Marriage A La Mode: “Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare. ”

By John Dryden

John Dryden was born on the 19th August 1631 in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire. Over the course of his career he made an immense contribution to literary life, so much so that the Restoration Age is also known as the Age Of Dryden. He was educated at Westminster and Trinity College Cambridge. In 1654 he graduated from Trinity but a short while later his Father died leaving him a little land and with it an income but unfortunately not enough to live on. He returned to London during the Protectorate and at Cromwell’s funeral on November 23rd 1658 he walked in a procession with the Puritan Poets. That same year he published his first major poem, Heroique Stanzas (1658), a restrained eulogy on Cromwell's death. In 1660 he celebrated the Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux, an authentic royalist panegyric. In this work the interregnum is a time of anarchy, and Charles is seen as the restorer of peace and order. With this Dryden established himself as the leading poet of the day and with it came his allegiance to the new government. On December 1st 1663 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard who was to bear him three sons. He also began to write plays now that theatres had re-opened after the Puritan ban. In 1665 the Great Plague of London ensured that all London theatres were closed again. Dryden retreated to Wiltshire. The next year the Great Fire of London swept through London. In 1667, he published Annus Mirabilis, a lengthy historical poem which described the events of 1666; the English defeat of the Dutch naval fleet and the Great Fire of London. It was a modern epic in pentameter quatrains that established him as the preeminent poet of his generation. By 1668 he was the Poet Laureate and had also contracted to write 3 plays a year for the King’s Company. This was for many years to now become the main source of his income and of course his Restoration Comedies are almost without peer. Dryden’s career remains a glorious example of English culture and for many he is as revered as Shakespeare. Dryden died on 12 May 1700, and was initially buried in St. Anne's cemetery in Soho, before being exhumed and reburied in Westminster Abbey ten days later

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stage Door
• Release date: Jun 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783944972

John Dryden

John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made England's first Poet Laureate in 1668.  Vinton A. Dearing, editor of the California Dryden edition, is Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Marriage A-La-Mode: A Comedy by John Dryden

Quicquid sum ego, quamvis

Infra Lucili censum ingeniumque, tamen me

Cum magnis vixisse, invita fatebitur usque

Invidia, et fragili quærens illidere dentem,

Offendet solido.

HORAT. SERM.

John Dryden was born on the 19th August 1631 in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire.  Over the course of his career he made an immense contribution to literary life, so much so that the Restoration Age is also known as the Age Of Dryden.

He was educated at Westminster and Trinity College Cambridge. In 1654 he graduated from Trinity but a short while later his Father died leaving him a little land and with it an income but unfortunately not enough to live on.

He returned to London during the Protectorate and at Cromwell’s funeral on November 23rd 1658 he walked in a procession with the Puritan Poets.

That same year he published his first major poem, Heroique Stanzas (1658), a restrained eulogy on Cromwell's death. In 1660 he celebrated the Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux, an authentic royalist panegyric. In this work the interregnum is a time of anarchy, and Charles is seen as the restorer of peace and order.

With this Dryden established himself as the leading poet of the day and with it came his allegiance to the new government.

On December 1st 1663 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard who was to bear him three sons.

He also began to write plays now that theatres had re-opened after the Puritan ban.

In 1665 the Great Plague of London ensured that all London theatres were closed again.  Dryden retreated to Wiltshire.  The next year the Great Fire of London swept through London. 

In 1667, he published Annus Mirabilis, a lengthy historical poem which described the events of 1666; the English defeat of the Dutch naval fleet and the Great Fire of London. It was a modern epic in pentameter quatrains that established him as the preeminent poet of his generation.

By 1668 he was the Poet Laureate and had also contracted to write 3 plays a year for the King’s Company.  This was for many years to now become the main source of his income and of course his Restoration Comedies are almost without peer. 

Dryden’s career remains a glorious example of English culture and for many he is as revered as Shakespeare.

Dryden died on 12 May 1700, and was initially buried in St. Anne's cemetery in Soho, before being exhumed and reburied in Westminster Abbey ten days later.

Index Of Contents

INTRODUCTION

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF ROCHESTER.

PROLOGUE.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

SCENE, Sicily.

ACT I. SCENE I. Walks near the Court.

ACT II. SCENE I.

ACT III. SCENE I.

SCENE II.

ACT IV. SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

SCENE IV.

SCENE V.

ACT V. SCENE I.

John Dryden – A Short Biography

John Dryden – A Concise Bibliography

INTROUCTION - MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE

Marriage a-la-mode was one of Dryden's most successful comedies. A venerable praiser of the past time, in a curious letter printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1745, gives us this account of its first representation. This comedy, acted by his Majesty's servants at the Theatre-Royal, made its first appearance with extraordinary lustre. Divesting myself of the old man, I solemnly declare, that you have seen no such acting, no, not in any degree since. The players were then, 1673, on a court establishment, seventeen men, and eight women. Gent. Mag. Vol. xv. p. 99. From a copy of verses, to which this letter is annexed, we learn the excellence of the various performers by whom the piece was first presented. They are addressed to a young actress.

