10 - Dryden and the modes of Restoration sociability

Summary

Dryden's literary life would have been completely different had it not been for the coffee houses of Restoration London. Indeed, coffee houses came to occupy a pivotal position in a series of overlapping literary spheres that swept from the elite culture of the Restoration court to the popular life of the town. Coffee houses were a new type of urban space that first appeared in Oxford in 1650 and then in London in 1652. Dryden early acknowledged as much when he addressed the audience “of Court, of Coffee-houses, or Town” in the “Epilogue” to The Indian Emperor (1667) (Works ix: 112), and Pepys records Dryden's presence in Will's Coffee House even earlier, in 1664:

In Covent-garden tonight, going to fetch home my wife, I stopped at the great Coffee-house there, where I never was before - where Draydon the poet (I knew at Cambridge) and all the wits of the town, and Harris the player and Mr. Hoole of our college; and had I had time then, or could at other times, it will be good coming thither, for there I perceive is very witty and pleasant discourse. But I could not tarry and it was late; they were all ready to go away.