Dryden, John 1631-1700
English poet

He was born at the vicarage of Aldwinkle All Saints, Northamptonshire, and educated at Westminster School under Richard Busby and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he stayed until 1657. Going up to London in that year he attached himself to his cousin Sir Gilbert Pickering, Cromwell's chamberlain, in the hope of employment, as both sides of his family were Parliamentarians. His Heroic Stanzas, in quatrains, on the death of Cromwell (1658), was soon followed by his Astrea Redux (1660), celebrating the Restoration in heroic couplets, which was to be his staple measure even in the myriad plays which he soon produced for the amusement of 'a venal court'. The first of these 'heroic' verse plays to win the public was The Indian Emperor (1665), dealing with the conquest of Mexico by Hern�n Cort�s and his love for the emperor's daughter, and the last was Aurungzebe (1676). In 1663 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, eldest daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. In 1667 he published Annus Mirabilis, The Year of Wonders, 1666, which established his reputation, and he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1668 following Sir William D'Avenant, and historiographer royal in 1670. Meanwhile he was writing a series of comedies for the stage, including The Rival Ladies (1664, in rhymed verse), and culminating with Marriage � la Mode (1672). He used blank verse for All for Love (1677), his best play and comparable to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. His adaptation of another Shakespeare play, Troilus and Cressida, in 1678, was by comparison a failure. He had adapted The Tempest in 1670, Milton's Paradise Lost (as The State of Innocence, 1677), and Corneille's The Mock Astrologer (1668). He wrote a series of important critical essays as prefaces to his plays, including his charming Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) and the Defence of the Epilogue (to The Conquest of Granada, 1670). In 1680 he began a series of satirical and didactic poems, starting with the most famous, 'Absalom and Achitophel' (1681), and followed by 'The Medal' (1682) and 'MacFlecknoe' (1684), written some years before, which did much to turn the tide against the Whigs. To this era also belong the didactic poem Religico Laici (1682), which argues the case for Anglicanism, and The Hind and the Panther, marking his conversion to Catholicism in 1685. A place in the Customs (1683) was his reward for his political labours. At the Revolution of 1688 he lost the poet laureateship and took up translation to earn a living. Of these his fine translation of Virgil was most profitable, and that of Juvenal and Persius was prefaced by a Discourse Concerning the Origin and Progress of Satire. His final work, published in 1699, was Fables, Ancient and Modern which, with its paraphrases of Chaucer, Ovid and Boccaccio, has delighted generations of readers. These works are only the most outstanding of a lifetime's industry. Dryden is transitional between the Metaphysical poets of the school of John Donne and the neoclassic reaction which he did so much to create.

Bibliography: G Wasermann, John Dryden (1964); C Ward, A Life of John Dryden (1961)