An Essay of Dramatic Poesy |
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Common terms and phrases
acknowledge action admiration allowed already ancients answer appear argument Aristotle audience beauty better betwixt blank verse called cause characters comedy common compass concernment Corneille Crites difference discourse drama Dryden edition English equal Essay Eugenius excellent fancy farther Fletcher follow French give given greater Greek hand honour houses humour imagine imitation impossible Johnson judge judgment kind language Latin least leave less LIBRARY Lisideius lively Lord Malone mean nature never observed opinion passions perfection persons Plautus play pleased plot poem poesy poet present PRESS probable produced prose prove published reason relation represented rest rhyme rule scene seems Selections sense serious plays Shakspeare sometimes speak stage suppose thing thoughts tragedy true truth unity UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA writ writing written
Popular passages
Page 67 - ... All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
Page 136 - To make a child now swaddled; to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords, And help of some few foot and half-foot words, Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars, And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
Page 67 - I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him...
Page 70 - Catiline. But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
Page 69 - As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it.
Page 70 - But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch ; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him.
Page 7 - The drift of the ensuing discourse was chiefly to vindicate the honour of our English writers from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French before them. This I intimate, lest any should think me so exceeding vain as to teach others an art which they understand much better than myself.
Page 42 - The end of tragedies or serious plays, says Aristotle, is to beget admiration, compassion, or concernment; but are not mirth and compassion things incompatible ? and is it not evident that the poet must of necessity destroy the former by intermingling of the latter?
Page 17 - A JUST AND LIVELY IMAGE OF HUMAN NATURE, REPRESENTING ITS PASSIONS AND HUMOURS; AND THE CHANGES OF FORTUNE, TO WHICH IT IS SUBJECT: FOR THE DELIGHT AND INSTRUCTION OF MANKIND.
Page 68 - Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem: and in the last King's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him.
Bibliographic information
| Pealkiri | An Essay of Dramatic Poesy Clarendon Press series |
| Autor | John Dryden |
| Editor | Thomas Arnold |
| Edition | 3 |
| Publisher | Clarendon Press, 1889 |
| Original from | California Ülikool |
| Digitized | 4 dets. 2007 |
| Length | 141 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |