Pen for a Party: Dryden's Tory Propaganda in Its Contexts

354 Pages·1993·39.436 MB·English

by  Phillip Harth

PEN FOR A PARTY

PEN FOR A PARTY
DRYDEN'S TORY PROPAGANDA
IN ITS CONTEXTS
PHILLIP HARTH
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright © 1993 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
Chichester, West Sussex
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicaNon Data
Harth, Phillip, 1926-
Pen for a party: Dryden's Tory propaganda in Lts contexts I
Phillip Harth.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographLcal references and index.
ISBN 0-691-06972-7 (acid-free paper)
1. Dryden, John, 1631-1700-Pohtical and social views.
2. Politics and literature-England-History-17th century.
3. Great Britain-Politics and government-1660-1688.
4. Conservatism-England-History-17th century.
5. Conservative Party (Great Britain)
6. Dryden, John, 1631-1700-Prose.
7. Propaganda, English. 1. Title.
PR3427.P6H37 1993 821'.4-dc20 92-27140 elP
This book has been composed in Adobe Sabon
Princeton University Press books are printed
on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Design, I am sure, is honest: but he who draws his
Pen for one Party, must expect to make Enemies of
the other. For, Wit and Fool, are Consequents of Whig
and Tory: And every man is a Knave or an Ass to the
contrary side.
“To the Reader,” Absalom and Acbitophel

CONTENTS
P reface ix
CHAPTER I
The Pulpit 3
CHAPTER 2
Parliament and the Press 18
CHAPTER 3
The Nation’s Savior 62
CHAPTER 4
The Association 138
CHAPTER 5
A Second Restoration 206
EPILOGUE 269
APPENDIX I
Political Allusions in Dryden’s Prologues and
Epilogues, 1678-1684 273
APPENDIX 2
The Misplaced Lines in Absalom, and Achitophel 279
A bbreviations and N o te o n D o cu m en ta tio n 286
N o tes 287
Index 329

PREFACE
THIS BOOK BRINGS a new perspective to bear on Dryden’s liter­
ary activity on behalf of Charles II and his policies during the
closing years of that monarch’s reign. Dryden’s great public
poems of this period—Absalom and Achitophel and The Medall—along
with his dramatic works of the same era—The Duke of Guise and Albion
and Albanius—have commonly been considered against a broad histori­
cal background of public events—the Popish Plot, the Exclusion Crisis,
the “Tory Reaction”—that may serve well enough to identify Dryden’s
topical allusions, but can throw very little light on the noticeable differ­
ences among these works or on the specific purposes for which they were
written. It is understandable, therefore, that such differences are most
often attributed to changes in Dryden’s attitudes rather than in his strate­
gies, while the specific purposes differentiating these individual works re­
main for the most part unexamined.
It is my thesis in this book that the immediate contexts of these works
are not the well-known historical events themselves but a constantly de­
veloping series of propaganda offensives, both Tory and Whig, designed
to influence public opinion toward fluctuating conditions and to attract
popular support for the immediate policies adopted by either side in re­
sponse to each new development. Since it is the public’s perception of
events that is at issue in these contests between the makers of opinion on
either side, the issues that party propagandists choose to emphasize and
the relative importance they attribute to events will often differ consider­
ably from those familiar in modern historical accounts. In relating politi­
cal developments from the perspective of party propaganda, therefore, I
have had to isolate and bring forward certain historical episodes, now
little noticed, that nevertheless acquired considerable importance at the
time.
Accustomed to relying on the clergy of the Established Church to de­
velop habits of obedience in the faithful that should prove adequate to
any emergency, the government of Charles II was slow to respond to the
Exclusion Crisis by developing new organs of public opinion specifically
adapted to this unprecedented challenge to its authority. Instead, it al­
lowed the Whigs to seize the initiative and, by choosing issues most ad­
vantageous to themselves, to dictate the terms of public debate between
government and opposition. It was only in 1681, a few months before
Dryden tardily joined the ranks of Tory propagandists, that the govern­
ment’s publicists began developing the machinery by which, in spite of
occasional setbacks, they would eventually win public acquiescence in the