Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

Dryden's main contribution to literary criticism is represented by An Essay of Dramatic Poesy in which in the form of a lively dialogue his views on drama are propounded. In this landmark of English Criticism, Dryden examines five important issues : the relative merits of ancient and modern poets, the French versus the English school of drama, the Elizabethan dramatists versus those of Dryden's own time, conformation to the dramatic rules laid down by the ancients and the question of substituting rhyme for blank verse. Considering the fact that Dryden had no settled body of English criticism to bank upon, his theorising on the form of drama is a distinguished achievement and many of the issues raised by him can by no means be treated as finally decided. Dryden's special advantages were "a strong, clear, common-sense judgement and a very remarkable faculty of arguing the point". Add to this his intimate knowledge of both ancient and modern playwrights, including the French masters, and his personal initial experiments in writing plays. Thomas Arnold's explanatory Notes make this volume all the more valuable to the scholars and students of Dryden as a critic. William T. Arnold in his revision of the third edition, made the Notes fuller and more helpful by, among other things, adding quotations from Corneille.