Palamon And Arcite (e-book) (used book) | Geoffrey Chaucer | bookbook.eu

Description

Excerpt from book:
APPENDIX A DRYDEN'S DEDICATION TO "PALAMON AND ARCITE" Dryden lived in the earlier days of the Age of Patronage in the history of English letters. At that time, and for some time to come, it was difficult for the writer to earn an independence by his pen. Shakespeare and a few of his fellow-playwrights had been able to gain respectable, though precarious, incomes by their plays; and Dryden did very well for some years by the same craft. In general, however, the man of letters had to rely on substantial backing by powerful and wealthy patrons. So it was with Dryden. He had to do much ignominious begging, and he made a " fine art" of it. He did it unblushingly in the numerous Dedications prefixed to his various volumes. In these he shows himself to be a past-master in the art of obsequious flattery, sometimes sinking to such depths of abject servility as to seem to be utterly lacking in self-respect. And yet in his personal relations with his noble and wealthy friends he was by no means so servile, but showed a somewhat sturdy independence of character. Some light is thrown upon this inconsistency between the man and the begging author by tha'fac.-Ui.it-Drydeir was iug'loriously following a fashion of the time, when impecunious writers tried to outdo one another in the brilliancy of their dedicatory varnish. This will not excuse him, of course; he was, in fact, one of the worst, because the most gifted, of offenders. As Dr. Johnson says in his pompous way, he was scarcely equalled " in themeanness and servility of hyperbolical adulation." However, we ought not, perhaps, to take these dedications too seriously; their extravagances were, even at the time, as they are to us, all too palpable and ridiculous. The volume of Fables which contained Palamon and Arcite, was dedic...