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| - Essay of Dramatic Poesie is a work by John Dryden, England's first Poet Laureate, in which Dryden attempts to justify drama as a legitimate form of "poetry" comparable to the epic, as well as defend English drama against that of the ancients and the French. The Essay was probably written during the plague year of 1666, and first published in 1668. In presenting his argument, Dryden takes up the subject that Philip Sidney had set forth in his Defence of Poesie in 1580. The treatise is a dialogue among four speakers: Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander. The four speakers are Sir Robert Howard [Crites], Charles Sackville (then Lord Buckhurst) [Eugenius], Sir Charles Sedley [Lisedeius], and Dryden himself (neander means "new man" and implies that Dryden, as a respected member of the gentry class, is entitled to join in this dialogue on an equal footing with the three older men who are his social superiors). On the day that the English fleet encounters the Dutch at sea near the mouth of the Thames, the four friends take a barge downriver towards the noise from the battle. Rightly concluding, as the noise subsides, that the English have triumphed, they order the bargeman to row them back upriver as they begin a dialogue on the advances made by modern civilization. They agree to measure progress by comparing ancient arts with modern, focusing specifically on the art of drama (or "dramatic poesy"). The four men debate a series of three topics: (1) the relative merit of classical drama (upheld by Crites) vs. modern drama (championed by Eugenius); (2) whether French drama, as Lisideius maintains, is better than English drama (supported by Neander, who famously calls Shakespeare "the greatest soul, ancient or modern"); and (3) whether plays in rhyme are an improvement upon blank verse drama—a proposition that Neander, despite having defended the Elizabethans, now advances against the sceptical Crites (who also switches from his original position and defends the blank verse tradition of Elizabethan drama). Invoking the so-called unities from Aristotle's Poetics (as interpreted by Italian and refined by French scholars over the last century), the four speakers discuss what makes a play "a just and lively imitation" of human nature in action. This definition of a play, supplied by Lisideius/Sedley (whose rhymed plays had dazzled the court and were a model for the new drama), gives the debaters a versatile and richly ambiguous touchstone. To Crites' argument that the plots of classical drama are more "just," Eugenius can retort that modern plots are more "lively" thanks to their variety. Lisideius shows that the French plots carefully preserve Aristotle's unities of action, place, and time; Neander replies that English dramatists such as Ben Jonson also kept the unities when they wanted to, but that they preferred to develop character and motive. Even Neander's final argument with Crites over whether rhyme is suitable in drama depends on Aristotle's Poetics: Neander says that Aristotle demands a verbally artful ("lively") imitation of nature, while Crites thinks that dramatic imitation ceases to be "just" when it departs from ordinary speech—i.e. prose or blank verse. A year later, the two brothers-in-law quarrelled publicly over this third topic. See Dryden's "Defence of An Essay of Dramatic Poesy" (1669), where Dryden tries to persuade the rather literal-minded Howard that audiences expect a play to be an imitation of nature, not a surrogate for nature itself. (en)
- Essay of Dramatic Poesy (en español, Ensayo sobre Poesía Dramática) por John Dryden fue publicado en 1668. Se escribió probablemente durante el año de la plaga de 1666. Dryden retoma el tema que Philip Sidney había adelantado en su Defence of Poesie (Defensa de la poesía) (1580) e intenta justificar el teatro como una forma de arte legítima. El tratado es un diálogo entre cuatro personas: Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, y Neander. Los cuatro representan al Conde de Dorset, Sir Robert Howard, Sir Charles Sedley, y el propio Dryden. El día en que las flotas inglesa y holandesa comenzaron a luchar en la desembocadura del Támesis, los cuatro amigos embarcan en un bote para ver la batalla. Conforme remite la batalla, los cuatro hombres hablan del teatro en francés y en inglés. En particular, están preocupados por la obsesión francesa neoclásica con obedecer las reglas clásicas de las tres unidades, prescritas por la Poética de Aristóteles, interpretadas por la escuela renacentista italiana de crítica. También discuten sobre la utilidad y la admisión de la rima en el teatro. El argumento general es que las unidades deben obedecerse siempre que sea posible, pero descartarse cuando sea necesario. Los hablantes comparan a Ben Jonson, quien escribió obras "regulares" que obedecían todas las reglas clásicas, con William Shakespeare, que se salta las reglas y viola el decoro con gran abandono. Dryden se inclina por Shakespeare. En términos de teoría literaria, Dryden intentaba justificar en especial el teatro, como opuesto a la poesía épica o la tragedia. Como con sus prefacios, Dryden busca establecer un terreno en el que la escena inglesa, que había abandonado las estrictas divisiones de la teoría clásica, pudiera quedar legitimado. (es)
- Essay of Dramatic Poesy (em português: Ensaio sobre Poesia Dramática) por John Dryden foi publicado em 1668. Escreveu-se provavelmente durante o ano da praga de 1666. Dryden retoma o tema que Philip Sidney tinha adiantado em seu Defence of Poesie (Defesa da poesia) (1580) e tenta justificar o teatro como uma forma de arte legítima. (pt)
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