Rhetoric and Disguise: Political Language and Political Argument in Absalom and Achitophel

This essay developed from discussions during a jointly taught seminar which was part of the Literature and History program at Washington University, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The ranking of the authors' names was determined by lot.

¹ See, for example, deF. Lord, George, “Absalom and Achitophel and Dryden's Political Cosmos,” John Dryden, ed. Miner, Earl (London, 1972): “Yet if we would understand Dryden's moderation it is important for us to see how closely it resembles in principle the moderation of Marvell, a chief spokesman for the opposition. ‘God send us moderation and agreement,’ Marvell wrote in 1671, and this prayer ‘may stand as an epigraph to all his efforts during the last years of his life.’ But the prayer might equally well represent Dryden's political position at the time of writing Absalom and Achitophel …. He shared with Marvell a deep aversion to the ‘party color'd mind,’” 182-83. Lord's statement of the poet's political moderation represents the explicit claims or implicit assumptions of much recent criticism of Absalom and Achitophel, including Schilling's lengthy study of the poem, Dryden and the Conservative Myth (New Haven, 1961). Although Schilling describes Dryden as a political conservative, his reading of the poem's corrective dialectic implies that Dryden's politics were an ideological middle ground, a belief in order that transcended party. Similar notions can be found in William Frost's introduc-tion to the Rhinehart, edition, Selected Works of John Dryden New York, 1971), 12; Isabel Rivers's general characterization of Dryden, 's politics in The Poetry of Conservatism (Cambridge, 1973) 134–35; Budick's, Sanford analysis of the poem's opening lines in Poetry of Civilization (New Haven, 1974), 88–89; Farley-Hills, David in The Benevolence of Laughter (London, 1974), 114–31; and in the exchange between Dyson, A. E. and Lovelock, Julian, Masterful Images (London, 1976), 71–97. These readings share an assumption that the poem moves from the lamentable real (opening lines) to the supposed ideal (closing fiat) and that this dialectical quest itself represents Dryden's real beliefs, moderate and nearly apolitical, essentially honest in their inability to subvert the truth of history to party needs. An older generation of scholars, as, for example, Feiling, Keith in the History of the Tory Party (Oxford, 1924), tacitly assumed the partisan nature of Dryden's argument in Absalom and Achitophel although they, in turn, paid little attention to the rhetoric of moderation in the poem.

² Two recent books, however, have significantly challenged the traditional understanding of Dryden as philosophical sceptic and political moderate; see Harth, Phillip, Contexts of Dryden's Thought (Chicago, 1968), and McKeon's, MichaelPoetry and Politics in Restoration England: The Case of Dryden's Annus Mirabilis (Cambridge, Mass. 1975). Harth and McKeon argue that scepticism and moderation are rhetorical techniques rather than themselves characteristics of Dryden's beliefs. In more recent work, Harth has placed Absalom and Achitophel in the very specific context of Shaftesbury's treason trial, correcting the notion that Dryden was prompted to write the poem in an effort to sway judicial opinion, see “Legends no Histories,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 4, ed. Pagliaro, H. (Madison, 1975), 13–31.

³ The boldest of such confusions between political language and political convictions can be found in Myers's, William recent study, Dryden (London, 1973). Myers identifies' the narrator's claims of independence with his own notion of Dryden's political beliefs: “He is too ready to identify integrity with balanced ironic truth-telling to be a great propagandist … even in this overtly propagandist poem his approach is a carefully balanced one.” In Myers's reading David is “An ageing, bribable adulterer [who] is every bit as disgusting as a bankrupt, toiling politician. With thoroughly un-Burkean coldness, Dryden shows ‘Royal’ manners to be as inconsistent and blasphemous as the temptation speeches of Achitophel.” And of the poem's conclusion, this critic observes, “Dryden is asserting once again that political success is almost inevitably based on unprincipled nastiness.” ibid. pp. 86, 92, 94.

⁴ The partisan response can be followed in Macdonald's, Hugh “The Attacks on Dryden,” Essays and Studies by the Members of the English Association 21(1936), pp. 41–74, and in the “Drydeniana” section of Macdonald's, John Dryden: a Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana (Oxford, 1939).

⁵ Throughout, citations are to Kinsley's, James text, The Poems of John Dryden, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1968).

⁶ See, for example, the debate on minor matters of electoral reform surveyed in Cannon, J., Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 (Cambridge, 1972), 27.

