John Dryden

The Works of John Dryden

After John Donne and John Milton, John Dryden was the greatest English poet of the 17th century. After William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, he was the greatest playwright. And he has no peer as a writer of prose, especially literary criticism, and as a translator. Other figures, such as George Herbert, may figure more prominently in anthologies and literary histories, but Dryden's sustained output in both poetry and drama ranks him higher. After Shakespeare, he wrote the greatest heroic play of the century. As a writer of prose he developed a lucid professional style, relying on patterns and rhythms of everyday speech. As a critic he developed a combination of methods-historical, analytical, evaluative, dialogic-that helped grow the neoclassical theory of literary criticism. As a translator he developed an easy manner of what he called paraphrase that produced brilliant versions of Homer, Lucretius, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, Persius, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, and above all Virgil. His translation of The Aeneid remains the best ever produced in English.