Brit Lit: Restoration Lit--Late 17th Century Quiz

Answer: John Dryden

John Dryden lived from 1631 to 1700. Dryden lived in a most turbulent time for England, a time when one's political leanings determined one's success or perhaps even one's survival. He grew up in a family that supported Parliament's dissolution of the monarchy and execution of King Charles I, and he himself supported the Cromwell regime.

However, upon Cromwell's death, he favored the restoration of the British crown and threw his support behind King Charles II. In 1686, he continued to support Charles II's successor James II and even converted to Catholicism to show solidarity with his Catholic monarch.

His loyalty to the British monarchy is the basis for his political epic "Absalom and Achitophel", a poem that somewhat pretends to be a retelling of the story of the Biblical David's son Absalom who follows the ill advice of Achitophel to usurp his father's kingdom. Absalom represents the duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son, who was being used by the Whigs with the Earl of Shaftesbury (Achitophel's counterpart) as the main instigator behind Monmouth's claim to the throne. David is, of course, Charles II.

As a literary critic, John Dryden was groundbreaking, for he became England's very first comprehensive critic--someone who managed to combine important pieces of past English literary criticism as well as philosophies of the classical Romans and Greeks into a synthesized whole. He was extremely well read but was enough of a free thinker to construct his own arguments about how to write literature well and about what the purposes of literature were.

Answer: Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys (pronounced "peeps") lived from 1633 to 1703. He had to rely on a scholarship to achieve a degree at Cambridge and then on a familial connection to find employment within the Office of the Navy. However, through his diligence, ambition, and remarkable knack for detail, he eventually became secretary of the Admiralty and held many other administrative positions, including president of the Royal Society, until his fortunate career collapsed with the deposition of King James II.

His attention to detail obviously spilled over into his "Diary", which is a splendid recording of English business, religion, literary life, music, theater, society, and much more.

It is a recording of matters both public and private--from major affairs of state to quarrels he had with his own wife.

Interestingly, he wrote his "Diary" in shorthand and often even in code, which probably provided him security to be as frank as he was. The book had to be deciphered before it was published in the 1800s, more than a hundred years after his death.

Answer: Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler lived from 1612 to 1680. He despised the Puritans and the Cromwellian government of England but had to wait until the Restoration of Charles II to England's throne before he could publish his thoughts and verse. Charles II so admired "Hudibras" that he awarded Butler 300 pounds as a gift and was known to quote the lines of the poem quite often.

The form of verse Butler chose to use for the poem has come to be known as hudibrastic verse. It is associated with mock heroic writing.

Its use of iambic tetrameter, a highly structured and formulaic meter, is associated with grand themes and epic deeds; however, its use of feminine rhyme undermines the loftiness of the meterical pattern. Iambic tetrameter would require each line of the poem to consist of four feet (eight syllables), and each foot would be an iambus, or a combination of two syllables with the second syllable receiving more of an emphasis than the first.

The pattern would sound something like this: dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM.

However, feminine rhyme destroys the neatness of the iambic tetrameter rhythm. Every line would end with one extra syllable past the last emphasized syllable. Feminine rhyme occurs when the rhyming sounds of two words are found in un-emphasized ending syllables (like WALKing and TALKing). The effect of hudibrastic verse is supposed to be a comical one in that the poem appears to be written by an individual who can't write metrical patterns correctly, a form that works perfectly with a poem that is ridiculing people who cannot lead correctly. Here is a sample of some of the poem's lines: "Whose honesty they all durst swear for, / Though not a man of them knew wherefore; / When gospel-trumpeter, surrounded / With long-eared rout, to battle sounded, / And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, / Was beat with fist instead of a stick". You can catch the comical effect in this last line when you consider that "a stick" is supposed to be read with emphais on "a" but not on "stick" so that you would pronounce the ending of the line thusly: "UH-stick".

Answer: The Way of the World

William Congreve lived from 1670 to 1729. His famous play, "The Way of the World", was produced in 1700. It unfortunately was so poorly received by English audiences that Congreve was convinced that he should give up being a playwright. However, scholars now consider it to be one of the wittiest plays ever written and a perfect and polished example of the genre of Restoration comedy. Most of these comedies focused on the struggle for power, sex, and money and relied on intricate scheming (such as disguised characters that led to mistaken identities) that often exploded in the most laughable of manners.

While "The Way of the World" at first seems to perpetuate the notion that cynical self-interest is "the way of the world", it eventually establishes that true love is the only goal that really matters. Ultimately, the play has this to say about those who would manipulate others for personal gain: "each deceiver to his cost may find / That marriage frauds too oft are paid in kind".

Answer: John Wilmot

"The Disabled Debauchee" wittily and satirically presents a thorough hedonist as a heroic figure by presenting the poem in heroic stanzas of iambic pentameter and by comparing him to a worthy soldier whom younger warriors seek as a mentor. The Debauchee is older, impotent, affected by wine, and scarred from a sexually transmitted disease; however, he celebrates his days of "conquest" in his memory and enjoys watching the exploits of those younger than he.

The following quatrain captures the poem's essence: "I'll tell of whores attacked, their lords at home; / Bawds' quarters beaten up, and fortress won; / Windows demolished, watches overcome; / And handsome ills by my contrivance done". John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, who wrote the poem and lived from 1647 to 1680, could draw upon his own experiences for material.

