[From The Indian Emperour, Or, The Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards]
From 'A Defence of An Essay of Dramatique Poesy, being an Answer to the Preface of The Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma', included at the beginning of some copies of the second edition of Dryden's play. It does not appear in subsequent editions. Pepys had a copy of the second edition by 20 September (Diary, 9.311 ). Sir Robert Howard had defended blank verse against rhyme in his preface to The Great Favourite (1668). It is Dryden's last word in the controversy with his brother-in-law, begun in Dryden's dedication to The Rival Ladies (1664), continued in Howard's preface to Four New Plays (1665) and in Dryden's Essay of 1667 (on the quarrel, see Oliver, 1963, 88-120 ). Jonson is listed in Dryden's essay (p. 13) among the 'heroes' who have dictated laws for the drama - Howard had suggested this was an impossibility - and Jonson's practice in Catiline is cited to show the dangers of breaking the unity of place: 'If Ben. Johnson himself will remove the Scene from Rome into Tuscany in the same Act, and from thence return to Rome, in the Scene which immediately follows; reason will consider there is no proportionable allowance of time to perform the journey, and therefore will chuse to stay at home' (pp. 17-18 ).
*****************************************[Replying to Howard's argument that prose dialogue in plays makes for greater verisimilitude than verse. The "verse" Jonson sometimes ascends to must be rhyme.]
But I will be bolder, and do not doubt to make it good, though a Paradox, that one great reason why Prose is not to be us'd in serious plays, is because it is too near the nature of converse: there may be too great a likeness; as the most skilful Painters affirm, that there may be too near a resemblance in a Picture: to take every lineament and feature is not to make an excellent piece, but to take so much only as will make a beautiful Resemblance of the whole; and, with an ingenious flattery of Nature, to heighten the beauties of some parts, and hide the deformities of the rest. For so says Horace,
Ut pictura Poesis erit, etc....In Bartholomew-Fair , or the Lowest kind of Comedy, that degree of heightning is used, which is proper to set off that Subject: 'tis true the Author was not there to go out of Prose, as he does in his higher Arguments of Comedy, The Fox and Alchymist ; yet he does so raise his matter in that Prose, as to render it delightful; which he could never have performed, had he only said or done those very things that are daily spoken or practised in the Fair: for then the Fair itself would be as full of pleasure to an ingenious person as the Play; which we manifestly see it is not. But he hath made an excellent Lazar of it; the Copy is of price, though the Original be vile. You see in Catiline and Sejanus, where the Argument is great, he sometimes ascends to Verse, which shews he thought it not unnatural in serious Plays: and had his Genius been as proper for Rhyme, as it was for Humour; or had the Age in which he liv'd, attained to as much knowledge in Verse, as ours, 'tis probable he would have adorn'd those Subjects with that kind of Writing.
(6-7)[Howard had argued against observing the unity of time in plays.]
In few words my own opinion is this, (and I willingly submit it to my Adversary, when he will please impartially to consider it,) that the imaginary time of every Play ought to be contrived into as narrow a compass, as the nature of the Plot, the quality of the Persons, and variety of Accidents will allow. In Comedy I would not exceed 24 or 30 hours: for the Plot, Accidents, and Persons of Comedy are small, and may be naturally turn'd in a little compass: But in Tragedy the Design is weighty, and the Persons great, therefore there will naturally be required a greater space of time in which to move them. And this, though Ben. Johnson has not told us, yet 'tis manifestly his opinion: for you see that to his Comedies he allows generally but 24 hours; to his two Tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline , a much larger time: though he draws both of them into as narrow a compass as he can: For he shews you only the latter end of Sejanus his Favour, and the Conspiracy of Catiline already ripe, and just breaking out into action.
But as it is an errour on the one side, to make too great a disproportion betwixt the imaginary time of the Play, and the real time of its representation; so on the other side, 'tis an oversight to compress the accidents of a Play into a narrower compass than that in which they could naturally be produc'd. Of this last errour the French are seldom guilty, because the thinness of their Plots prevents them from it: but few English men, except Ben. Johnson, have ever made a Plot with variety of design in it, included in 24 hours which was altogether natural. For this reason, I prefer the Silent Woman before all other Plays, I think justly, as I do its Author in Judgment, above all other Poets. Yet of the two, I think that errour the most pardonable, which in too strait a compass crowds together many accidents, since it produces more variety, and consequently more pleasure to the Audience; and because the nearness of proportion betwixt the imaginary and real time does speciously cover the compression of the Accidents.
(19-20)
A poem is like a picture.... This courts the shade, that will wish to be seen in the light, and dreads not the critical insight of the judge ... and what [the poet] fears he cannot make attractive with his touch he abandons (Horace, Ars Poetica, 361, 363-4, 149-50 ).