In the last decade of Dryden's life, he brought four new works before the theatre-going public: a dramatic opera, a tragedy, a tragicomedy, and a number of appendages to an old comedy by John Fletcher, which was revived partly so that Dryden might have the author's third-night profits. He died that night, but his family received the money. The dramatic opera, King Arthur, benefited from a fine score by Henry Purcell and has remained in the operatic repertoire to this day. Cleomenes, the tragedy, was banned until Dryden was able to convince Queen Mary that it did not reflect any seditious sympathy with the exiled James II, after which it was successful. The fate of Love Triumphant, the tragicomedy, was different; possibly because of a growing swell of moral reform, the play was universally damned, even though its themes of incest and miscellaneous fornication had never brought rejection to Dryden in the past. The Secular Masque, Dryden's principal contribution to The Pilgrim by Fletcher, had undistinguished music, but its lively verse and broad review of the previous century kept the piece on the stage for the next fifty years, and in anthologies up to the present.
The presentation of the writings in this volume, like that of the entire twenty-volume series, is a tribute not only to Dryden but also to the editors who have guided it through five decades.
The notice there says: “Perform'd at Stationers-Hall, on MONDAY, November 22. 1697.” Alexander's Feast was subsequently performed on 9 December at Thomas Hickford's dancing school in Panton Street, and on 16 December in York Buildings ...
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations.
The book explores the many ways in which the work of Dr. Pettigrew has fostered new developments in the field, with each chapter presenting both Dr. Pettigrew's landmark work as well as the most recent and relevant advances.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact.
The three plays in this volume, composed between 1672 or 1673 and 1675, demonstrate Dryden's versatility and inventiveness as a dramatist.
Selected Poetry and Prose
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact.
Examines Shakespeare's plays in terms of Elizabethan society, analyzes exorcism, cross-dressing, colonial propaganda, and the law, and discusses Shakespeare's cultural influences
The Companion is a major contribution to the literary evaluation of Pound's great, but often bewildering and abstruse work, The Cantos.