John Dryden "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy" Quotes – Flashcards

Every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies: the work then being pushed on by many hands, must of necessity go forward.

Emulation is the spur of wit; and sometimes envy, sometimes admiration, quickens our endeavors.

talks about the three unities in great detailss

In the mean time I must desire you to take notice, that the greatest man of the last age (Ben Jonson) was willing to give place to them in all things: he was not only a professed imitator of Horace, but a learned plagiary of all the others.

which was worn so threadbare by the pens of all of epic poets, and even by tradition itself of the talkative Greeklings... that before it came upon the stage, it was already known to all the audience:

But as they have failed both in laying of their plots and managing of them, swerving from the rules of their own art by misrepresenting Nature to us, in which they have ill satisfied one intention of a play, which was delight; so in the instructive part they have erred worse: instead of punishing vice and rewarding virtue, they have often shown a prosperous wickedness, and an unhappy piety...

the Ancients were more hearty, we more talkative: they writ love as it was then the mode to make it...

the incomparable Shakespeare...

He was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.... He is many times flat, insipid.

obsessed with the French