A Reading of 'Absalom and Achitophel'

Author(s): K. E. Robinson
Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 6 (1976), pp. 53-62
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
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A
Reading
of Absalom and
Achitophel
One of the most
forthright
comments on Absalom and
Achitophel
is Yvor Winters's
remark that the whole
poem
is
designed
'to
praise
a monarch who was a
corrupt
fool'.1 It
may
not
represent
Winters at his
best,
but it does state
honestly
not
only
the
question
of
sincerity
which so often confronts the critic of
Dryden
but the answer
offered
by
the critical
orthodoxy
-
except
that the orthodox view
praises
where
Winters condemns. It has become
commonplace
to
regard
the
opening
lines of
Absalom and
Achitophel
as a
witty
transvaluation of Charles's adulteries into a
polygamy
in the tradition of the
patriarchs
and to
disregard
that this
implies
that
Dryden
evaded
-
not to
say wilfully
overlooked - the
immorality
involved.2 In
order to show that
Dryden
was
morally
sincere in his
praise
of Charles it is
necessary
to demonstrate that he faced
up
to the
failings
of his monarch but discerned
qualities
in the man or his role
(or both)
which more than
compensated
for them.
There are indeed
strong
reasons to
suggest
that the
opening
lines have
precisely
this balanced
perspective
and that
upon
it
hinges
the structure of the whole
poem.
Even a
passing
examination of the
poem's
historical context
emphasizes
the
tenuousness of the normal
reading
of its
beginning.
No one would
deny
that
Absalom and
Achitophel
is a
public poem
on a
very
serious
subject,
and
yet
the
witty
reading
is at variance with such a view. Not that wit and seriousness are
mutually
exclusive,
but the
reading
does
depict Dryden
as
resorting
to a device more in
keeping
with the conceited
valedictory poems
of the earlier
century (so
often
underpinned by precisely
those 'nice
speculations'
which he had
rejected)
than the
perspicuous style which, increasingly
an
individuating
factor of his
age,
he himself
conceived of as a better tool for
reasoning
man into truth.3 It is true that Burnet
composed
a defence of
polygamy
with Charles
very
much in
mind,
and similar
defences were written as themes
by
Oxford
undergraduates,
but Burnet was well
aware that he was
being
tendentious and the themes were little more than
pyro-
technic
displays.4
For
Dryden
to
begin
on such a note would have been to risk the
status of the whole
piece, especially
since more than one commentator had
counselled
against
the misuse of David's
example.5 Although
the conventional
1
Forms
of Discovery (Chicago, 1967),
p. I26.
Compare
Herbert
Grierson,
Cross-Currents in
English
Literature
of
the Seventeenth
Century (i929; reprinted Harmondsworth, 1966), pp. 297-300.
2
See,
for
example,
Ian
Jack, Augustan
Satire
(Oxford, I952),
p.
75
and Earl
Miner, Dryden's
Poetry
(Bloomington, Indiana, I967),
pp.
115-22. Compare
Bernard
Schilling,
Dryden
and the Conservative
Myth (New Haven, Connecticut, 1961),
pp. I48
and 28I.
3
Of
Dramatic
Poesy
and Other Critical
Essays,
edited
by George Watson,
2 vols
(London, 1962), II, 76;
Preface to
Religio Laici,
in The Poems
of
ohn
Dryden,
edited
by James Kinsley, 4
vols
(Oxford, 1958), I,
311.
All
quotations
from
Dryden's
verse are from the
Kinsley
edition.
4
'Two Cases of
Conscience',
in Memoirs
of
the Secret Service
of John Masky,
edited
by
S.
Masky
(London, 1733), Appendix ii, pp.
xxiv-xxxiii
(cf. Miner, pp. 119-20);
C. E.
Mallet,
The
History
of
the
University of Oxford, 3
vols
(Oxford, 1924-7), II, 424; Bishop
Buret's
History of
His Own
Time,
2 vols
(London, 1850), I, 177.
6
See,
for
example,
Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami
Opera Omnia,
10 vols
(Leyden, I703-6; reprinted
London, I962), v, 583(D)-584(A)
and Thomas
Brooks,
Precious Remedies
Against
Satan's Devices
(1652; reprinted London, 1968), p. 45.
54
A
Reading of
'Absalom and
Achitophel'
attitude towards Absalom and
Achitophel
is far from
denying
that the final
passages
of
the
poem
deal with Charles's virtues as monarch
'restoring
order to his
realm','
the
quality
of these
virtues,
and the
quality
of
Dryden's response
to
them,
is called into
doubt if
they
are shown as
belonging
to a man whose earlier moral aberrations can
only
be
wittily praised.
