Dryden's Dilemma, or, Racine Refashioned: The Problem of the English Dramatic Couplet

Abstract

The history of the rhyming pentameter couplet as a medium for serious drama in English is not a lengthy one.1 Its beginnings are usually traced to Davenant's heroic opera of I656, The Siege of Rhodes, Part I, which uses a variety of metres but which may originally have been written as a spoken play in couplets, and altered because of Puritan opposition.2 Such disguises, however, were soon rendered unnecessary by the re-opening of the theatres at the Restoration, and it was Charles himself who, impressed by the French classical plays he had attended during his exile, recommended the use of the dramatic couplet to the most influential of its early exponents, Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery. In compliance with the king's suggestion, Boyle wrote The General in 1661, and gave the rhymed heroic play its full form.3 Among those who were impressed by Boyle's work was Dryden, who began his career as a writer of rhymed heroic drama by collaborating with his brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard on The Indian Queen, performed in 1663, and who initiated the theoretical debate about dramatic rhyme in the dedication (to Boyle) of The Rival Ladies in I664.4 With Dryden as its leading practitioner and defender, rhymed tragedy was soon dominating the serious theatre.5 From his somewhat tentative defence of rhyme in I664, including the