Week 13 - John Dryden / Samuel Pepys

Question 1

What is the occasion of the poem? (What does it commemorate?)

Question 2

How would you summarize the narrative of the poem?

Question 3

In what sense is Shadwell Flecknoe’s son?

If Flecknoe’s speech identifying Shadwell as his successor (lines 15–26) should be complimentary, what do the lines suggest about

Shadwell? About Flecknoe?

Where does Dryden place the coronation, and how does he describe it? What is the significance of this environment?

What does the “yet declaiming bard” prophesy about his successor?

How does Dryden treat his fellow Restoration playwrights in the poem? What is the significance of this? How does he treat earlier playwrights? What is the significance of this?

If satire aims to correct vice, what does “mac Flecknoe” aim to correct?

What does the word “dullness” imply in the poem?

“Mac Flecknoe” is a poem that uses the political concerns over proper succession to illustrate a problem in the literary kingdom. What parallel (metaphor) does Dryden construct? What are the implications of the comparison?

Question 4

If Flecknoe’s speech identifying Shadwell as his successor (lines 15–26) should be complimentary, what do the lines suggest about Shadwell? About Flecknoe?

Question 5

Where does Dryden place the coronation, and how does he describe it? What is the significance of this environment?

Question 6

What does the “yet declaiming bard” prophesy about his successor?

Question 7

How does Dryden treat his fellow Restoration playwrights in the poem? What is the significance of this? How does he treat earlier playwrights? What is the significance of this?

Question 8

If satire aims to correct vice, what does “mac Flecknoe” aim to correct?

Question 9

What does the word “dullness” imply in the poem?

Question 10

“Mac Flecknoe” is a poem that uses the political concerns over proper succession to illustrate a problem in the literary kingdom. What parallel (metaphor) does Dryden construct? What are the implications of the comparison?

Question 11

What are the characteristics of bad poetry?

Question 12

How does Dryden define wit?

Question 13

As the headnote suggests, Dryden did not feel obliged to maintain an opinion simply because he once expressed it in writing. can you find evidence of any changing opinions in these excerpts?

Question 14

How does Dryden’s view of Jonson in the “Essay of Dramatic Poesy” inform his treatment of Shadwell—who claimed to be Jonson’s literary heir—in “Mac Flecknoe”?

Question 15

Would you characterize Dryden’s prose criticism as fair? Why or why not?

Question 16

How does Dryden’s treatment of earlier authors in his prose criticism compare with his treatment of contemporary authors in the verse satire “Mac Flecknoe”?

Question 17

What are the dominant characteristics of Dryden’s prose style? How does it compare with that of other writers from his era (see excerpts from Pepys, Bunyan, Locke, and Newton)? How does it compare with the prose of Johnson?

Question 18

What tricky issues did Dryden confront in writing this poem about Charles II and his illegitimate son? What strategies did he use? How successful are they?

Question 19

What motivates Achitophel? Why does he need Absalom?

Question 20

Why does Absalom change his mind and join Achitophel?

Question 21

Note the description of Achitophel’s confederates. What do they have in common? What makes the satire in this section so effective? (The portrait of Zimri is the chief example.)

Question 22

Note the description of Charles II’s loyal followers. What do they
have in common? How does this characterization differ from the earlier portraits? What are the differences between satire and panegyric? Which makes better reading?

Question 23

What is Charles II’s message in his speech? Why does Dryden put it in the poem at that point?

Question 24

Evaluate the closing lines of the poem. Why does Dryden end it so equivocally?

Question 25

Where are the women in the poem? Why don’t they play a role?

Question 26

Almost one hundred years after the publication of Absalom and Achitophel, Samuel Johnson said that this best-seller continued to be so well known he didn’t need to describe it for his readers. How can you account for the continuing popularity of the work?

Question 27

How does the poem function as “spin”? What contemporary parallels can you find? How do they compare with Dryden’s work?

Question 28

Look at a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century map of London. What parts of the city did the fire consume?

Question 29

What are Pepys’s principal concerns in reviewing the progress of the fire? What emotions does he experience and why?

Question 30

What conditions make the fire’s progress so extraordinary?

Question 31

Why don’t people attempt to extinguish the fire? What role does Pepys play in controlling the fire?

Question 32

What happens when the fire (or fear of the fire) reaches Pepys’s own house? What are his principal concerns?

Question 33

With regard to the Deb Willet affair, how does Pepys feel about Deb? How do you know? What can we tell about her feelings for him?

Question 34

How does Pepys regard his wife?What is her reaction to walking in on her husband being intimate with Deb? What does he do in response?

Question 35

What does Pepys’ prolonged agony over (and persistence in) the affair suggest about his character? About his marriage?

Question 36

Why does Pepys write these entries? What do they record? What is their value for contemporary readers?