Mac Flecknoe :
MAC FLECKNOE (1682) Dryden's Mac Flecknoe, or A Saiyr upon the True – Blue Protestant Poet, T.S. (1682) is a scathing personal attack on a former friend Thomas Shadwell, who had replied to Dryden's The Medal (1682) in a poem with scurrilous abuse. Richard Flecknoe, who died in 1678, was an Irish priest and a poetaster who wrote a little good verse and 'a great deal of bad. This Richard Flecknoe was a stock subject for satire, and even Andrew Marvell wrote against him as early as 1645. Evidently, this suggested Dryden's choice of Flecknoe, as he noticed how natural was the connection between a bad poet and Flecknoe. Dryden and Shadwell of the Tory and the Whig parties respectively came to satirize each other, and Flecknoe's name was found handy because of the contemporary references to him by poets and critics. Flecknoe finds his true heir in his son (Mac) Shadwell, a loqacious Celtic bard, irrepressible and irresponsible. Mac Flecknoe is constructed in a mock-heroical epical framework with all the solemnity and grandeur in the Homeric style.
Its scheme is highly ingenious. It can be interpreted as perhaps the best expression of the various forces which served to diffuse the satiric spirit in the age of Dryden. In his ready-made frame, Dryden displays all the classical power of form. Helped by a clear and well thought out plan, the framework of his construction acquires almost an architectural quality. It has all the features of a mock-heroic fantasy. The development is masterly from the very opening in which the aged monarch of Dullness, Flecknoe, is represented in the epic manner down to the closing speech in which he enjoins his heir - the supreme dullard (Shadwell) to trust nature and not labour to be dull. The poem begins:
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