Dryden was not great in original work, but he was
particularly happy in adaptation; and so it happened
that his best play, All for Love, was modeled
on Shakspere’s Antony and Cleopatra, and
his best poem, Palamon and Arcite, was a paraphrase
of the Knight’s Tale of Chaucer.
Contrary to the general taste of his age, he had long
felt and often expressed great admiration for the
fourteenth-century poet. His work on Ovid had
first turned his thought to Chaucer, he tells us, and
by association he linked with him Boccaccio. As
his life drew near its close he turned to those famous
old story-tellers, and in the Fables gave us
paraphrases in verse of eight of their most delightful
tales, with translations from Homer and Ovid, a verse
letter to his kinsman John Driden, his second St.
Cedlia’s Ode, entitled Alexander’s
Feast, and an Epitaph.
The Fables were published in 1700. They
were his last work. Friends of the poet, and
they were legion, busied themselves at the beginning
of that year in the arrangement of an elaborate benefit
performance for him at the Duke’s Theater; but
Dryden did not live to enjoy the compliment.
He suffered severely from gout; a lack of proper treatment
induced mortification, which spread rapidly, and in
the early morning of the first of May, 1700, he died.
He had been the literary figurehead of his generation,
and the elaborate pomp of his funeral attested his
great popularity. His body lay in state for several
days and then with a great procession was borne, on
the 13th of May, to the Poet’s Corner in Westminster
Abbey. The last years of his life had been spent
in fond study of the work of Chaucer, and so it happened
that just three hundred years after the death of elder
bard Dryden was laid to rest by the side of his great
master.
PALAMON AND ARCITE
The Fables, in which this poem appears, were
published in 1700. The word fable as here used
by Dryden holds its original meaning of story or tale.
Besides the Palamon and Arcite, he paraphrased
from Chaucer the Cock and the Fox, the Flower
and the Leaf, the Wife of Bath’s Tale,
the Character of the Good Parson. From
Boccaccio he gave us Sigismonda and Guiscardo,
Theodore and Honoria, and Cymon and Iphigenia,
while he completed the volume with the first book of
the Iliad, certain of Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
the Epistle to John Driden, Alexander’s Feast,
and an Epitaph. The Fables were
dedicated to the Duke of Ormond, whose father and
grandfather Dryden had previously honored in a prose
epistle, full of the rather excessive compliment then
in vogue. Palamon and Arcite is itself preceded
by a dedication in verse to the Duchess of Ormond.
In the graceful flattery of this inscription Dryden
excelled himself, and he was easily grand master of
the art in that age of superlative gallantry.
The Duke acknowledged the compliment by a gift of
five hundred pounds. The preface to the volume
is one of Dryden’s best efforts in prose.
It is mainly concerned with critical comment on Chaucer
and Boccaccio; and, though it lacks the accuracy of
modern scholarship, it is full of a keen appreciation
of his great forerunners.
Copyrights
Palamon and Arcite from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
