Epilogue

Abstract

There is some evidence to suggest that the confident command of rhetoric and multiple voices which Dryden’s writing displayed did not come easily to him in daily social life. Shadwell’s The Medal of John Bayes (quoted in chapter 5) asserts that Dryden’s social embarrassment led him to produce crude obscenity which he mistook for wit. Whether true or not, such an appropriation of Dryden’s voice and representation of his intimate discourse with friends is an instance of the continual traducing and translation which Dryden suffered at the hands of his enemies. But there are other interpretations of Dryden’s convivial manner; one W.G. recalled:

Posterity is absolutely mistaken as to that great man; tho’ forced to be a satirist, he was the mildest creature breathing, and the readiest to help the young and deserving … He was in company the modestest man that ever convers’d … Shadwell in conversation was a brute.¹