9 - Dryden’s anonymity

Summary

Dryden had good reason to know that it could be dangerous to be recognized as an author. On 18 December 1679 the Poet Laureate was attacked in Rose Alley, Covent Garden by several men and badly beaten. Accounts soon appeared in newssheets:

Last night Mr. Dryden, the famous Dramatic Poet, going from a Coffee-house in Covent-Garden, was set upon by three Persons unknown to him and so rudely by them handled, that it is said, his Life is in no small danger.

Dryden advertised for information about the identity of those responsible, promising any informer fifty pounds and, if necessary, immunity from prosecution. There is no evidence that he ever found a culprit. Four private accounts of the time record that the assault was provoked by Dryden’s supposed authorship of An Essay upon Satire, an anonymous poem recently circulated in manuscript. This had attacked a whole gallery of courtiers, including the Duchess of Portsmouth, one of Charles II’s mistresses (“False, foolish, old, ill-natur’d and ill-bred”). One of the newssheet accounts concurs, reporting that Dryden’s assailants “designed not to rob him but to execute on him some Feminine, if not Popish vengeance” (the duchess was a Roman Catholic).