Mac Flecknoe

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1682

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Artistic Standards

Few writers have done more to shape modern English verse and expression than John Dryden. Poets like Shakespeare, who died only 15 years before Dryden’s birth, or John Donne, who died in 1631, the year of Dryden’s birth, are worth celebrating, but usually not for their efficiency or their consistency. Influenced by the ongoing Scientific Revolution, Dryden took a scientifically rigorous approach to poetry and language, as partially outlined in his essay on “Dramatic Posey,” and he believed that they could be refined to perfection. Dryden brought an unprecedented level of polish and efficiency to English. Many of the ideas Dryden developed around this time, such as that English sentences should not end in prepositions, have since become ingrained in formal English writing.

Dryden’s hope was that a more refined language would be able to express complex ideas with more precision. However, this belief about the potential of the English language meant that Dryden had little patience for writers, such as Shadwell, who wrote simpler, less-refined verse. Dryden’s concern that this kind of simple, obscuring language would continue to gain popularity is one of the driving forces behind “Mac Flecknoe.” The aesthetic dystopia Dryden depicts is first described as “all the realms of Non-sense, absolute” (Line 6). Likewise, Shadwell’s heroic quality is that he “never deviates into sense” (Line 20). While Shadwell’s poor versification is a concern, Dryden places even greater emphasis on the nonsense that the bad poetry creates. The problem with bad poetry, Dryden seems to argue, is that it results in the devolution of discourse and the dulling (another one of Shadwell’s traits is his dullness) of the language used to communicate. Artistic standards, for Dryden, border on a moral obligation.

The Power of Creation

The artist’s moral obligations to society are not limited to ensuring sensible communication. One of Dryden’s most interesting decisions in “Mac Flecknoe” is to include characters from Shadwell’s plays among known members of the London literary scene (the particulars of this maneuver are covered in the “Literary Devices” section of this guide).

It might be easy to think that Dryden is peppering his representation of Shadwell with characters from Shadwell’s own works to suggest that Shadwell has drawn his characters from life rather than from personal creative insight. However, such conceptions of creativity are mostly absent from Western thought until the Romantic era. It would also be hypocritical of Dryden to criticize Shadwell for writing about subjects from his own life, especially considering that Dryden’s frequently writes poetry, including “Mac Flecknoe,” that engages with real people and real events.

Rather, the inclusion of Shadwell’s creations among the poem’s real-life characters signifies another aspect of the artist’s societal responsibility. Artistic representations, Dryden argues through the interlacing of fiction and real characters, have an impact on reality; the poetic impulse for “Mac Flecknoe” is the poet’s fear that London’s substandard aesthetic values might led to cultural deterioration. Dryden renders his hypothesis through depicting the effects of Shadwell’s apparently deficient creativity: In the case of Shadwell’s poorly drawn characters, their nonsense disrupts the natural order of logic and reason, such as when “Bruce and Longvil” (Line 212) are suddenly revealed to have prepared a trap that terminates Flecknoe’s speech. Dryden intentionally uses these absurd characters in an absurd situation to demonstrate the real, beguiling impact of Shadwell’s nonsense on reality.

Humor and “Humours”

Shadwell’s characters, Bruce and Longville, set a trap to capture Flecknoe because they are one-dimensional characters who can only enact the script that Shadwell has laid out for them. Their stiffness is a symptom of Shadwell’s wooden adherence to literary formulae, particularly the comedy of humors, which dictates that each character is characterized by one driving emotional quality. This mode of comedy is inherently limited by the four available humors—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile—to four different character types. Characters in Shadwell’s plays were therefore vapid and predictable, unable to act beyond their humors. This aesthetic and intellectual limitation is what Dryden targets when the poem states that Shadwell’s comic muse “sleep[s]” (Line 198). Though Flecknoe states that Shadwell is able to invent “New humours […] for each new play” (Line 188) the statement is likely intended to mock Shadwell’s poor execution of the simple generic formula.

Shadwell’s comedies, somewhat like modern-day situational comedies, relied on the characters’ humors to create humorous situations. While Dryden seems unbothered by Jonson, who pioneered the comedy of humors, he thinks the form “dwindled to a farce” in Shadwell’s hands (Line 182). Dryden also accuses Shadwell and his school of relying on “clinches” (Line 83) or puns, in their work. Dryden, evidenced by the referenced to “Panton” (Line 84), a farce character known for their puns, sees the comic technique not as wordplay but as “waging harmless war with words” (Line 84).

Dryden provides no explicit alternative to Shadwell’s mode of comedy. However, the poem’s satirical wit, and the statement that no “beams of wit […] fall” (Line 21) on Shadwell, emphasizes wit—an emphasis that may suggest that Dryden considers it a superior route to comedy.