Preface.
To edit an English classic for study in secondary
schools is difficult. The lack of anything like
uniformity in the type of examination required by
the colleges and universities complicates treatment.
Not only do two distinct institutions differ in the
scope and character of their questions, but the same
university varies its demands from year to year.
The only safe course to pursue is, therefore, a generally
comprehensive one. But here, again, we are hampered
by limited space, and are forced to content ourselves
with a bare outline, which the individual instructor
can fill in as much or as little as he pleases.
The ignorance of most of our classical students in
regard to the history of English literature is appalling;
and yet it is impossible properly to study a given
work of a given author without some knowledge of the
background against which that particular writer stands.
I have, therefore, sketched the politics, society,
and literature of the age in which Dryden lived, and
during which he gave to the world his Palamon and
Arcite. In the critical comments of the introduction
I have contented myself with little more than hints.
That particular line of study, whether it concerns
the poet’s style, his verse forms, or the possession
of the divine instinct itself, can be much more satisfactorily
developed by the instructor, as the student’s
knowledge of the poem grows.
It is certainly a subject for congratulation that
so many youth will be introduced, through the medium
of Dryden’s crisp and vigorous verse, to one
of the tales of Chaucer. May it now, as in his
own century, accomplish the poet’s desire, and
awaken in them appreciative admiration for the old
bard, the best story-teller in the English language.
G. E. E. Clinton, Conn., July 26, 1897.
Introduction.
The background.
The fifty years of Dryden’s literary production
just fill the last half of the seventeenth century.
It was a period bristling with violent political and
religious prejudices, provocative of strife that amounted
to revolution. Its social life ran the gamut from
the severity of the Commonwealth Puritan to the unbridled
debauchery of the Restoration Courtier. In literature
it experienced a remarkable transformation in poetry,
and developed modern prose, watched the production
of the greatest English epics, smarted under the lash
of the greatest English satires, blushed at the brilliant
wit of unspeakable comedies, and applauded the beginnings
of English criticism.
