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Palamon and Arcite By: John Dryden (1631-1700) |
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EDITED
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
GEORGE E. ELIOT, A.M.
ENGLISH MASTER IN THE MORGAN SCHOOL TO
HENRY A. BEERS
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN YALE UNIVERSITY
WHO FIRST AROUSED MY INTEREST IN DRYDEN
AND DIRECTED MY STUDY OF HIS WORKS
THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED PREFACE. To edit an English classic for study in secondary schools is difficult.
The lack of anything like uniformity in the type of examination required
by the colleges and universities complicates treatment. Not only do two
distinct institutions differ in the scope and character of their
questions, but the same university varies its demands from year to year.
The only safe course to pursue is, therefore, a generally comprehensive
one. But here, again, we are hampered by limited space, and are forced
to content ourselves with a bare outline, which the individual
instructor can fill in as much or as little as he pleases. The ignorance of most of our classical students in regard to the history
of English literature is appalling; and yet it is impossible properly to
study a given work of a given author without some knowledge of the
background against which that particular writer stands. I have,
therefore, sketched the politics, society, and literature of the age in
which Dryden lived, and during which he gave to the world his Palamon
and Arcite . In the critical comments of the introduction I have
contented myself with little more than hints. That particular line of
study, whether it concerns the poet's style, his verse forms, or the
possession of the divine instinct itself, can be much more
satisfactorily developed by the instructor, as the student's knowledge
of the poem grows. It is certainly a subject for congratulation that so many youth will be
introduced, through the medium of Dryden's crisp and vigorous verse, to
one of the tales of Chaucer. May it now, as in his own century,
accomplish the poet's desire, and awaken in them appreciative admiration
for the old bard, the best story teller in the English language.
G. E. E. CLINTON, CONN., July 26, 1897. INTRODUCTION. THE BACKGROUND.
The fifty years of Dryden's literary production just fill the last half
of the seventeenth century. It was a period bristling with violent
political and religious prejudices, provocative of strife that amounted
to revolution. Its social life ran the gamut from the severity of the
Commonwealth Puritan to the unbridled debauchery of the Restoration
Courtier. In literature it experienced a remarkable transformation in
poetry, and developed modern prose, watched the production of the
greatest English epics, smarted under the lash of the greatest English
satires, blushed at the brilliant wit of unspeakable comedies, and
applauded the beginnings of English criticism. When the period began, England was a Commonwealth. Charles I., by
obstinate insistence upon absolutism, by fickleness and faithlessness,
had increased and strengthened his enemies. Parliament had seized the
reins of government in 1642, had completely established its authority at
Naseby in 1645, and had beheaded the king in front of his own palace in
1649. The army had accomplished these results, and the army proposed to
enjoy the reward. Cromwell, the idolized commander of the Ironsides, was
placed at the head of the new formed state with the title of Lord
Protector; and for five years he ruled England, as she had been ruled by
no sovereign since Elizabeth. He suppressed Parliamentary dissensions
and royalist uprisings, humbled the Dutch, took vengeance on the
Spaniard, and made England indisputably mistress of the ocean. He was
succeeded, at his death in 1658, by his son Richard; but the father's
strong instinct for government had not been inherited by the son. The
nation, homesick for monarchy, was tiring of dissension and bickering,
and by the Restoration of 1660 the son of Charles I became Charles II of
England. Scarcely had the demonstrations of joy at the Restoration subsided when
London was visited by the devouring plague of 1665... Continue reading book >>
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