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 | | | Portrait: Thomas Shadwell (source) |
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| 11/19/1692 |
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Rhyme War: Shadwell vs. Dryden
On this day in 1692 the British poet and playwright Thomas Shadwell died. Shadwell wrote eighteen plays and became poet laureate but, as the Columbia History of English Literature puts it, "he enjoyed a popularity in his own day which is not easily explicable in ours." This is utter kindness compared to contemporary John Dryden, who enthroned Shadwell as "The King of Dullness." |
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Malaspina Great Books
Find a short biography of the playwright, and review of his famous rivalry with John Dryden.
"For fourteen years from the production of his first comedy to his memorable encounter with Dryden, Shadwell produced a play nearly every year. These productions display a genuine hatred of shams, and a rough but honest moral purpose. They are disfigured by indecencies, but present a vivid picture of contemporary manners. Shadwell is chiefly remembered as the unfortunate Mac Flecknoe of Dryden's satire, the 'last great prophet of tautology,' and the literary son and heir of Richard Flecknoe: -- 'The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense.'" |  | Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)
Find a brief overview of the author's life and works, including criticism and commentary from Shadwell's peers and rivals.
""Dryden's Mac Flecknoe (ca. 1678) sardonically hails Shadwell as the successor of boring Richard Flecknoe; insulted by the patronymic, Shadwell defended himself against the charge of Irishness, as if the throwaway insult had cut deepest; his defence contained in the preface to his Tenth Satyr of Juvenal (1687) where he peevishily protests against Dryden's 'giving me the Irish name Mack, when he knows I never saw Ireland till I was three and twenty years old, and was there but four months.' His father was Recorder of the City of Galway." | | The Seventeenth Century
This comprehensive review of 17th century England offers information about English culture and religion, the Stuarts and Tudors, Cromwell and the Republic, the civil wars and the Revolution of 1688, and other subjects. It includes literary resources on Restoration theatre and humor, and biographies of Shadwell, Dryden, and Henry Purcell.
"Ben Jonson is certainly the dramatist who most influences the comedies of manners of the Restoration, and notably Thomas Shadwell who shows a real reverence to his predecessor. If 'humour' as conceived by Jonson is an extravagance, a slant of the soul, a singular manner of acting or speaking, Don John, in The Libertine is prey to the exaggerated 'humour' of the debauchee...." | | Thomas Shadwell: Song Texts
Find lyrics from several plays. Includes "Dear Pretty Youth," "Halcyon days," "Love quickly is pall'd," "Nymphs and shepherds," "Prepare, prepare, new guests draw near," and "Your Awful Voice." From "Love in their little veins inspires":
"Love in their little veins inspires
their cheerful notes, their soft desires.
While heat makes buds and blossoms spring,
those pretty couples love and sing.
But winter puts out their desire,
and half the year they want love's fire." | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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