ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL

Analoguous to Biblical story of King David and the plot against him by the two title characters (in 2 Samuel).

Like more modern authors (Brecht's 1939 Mother Courage and her Children which deals with the 30-Years-War of 1618-48; and Arthur Miller's 50s The Crucible which deals with the 17th century Salem witch trials), Dryden's Biblical story treats a contemporary (1680s) condition. The Bible story is but a vehicle to convey Dryden's ideas about present political difficulties.

What is going on historically?

Elizabeth I dies in 1603

James I (James the VI of Scotland, Mary Stuart's son) reigns until 1625.

Charles I (James I's son), is executed in 1649.

Commonwealth (under Oliver Cromwell) lasts until 1660, when

Charles II (who was crowned in Scotland in 1650 but exiled in France) is

restored (hence "Restoration.")

1678 "Popish Plot" led by Jesuits and the French aims to overthrow the king and restore Catholicism, but this was unsuccessful.

Here is the plot of Dryden's poem. Charles II has no issue, and therefore no legitimate heir. He will be succeeded by his catholic brother James. Dryden's poem is written and published in 1681. Charless II rules until 1685.

James II (brother of Chas II, Catholic, abdicates in 1688) deposed in 1689.

William and Mary (Mary is their sister) rule until 1702.

Events cannot be interpreted yet because we are in the middle of them--we have no 20/20 hindsight yet. What Dryden is suggesting then is that history repeats itself and if we look at an ancient example, we can determine how this will turn out. Maybe we can prevent certain things from happening if we know what specific behavior will lead to.

A 1681 audience would have know immediately to whom the author refers. The threat of another civil war was in the air.

Dryden believed that monarchy was divinely ordained. Restoration history has a biblical analogy for him.

But the poem is neither Jewish nor English history, but an action somewhere above and commenting on both. Some details are not biblical (872), some don't apply to Chas (197 and perhaps 39). "Adam" (771) and "our ark" (804) do not occur in David's time. The allegory gets suspended here. Result: Biblical history may explain something in English history and English history may expand on the biblical history.

Tropology is the use of a scriptural text to give it significance apart from its direct meaning--when we collect from the Bible what is suitable to direct our lives and form our minds. What Dryden does is apply Biblical history to secular history. This enables him to convince his readers: this all happened before; it is clearly capable of happening again.

The rebellion is also compared with the Popish Plot three years earlier. Rebellions of Satan (273), Adam (51, 771), and Israel against Moses and Aaron (66).

Satan's rebellion against God

is a metaphor for

Absalom and Achitophel's Shaftesbury and Monmouth's

rebellion against David. rebellion against Charles.

Commonwealth rebellion of English history is compared to the rebellion during David's reign.

The situation giving birth to the plot: an indulgent father on a throne and a handsome and wild son. Around them the giddy, inconstant, and treacherous crowds, the masses.

The self-exposure of the two chief opponents of the king works better than straight condemnation.

Dryden cannot show the king's forces triumphing over his foes; this would be civil war. He does not want to admit such a possibility, does not want to encourage it. The plotters don't seem to pose a real threat in the poem. The portrait of the chief rebels and the loyalists interrupt the forward temporal movement and the rebels passage gives no sense of the spreading rebellion.

Dryden's passage on government (759-810) shows that he is a committed royalist. He argues like a conservative adhering to a system that works well. He discusses the limitations of both monarch and people, showing that the "best" thought "the power of the monarch too much" (495-96).

The loyalists don't seem as strong as the rebels. Dryden can't make them as strong as this would weaken in advance David's speech.

NOTES TO POEM’S PARTICULAR LINES (borrowed from online source):

24. Monmouth had commanded the British troops serving under the French against the Dutch in 1672-73, and under the Dutch against the French in 1678. He gained distinction in both campaigns.

40. This may be a reference to the attack made on Sir John Coventry (d. 1682) in 1670 at the instigation of Monmouth. Coventry reflected on the King's affairs with actresses in a debate in the Commons, and was later waylaid and had his nose slit to the bone with a penknife.

50. A reference to the proliferation of religious sects.

59. Charles II was crowned King in Scotland in 1651 but not in England until 1661: therefore, although he entered England in 1660 from the Continent, Dryden can say that his people brought him from Scotland.

84. "Commonwealth" is here used, of course, with memories of Cromwell's rule.

121. A gibing reference to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

158. Shaftesbury was a man of poor physique and sickly constitution. "Inform'd" is used here in the Aristotelian sense.

172. Shaftesbury's son, the second Earl, was entirely without character or ability.

177. Shaftesbury was a signatory to the second Treaty with France in 1670 which ended the Triple Alliance of 1667 between England, Sweden, and Holland, directed against France. He was ignorant of the first Treaty with France of 1670 by which Charles II pledged himself to re-establish Roman Catholicism in England.

