Selected Poems

Description

A new and comprehensive selection of Dryden’s poetry, revealing him as a master of theatricality, ventriloquism, and unmistakable originality.

In his lifetime, John Dryden gained fame at the cost first of gossip and scandal and then of suspicion and scorn. He wrote to order, currying favor with the Crown and repeatedly savaging its enemies. Yet the finest works of his political and spiritual imagination- “Absalom and Achitophel” and “The Hind and the Panther”-develop the themes of envy, ambition, and misdeed in ways that far transcend their era. During the Glorious Revolution, Dryden fell from patronage and favor: he then transformed himself into perhaps the greatest of English translators, a superb interpreter of Virgil and Horace, Juvenal and Persius, Boccaccio and Chaucer. This edition contains a preface and annotations accompanying each poem, modernized spelling and punctuation, and an informative introduction and chronology.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.John Dryden: Selected PoemsList of Illustrations
Introduction
Dryden’s Career
The Text
Bibliography and Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Chronology

1749 Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings

1659 Heroic Stanzas

1660 Astræa Redux

1661 To His Sacred Majesty

1662 To Dr. Charleton

1667 Annus Mirabilis

1671 Prologues, Epilogues and Songs from The Conquest of Granada

1676 Macflecknoe

1677 Prologue and Epilogue to All For Love

1680 The Prologue at Oxford, 1680

1681 The Epilogue Spoken to the King at Oxford
Absalom and Achitophel

1682 Prologue and Epilogue to The Unhappy Favourite
The Medal
Prologues to the Duke and Duchess of York
Religio Laici

1684 To the Earl of Roscommon
To the Memory of Mr. Oldham

1685 Translations from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
From the Third Book: Against the Fear of Death
From the Fourth Book: Concerning the Nature of Love
Translations from Horace
Book 1, Ode 3
Book 1, Ode 9
Book 3, Ode 29
To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew

1687 The Hind and the Panther
A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, 1687

1688 Lines on Milton

1692 Eleonora
From The Satires of Juvenal and Persius

The First Satire of Juvenal
The Third Satire of Juvenal
The First Satire of Persius

1694 To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve
To Sir Godfrey Kneller

1696 An Ode, On the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell

1697 From The Works of Virgil

From Æneis 1: The Tempest
From Æneis 5: The Funeral Sports
From Æneis 12: The Combat of Turnus and Æneas
From Georgics 2: The Country
From Georgics 3: The Battle of the Bulls
From Georgics 3: The Plague
From Georgics 4: The Labour of the Bees
Alexander’s Feast

1698 Lines of Tonson

1700 From Fables Ancient and Modern

Preface
To the Duchess of Ormonde
To My Hounoured Kinsman, John Driden
Baucis and Philemon, out of the Eighth Book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
The First Book of Homer’s Ilias
The Cock and the Fox; or, The Tale of the Nun’s Priest, from Chaucer
The Wife of Bath Her Tale
The Character of a Good Person, Imitated from Chaucer and Enlarged
Cymon and Iphigenia, from Boccace
The Secular Masque

Notes

Most of John Dryden‘s (1631-1700) early work was for the theatre. He wrote romantic comedies, adaptations and tragi-comedies including ‘Marriage à-la-Mode’. He was Poet Laureate from 1668 to 1688 during which time he wrote his most celebrated satires and criticism. In his later years, he turned to translation.

Steven N. Zwicker & David Bywaters have edited this volume. Zwicker teaches English at Washington University and is author of ‘The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650-1740’.US