SOURCE: Thorson, James L. Introduction to Butler's Ghost, by Thomas D'Urfey, pp. iii-xxi. Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1984.

In the following excerpt, Thorson discusses the political themes in Durfey's Butler's Ghost,

Thomas D'Urfey's Butler's Ghost: or, Hudibras, the Fourth Part first appeared on the English literary, political, and religious scene in March 1682 in the aftermath of the Popish Plot and Exclusion crises. The poem cannot claim to be the most famous work to grow out of the controversy, as that honor must undoubtedly go to John Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681), but it is of real interest to students of the period as a bawdy, slashing attack on the Whig faction led by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-1683). Shaftesbury is, of course, the Achitophel of Dryden's poem as well as the object of the satire of Dryden's The Medall, which also came out of...