Henceforth, in livelier characters excel,

Though 'tis great merit to act folly well;

Take, take from Dryden's hand Melantha's part,

The gaudy effort of luxuriant art,

In all imagination's glitter drest;

What from her lips fantastic Montfort caught,

And almost moved the thing the poet thought.

These scenes, the glory of a comic age,

(It decency could blanch each sullied page)

Peruse, admire, and give unto the stage;

Or thou, or beauteous Woffington, display

What Dryden's self, with pleasure, might survey.

Even he, before whose visionary eyes,

Melantha, robed in ever-varying dies,

Gay fancy's work, appears, actor renowned.

Like Roscius, with theatric laurels crowned,

Cibber will smile applause, and think again

Of Harte, and Mohun, and all the female train,

Coxe, Marshal, Dryden's Reeve, Bet Slade, and Charles's reign.

Mrs Monfort, who, by her second marriage, became Mrs Verbruggen, was the first who appeared in the highly popular part of Melantha, and the action and character appear to have been held incomparable by that unquestionable judge of the humour of a coquette, or coxcomb, the illustrious Colley Cibber. Melantha says Cibber, "is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room; and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be

crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and body, are in a continual hurry to be something more than is necessary or commendable. And, though I doubt it will be a vain labour to offer you a just likeness of Mrs Monfort's action, yet the fantastic expression is still so strong in my memory, that I cannot help saying something, though fantastically, about it. The first ridiculous airs, that break from her, are upon a gallant never seen before, who delivers her a letter from her father, recommending him to her good graces as an honourable lover. Here, now, one would think she might naturally shew a little of the sex's decent reserve, though never so slightly covered. No, sir, not a tittle of it: Modesty is a poor-souled country gentlewoman; she is too much a court lady to be under so vulgar a confusion. She reads the letter, therefore, with a careless dropping lip, and an erected brow, humming it hastily over, as if she were impatient to outgo her father's commands, by making a complete conquest of him at once; and, that the letter might not embarrass the attack, crack! she crumbles it at once into her palm, and pours down upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion; down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as it she were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions; then launches into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and, to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit, that she will not give her lover leave to praise it. Silent assenting bows, and vain endeavours to speak, are all the share of the conversation he is admitted to, which, at last, he is removed from by her engagement to half a score of visits, which she swims from him to make, with a promise to return in a twinkling." Cibber's Apology, p. 99.

By this lively sketch, some judgment may be formed of the effect produced by the character of Melantha, when ably represented; but, to say the truth, we could hardly have drawn the same deduction from a simple perusal of the piece. Of the French phrases, which the affected lady throws into her conversation, some have been since naturalized, as good graces, minuet, chagrin, grimace, ridicule, and others. Little can be said of the tragic part of the drama. The sudden turn of fortune in the conclusion is ridiculed in The Rehearsal.

The researches of Mr Malone have ascertained that Marriage A-la-Mode was first acted in 1673, in an old theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, occupied by the King's company, after that in Drury-Lane had been burned, and during its re-building. The play was printed in the same year.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF ROCHESTER [1].

MY LORD,

I humbly dedicate to your Lordship that poem, of which you were pleased to appear an early patron, before it was acted on the stage. I may yet go farther, with your permission, and say, that it received

amendment from your noble hands ere it was fit to be presented. You may please likewise to remember, with how much favour to the author, and indulgence to the play, you commended it to the view of his Majesty, then at Windsor, and, by his approbation of it in writing, made way for its kind reception on the theatre. In this dedication, therefore, I may seem to imitate a custom of the ancients, who offered to their gods the firstlings of the flock, (which, I think, they called Ver sacrum) because they helped them to increase. I am sure, if there be any thing in this play, wherein I have raised myself beyond the ordinary lowness of my comedies, I ought wholly to acknowledge it to the favour of being admitted into your lordship's conversation. And not only I, who pretend not to this way, but the best comic writers of our age, will join with me to acknowledge, that they have copied the gallantries of courts, the delicacy of expression, and the decencies of behaviour, from your lordship, with more success, than if they had taken their models from the court of France. But this, my lord, will be no wonder to the world, which knows the excellency of your natural parts, and those you have acquired in a noble education. That which, with more reason, I admire, is that being so absolute a courtier, you have not forgot either the ties of friendship, or the practice of generosity. In my little experience of a court, (which, I confess, I desire not to improve) I have found in it much of interest, and more of detraction: Few men there have that assurance of a friend, as not to be made ridiculous by him when they are absent. There are a middling sort of courtiers, who become happy by their want of wit; but they supply that want by an excess of malice to those who have it. And there is no such persecution as that of fools: They can never be considerable enough to be talked of

themselves; so that they are safe only in their obscurity, and grow mischievous to witty men, by the great diligence of their envy, and by being always present to represent and aggravate their faults. In the mean time, they are forced, when they endeavour to be pleasant, to live on the offals of their wit whom they decry; and either to quote it, (which they do unwillingly) or to pass it upon others for their own. These are the men who make it their business to chace wit from the knowledge of princes, lest it should disgrace their ignorance. And this kind of malice your lordship has not so much avoided, as surmounted. But if by the excellent temper of a royal master, always more ready to hear good than ill; if by his inclination to love you; if by your own merit and address; if by the charms of your conversation, the grace of your behaviour, your