The
credibility
of the
poem's ending
rests
upon
the
poet's
holding
stable criteria of
judgement.
The
opening
lines must extenuate Charles's
faults
against
a stature which is
beyond
or transcends
them;
a sense of moral
growth
is essential if Charles's final
position
is to achieve the
strength
that
Dryden obviously
intended.
It should now be clear
that,
on
my reading,
the balanced
perspective
of the
opening
lines consists of an admission of Charles's sexual incontinence in such a
context that it is extenuated without
being
excused. The biblical
analogue provided
Dryden
with an
objective
source for his extenuation. Its
power
as a historical
precedent
stems from
Dryden's regard
for
history
as 'a
prospective-glass carrying
your
soul to a vast
distance,
and
taking
in the farthest
objects
of
antiquity':
It informs the
understanding by
the
memory.
It
helps
us to
judge
of what will
happen, by
shewing
us the like revolutions of former times. For mankind
being
the same in all
ages,
agitated by
the same
passions,
and moved to action
by
the same
interests, nothing
can come
to
pass
but some
precedent
of the like nature has
already
been
produced,
so that
having
the
causes before our
eyes,
we cannot
easily
be deceived in the
effects,
if we have
judgment
enough
but to draw the
parallel.2
By exercising
the
memory
and
looking
back to events in the historical
(or biblical)
past,
it was
possible,
if the
parallel
were chosen with sufficient
care,
to understand
the
pattern
and
significance
of
contemporary
situations. The Davidic
analogue
that
Dryden
inherited offered him a means of
focusing
the nature of events in the
Exclusion
Crisis, including
Charles's misdemeanours.3
'Dryden employs
a dull
narrative',
claims Winters
(p. I26),
'which
elaborately
and
clumsily parallels
the biblical narrative' because it lacks
'any really unifying
principle';
but
Dryden
did not restrict himself to a literal
application
of the
analogue, preferring
to concern himself with the
pattern
of
key
incidents. This
pattern pivots upon
Absalom's
rebellion, biblically
a function of David's
adultery
with Bath-sheba and his murder of Uriah. If the
relationship
between Absalom's
revolt and Nathan's
prophecy
in ii Samuel 12.
10-14
is at all
obscure,
the
exegesis
shows no doubt about the connexion. In Thomas
Lodge's
translation
ofJosephus,
for
example,
Nathan
pronounces
that David 'should be
punished by God,
and his
wives should be violated
by
one of his own
sonnes,
who should likewise
lay
a snare
for him: so that he should suffer a manifest
plague
for the sinne he had committed
in secret'. And closer to the date of Absalom and
Achitophel
both Milton
(in
De
Doctrina
Christiana)
and Matthew Poole's
commentary give essentially
the same
account.4 David's
triumph
over Absalom and Absalom's death restate David's
1
Schilling, p.
28I.
2
'The Life of Plutarch'
(I683)
in
Of
Dramatic
Poesy
and Other Critical
Essays, I, 4.
See
Miner,
pp. 107-8
and
I39-40,
and Anne T.
Barbeau,
The Intellectual
Design of John Dryden's
Heroic
Plays
(New Haven, Connecticut, I970), pp. 50-51.
3
See R. F.
Jones,
'The
Originality
of Absalom and
Achitophel', MLN, 46 (I93I),
2I I-I8.
4
Thomas
Lodge,
The Famous and Memorable Works
ofjosephus (London, I640),
p.
171;
The Works
of
John Milton,
edited
by
F. A. Patterson et
al., I8 vols
(New York, 193I-8), xv, 78-9;
Matthew
Poole,
A
Commentary
on the
Holy Bible, 3
vols
(London, I962), I, 608.
K. E. ROBINSON
55
quasi-divinity
and record the end of his
purgation
to
produce
a
basically simple
analogical pattern.
It consists of a sinful
lapse
from the stance
required by
the
sacred office of
kingship,
its
punishment through Absalom,
and the monarch's
regeneration. Dryden
invokes this
pattern proleptically
to soften Charles's
offences,
harnessing
all the
authority
of a historical
precedent
to subordinate his
immorality
to the satisfaction of the role of
king
which marks the
pattern's
fulfilment.
It
is,
of
course,
one
thing
to
state,
another to show that this
analogical pattern
applies
to Absalom and
Achitophel.
The
greatest difficulty
about the
opening
lines is
to understand the
experience
of
reading
them. The
preface
assumes that the reader
will
bring
the received
correspondence
between David and Charles to bear on the
poem,
but that does not mean that David is Charles in
any simple way.
