Writing It Real member David D. Horowitz shares the impact on him of a 1681 poem by John Dryden. David operates an active poetry press, Rose Alley Press and writes poetry and essays. Visit his website to learn more about Rose Alley’s book list and for a list of events he sponsors and participates in.

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 ON JOHN DRYDEN’S “ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL”

by David D. Horowitz

I have favorite love poems, park poems, cat poems, dog poems, baseball poems, erotic poems, sunset poems, and urban mean-street poems, but I don’t have one overall favorite poem. For the past few years, though, I’ve been absorbed in reading and composing epigrammatical political poems—in the mode of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century satire. My hostility to former President Trump’s duplicity and bullying contributes mightily to this current taste.

I recommend, then, poetry lovers explore or revisit John Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel.” Written and published in 1681, Dryden’s Biblical analog serves as a commentary on the politics of his time—inflamed by accusations leveled by cleric Titus Oates, who falsely claimed the Pope and Catholic Church were conspiring to murder England’s King Charles II. Hailed by many as a hero, Oates (“Corah” in the poem) successfully parlayed his false conspiracy into much wealth, prestige, and power. Sound familiar? Dryden’s other target was the first Earl of Shaftesbury (“Achitophel”), whom he regarded as a demagogue trying to manipulate James, the Duke of Monmouth (“Absalom”), into rebelling against his father, Charles II (“King David”).

Note that John Dryden was born into a politically active family and served as England’s first Poet Laureate. He was the Laureate while he wrote this great poem and during the worst turmoil over Oates’ accusations and potential successors to Charles II. England had just spent two decades recovering from a civil war, but tensions still ran high, especially between the Anglican majority and the Catholic minority and between monarchists and parliamentarians. Violence and public hangings were common. Indeed, Dryden was nearly beaten to death by three toughs in London’s Rose Alley, near Covent Garden, on December 18, 1679. No one knows for sure who set the toughs to their work, but Dryden was undeterred and published the poem in November 1681.

The historical background to the poem is fascinating and repays study. That said, let me simply offer several passages from it to show its depth and relevance to us today:

“In friendship false, implacable in hate,

Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.”

“So easy still it proves in factious times,

With public zeal to cancel private crimes.”

“But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand,

And Fortune’s ice prefers to Virtue’s land.”

“A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleas’d with the danger, when the storms went high,

He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.”

“The wish’d occasion of the Plot he takes;

Some circumstances finds, but more he makes.

By buzzing emissaries fills the ears

Of list’ning crowds with jealousies and fears…”

Lines like these resonate with an acute awareness of how easily crowds can be manipulated into resentment and violence by demagogues. Now, not everything in the poem is as accessible as the above lines, and Dryden’s characterological descriptions occasionally veer into stereotype. That said, “Absolom and Achitophel” feels remarkably contemporary for a 341-year-old poem. If you read it in a college survey course, and felt it rather stiff and irrelevant, I recommend you refamiliarize yourself with it. “Absolom and Achitophel” is great, and I know of no classic poem more relevant to current political tensions in the United States.