for poetry’s value. Samuel Johnson, who would go on to become one of England’s literary legends alongside Dryden, would not be born for almost three decades after this period in British history, during which time his father was a bookseller. Johnson would later recount how his father told him that he could not keep copies of Dryden’s poem on his shelves. Everyone in London was familiar with the actual political crisis taking place, and half of them were eager to read Dryden’s satirical allegory. The storied reaction to Dryden’s poem about a current political scandal, couched as a biblical parody, seems utterly inconceivable for modern society. Today, a gossipy non-fiction bestseller weaved from anonymous sources can impact political scandals just as easily, but very few of those books will also go on to become an established highlight of the literary history of an entire language.
Divine right of King :
During the Renaissance, education passed more from the clutches of the priest into the hand of the prince. In other words it became more secular. It was also due to the growth of the nation - stale and powerful monarchs who united the country under their rule. Thus, under the control of the monarch, education began to devise and preach the infallibility of its masters. It also invented and supported fantastic theories like the Divine Right Theory and that the king can do no wrong’ etc.
Dryden habitually makes this identification in his writings from 1679 to 1683. In Absalom and Achitophel, therefore, Dryden is counting on the power of the phrases ``officer in trust" and "resuming covenant" to revive memories of the reasons given by the Rump for abolishing the monarchy, or of Sir John Bradshawe's speeches.
With the advent of the industrial revolution education took a different tum and had to please the new masters. It now no longer remained the privilege of the baron class but was thrown open to the new rich merchant class of society. Yet education was still confined to the few elite. This religious education taught the poor man to be meek and to earn his bread with the sweat of his brow, while the priests and the landlords lived in luxury and fought duels for the slightest offence.
Conclusion :
Absalom and Achitophel ( 1681 ) has received considerable attention in recent years , but little of this attention takes fully into account the poem's political arguments on behalf of Charles II.
John Dryden's famous Restoration satire Absalom and Achitophel (1681) is one of the key seventeenth-century texts that demand a political reading; it engages its readers in the political debates and idioms of its own time while also calling for a more general reflection on the connections between literature and society.
[Words 1635, Image 02]
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