An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

A treatise staged as a dialogue among learned friends, “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” defends the state of the 17th-century English theater, the use of rhyme (“poesy”) in dramatic plays, and the work of English writers in general. Its author, John Dryden (1631-1700), was a giant among men of letters during the contentious 17th century. He composed some of the most celebrated plays, poems, and criticism of the era and was appointed Poet Laureate in 1668. He lived through the English Civil War (1642-1651), which saw the execution of a king, the restoration of a king, and, in between, the establishment of a Puritan Interregnum that kept the theaters closed for more than a decade. Throughout all of this upheaval, Dryden rose to prominence with his witty, versatile, and challenging work. All citations in this guide come from John Dryden: Selected Poetry, republished by Penguin Books with a new introduction in 1985.

Dryden wrote “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” in 1665-1666 during an outbreak of the plague in which London’s theaters were again closed. Four friends—Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander—discuss the relative merits of English writing as compared to that of the ancients and the French, among others, while a naval war with the Dutch rages in the background.