Marriage A-La-Mode
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Dryden's audiences in 1671, both aristocratic and middle-class, would have been quick to respond to the themes of disputed royal succession, Francophilia and loyalty among subjects in his most successful tragicomedy. In the tragic plot, written in verse, young Leonidas has to struggle to assert his place as the rightful heir to the throne of Sicily and to the hand of the usurper's daughter. In the comic plot, written in prose, two fashionable couples (much more at home in London drawing-rooms than at the Sicilian court) play at switching partners in the 'modern' style. The introduction of this edition argues that Dryden's own ambivalence about King Charles and his entourage, on whom he came to rely more on more for patronage, manifests itself in both plots; most of all perhaps in the excessively Francophile Melantha, whose affectation cannot quite hide her endearing joie-de-vivre.
John Dryden (1631-1700) was an English poet, critic and dramatist, responsible for nearly 30 plays. He was noted both for his elegant comedies and his heroic verse dramas, which introduced the principles of French neoclassicism to England.
Dryden turned to drama following the reopening of the theatres at the Restoration; his first attempt, the comedy The Wild Gallant, was presented in 1663 at Drury Lane. The success of his heroic drama The Indian Emperor established him as a leading playwright. Following Aureng-Zebe (1675), perhaps his best heroic work, Dryden abandoned the use of rhyming couplets, producing the oft-revived blank-verse tragedy All for Love (a retelling of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra) in 1677.
Dryden was the first to write drama criticism in an informal modern style and the first to attempt a history of English drama in his essay Of Dramatick Poesie (1668). He eventually tired of playwriting and his final plays, such as the tragicomedy Love Triumphant (1694), were written to relieve financial problems after his fortunes fell with the abdication of James II.