After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, English literature moved away from Puritan ideals towards more worldly concerns. The Age of Dryden was dominated by John Dryden, who perfected the heroic couplet in poetry, drama, and prose. Restoration drama featured comedies of manners that satirized the aristocracy, while tragedy focused on heroic themes. Prose evolved to be more precise and suited to scientific, historical and philosophical topics. John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress was a masterpiece of simple allegorical English prose.
2. After the Restoration in 1660, when Charles II
came to the throne, there was a complete
repudiation of the Puritan ideals and way of
living. In English literature the period from
1660 to 1700 is called the period of
Restoration, because monarchy was restored
in England, and Charles II, the son of Charles
I who had been defeated and beheaded, came
back to England from his exile in France and
became the King.
3. It is called the Age of Dryden, because Dryden was the
dominating and most representative literary figure of the Age.
As the Puritans who were previously controlling the country,
and were supervising her literary and moral and social
standards, were finally defeated, a reaction was launched
against whatever they held sacred.
All restraints and discipline were thrown to the winds, and a
wave of licentiousness and frivolity swept the country.
Age of Dryden
4. Charles II and his followers who had enjoyed a gay life
in France during their exile, did their best to introduce that
type of foppery and looseness in England also.
They renounced old ideals and demanded that English
poetry and drama should follow the style to which they had
become accustomed in the gaiety of Paris.
Instead of having Shakespeare and the Elizabethans as their
models, the poets and dramatists of the Restoration period
began to imitate French writers and especially their vices.
Charles II
5. The result was that the old Elizabethan spirit with its
patriotism, its love of adventure and romance, its creative
vigour, and the Puritan spirit with its moral discipline and love
of liberty, became things of the past.
For a time in poetry, drama and prose nothing was produced
which could compare satisfactorily with the great
achievements of the Elizabethans, of Milton, and even of
minor writers of the Puritan age.
But then the writers of the period began to evolve something
that was characteristic of the times.
6. They made two important contributions to English literature
in the form of realism and a tendency to preciseness.
In the beginning realism took an ugly shape, because the
writers painted the real pictures of the corrupt society and
court.
The result was a coarse and inferior type of literature.
Later this tendency to realism became more wholesome, and
the writers tried to portray realistically human life as they
found it—its good as well as bad side, its internal as well as
external shape.
Realism
7. The tendency to preciseness which ultimately became the
chief characteristic of the Restoration period, made a lasting
contribution to English literature.
It emphasized directness and simplicity of expression, and
counteracted the tendency of exaggeration and extravagance
which was encouraged during the Elizabethan and the Puritan
ages.
Instead of using grandiloquent phrases, involved sentences
full of Latin quotations and classical allusions, the Restoration
writers, under the influence of French writers, gave emphasis
to reasoning rather than romantic fancy, and evolved an
exact, precise way of writing, consisting of short, clear-cut
sentences without any unnecessary word.
The tendency to preciseness
8. (a) Restoration Poetry
John Dryden
(1631-1700)
• The Restoration poetry was mostly satirical, realistic
and written in the heroic couplet, of which Dryden
was the supreme master.
He was the dominating figure of the Restoration
period, and he made his mark in the fields of poetry,
drama and prose.
He wrote in a clear and forceful style which laid the
foundation of the classical school of poetry in England.
9. The poetry of Dryden can be conveniently divided under three
heads—Political Satires, Doctrinal Poems and The Fables.
Of his political satires, Absolem and Achitophel and The
Medal are well-known.
In Absolem and Achitophel, which is one of the greatest political
satires in the English language, Dryden defended the King
against the Earl of Shaftesbury who is represented as Achitophel
Heroic Couplet:
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly
used in epic and narrative poetry, and consisting of a rhyming
pair of lines in iambic pentameter. Use of the heroic couplet was
pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Legend of Good
Women and the Canterbury Tales,and generally considered to
have been perfected by John Dryden and Alexander Pope in the
Restoration Age and early 18th century respectively.
10. The two great doctrinal poems of Dryden are Religio
Laici andThe Hind and the Panther. These poems are neither
religious nor devotional, but theological and controversial.
The Fables, which were written during the last years of
Dryden’s life, show no decrease in his poetic power. Written
in the form of a narrative, they entitle Dryden to rank among
the best story-tellers in verse in England.
Characteristics of His Poetry:
The poetry of Dryden possess all the characteristics of the
Restoration period and is therefore thoroughly representative
of that age. It does not have the poetic glow, the spiritual
fervour, the moral loftiness and philosophical depth which
were sadly lacking in the Restoration period.
But it has the formalism, the intellectual precision, the
argumentative skill and realism which were the main
characteristics of that age.
11. Dryden’s greatest contribution to English poetry was his
skilful use of the heroic couplet, which became the accepted
measure of serious English poetry for many years.
In 1642 the theatres were closed by the authority of the
parliament which was dominated by Puritans and so no good
plays were written from 1642 till the Restoration (coming
back of monarchy in England with the accession of Charles II
to the throne) in 1660 when the theatres were re-opened.
The drama in England after 1660, called the Restoration
drama, showed entirely new trends on account of the long
break with the past.
(b) Restoration Drama
12. Moreover, it was greatly affected by the spirit of the new age
which was deficient in poetic feeling, imagination and
emotional approach to life, but laid emphasis on prose as the
medium of expression, and intellectual, realistic and critical
approach to life and its problems.