187. Shaftesbury was Lord Chancellor in 1672-73 but was dismissed from office.

227. "Democracy" is used here, as usually before the modern period, to mean mob rule.

344. "Prevent" is used in its early sense of "anticipate."

357. The courage of James, Duke of York (later James II), and his success as a naval commander had been celebrated by Dryden in Annus Mirabilis (1667).

386. "Wit," in its general sense of intelligence.

530. "Enthusiastic" is usually in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a derogatory term, denoting one with a delusory sense of being divinely inspired.

544. The Duke of Buckingham, poet, wit, and politician, was a man of brilliant gifts but of unstable and profligate character. He was at this time a supporter of Shaftesbury. He had superbly ridiculed Dryden and his plays in the comedy of The Rehearsal, 1671. Dryden had thus a double reason for satirizing him.

561. "Still" in the early sense of "always."

576. Lord Howard was said to have taken the Sacrament in "lamb's wool," a concoction of ale, sauce, and roasted apples, instead of in wine.

581. Sir William Jones, as Attorney-General, conducted the prosecutions of the Popish Plot but resigned office in order to support Shaftesbury. He secured the passage through the Commons in 1680 of the Bill--which he may have drawn up--to exclude the Duke of York from the succession.

585. Slingsby Bethel, a wealthy merchant and conspicuous republican, was elected sheriff of London in 1680 but his mean state during his term of office offended many citizens.

595. "Vare," from the Spanish vara, means a wand.

644. Titus Oates had taken orders in the Church of England following his father's lead who, after being a ribbon-weaver and an Anabaptist minister, was also a Church of England clergyman.

647. The ruddy complexion of a clergyman and a shining expression like Moses's when he came down from Mount Sinai.

659. Oates claimed to have received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Salamanca, a place which he is known never to have visited.

676. Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the London magistrate before whom Oates deposed on oath his story of the Popish Plot, was murdered on Primrose Hill on October 12, 1678. The Protestants accused the Catholics of his murder and the Catholics retaliated by accusing the Whigs of murdering him in order to give substance to the Plot.

677. Presumably 1 Sam. 15:3.

697. Hybla drops: drops of Hybla honey.

700. Monmouth had been sent out of the country by the King in September 1679 but returned without permission in November. He was ordered to leave the country again and, when he disobeyed, was deprived of all his offices and banished from the Court.

730. Monmouth made a royal progress through western England after his banishment from Court and his attractive personality gained him and the Whigs many supporters.

817. The Duke of Ormonde, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, was an ardent royalist, and a man of remarkable purity and integrity of character, who, after being defeated in Ireland during the Civil War, was in exile until the Restoration, when he was restored to the offices he had held under Charles I.

831. Ormonde's eldest son was Thomas, Earl of Ossory (1614-1680), who, in John Evelyn's words, "deserved all that a sincere friend, a brave soldier, a virtuous courtier, a loyal subject, an honest man, a bountiful master, and good christian, could deserve of his prince and country."

866. The Bishop of London was Henry Compton (1632-1713), who had superintended the education of the Duke of York's daughters, Mary and Anne.

868. A reference to John Dolben (1625-1686), Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. The "Western dome" is Westminster Abbey, and the "Prophet's Sons," the boys of Westminster School.

877. The Earl of Mulgrave was both a poet and a particular friend and patron of Dryden.

881. Mulgrave was invested with some of the offices taken from Monmouth in 1679.

882. The Marquis of Halifax had once supported Shaftesbury but, alarmed at his excess, had become a supporter of the Court. It was entirely by his eloquence that the Exclusion Bill was defeated in the Lords in 1680. See also the Introductory Note.

888. Laurence Hyde was an ardent royalist, a confidant of`the Duke of York, and a patron of Dryden. He was first commissioner of the treasury and an important power in the Administration.

899. Edward Seymour, who had been Speaker of the House of Commons from 1673 to 1678, was re-elected as Speaker in 1679, but the King refused to accept him. A Tory and Churchman, he opposed the Exclusion Bill in 1680.

928. The image is from the sport of hawking.

930. "Turn'd" in the same sense as in "wood-turner"--"shaped" or "manufactured"--as well as in the usual sense.

965-66. Compare Johnson's "Patriotism: the last refuge of a scoundrel." The term "patriot" remained disreputable through most of the eighteenth century, chiefly from being assumed by rabble-rousers.

967. "Brave" (more commonly "Bravo") denotes a swaggering bully rather than a true hero.

982. See Genesis 27.

1008. her: i.e., Law's.