He began a promising career by taking a position at Charles II's court when he was seventeen; however, he was imprisoned for abducting an heiress and became infamously known for his practical jokes, sexual affairs, reckless spending, and constant intoxication.

In fact, he told his biographer that "for five years together he was continually drunk".

Answer: The Country Wife

"The Country Wife" was typical of many Restoration comedies in that it relied heavily on witty exchanges of dialogue, puns, and playfully sexual discussion and behavior. The very title itself is meant to be a double entendre referring to both a rural location and a vulgar term for a woman's genitalia.

These comedies were also known for their fast but complicated story lines that involved many twists and multiple plots. Wycherly's "The Country Wife" itself consists of a dual plot, one involving the rake mentioned in the question and the other involving the country wife herself, who is an inexperienced young woman newly infatuated with the exciting city life of London and its young men. Finally, like many Restoration comedies, "The Country Wife" attempts to push for aristocratic values following the downfall of Cromwell's Puritan regime.

The play's radical disregard for "decency" is a direct result of the Puritan decision to prohibit plays for nearly twenty years and the censorship they imposed on writers. William Wycherly lived from ca. 1640 to 1715.

He was born into a moderately wealthy family, but his wit was so popular among the aristocrats, particularly King Charles II himself, that he enjoyed a semi-privileged lifestyle for some time.

Answer: Oroonoko

"Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave" was written by Aphra Behn and published in 1688, a year before her death. She composed this story during a time when prose fiction was still rather experimental for the English--at least prose fiction in the format of a novel. Thus, it is a highly significant publication because of its influence on the "shape" the novel would assume.

Despite its combination of history and realism with fiction and romantic fantasy, it also was a significant force in the abolition of the slave trade in England. During a time when women were looked down upon for pursuing careers in writing and acting, Aphra Behn boldly signed her name to her plays and other writings, and she courageously responded in turn to those who criticized her.

Her maiden name and the date of her birth are shrouded in mystery, and the Mr. Behn she was supposedly to have married also remains an unknown. Prior to beginning her writing career, she was a spy for King Charles II; he went back on his deal to pay her for her services, however, and she was forced to look elsewhere for an income--playwrighting.

She is now praised with having paved the way in England for the female writer. (By the way, how many recognized the other three titles among the answers as three of Herman Melville's novels?)

Answer: Pilgrim's Progress

John Bunyan lived from 1628 to 1688. He was born the son of a poor pot maker and learned his father's trade, yet he went on to become one of the most well-known seventeenth-century writers from around the world due to his writing and publishing of "Pilgrim's Progress". Until contemporary times--a more secular age--this book was as likely to be found in a Christian home as was the Bible itself.

The entire story revolved around the most basic metaphor in human culture--life is a journey--and it contained images and events that the simplest of readers could comprehend. Furthermore, its prose was modeled after that of the English translation of the Bible, and many of its statements were rather memorable because of their proverbial nature: for example, "Some cry out against sin even as the mother cries out against her child in her lap, when she calleth it slut and naughty girl, and then falls to hugging and kissing it".

Answer: John Locke

John Locke was born 1632 and died 1704. He attended Oxford University, learned medicine, and then worked as a physician and held various offices to which he was appointed. However, his primary focus was always philosophy and simply finding time to think. Locke argued that any unclear and logically unsupportable ideas should be cleared from the mind, but when he turned this approach toward Christianity and removed all the "unreasonable" or "illogical" components of this system of belief, he found not much was left to believe in except the existence of a creator. From out of such thinking would arise Deism, the belief that a creator exists but that this entity does not interfere with or intervene in the lives of human beings. Locke's philosophy would have tremendous impact on the thinking of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment movement as well as on the leading thinkers of the American colonies (some of Thomas Jefferson's ideas in the "Declaration of Independence" stem from Locke's thoughts).

Answer: Mac Flecknoe

"Mac Flecknoe" is a primary example of the mock epic, a poem that relies on a common, low, or absurd subject for a piece written in a grand language, lofty style, and solemn tone--qualities associated with epic poetry. Thomas Shadwell, the subject of Dryden's lampoon, and Dryden had disagreed on a number of topics--both literary and political--for quite some while. Dryden refers to Shadwell as Mac Flecknoe, or "son of Flecknoe". Richard Flecknoe had been a widely recognized prolific yet untalented writer, and when he died, Dryden quickly seized an opportunity to speculate who would be Flecknoe's successor as "king" of bad writing.

He ridiculously compares Shadwell to Augustus Caesar, Romulus, and Christ himself, as if Shadwell were worthy of such praise yet refers to Shadwell as the king of Nonsense, a realm that extends from Ireland to Barbados and basically includes no kingdom at all but rather the vast Atlantic Ocean.

He insults Shadwell by attacking his intelligence and declares that Shadwell is one "Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. / The rest [of the bad writers] to some faint meaning make pretense, / But Sh--- never deviates into sense". Rather than sailing down the Thames to his coronation, Shadwell sails down the sewer. Rather than being crowned with laurel, he is crowned with poppies, and rather than holding the globe in his hand, he holds a mug of ale.

In the end, as Flecknoe descends into the bowels of the earth instead of ascending into Heaven, as the Old Testament prophet Elijah did, Flecknoe's cloak falls off his shoulders and onto the shoulders of Shadwell, as Elijah's cloak fell to the shoulders of his successor Elisha. Dryden even throws in some really low blows by insulting Shadwell as an inferior because he is Irish, and poking fun of Shadwell's obesity.