The Poetry of John Dryden Literary Elements

Dryden's work is usually written in a distant third-person, such that the speaker is a person who can be inferred to share certain opinions with Dryden, but whose characteristics are unknown. At times he opts for a more intimate first-person autobiographical mode, as in many of his elegies. Meanwhile, his plays, or critical works written as dialogues, contain only spoken language and therefore have no single narrator or speaker.

Dryden varies his meter and often writes in prose, but he is most famous for his pioneering use of the heroic couplet—rhymed couplets in iambic pentameter.

In "Mac Flecknoe," Dryden uses a metaphor to describe Shadwell's work as a violent force harming the legacy of other writers, saying "No Persian carpets spread th'imperial way, / But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay." In "Happy the Man," Dryden uses weather as a metaphor to describe the unpredictability of life, explaining, "Be fair or foul or rain or shine / The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine." Meanwhile, in "Annus Mirabilis," Dryden uses a simile in the phrase "Trade, which, like blood,/should circularly flow."

Simile and metaphor are especially helpful in the evocation of music in poems like "Alexander's Feast," where a lyre is compared to "a peal of thunder." Similarly, in "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day," a violin's sound is described metaphorically as "jealous pangs," a use of metaphor that also personifies the instrument.

Characters in Dryden's dramas often speak in metaphorical terms too—Cleopatra, in All for Love, describes jealousy as "A weak and unavailing medicine," while in Marriage a-la-mode, Leonidas describes the sweetness of a first kiss with the simile "like drops of honey."

"Religio Laici" uses alliterative "F" sounds in the lines "Commanding words; whose Force is still the same / As the first Fiat that produc’d our Frame. / All Faiths beside, or did by Arms ascend"—this has the effect of drawing attention to keywords, especially "faith" and "fiat." Alliterative L's create a slow, longing tone in "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham," where Dryden describes his subject as "too little and too lately known."

Assonant "ou" vowel sounds create drama in "The Medal," where Dryden writes, "O thou too bounteous, thou too fruitful Nile!" And in "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day," the beat of drums is evoked with an assonant U sound in the line "Of the thundering drum."

The line "wanting orphans saw, with watery eyes," in Annus Mirabilis, includes both alliterative "W" sounds and assonant "A" sounds: these two low, open sounds, in combination, create a mournful mood.

Marriage a-la-Mode is driven by dramatic irony: Rhodophil and Palamede each knowingly seek a mistress, but do not realize that they are courting one another's lovers. Similarly, dramatic irony is behind the action in All for Love, where Antony kills himself because he mistakenly believes that Cleopatra is dead—though the audience knows this is untrue. Mac Flecknoe, in particular, uses verbal irony, mocking Shadwell by facetiously glorifying him through comparisons to a monarch. Meanwhile, The Medall describes the situational irony of Shaftesbury being valorized, despite the fact that he is (in Dryden's description) a traitor. The line "peace itself is war in masquerade," from Absalom and Achitophel, is an instance of situational irony, upending readers' expectations of war and peace as opposites.

Dryden wrote in a wide variety of genres, including lyric poetry, satire, criticism, drama (both tragic and comic), and translation.

Dryden's works are most often set in 17th century England, but the ancient world is his chosen backdrop in works like All For Love, Alexander's Feast, and Absalom and Achitophel.

Dryden is known for his incisive, analytical, authoritative tone.

Among Dryden's protagonists include the Catholic Church and the king, depending on his own changing allegiances. His antagonists include the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Dutch Navy, and Thomas Shadwell.

Several related conflicts, drawn from the political realities of Dryden's England, dominate across his work. One of these is the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism—a matter on which Dryden himself changed sides, with the differences between Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther neatly tracking his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism. Meanwhile, the political conflict of the Exclusion Crisis in the late 1770s and early 1780s is the basis of Dryden's satires The Medall and Absalom and Achitophel. Very broadly, a conflict between tradition and innovation, or stability and chaos, is present in many of Dryden's works.

Because Dryden is known for his rhetorical skill in building an argument. many of his works reach a climax when he arrives at the crux of his argument. For example, Neander's defense of English drama in "An Essay on Dramatick Poesie" represents Dryden's own views and is the climactic moment of the essay. In terms of Dryden's best-known drama, All for Love reaches its climax with the suicide of Antony. The climactic moment of Marriage a-la-Mode, however, is the revelation of Leonidas's identity.

Dryden's implication that the hind will face hardship and attacks, early on in The Hind and the Panther, foreshadows the poem's eventual conflict. Meanwhile, in Marriage a-la-Mode, Melanthis and Philotis's discussion about French vocabulary foreshadows the role of French in the upcoming romance between Melanthis and Palamede. Finally, the broad claim that European powers are fighting in Annus Marabilis foreshadows the later scenes of conflict between the English and their neighbors.

Dryden accuses Shadwell of being nonsensical in Mac Flecknoe with the understated claim that he "never deviates into sense." In Anne Killigrew, Dryden writes, with understatement, that "Hear then a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse, / In no ignoble verse."

Much of Dryden's work is occasional, meaning that it is written to respond to events happening in the outside world. For this reason, his works are packed with allusion. Among these are allusions to the Exclusion Crisis, which form the basis of The Medall and Absalom and Achitophel, allusions to classical literature in works from Anne Killigrew to An Essay of Dramatick Poesie, allusions to the Bible in, most prominently, Absalom and Achitophel, allusions to Catholic tradition and figures in works including "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day," and allusions to past and present writers and poets in works including Mac Flecknoe and "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham."

"To the Memory of Mr. Oldham" uses the common metonymic definition of "tongue" to mean "language." "Blood" is often used metonymically to mean ancestry or family, as in the descriptor "a chief of royal blood" in Absalom and Achitophel. But it is also at times used metonymically to mean "violence," as in Religio Laici, where Dryden writes that "And Cruelty and Blood, was Penitence." "Throne" takes on the meaning of monarchy as a whole through metonymy, in Mac Flecknoe, with the line "greater than his Father's be his Throne."

In Annus Mirabilis, Dryden personifies ships with the line "every ship their sovereign knows," and personifies death as "point(ing) his dull dart." Meanwhile, Anne Killigrew is characterized as a "daughter of the skies," giving the sky characteristics of personhood. And at several points, musical instruments are personified, with flutes in "Alexander's Feast" characterized as "breathing."

Dryden's praise of Anne Killigrew, in his elegy for the poet, is hyperbolic: she is referred to as a "daughter of angels." In "An Essay of Dramatick Poesie," Neander hyperbolically claims, referring to the works of Shakespeare, that “I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived at its highest perfection."

Anne Killigrew features the onomatopoetic phrase "rattling bones," while in "Alexander's Feast," snakes "hiss."