It is clear
that
Dryden
will assert the
correspondence
rather than address himself to it as
inapposite,
and
yet
the
opening
lines so
present
the Davidic
period by
contrast with
the Restoration era that
by
the time 'Israel's Monarch' is introduced in the seventh
line there is a firm sense of the differences in social institutions which make certain
aspects
of the Davidic
analogue inapplicable.
It is
precisely
because the
opening
lines seem to assert the
inapplicable
as
applicable
that
they
become so
complex.
To discard this sense of the
inapplicable
at the seventh
line,
to retreat into some
statement about the wit of the
opening,
would be to
falsify
the
experience
of
reading.
What follows is an
attempt
to realize the full
impact
and
importance
of this
complexity.
When Mandeville observed 'Of
Paradys
ne can I not
speken propurly
I was not
there; it is fer
beyonde
and that for thinketh
me',1
he summed
up
the
problem
of
the writer
dealing
with the
paradisial
or
quasi-paradisial
estate. He could have
written of it
-
others have
-
but it would
only
have been
possible
to do so
meaningfully through negative
definition. For Milton such
negativity
involved a
fallen
perspective
which,
far from
being obstructive,
lent itself to his concern with
thefelix
culpa.
On a different scale
Dryden
too is able to contain such a
perspective
in the first few lines of Absalom and
Achitophel.
He
adapts
the
relativity
of
temporal
periods implicit
in the
perspective
to
distinguish
the mores fundamental to the
Davidic
period
and the Restoration.2 'Priest-craft'
(whatever
its
signification)
has
begun; polygamy
is a sin. David's
polygamy may
have been
legitimate,
but
Charles's
analogous
behaviour is not. There is
nothing
to
suggest
that either the
law
prohibiting polygamy
or the moral censure of
adultery
does not
apply
to
Charles,
nor would it be
permissible
to
bring
into
play
the
regenerative expectations
of the
analogical pattern
on the evidence of the Davidic
correspondence
alone as it
appears
in the
opening
lines. But what
might
have been a
heavy judgement
on
Charles's sexual
exploits
is
lightened by
a
carefully
controlled
point
of
view,
an
urbane
perspective
which the
analogical pattern finally justifies.3 Although
there is
no
escape
from the law
(civil
and
moral)
as it stood in the Restoration
period,
the
opening
lines look back
nostalgically,
as Miner
(p. 18) rightly observes,
to the
ahistorical
'pious
times' which
appeal
to the
'daydreams
of masculine
desires',
when to act
naturally
was to
pursue
a
purely appetitive
course unfettered
by
restrictions. This
poised nostalgia (so
characteristic of the earlier Cavalier
wits)
is
1
Quoted
in David
Jones's preface
to In Parenthesis
(London, 1937), p.
xiii.
2
See Alan
Roper, Dryden's
Poetic
Kingdoms (London, 1965), p. 13.
3 See Ruth
Nevo,
The Dial
of
Virtue
(Princeton,
New
Jersey, 1963), pp. 250-5I.
5
56
A
Reading of
'Absalom and
Achitophel'
finely captured
in
'cursedly'.
It is not concerned with literal
truth;
instead the
punctuation
of the I68I folios
('E'er
one to one
was, cursedly, confin'd')
makes it
clear that it
operates
as a
parenthetical
aside closer to the
urbanely
mock-serious
than an
imprecation.
It is this attitude that informs the nebulous reference to
'Priest-craft',
which as an extension of the wishful desire for a naturalistic
juris-
prudence implicitly
attacks
argument
from
authority
at the diametrical
opposite
of the naturalistic. It is hinted that
polygamy
is a
sin,
has become
adulterous, only
because those who exercise 'Priest-craft'
designate
it so. But
Dryden
does not
crudely
'enlist anti-clerical
feeling'.1
The effect of 'Priest-craft' is emotional rather
than
logical:
like
'cursedly'
it
expresses
a
positive
but
judicious
attachment to the
vital natural
qualities underlying
Charles's
quasi-polygamy
(and
so
utterly foreign
to
Shaftesbury's
'huddled'
procreative activities)
whilst
maintaining
a strict
adherence to the moral law. It is characteristic of
Dryden's regard
for the tradi-
tional social fabric that he should contain the natural within the limits of the
received moral code in contrast to the deists'
emerging
examination of the customs
and
systems
of national law in terms of natural law
(which Geoffrey Bullough
dates from the
I67os onwards).2
Charles, then,
shares meritorious attributes with David in a context which
shows them to be
misplaced. Dryden preserves
this balance in the earlier
parts
of
the
poem by hinting
that beneath the elevation of the heroic
couplet
and biblical
allusion all is not as it
ought
to be. It is
especially
difficult here to describe or
indeed understand the
complex experience
of
reading
the
poem.
