Dryden’s (Excessive) Remorse about the ›Licentiousness‹ of his Comedies and his Part Rejection of Collier in his Adaptation of Boccaccio’s »Cimone ed Efigenia«

Abstract

John Dryden was the only playwright targeted by Jeremy Collier who responded with a confession, yet he blamed the moral decline on the Carolean court rather than the stage. In fact, Marriage-à-la-Mode, written at the height of his favour at court, does not truly embrace the provocative libertine doctrines, for which his then-patron, the Earl of Rochester, was notorious. Although the play opens with an exuberant celebration of libertine ideals, it progressively engages in their forceful refutation – making Dryden’s later remorse appear excessive. Still, disillusioned in retrospect with the Carolean era, Dryden came to regret having gone too far (in that play and elsewhere) in dramatizing a hedonistic view of gender relations, which he felt had »prophan’d [the] Heav’nly Gift of Poesy« by pandering to an »adult’rate age«. In Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700) he vows to avoid any »irreverent Expression, or […] Thought too wanton«. Even so, he remained wary of the Reformers’ zeal, fearing its stifling effect on creativity and rejecting their wholesale denigration of sexuality. Dryden found a way out of this dilemma in his adaptation of Boccaccio’s »Cimone ed Efigenia«. Viewed in the context of his lifelong struggle in positioning himself morally in a changing world, this rejoinder to Collier warrants greater attention than it has so far received in modern scholarship. It complements Congreve’s and Vanbrugh’s defences based on the characteristics of drama as an art form, by focusing specifically on sexual ethics as the central point of contention in the controversy. Dryden demonstrates that – through its capacity to evoke and examine lifelike situations – poetry can clearly distinguish between sexuality’s civilizing and destructive potentials. Together, these responses to Collier assert drama’s right to be judged by standards other than those wryly alluded to by Vanbrugh as practised by the »College of Divines«.