John Dryden (1631-1700) Poet Laureate Compare to Charles II Source: Rulebound

Background:

      There was a revulsion against religion and zeal; both Papists and Puritans were scorned.

      At the same time the success of new scientific thinking gave sense (rationality) added prestige. (It had always had prestige in the school curriculum, where the rational ideals of the early Roman Empire were often praised.)

Mac Flecknoe is related to this background because:

      Dryden satirizes Shadwell for his embrace of "Nonsense" — irrational zeal for fashionable ideas and attitudes.

The Heroic is a fashionable idea and a fashionable style, and it lends its name to two key terms, "Mock Heroic" and "Heroic Couplets."

The word "heroic" was associated with the popular "heroic" plays written by Dryden and others. Here's a sample from such a play, The Indian Queen, written by Dryden and his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard.

Thus the "Mock Heroic" mocks such heroic sentiments.

Also, The Indian Queen (and other poems of Dryden) helped to establish heroic couplets as the default verse style until the advent of the Romantic poets in the Nineteenth Century.

"Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey,
But savage man alone does man betray." -- John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest." -- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

In Mac Flecknoe see the allusions to Jonson, lines 80 & 175. According to Jonson, and Dryden, satire is the most truly witty when it is corrective, that is when it enables a man of sense to justly evaluate others and himself, and so be able to correct himself if he feels liable to becoming a fop, fool, or gull. In contrast to this is false wit, which is mere name-calling, and which is appreciated only by fops and fools.

An Example of Jonson's wit, from Volpone:

      MOSCA:
A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints,
And makes the color of his flesh like lead.
      CORBACCIO:
'Tis good.
      MOSCA:
His pulse beats slow, and dull.
      CORBACCIO:
Good symptoms, still.
      MOSCA:
And from his brain —
      CORBACCIO:
Ha? How? Not from his brain?
      MOSCA:
Yes, sir, and from his brain —
      CORBACCIO:
I conceive you, good.
      MOSCA:
Flows a cold sweat with a continual rheum,
Forth the resolved corners of his eyes.
      CORBACCIO:
Is it possible? Yet I am better, ha!