David's
polygamy
involves the
'promiscuous [or mixed]
use of concubine and
bride',
but
although
Charles's
'polygamy'
stems from the same natural
outgoing warmth,
it is
promis-
cuous in a different sense. In his case the warmth is allowed a less than discriminate
rein. But this
separation
of
temporal perspective
is not so
pronounced
in the lines
that follow. David and Charles are fused so that David's as well as Charles's faults
are
exposed
within the same
extenuating
framework. What makes David 'after
Heaven's own heart' in the biblical version is not sexual
vigour
but a
quality
of
soul which
equips
him to be
'captain
over his
people' (i
Samuel
13.
14).
Since
vigorous procreative
activities are
specifically presented
as an
example
of
being
'after Heaven's own
heart',
David no less than Charles is
guilty
of misvalues.
Siiilarly, although
Miner
(p. I2I)
is in
part
correct to assert that the
phrase
'Scatter'd his Maker's
Image through
the Land' indicates 'how much the
king
can
be
regarded
as a
type
of God the
Father, creating
like
Him,
after his own
image,
and indeed after His
image',
it is
morally
ambivalent. 'Scatter'd' both
strengthens
the sense of indiscrimination and takes on ribald sexual overtones as a
part
of the
imagery
of
sowing
and
reaping
which
provided
the
century
with a rich source of
bawdy.
The effect is to maintain a
suggestion
of careless
sexuality
without
destroying
that
magniloquence,
both in
couplet
and
allusion,
which
represents
David's and Charles's true
stature,
thus
keeping
alive the delicate balance between
1
Jack, p.
75.
Dr
Johnson
felt that
'Dryden
indeed
discovered,
in
many
of his
writings,
an affected
and absurd
malignity
to
priests
and
priesthood' (Lives of
the
English Poets,
edited
by George
Birkbeck
Hill,
3
vols
(Oxford, I905), I, 403).
a
'Polygamy amongst
the
Reformers',
in Renaissance and Modem
Essays
Presented to Vivian de Sola
Pinto,
edited
by
G. R. Hibbard
(London, I966), pp. 5-23 (p. 23).
See also A.
O. Aldridge, 'Polygamy
and
Deism', JEGP, 48 (1949), 343-6o.
K. E. ROBINSON
57
the
reprehensible
and meritorious. The 'tiller'
possesses
a
sexuality
which
provokes
him to illicit extra-marital
relationships
but at the same time he shows a sensitive
regard
for his wife.
Although
this recommends itself as an incisive
portrait
of
Charles's
paradoxical
character,l
it cannot but refer too to David whose adulterous
lapse provides
the first
stage
of the
analogical pattern. By dealing
with David's
adultery
at several removes from the surface of the
poem Dryden places
its
importance
relative to his life as a whole. He
puts
his
emphasis firmly upon
the
positive qualities
common to David and
Charles, and,
the
correspondence
between
them as adulterers
established,
these
positive qualities
activate the
expectations
of
regeneration
contained in the
analogical pattern.
Charles's
immorality,
like
David's,
becomes
inseparable
from the total
pattern.
It is self-evident that the remainder of the
pattern
is to be found in the
poem.
Although
Charles is
guilty
of
nothing
so
depraved
as David's murder of
Uriah,
his
licence has involved him in a threat to the British
system
of
monarchy
and the law
founded
upon it,
not
only
because of his
susceptibility
to feminine wiles
-
he is
'the
poor Priapus King',
not so much the ruler as ruled in his indiscretions2- but
because his
indulgent
attitude towards Monmouth has exacerbated the succession
problem.
Monmouth is well suited to be the
unwitting agent
of
judgement
on
Charles
for,
born out of wedlock and viewed so
indulgently by
his
father,
he is both
the outcome and the occasion of Charles's sinfulness. On to this skeleton
Dryden
builds his
narrative;
but
although
the
credibility
of his statement about the Exclu-
sion Crisis rests
upon
as full as
possible
an
application
of the
analogue,
he is far
from
justifying
Winters's strictures. The
emphasis
on
pattern
allows him con-
siderable freedom to work within those facts which
yield
themselves
readily
to his
drawing
of the
parallel,
without
any
essential distortion.
The
analogical pattern permits Dryden
to maintain the civilized and
apparently
objective
balance of the
opening
lines
throughout
the
poem.
He can
juxtapose
the
essentially praiseworthy qualities
of Charles's character and the
pernicious
results
when
they
are
misplaced
in the
knowledge
that
they
have been reasserted in their
proper
context. The worst result
is,
of
course,
Absalom's defection at
Shaftesbury's
instigation,
the abortive outcome of natural
generosity
and mildness in his
begetting
and
upbringing.