⁷ Kenyon, J. P., “The Revolution of 1688: Resistance and Contract,” in McKendrick, N., ed., Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought an Society in Honour of J. H. Plumb (London, 1974), pp. 43–69; Mintz, S. I., The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge, 1962).

⁸ See Evans's sermon To the Lord Mayor and Alderman cited in the epigraph to this paper, ModerationStated (London, 1682), p. 8.

⁹ See, for example, Philanax a Misopappas. The Tory Plot: Or, a farther Discovery of a Design to alter the constitution of the Government (London, 1682); Nelson, John, The Complaint of Liberty and Property against Arbitrary Government (London, 1681); The Phanatick in his Colours: Being a Full and Final Character of a Whig; in a Dialogue between Tory and Tantivy (London, 1681); Gregory, Francis, The Religious Villain (London, 1679); The Character of Rebellion (London, 1681); The Parallel: Or, the New Specious Association an Old Rebellious Covenant. Closing with a disparity between a true Patriot, and a factious Associator (London, 1682); The Character of a Disbanded Courtier. By a Person of Quality (London, 1682); A Protestant Plot No Paradox: Or, Phanaticks under that name Plotting against the King and Government (London, 1682).

¹⁰ See, for example, Phillips, Fabian, Ursa Major & Minor: Or a Sober and Impartial Enquiry Into those Pretended Fears and Jealousies of Popery and Arbitrary Power (London, 1681); An Impartial Account of the Nature and Tendency of the Late Addesses, in a Letter to a Gentleman in the Country (London, 1681); A Gentle reflection on the modest account, and a vindication of the loyal abhorrers, from the calumnies of a factious pen (London, 1682); An Impartial Account of Richard Duke of York's Treasons (London, 1682).

¹¹ Feiling, , History of the Tory Party, pp. 199–200.

¹² Willman, R., “The Origins of ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ in English Political Language,” Historical Journal 17 (1974), 263–64.

¹³ H. T. Swedenberg argues the interesting point that the praise of Achitophel as judge might well have been taken ironically by Dryden's, seventeenth-century reader, The Works of John Dryden, vol. 2, ed. Swedenberg, H. T. Jr., (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), pp. 250–51.

¹⁴ Willman, , “Origins of ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’,” p. 262.

¹⁵ It is interesting and ironic that the men whom Dryden singles out as not only Charles's staunchest allies but also as ideal patrons should all have, at one point or another in Dryden's career, acted as the poet's patrons. Further, it may be more than coincidental that Amiel, Edward Seymour, who was reported to have commissioned the writing of this call for stern measures (HMC Ormonde, new series, vol. VI, 233), should, it is now thought, have been the mastermind of the Court's repressive policy in the aftermath of the Oxford Parliament; Kenyon, J. P., Stuart England (London, 1978), p. 222. While Dryden clearly could not have known this in 1681, the link nevertheless raises the interesting question of how closely the poem expresses Court policy.

¹⁶ See, for example, Frost, , Selected Works of John Dryden, p. 12.

¹⁷ Jones, R., The First Whigs (London, 1961), p. 196.

¹⁸ See Kenyon, J. P., Revolution Principles (Cambridge, 1977), ch. 5.

¹⁹ Quoted by Jacob, M. C., “Millenarianism and Science in the Late Seventeenth Century,” J. H. I. 37 (1976): 339–740.

²⁰ Jones, J. R., The Revolution of 1688 in England (London, 1972); Western, J. R., Monarchy and Revolution (London, 1972).

²¹ On the significance of scriptural figuralism in Absalom and Achitophel see Zwicker, , Dryden's Political Poetry (Providence, 1972), pp. 83–101.

²² It has been argued by Wallace, J. M., (“‘Examples are Best Precepts’: Readers and Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Poetry,” Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 273–91; cf. McKeon, , Poetry and Politics, 186–8) that seventeenth-century readers could exercise their discretion in choosing to draw parallels between historical examples and the contemporary world. Wallace's reading of Absalom and Achitophel requires that in writing about politics in scriptural terms Dryden would have been content to have the metaphor open-ended; this argument also implies that the reader need not have made the contemporary application. But, in fact, the scriptural materials are so shaped, at times so warped, that the application is inescapable, particularly in view of the widespread contemporary identification of Shaftesbury as Achitophel and of Charles II as David. These identifications were immediately asserted and extended in the keys that were eagerly compiled for the poem: see Macdonald, John Dryden: a Bibliography of Early Editions.