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Rhetoric and Disguise: Political Language and Political Argument in Absalom and Achitophel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Steven Zwicker  and
Derek Hirst
Steven Zwicker
Affiliation:
Washington University
Derek Hirst
Affiliation:
Washington University
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Extract

“There was never more need, never greater occasion for the exercise of Moderation, than now in our Age. It's much in the common talk, and in the wishes of all sorts of men, all seem to desire and court it; and yet I believe it was never less understood, less practised.”

John Evans, Moderation Stated, 1682.

The ironic fate of Absalom and Achitophel is to be fully appreciated as one of the great political poems of the language and only partially comprehended as political argument. Recent criticism of the poem is marked by a widening discrepancy between the ways in which it is understood as verbal and as political artifact. Metaphor and allusion have been carefully and often subtly charted, yet the poem's political rhetoric and its political argument are assumed to be simple coordinates. The tensions, indeed the contradictions, between explicit language and implicit argument are not only unexamined but largely unperceived. The conventional reading, which has become an almost fixed critical response, argues that the poem rises above partisan politics, that it derives from a political intelligence committed to a conservative ideology but indifferent to, indeed contemptuous of, the “party color'd mind.”

Generalities about Dryden's temper, the poet as philosophical sceptic, as disinterested critic of extremes, together with the seemingly ingenuous and repeated claims of moderation and balance in the Preface have led a number of critics to understand the narrator's espoused moderation as Dryden's political stance—a judgment which Dryden's contemporaries certainly did not allow.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Fall 1981 , pp. 39 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1983

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References

This essay developed from discussions during a jointly taught seminar which was part of the Literature and History program at Washington University, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The ranking of the authors' names was determined by lot.

1 See, for example, deF. Lord, George, “Absalom and Achitophel and Dryden's Political Cosmos,” John Dryden, ed. Miner, Earl (London, 1972)Google Scholar: “Yet if we would understand Dryden's moderation it is important for us to see how closely it resembles in principle the moderation of Marvell, a chief spokesman for the opposition. ‘God send us moderation and agreement,’ Marvell wrote in 1671, and this prayer ‘may stand as an epigraph to all his efforts during the last years of his life.’ But the prayer might equally well represent Dryden's political position at the time of writing Absalom and Achitophel …. He shared with Marvell a deep aversion to the ‘party color'd mind,’” 182-83. Lord's statement of the poet's political moderation represents the explicit claims or implicit assumptions of much recent criticism of Absalom and Achitophel, including Schilling's lengthy study of the poem, Dryden and the Conservative Myth (New Haven, 1961)Google Scholar. Although Schilling describes Dryden as a political conservative, his reading of the poem's corrective dialectic implies that Dryden's politics were an ideological middle ground, a belief in order that transcended party. Similar notions can be found in William Frost's introduc-tion to the Rhinehart, edition, Selected Works of John Dryden New York, 1971), 12Google Scholar; Isabel Rivers's general characterization of Dryden, 's politics in The Poetry of Conservatism (Cambridge, 1973) 134–35Google Scholar; Budick's, Sanford analysis of the poem's opening lines in Poetry of Civilization (New Haven, 1974), 88–89Google Scholar; Farley-Hills, David in The Benevolence of Laughter (London, 1974), 114–31Google Scholar; and in the exchange between Dyson, A. E. and Lovelock, Julian, Masterful Images (London, 1976), 71–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These readings share an assumption that the poem moves from the lamentable real (opening lines) to the supposed ideal (closing fiat) and that this dialectical quest itself represents Dryden's real beliefs, moderate and nearly apolitical, essentially honest in their inability to subvert the truth of history to party needs. An older generation of scholars, as, for example, Feiling, Keith in the History of the Tory Party (Oxford, 1924)Google Scholar, tacitly assumed the partisan nature of Dryden's argument in Absalom and Achitophel although they, in turn, paid little attention to the rhetoric of moderation in the poem.

2 Two recent books, however, have significantly challenged the traditional understanding of Dryden as philosophical sceptic and political moderate; see Harth, Phillip, Contexts of Dryden's Thought (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar, and McKeon's, MichaelPoetry and Politics in Restoration England: The Case of Dryden's Annus Mirabilis (Cambridge, Mass. 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Harth and McKeon argue that scepticism and moderation are rhetorical techniques rather than themselves characteristics of Dryden's beliefs. In more recent work, Harth has placed Absalom and Achitophel in the very specific context of Shaftesbury's treason trial, correcting the notion that Dryden was prompted to write the poem in an effort to sway judicial opinion, see “Legends no Histories,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 4, ed. Pagliaro, H. (Madison, 1975), 13–31Google Scholar.

3 The boldest of such confusions between political language and political convictions can be found in Myers's, William recent study, Dryden (London, 1973)Google Scholar. Myers identifies' the narrator's claims of independence with his own notion of Dryden's political beliefs: “He is too ready to identify integrity with balanced ironic truth-telling to be a great propagandist … even in this overtly propagandist poem his approach is a carefully balanced one.” In Myers's reading David is “An ageing, bribable adulterer [who] is every bit as disgusting as a bankrupt, toiling politician. With thoroughly un-Burkean coldness, Dryden shows ‘Royal’ manners to be as inconsistent and blasphemous as the temptation speeches of Achitophel.” And of the poem's conclusion, this critic observes, “Dryden is asserting once again that political success is almost inevitably based on unprincipled nastiness.” ibid. pp. 86, 92, 94.