Since Monmouth mirrors Charles's own
appearance
and character
as a
youth,
in Charles
too,
it
may
be
assumed,
' 'twas Natural to
please'.3
Yet if the
'native
mercy'
and mildness to which this
gives
rise have a
stabilizing
effect and if
'the moderate sort of Men ... Inclin'd the Ballance to the better
side', Dryden
hints that Charles is not in control of his
mildness,
that its effect is unintentional:
David's mildness
manag'd
it so
well,
The Bad found no occasion to Rebell.
(1. 77)
1 See The
Diary of
Samuel
Pepys,
edited
by Henry
B.
Wheatley,
8 vols
(London, I904-5), vII, 37
and
compare J.
P.
Kenyon,
The Stuarts
(London, 1958),
p. II5.
2
'An Historical Poem' in Poems on
Affairs of
State:
Augustan
Satirical
Verse, 166o-7r4,
edited
by
George
de F. Lord
(New Haven, Connecticut, I963-),
II
(1965), I58.
See also
Dryden, Poems,
iv
1879.
3
The extent of the actual likeness between Monmouth and Charles can be
judged by comparing
William Dobson's
portrait
of Charles at fourteen with Samuel
Cooper's
miniature of Monmouth at
seven, bearing
in mind that
Cooper may
have
emphasized
the
similarity.
The
portraits
are con-
veniently reproduced
side
by
side in Lord
George Scott, Lucy
Walter:
Wife
or Mistress
(London, I947),
facing p. I28.
58
A
Reading of
'Absalom and
Achitophel'
Such
laisser-faire government
invites the
participation
of a
Shaftesbury,
and
only
a
practical
reaffirmation of
kingship
in Charles's second 'restoration' can
stop
the
balance
inclining
to the worst side once the
political
situation is such
That no Concessions from the Throne woud
please,
But Lenitives fomented the Disease.
(1. 295)
But at no
stage
do Charles's natural virtues lose their essential merit.
The critics' concentration
upon Dryden's
skill in satiric
portraiture
has tended to
obscure the remarkable
honesty
which the
extenuating
framework of the
analogical
pattern permits
him to
bring
to his
presentation
of
governmental
chaos as the
upshot
of Charles's faults. As
moral, religious,
and
political
head of his
country
Charles dictates in his own outlook and behaviour the outlook and behaviour of
his
subjects.
In the
analogue
itself Absalom's revolt is visited
upon
David for his
sins,
but
Dryden deepens
this
relationship
to show that the masses' attitude towards
Absalom
(and
hence towards the traditional fabric of their
country)
reflects
David's attitude. The indiscriminate exercise of natural instinct in his sexual
enterprises
and his self-absorbed and
indulgent bearing
towards 'His
youthful
Image
in his Son
renew'd', bordering
on narcissistic
idolatry, provoke parallel
tendencies in the
body politic.
His
subjects
see him in terms of a
graven image
whose existence is
dependent upon
their wishes:
Those
very Jewes, who,
at their
very best,
Their Humour more than
Loyalty exprest,
Now,
wondred
why,
so
long, they
had
obey'd
An Idoll Monarch which their hands had made:
Thought they might
ruine him
they
could
create;
Or melt him to that Golden
Calf,
a State.
(1. 6I)
Charles's 'natural' behaviour
precipitates
such
governmental
idleness and his
worship
of Monmouth is so idolatrous that his
authority
is threatened and he sinks
towards
becoming
a redundant
symbol.
In David the Lord had
'sought
him a man
after his own
heart,
and commanded him to be
captain
over his
people',
but Charles
has become
(to
use a term
Dryden
borrowed from an earlier
Royalist writer)
a
'weathercock of state'.' His
epicurean
abdication from
captaincy
threatens at least
a decline to limited
monarchy
where
Kings
are slaves to those whom
they Command,
And Tenants to their
Peoples pleasure
stand.
(1. 775)
or at worst a
retrogression
to a lawless 'state of
nature',
for
If
they may
Give and Take when e'er
they please,
Not
Kings alone, (the
Godheads
Images,)
But Government it self at
length
must fall
To Nature's
state;
where all have
Right
to all.
(1. 791)
1
The
Conquest of Granada, nII..Io (Mermaid edition,
edited
by George Saintsbury,
2 vols
(London,
1904), I, 62).
The
phrase
derives from the
dedicatory epistle
to
John Collop's
Poesis
Rediviva; or,
Poesie Reviv'd
(London, I656), sig. A4r.
K. E. ROBINSON
Naturalistic
kingship
breeds naturalistic
politics.
