John Dryden

Son of a Puritan upper middle class farming family, John Dryden was born in 1631, in the county of Northampton, and was only eleven years old at the outbreak of the Civil War that ravages England until 1651. However he is first educated at Westminster School and then, from 1650, at Trinity College, Cambridge. From the end of his studies until the period of the Restoration of 1660, he is especially noticed as a poet, notably with his funeral eulogy dedicated to Cromwell. He greets with joy the return of Charles II with a poem of 300 verses entitled Astraea Redus and he reiterates this for the Coronation in 1661; everything indicates that his deep convictions are somewhat royalist and that he is a poet of talent. With the reopening of the theatres by Charles II, he turns to dramatic art and writes his first play, a farce, in 1663. It is a failure, but he is not dispirited and in 1664 collaborates with Robert Howards in writing the heroic tragedy, The Indian Queen. The success of this play prompts him to become more involved in this new theatrical genre.
He thus writes his first tragicomedy Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen in 1667 that is particularly pleasing to the King. The same year, he begins to adapt L'Étourdi by Molière that becomes Sir Martin Marall. In 1668, he writes an essay that becomes a classic on the defence of English dramatic art, and for about ten years he writes for the troupe of Thomas Killigrew at the Drury Lane Theatre, one of the two official performance venues in London. He writes a play every year, trying several genres, with notable successes such as his comedy of manners, Mariage-à-la-mode or his tragedy All for Love. In the 1680's, a period of troubled times during which the terms whig and tory emerge, he vigorously serves the interests of the Court with a set of the political satires in which he excels. Stimulated by politics, his satirical mind then applies stern resentment to criticise Thomas Shadwell with whom he is already conducting a long running quarrel. After the ascension to the throne of James II in 1685, he converts to Catholicism. The Revolution of 1688 destroys all his political ambitions and he loses his rank of “Poet Laureate” to the profit of… Shadwell! He dedicates his last years to writing and dies in 1700. He is considered as one of the major English poets in the 17th century and a productive dramatist with about thirty plays to his credit.