2 - Onely victory in him: the imperial Dryden

Summary

Dryden remarked of Ben Jonson that “He invades Authours like a Monarch, and what would be theft in other Poets, is onely victory in him.” The comment distinguishes between simple plagiarism (“theft”) and another kind of appropriation that is a kind of “victory.” As practiced by Dryden upon such figures as Thomas Corneille, Quinault, Madeleine de Scudéry, and Molière, this aggressively public mode of poetic assimilation is the literary equivalent of invading weaker foreign realms and diverting their resources back to the conquering capital. Dryden vindicates this imperial practice with arguments similar to his justifications for national conquest. Although often charged with literary theft, Dryden regards literary imperialism – “victory” – differently from plagiarism; when in the imperial mode, Dryden publicly asserts his right to seize other poets' work and incorporate it into his own. Appropriating others' work without comment is plagiarism; glorying in such depredations is peculiar to the imperial poet.

Dryden's transactions with those he considers poetic equals and inferiors approximate the complicated dealings of an imperial power with its vassal states, ranging from brute conquest to the more subtle strategies of denigration and replacement of the invaded culture. His treatment of those he does not fear is often Almanzor-like: arrogant, splendid, glorious – and ultimately quite far from the silent and surreptitious manipulations of the plagiarizing sneak-thief his critics wished to make him. As I shall show by examining how Dryden refashioned Thomas Corneille's Le Feint Astrologue (1650) into his own Evening's Love, or The Mock Astrologer (1668), plagiarism, the contemporary charge most leveled against Dryden with regard to his appropriation of dramatic plots, is inadequate to describe his manner of taking from other poets.