An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: John Dryden (Critical Analysis Part I)

An Essay of Dramatic Poesy by Dryden is in the form of a conversation between four friends, namely: Crites (Representing Dryden's brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard), Lisideius (Representing Sir Charles Sedley), Eugenius (Lord Buckhurst) and Neander (Representing Dryden himself) who are drifting in a barge down the river Thames, waiting to hear the new of the Great Naval Battle with the Dutch on 3rd June, 1665. Dryden has used the dialogue method to discuss a problem from different angles and leaving the reader to come up with a conclusion. 

1. Ancient Drama Vs Modern Drama 

Crites is in favour of the Ancients while Eugenius is in favour of the Moderns. 

Crites says that drama was born and perfected in Ancient Greece, The Ancient Greek dramatists excelled because they were 'faithful imitators and wise observers' of nature. But the Moderns were 'ill-copiers' of nature. They depicted nature in a 'monstrous and disfigured' manner. 

He says that Ancient dramatists like Aristotle and Horace had framed rules of drama. But the Moderns have not added anything of their own to these rules. 

However, Crites supported the Three Unities of Action, Place & Time. He says that they are Ancient rules and Modern dramatists fail because of the violation of these unities. 

He praises the Ancients because of their 'superlative power of expression'. He praises Ben Jonson because the latter scrupulously followed the rules of the Ancients. 

Eugenius comes forward to speak in favour of the Moderns. His first counter-argument is that the Moderns are not totally averse to the rules of the Ancients and have followed some of them with success. The Moderns have improved upon the Ancients. 

His second counter-argument is that the Ancients used only stale plots. All their tragedies were based on the hackneyed tales of Thebes & Troy so much so that even before the play began, the audience foretold what it was all about. Their plays lacked in the elements of surprise and often fell flat on the audience. Their comedies were also lacking in variety. The comedy playwrights were confined to a narrow set of themes. They imitated nature not comprehensively, but partially. It was as if the painter painting only a hand or an eye, and not the full body.

Eugenius says that only the Unity of Action was given by Aristotle in in 'Poetics'. But the Unity of Place & Time were put forward by the drama critics of Italy & France, and so they're not Ancient rules as they belong to a later era. 

The biggest argument of Eugenius is that the Ancients lacked in moral teaching. They didn't care to show a world governed by poetic justice. They showed virtue suffering and vice triumphing.
Eugenius praises the Modern playwrights for their mixing of comic and tragic elements in their plays. The same modern playwright wrote both tragedy and comedy. Eg: Shakespeare who began his career by writing comedy, but later also wrote tragedy. But this is not the case with the Ancients. Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus wrote nothing but tragedy. Aristophanes, Plautus and Terence wrote nothing but tragedy.
A glaring defect of the Ancient plays is that they didn't depict tender love and compassion. The Ancient plays focused mainly on cruelty, revenge, lust, ambition, etc., and the bloody consequences that followed out of these terrible passions.  

*********************************************************************************