Dryden's interpretation
rests
upon
a well-defined
political theory. Jean
Bodin
had
pointed
out that 'to confound the state of monarch with the
popular
aristo-
cratical
estate',
as Charles offers to do in
acting simultaneously
as both ruler and
ruled,
'is a
thing impossible,
and in effect
incompatible,
and such as cannot be
imagined':
for
sovereignty being
of itself
indivisible,
how can it at one and the same time be divided
betwixt one
prince,
the
nobility
and the
people
in common? The first mark of
sovereign
majesty
is to be of
power
to
give laws,
and to command over them into the
subjects:
and
who should those
subjects
be that should
yield
their obedience to the
law,
if
they
should
have also
power
to make the laws? Who should he be that could
give
the
law, being
he
himself constrained to receive it of
them,
unto whom he himself
gave
it ?1
Charles's indiscretions
neglect
the 'indivisible'
quality
of his role. The common
base of the sexual and
political, private
and
public
forms of materialism which
Charles shares with his
people
is
implied
in the echo of the line 'When
man,
on
many, multiply'd
his kind' in Charles's
summary
of the dissidents'
ideology:
'That
one was made for
many, they
contend'. This contention seems to be a deliberate
inversion of Bellarmine's
belief,
as
quoted by
Sir Robert Filmer
(p. 84),
that
'God,
when he made all mankind of one
man,
did seem
openly
to
signify
that He rather
approved
the
government
of one man than of
many'.
Charles's
rejection
of the
inversion and his affirmation of the true 'monarch's end' are themselves a dismissal
of his earlier aberrations.
The idea of the
king
as
pater patriae, propounded by
Bodin and
Filmer,
is central
to
Dryden's presentation
of his
analogue.
Filmer's Patriarcha
was,
according
to
Peter Laslett
(pp. 33-5), widely
influential in the Exclusion
Crisis,
and it must have
appeared particularly
attractive to
Dryden.
Its familial
theory
of
monarchy
fitted
well not
only
with his own outlook but with the
basically
familial
analogue
of
Absalom and
Achitophel.
Filmer's
argument
is summed
up by
the
quotation
from
Bellarmine:
just
as Adam and the
patriarchs
had
'right
of
fatherhood, royal
authority
over their
children',
so
by
'the ancient and
prime right
of lineal succession
to
paternal government' kings
have succession to 'the
right
of that fatherhood which
their ancestors did
naturally enjoy' (pp. 57, 60, 6i).
Given this stature for Charles
it is
easy
to see the seriousness of his
misapplication
of fatherhood in his
relationship
with Monmouth.
Although 'Kingly power
is
by
the law of
God,
so it hath no
inferior law to limit
it',
the
King,
as a
father,
'is bound
by
the law of nature to do his
best for the
preservation
of his
family':
all
Kings,
even
tyrants
and
conquerors, [are]
bound to
preserve
the
lands, goods,
liberties
and lives of all their
subjects,
not
by any municipal
law of the
land,
but
by
the natural law of
a
Father,
which binds them to
ratify
the acts of their forefathers and
predecessors
in
things
necessary
for the
public good
of their
subjects. (p. 103)
Charles's
indulgence
of Monmouth is also the
neglect
of more
important patri-
archal or familial duties. His slowness to react to Monmouth's
progresses,
for
example,
seems to
endanger
the
'Hereditary
Paternal
Monarchy'
of
England.2
Dryden's honesty
about the extent of Charles's
responsibility
for the faction of
the times
prepares
the
way
for his rehabilitation of Charles as the
regenerated
1
'The
Necessity
of the Absolute Power of All
Kings
and in Particular of the
Kings
of
England',
in
Patriarcha and Other Works
of
Sir Robert
Filmer,
edited
by
Peter Laslett
(Oxford, 1949),
p.
322.
2
Edward
Chamberlayne, Angliae
Notitia or the Present State
of England,
Part I
(London, I674),
p.
72.
59
60 A
Reading of
'Absalom and
Achitophel'
David at the end of the
poem. Culpability
is
necessary
if the
analogical pattern
is to
carry
its full
weight.
Since this
culpability
is a matter of virtues
misdirected,
it is
quite
consistent that
having
seen
(or
in terms of the
analogue
been
punished by)
the results of his earlier
misdeeds,
Charles 'With all these loads of
Injuries opprest'
should be restored to
grace
as an embodiment of the same virtues
rightly placed.
And the
relationship
between Charles's and his
subjects'
attitudes
presupposes
the
country's
felicitous reaction to his
regained
stature.
Broadly speaking, then,
the
difference between Charles at the
beginning
and at the end of the
poem
is that he
has contained his natural
impulses.
