An Essay of Dramatic Poesy |
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action admiration already ancients answer appear argument Aristotle audience beauty better betwixt blank verse called cause characters comedy compass concernment consider conversation Corneille Crites delight difference discourse drama Dryden edition English Essay Eugenius excellent Fletcher French given gives greater Greek hand houses humour imagine imitation impossible Johnson judge kind King language least leave less Lisideius lived Lord Malone means nature never observed opinion passage passions perfection persons Plautus play plot poem poesy poet poetry Preface present probably produced proper prose prove published quoted reason reference relation represented rest rhyme rule says scene seems sense serious Shakespeare sometimes sound Spanish speak stage suppose thing thought tragedy true truth unity whole writ writing written
Popular passages
Page 67 - All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, 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.
Page 67 - I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him...
Page 70 - Catiline. But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
Page 69 - As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it.
Page 70 - But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch ; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him.
Page 91 - This last is indeed the representation of nature, but 'tis nature wrought up to an higher pitch. The plot, the characters, the wit, the passions, the descriptions are all exalted above the level of common converse, as high as the imagination of the poet can carry them, with proportion to verisimility. Tragedy, we know, is wont to image to us the minds and fortunes of noble persons, and to portray these exactly. Heroic rhyme is nearest nature, as being the noblest kind of modern verse.
Page 159 - To make a child now swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, Past three-score years ; or, with three rusty swords, And help of some few foot and half-foot words, Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars, And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
Page 17 - A JUST AND LIVELY IMAGE OF HUMAN NATURE, REPRESENTING ITS PASSIONS AND HUMOURS; AND THE CHANGES OF FORTUNE, TO WHICH IT IS SUBJECT: FOR THE DELIGHT AND INSTRUCTION OF MANKIND.
Page 133 - And Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the Table Round again, But that a ribald King and Court Bade him toil on, to make them sport ; Demanded for their niggard pay, Fit for their souls, a looser lay, Licentious satire, song, and play ; The world defrauded of the high design, Profan'd the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line.
Page 177 - I am satisfied if it cause delight. For delight is the chief, if not the only, end of poesy. Instruction can be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only instructs as it delights.
Bibliographic information
| Title | An Essay of Dramatic Poesy |
| Author | John Dryden |
| Editor | Thomas Arnold |
| Edition | 3 |
| Publisher | Clarendon Press, 1922 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | 17 Jul 2007 |
| Length | 179 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |