All for Love

The age of Elizabeth, memorable for so many reasons in the history of

England, was especially brilliant in literature, and, within literature, in

the drama. With some falling off in spontaneity, the impulse to great

dramatic production lasted till the Long Parliament closed the theaters in

1642; and when they were reopened at the Restoration, in 1660, the

stage only too faithfully reflected the debased moral tone of the court

society of Charles II.

John Dryden (1631-1700), the great representative figure in the literature

of the latter part of the seventeenth century, exemplifies in his work most

of the main tendencies of the time. He came into notice with a poem on

the death of Cromwell in 1658, and two years later was composing

couplets expressing his loyalty to the returned king. He married Lady

Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of a royalist house, and for practically all

the rest of his life remained an adherent of the Tory Party. In 1663 he

began writing for the stage, and during the next thirty years he attempted

nearly all the current forms of drama. His "Annus Mirabilis" (1666),

celebrating the English naval victories over the Dutch, brought him in

1670 the Poet Laureateship. He had, meantime, begun the writing of

those admirable critical essays, represented in the present series by his

Preface to the "Fables" and his Dedication to the translation of Virgil. In

these he shows himself not only a critic of sound and penetrating

judgment, but the first master of modern English prose style.