As the common people still under the influence of Puritanism
had no love for the theatres, the dramatists had to cater to
the taste of the aristocratic class which was highly
fashionable, frivolous, cynical and sophisticated.
The result was that unlike the Elizabethan drama which had a
mass appeal, had its roots in the life of the common people
and could be legitimately called the national drama, the
Restoration drama had none of these characteristics.
Its appeal was confined to the upper strata of society whose
taste was aristocratic, and among which the prevailing
fashions and etiquettes were foreign and extravagant.
13. The most popular form of drama was the Comedy of
Manners which portrayed the sophisticated life of the
dominant class of society—its gaiety, foolery, insolence and
intrigue.
Thus the basis of the Restoration drama was very narrow.
The general tone of this drama was most aptly described by
Shelley:
‘’Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit succeeds humour;
we laugh from self-complacency and triumph; instead of
pleasure, malignity, sarcasm and contempt, succeed to
sympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we smile… ’’
The Comedy of Manners
14. These new trends in comedy are seen in Dryden’s Wild
Gallant(1663), Etheredge’s (1635-1691) , Wycherley’s The
Country Wife and The Plain Dealer,and the plays of Vanbrugh
and Farquhar.
But the most gifted among all the Restoration dramatist was
William Congreve (1670-1720) who wrote all his best
plays he was thirty years of age. He well-known comedies
are Love for Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700).
No English dramatist has even written such fine prose for the
stage as Congreve did. He balances, polishes and sharpens
his sentences until they shine like chiselled instruments for
an electrical experiment, through which passes the current in
the shape of his incisive and scintillating wit.
As the plays of Congreve reflect the fashions and foibles of
the upper classes whose moral standards had become lax,
they do not have a universal appeal, but as social documents
their value is very great.
15. In tragedy, the Restoration period specialised in Heroic
Tragedy, which dealt with themes of epic magnitude. The
heroes and heroines possessed superhuman qualities.
The purpose of this tragedy was didactic—to inculcate
virtues in the shape of bravery and conjugal love.
The chief protagonist and writer of heroic tragedy was
Dryden. Under his leadership the heroic tragedy dominated
the stage from 1660 to 1678. His first experiment in this type
of drama was his play Tyrannic love, and in The Conquest of
Granada he brought it to its culminating point.
He shifts his ground from the typical heroic tragedy in this
play, drops rhyme and questions the validity of the unities of
time, place and action in the conditions of the English stage.
Tragedy
16. The Restoration period was deficient in poetry and drama, but
in prose it holds its head much higher.
Of course, it cannot be said that the Restoration prose enjoys
absolute supremacy in English literature, because on account
of the fall of poetic power, lack of inspiration, preference of
the merely practical and prosaic subjects and approach to
life, it could not reach those heights which it attained in the
preceding period in the hands of Milton and Browne, or in the
succeeding ages in the hands of Lamb, Hazlitt, Ruskin and
Carlyle.
But it has to be admitted that it was during the Restoration
period that English prose was developed as a medium for
expressing clearly and precisely average ideas and feelings
about miscellaneous matters for which prose is really meant.
(c) Restoration Prose
17. For the first time a prose style was evolved which could be
used for plain narrative, argumentative exposition of intricate
subjects, and the handling of practical business.
The epigrammatic style of Bacon, the grandiloquent prose of
Milton and the dreamy harmonies of Browne could not be
adapted to scientific, historical, political and philosophical
writings, and, above all, to novel-writing.
Thus with the change in the temper of the people, a new type
of prose, as was developed in the Restoration period, was
essential.
As in the fields of poetry and drama, Dryden was the chief
leader and practitioner of the new prose. In his greatest
critical work Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden presented a
model of the new prose, which was completely different from
the prose of Bacon, Milton and Browne.
He wrote in a plain, simple and exact style, free from all
exaggerations. His Fables and the Preface to them are fine
examples of the prose style which Dryden was introducing.
18. Next to Dryden, Bunyan was the greatest prose-writer of the
period. Like Milton, he was imbued with the spirit of
Puritanism, and in fact, if Milton is the greatest poet of
Puritanism, Bunyan is its greatest story-teller.
His greatest work is The Pilgrim’s Progress. Just
as Milton wrote his Paradise Lost “to justify the ways to God
to men”, Bunyan’s aim in The Pilgrim’s Progress was” “to lead
men and women into God’s way, the way of salvation,
through a simple parable with homely characters and exciting
events”.
Like Milton, Bunyan was endowed with a highly developed
imaginative faculty and artistic instinct.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
19. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan has described the
pilgrimage of the Christian to the Heavenly City, the trials,
tribulations and temptations which he meets in the way in the
form of events and characters, who abstract and help him,
and his ultimately reaching the goal. It is written in the form
of allegory. The style is terse, simple and vivid, and it appeals
to the cultured as well as to the unlettered. As Dr. Johnson
remarked: “This is the great merit of the book, that the most
cultivated man cannot find anything to praise more highly,
and the child knows nothing more amusing.”
The Pilgrim’s Progress is a work of superb literary genius,
and it is unsurpassed as an example of plain English.
It is quite true to call him the pioneer of the modern novel,
because he had the qualities of the great story-teller, deep
insight into character, humour, pathos, and the visualising
imagination of a dramatic artist.