As a
paternal
monarch he
ought
to have
embodied a
godlike perfection,
but he comes close to
forfeiting
this stature
by
trusting
the
promptings
of nature. The line 'When Nature
prompted,
and no law
deny'd'
sums
up
his
position. Characteristically poised,
it maintains an attachment
to natural warmth whilst
insisting
that
adultery
is not
acceptable;
but it also
refers to the well-known
passage
on innate
goodness
from St Paul which lies behind
the
following
lines from
Religio
Laici:
Not
onely
Charity
bids
hope
the
best,
But more the
great Apostle
has
exprest:
That, if
the
Gentiles, (whom
no Law
inspir'd,)
By
Nature did what was
by
Law
requir'd;
They,
who the written Rule had never
known,
Were to themselves both Rule and Law alone:
To Natures
plain
indictment
they
shall
plead;
And, by
their
Conscience,
be condemn'd or
freed.
(1. 198)
Instead of
doing 'By
nature ... what
[is] by
law
requir'd'
Charles acts
against
a
background
of external restraints. Because he needs external law to indicate his
transgressions,
he cannot
properly
ensure the
safety
of the
Ark,
which is best done
by keeping
'the covenant of the ark ... the law which the ark
preserves'.l
In
failing
he allows both
anarchy
and the
Satanic,
in the
guise
of
Achitophel,
to exert their
influences.2 His
explicit recognition
of Monmouth's status and his
adoption
of true
paternal
stature in relation to his
country prevent, however,
those who would
'touch our Ark'. At the end of the
poem
he
is,
in the fullest sense of the
word,
'lawful'. He is no
longer subjected
to but is the
law;
and because he has himself
asserted his lawful
function,
he is
regarded
as lawful
by
his
subjects.
In an
important
sense, however,
he is now
beyond
the law. It is
implicit
that as a man Charles has
passed through
the
stages
of
development
from sinfulness to
being
dead to sin
(and
hence the
law) through grace.
As a
king
he
can, therefore,
become an embodiment
of
Grace,
self-control
transmuting
his desire to
please
into a
truly godlike mercy
and
mildness.
Despite
the fact
that,
his
clemency despised, justice
has to take the
throne,
he remains a most humane embodiment of the law. It was
precisely
'the
healing
Balm' of Charles's
mercy
that
Dryden
was to declare
superior
to David's deathbed
cruelty
in Threnodia
Augustalis:
That
King
who liv'd to Gods own
heart,
Yet less
serenely
dies than he:
1 Edmund
Calamy, 'Trembling
for the Ark of
God',
in Sermons
of
the Great
Ejection,
edited
by
Iain
Murray (London, I962), p. 34.
For a discussion of the ark
image,
see
Roper, pp. 17-18.
2
See
particularly
B. K.
Lewalski,
'The
Scope
and Function of Biblical Allusion in Absalom and
Achitophel', English Language Notes, 3 (1965-6), 29-35
and A. B.
Chambers,
'Absalom and
Achitophel:
Christ and
Satan', MLN, 84 (1959), 592-6.
K. E. ROBINSON
Charles left behind no harsh decree
For Schoolmen with laborious art
To salve from
cruelty:
Those,
for whom love cou'd no excuses
frame,
He
graciously forgot
to name.
(1. 239)
It is
interesting
that whereas at the
beginning
of the
poem
Charles had to be
viewed
through
a
carefully
balanced
perspective,
at the end the
poise belongs
to
Charles
himself, recognizing
and
realizing
his natural
propensities
within the
exigencies
of the situation that he faces. The shift is
significant
of the monarch's
new self-control.
Any attempt
to describe the
ending
of Absalom and
Achitophel
must take account of
Johnson's
remarks on the
poem,
which have exercised a
profound
effect on critical
thinking
to the
present day. Only
in more recent studies has it become common to
defend
Dryden's
structural
powers against
the
judgement
that because the
'original
structure of the
poem
was defective
...
there is an
unpleasing disproportion
between the
beginning
and the end'.1
Schilling proposes
the solution that the effect
of the
apparent
imbalance in favour of evil is to
emphasize
the force of Charles's
virtuous
power.
'The sudden
breaking
off of the
poem shows',
he
claims,
'the
king's
total
command;
the
greatest possible
structure of
opposition
has risen
against
him; yet
the moment he chooses to
speak,
this becomes
meaningless.'2
But correct
as his solution
might be,
it is
only,
since it relies
upon
a
purely
theoretical
strength
attaching
to
kingship, moderately convincing
in terms of the
poem's
effect. The
pattern
and movement that have been outlined
mean, however,
that Absalom and
Achitophel
enacts
Schilling's reading.
