Dryden was now, with the possible exception of the veteran Davenant, who died in 1668, the most prominent English dramatist. About 1668 he became a shareholder of the King's Company, one of the two licensed companies of players in London, on condition of furnishing them three plays a year. This gave him an annual income of L350 or L400 until the burning of the theatre in 1672, when the profits of the company were much reduced. Though he did not fulfil his part of the contract, producing little more one play a year, he apparently enjoyed the benefits of it until 1678, when he deserted his associates and gave his plays to their rivals, the Duke's Company. The great success of 'The Conquest of Granada' (1670), his most famous heroic play, probably helped to reconcile his partners to his small production.
Dryden's eminence was now universally rec ognized. In 1662 he had been chosen a member of the newly-founded Royal Society, and his early poems show his enthusiasm for science. In 1668 he was appointed to the posi tions of poet laureate, to which in 1670 was added that of historiographer royal: the two positions yielded a salary of #200. At a later date he received an additional pension of f100. But in 1671 his dramas were assailed with keen ridicule in 'The Rehearsal,' a witty farce by the Duke of Buckingham and some other writers. In 1673 he was humiliated by the success of a poetaster, Elkanah Settle, with a bombastic play called 'The Empress of Morocco.' When Dryden joined Shadwell and Crown in writing a pamphlet ridiculing this drama, Settle retorted with equally pungent satire on 'The Conquest of Granada.' By the contest the laureate had lowered his dignity and had gained nothing. Dryden's ideas were also affected by French critical works published at this time. Hence in 'Aureng-Zebe) (1675), his next heroic play, he adopted a more natural style and then abandoned the type altogether. In 'All for Love' (1677) he treated in blank verse the familiar subject of Antony and Cleo patra, and imitated with real success the style and character-drawing of Shakespeare, but the dramatic technique of Corneille and Racine. This play remains the masterpiece of Restora tion tragedy, the finest result of the French influence on the English serious drama. Of the plays that followed the most important is 'The Spanish Friar' (1680 or 1681), a tragi comedy which has great merits of style and contains Dryden's best comic writing.
In 1668 Dryden had published his most im portant prose work, 'An Essay of Dramatic Poesy.' This is designed to uphold the repu
tation of English dramatists and to defend its author's principles of composition. Here and in numerous smaller critical writings, which he continued to publish all through his life, Dryden showed himself a perfect master of his "other harmony') of prose. In critical work his style has never been surpassed for ease, grace and unassuming dignity. It is of so modern a type that, with the exception of an occasional phrase, it might seem the creation of a great artist of our own day.
Already a man of. 50, Dryden has as yet pro duced none of the poems on which his perma nent fame was to depend. In 1681 he turned from the drama, of which he was thoroughly weary, to political satire, and brought all his skill to the aid of the Tory government. After the defeat of the Whigs in their effort to ex elude the Duke of York from the succession in favor of the Duke of Monmouth, their leader Shaftesbury was accused of high treason and in November 1681 his case was brought before the London grand jury. At this time Dryden issued his 'Absalom and Achitophel.) In this finest of political satires (written, like nearly all his later work, in the heroic couplet, and containing about 1,000 lines), under the trans parent veil of a scriptural allegory, he gives portraits of the leading politicians of the time, among them his old foe, the Duke of Bucking ham. Absalom represents Monmouli; Achito phel, " For close designs and crooked councils fit, Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit," Shaftesbury himself. Though the poem had a wide sale and probably affected public sentiment to some degree, it failed of its immediate ob ject, since the grand jury refused to indict Shaftesbury. When the latter's friends had a medal struck to commemorate his liberation, Dryden published a second satire, 'The Medal' (1682), hardly inferior to its predecessor. In reply, the Whig poet Shadwell, once Dryden's friend, assailed him with scurrilous abuse in 'The Medal of John Bayes.' Dryden now turned against Shadwell his tremendous powers of invective and in 'Mac Flecknoe' secured for him an unpleasant immortality. He closed this series of great satires by some 200 lines contributed to a second part of 'Absalom and Achitophel' (1682), by Nahum Tate, in which he again attacks Shadwell and his other enemy, Settle, .under the names of Og and Doeg. At about the same time he turned to didactic poetry and in 'Religio Laici) gave a versified defense of the doctrines of the Church of England.