An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

Dryden employs metaphors to vivid effect throughout the essay; the essay itself, as discussed above, relies on an extended metaphor of battle. He also employs a metaphor to illustrate how the moderns surpass the ancients in their playwriting: The ancients knew not to divide plays into particular acts, which is akin to “building an house without a model” (164). Later, plots are compared to cloths “weaved in English looms” (196), which both makes them unique and fit for a particular culture. Moreover, English playwrights work like chess players: “[B]y little and little he draws out his men, and makes his pawns of use to his greater persons” (206). All of these metaphors underscore the seriousness with which Dryden takes his discussion—as important as the battle raging in the background—and the superiority of the English writer.

Another figure of speech that uses comparison (one using “like” or “as”), the simile emphasizes or vivifies a concept. Dryden uses similes to illustrate some of his most significant points. For example, when Eugenius argues that wit should employ understandable language, he says that wit “is most to be admired when […] it is understood by the meanest apprehension, as the best meat is the most easily digested” (171). When Lisideius argues for the supremacy of the French theater, he points out that all characters have a purpose in their plays, “like so many servants in a well-governed family” (180). Each character assumes a role in the play, just as each servant fulfills his duty in a family; the comparison indicates appropriate roles and strict order. Later, when Neander defends the use of poesy in drama, he says that actors “perform their tricks like fortune-tellers by confederacy” (210). Again, the simile serves to illustrate the importance of unity and order.

Dryden endows certain inanimate objects with human characteristics and agency. One of the most striking examples is when Crites discusses nature, that most important quality that all writing strives to reproduce: “Those ancients have been faithful and wise observers of that nature which is so torn and ill represented in our plays; they have handed down to us a perfect resemblance of her, which we […] have rendered monstrous and disfigured” (157). To personify nature as a woman—and then to depict the violence done to her—emphasizes how seriously this concept should be taken; the assault is more horrifying when it is imagined to be committed on an actual (and vulnerable) person. More broadly, the characterization of nature as feminine—a passive object of study for the male artist, philosopher, or scientist—was common in Dryden’s era (and others).