The
ending
benefits from the additional
strength
that comes from the
completion
of the
pattern
and its
analogical expecta-
tions.
Moreover,
the attitude of Charles's
people
towards him has been shown to be a
direct function of the
degree
to which he fulfils or fails to fulfil his
paternal
role.
When he
neglects
them to
indulge Monmouth, they
themselves feel a
slackening
of
obligation
towards
him;
and his
positive
statement in lines
939-I025
contains
their reaction: 'And
willing
Nations knew their Lawfull Lord'. His
assumption
of
the full
obligations
and
power
of
paternal monarchy
is
accompanied by exactly
that
effect his
contemporaries
felt it
ought
to be
accompanied by,
'a kind of Universal
Influence,
over all his
Dominions',
so that
'every
Soul within his
Territories, may
be
said to feel at all times his Power and his Goodness'.3 His actions have become
consistent with his
divinely
ordained
role,
and he is
truly
'after Heaven's own
heart':
Thus from his
Royal
Throne
by
Heav'n
inspir'd,
The God-like David
spoke:
with awfull fear
His Train their Maker in their Master hear.
(1. 936)
Dryden's
assertion that 'a Series of new time' is
consequent upon
his
sovereign's
changed
stature is much more than a
Virgilian platitude:
Charles's moral
growth
makes
retrogression improbable
within the terms of the
poem.
I
Lives
of
the
Poets,
ed.
Hill, I, 437.
2
Dryden
and the Conservative
Myth, p. 306.
For other discussions of
structure,
see
Lewalski,
and also
Morris
Freedman, 'Dryden's
Miniature
Epic', JEGP, 57 (1958), 2II-19.
8
Chamberlayne, Anglia Notitia, p. 0o7.
62 A
Reading of
'Absalom and
Achitophel'
And
yet
the
ending
of the
poem
is not without its difficulties. It is true that
Dryden's
concern with the
relationship
between the law and natural
impulse
suggests
moral
growth
in Charles at the
poem's end,
but it is
equally
true that his
explicit
treatment of this
growth
is limited to Charles's
relationship
with Monmouth.
Dryden
does not deal
explicitly
with the
regenerated
Charles's sexual
appetite,
although
the
analogical pattern requires
the fullest rehabilitation. He could have
settled
pragmatically
for a stature in which Charles was at one with the civil but
not
necessarily
the moral
law, realizing
that
complete
restoration was
improbable,
if not
humanly impossible.
On this account
immorality
would be
allowable,
albeit
not
desirable,
so
long
as the law was not threatened.
Dryden obviously preferred
even a
partially regenerated
monarch to contractual
monarchy,
but within the
poem
the
emphasis
on the connexion between materialistic actions in the moral
sphere
and materialistic
politics
and the stress on Charles's
position
as ethico-
religious
as well as
political
head of his
country
demand
complete regeneration.
Dryden
was
clearly
aware of the
disparity,
but he chose neither to make a virtue
of
pragmatism
nor to claim a stature Charles did not merit. His concern was not so
much to defend Charles as to describe the
optimum
social
order,
in the full know-
ledge
that Charles did not
quite
match
up
to his
part despite
the re-establishment
of his
proper relationship
with his
country.
F. R. Leavis has
implicitly (and rightly)
insisted on the
opposition
between
politics
defined as the art of the
possible
and
imaginative
literature creative of
possibilities.1
Absalom and
Achitophel
is
generally regarded
as a
political poem
addressed to the
political
debate which was
eventually
to issue in contractual
monarchy,
but it stands above the mass of
political
verse of the
period
as concerned
with much more than the art of the
possible. Dryden
uses the
analogue,
as other
writers use the
myth,
to structure
perceptions
about the
ethical, religious,
and
political
welfare of his
nation, perceptions
sensitive to human
potentiality
and
incisively
evaluated
against
the
political
theorists of his
day.
If the
ending
is
ideal,2
it is
self-consciously
so. It
represents
a
projection
of
Dryden's profound
concern for
an order which would
preserve
the
dynamism
of the traditional social
structure,
asking
(in
Lawrence's
terms) 'why'
and not
'how',
about the
organic
needs of his
society
rather than about how the social structure
might
be
changed
to accommo-
date the
period's increasingly
reductive view of human
capabilities.
On this
reading
Absalom and
Achitophel presents
a much more sensitive and honest
Dryden
than the
party apologist
of the orthodox criticism.
K. E. ROBINSON
NE WCK.ASTLE-U. ON-TYNE
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE
1
Nor Shall
My
Sword
(London, I972),
p.
I70.
2
See
Schilling, p.
281.