4 The partisan response can be followed in Macdonald's, Hugh “The Attacks on Dryden,” Essays and Studies by the Members of the English Association 21(1936), pp. 41–74Google Scholar, and in the “Drydeniana” section of Macdonald's, John Dryden: a Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana (Oxford, 1939)Google Scholar.

5 Throughout, citations are to Kinsley's, James text, The Poems of John Dryden, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar.

6 See, for example, the debate on minor matters of electoral reform surveyed in Cannon, J., Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 (Cambridge, 1972), 27Google Scholar.

7 Kenyon, J. P., “The Revolution of 1688: Resistance and Contract,” in McKendrick, N., ed., Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought an Society in Honour of J. H. Plumb (London, 1974), pp. 43–69Google Scholar; Mintz, S. I., The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar.

8 See Evans's sermon To the Lord Mayor and Alderman cited in the epigraph to this paper, ModerationStated (London, 1682), p. 8Google Scholar.

9 See, for example, Philanax a Misopappas. The Tory Plot: Or, a farther Discovery of a Design to alter the constitution of the Government (London, 1682)Google Scholar; Nelson, John, The Complaint of Liberty and Property against Arbitrary Government (London, 1681)Google Scholar; The Phanatick in his Colours: Being a Full and Final Character of a Whig; in a Dialogue between Tory and Tantivy (London, 1681)Google Scholar; Gregory, Francis, The Religious Villain (London, 1679)Google Scholar; The Character of Rebellion (London, 1681)Google Scholar; The Parallel: Or, the New Specious Association an Old Rebellious Covenant. Closing with a disparity between a true Patriot, and a factious Associator (London, 1682)Google Scholar; The Character of a Disbanded Courtier. By a Person of Quality (London, 1682)Google Scholar; A Protestant Plot No Paradox: Or, Phanaticks under that name Plotting against the King and Government (London, 1682)Google Scholar.

10 See, for example, Phillips, Fabian, Ursa Major & Minor: Or a Sober and Impartial Enquiry Into those Pretended Fears and Jealousies of Popery and Arbitrary Power (London, 1681)Google Scholar; An Impartial Account of the Nature and Tendency of the Late Addesses, in a Letter to a Gentleman in the Country (London, 1681)Google Scholar; A Gentle reflection on the modest account, and a vindication of the loyal abhorrers, from the calumnies of a factious pen (London, 1682)Google Scholar; An Impartial Account of Richard Duke of York's Treasons (London, 1682)Google Scholar.

11 Feiling, , History of the Tory Party, pp. 199–200Google Scholar.

12 Willman, R., “The Origins of ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ in English Political Language,” Historical Journal 17 (1974), 263–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 H. T. Swedenberg argues the interesting point that the praise of Achitophel as judge might well have been taken ironically by Dryden's, seventeenth-century reader, The Works of John Dryden, vol. 2, ed. Swedenberg, H. T. Jr., (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), pp. 250–51Google Scholar.

14 Willman, , “Origins of ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’,” p. 262Google Scholar.

15 It is interesting and ironic that the men whom Dryden singles out as not only Charles's staunchest allies but also as ideal patrons should all have, at one point or another in Dryden's career, acted as the poet's patrons. Further, it may be more than coincidental that Amiel, Edward Seymour, who was reported to have commissioned the writing of this call for stern measures (HMC Ormonde, new series, vol. VI, 233), should, it is now thought, have been the mastermind of the Court's repressive policy in the aftermath of the Oxford Parliament; Kenyon, J. P., Stuart England (London, 1978), p. 222Google Scholar. While Dryden clearly could not have known this in 1681, the link nevertheless raises the interesting question of how closely the poem expresses Court policy.

16 See, for example, Frost, , Selected Works of John Dryden, p. 12Google Scholar.

17 Jones, R., The First Whigs (London, 1961), p. 196Google Scholar.

18 See Kenyon, J. P., Revolution Principles (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 5.

19 Quoted by Jacob, M. C., “Millenarianism and Science in the Late Seventeenth Century,” J. H. I. 37 (1976): 339–740Google Scholar.

20 Jones, J. R., The Revolution of 1688 in England (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Western, J. R., Monarchy and Revolution (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 On the significance of scriptural figuralism in Absalom and Achitophel see Zwicker, , Dryden's Political Poetry (Providence, 1972), pp. 83–101Google Scholar.

22 It has been argued by Wallace, J. M., (“‘Examples are Best Precepts’: Readers and Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Poetry,” Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 273–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. McKeon, , Poetry and Politics, 186–8Google Scholar) that seventeenth-century readers could exercise their discretion in choosing to draw parallels between historical examples and the contemporary world. Wallace's reading of Absalom and Achitophel requires that in writing about politics in scriptural terms Dryden would have been content to have the metaphor open-ended; this argument also implies that the reader need not have made the contemporary application. But, in fact, the scriptural materials are so shaped, at times so warped, that the application is inescapable, particularly in view of the widespread contemporary identification of Shaftesbury as Achitophel and of Charles II as David. These identifications were immediately asserted and extended in the keys that were eagerly compiled for the poem: see Macdonald, John Dryden: a Bibliography of Early Editions.