Legends No Histories: The Case of Absalom and Achitophel

Abstract

Legends No Histories: The Case of Absalom and Achitophel PHILLIP HARTH The title of this paper, borrowed from one of Dryden’s more irascible contemporaries, Henry Stubbe, is somewhat ambiguous. “Legends No His­ tories” might easily serve for a Whig interpretation of Absalom and Achito­ phel itself, suggesting that Dryden’s account of the Exclusion Crisis in his poem was a pack of lies. My title refers, however, not to legends in the poem, but to legends about the poem which have passed for history. More particu­ larly, I am going to discuss the most popular and persistent of all legends about that poem, which concerns its occasion and purpose. Most editions and studies of Dryden’s poem today agree that the occasion of Absalom and Achitophel was the arrest of the first Earl of Shaftesbury, Dryden’s “Achitophel,” in July of 1681, just as the occasion of The Medal was the same statesman’s release from the Tower the following November. They also agree that Dryden’s purpose in writing his poem and in publishing it when he did is directly related to the attempt to indict Shaftesbury on charges of high treason four days before he was set free. “It seems clear,” writes a recent editor of Absalom and Achitophel, “that Dryden’s poem was intended and timed to serve as propaganda to prejudice Shaftesbury’s case.”1 A random sampling of other modern explanations of Dryden’s purpose pro­ duces such repetitive phrases as “the design of prejudicing Shaftesbury’s 13 14 / PHILLIP HAR TH trial,” “timed to prejudice the trial,” “no doubt timed to influence Shaftes­ bury’s trial,” “hoping to influence the outcome of Shaftesbury’s trial,” and calculated “for exciting popular feeling against Shaftesbury and thereby securing his indictment.”2 The nearly identical language in which these syn­ optic accounts are couched suggests the extent to which literary historians and critics are endlessly repeating a litany each has learned from his imme­ diate predecessor. “Of an opinion which is no longer doubted,” Johnson observed in his Life of Dryden, “the evidence ceases to be examined.” That has certainly been true of the case before us, for none of the half-dozen editors and commentators I have been quoting has seen fit to consider the reasons behind an opinion regarded as axiomatic. But if we examine the grounds for this popular belief and retrace the steps by which it acquired the status of a truism, we shall find ourselves involved in an interesting study of literary mythogenesis. Absalom and Achitophel was published on or about November 17, 1681, the date on Narcissus Luttrell’s copy of the poem, a gift from his friend Jacob Tonson. One week later, on November 24, the case against Shaftesbury was presented to a grand jury at the Old Bailey. So much is fact; the rest is speculation: that the close proximity of these two events is not simply a coincidence, but reflects Dryden’s deliberate design. But what was that de­ sign? To the Whigs who dashed off angry rejoinders to Absalom and Achitophel, the fact that the poem was published on the eve of Shaftesbury’s inquest was certain proof that Dryden was trying to inflame public opinion against the government’s intended victim. Less than a month after the poem’s appearance, the Whig author of Poetical Reflections on a Late Poem Entituled Absalom and Achitophel, published on December 14, was indignantly asking: “As to my Lord Shaftsbury (in his collusive Achitophel), what does he [ Dryden] other than exceed Malice it self? or that the more prudent deserts of that Peer were to be so impeach’d before hand by his impious Poem, as that he might be granted more emphatically condign of the Hangman’s Ax; And which his Muse does in effect take upon her to hasten.”3 But this was not to say with modern critics that Dryden was “hoping to influence the outcome of Shaftesbury’s trial.” Quite the contrary, in fact. According to Dryden’s Whig enemies, the Tory poet must have considered the Whig statesman’s approach­ ing indictment so certain that he could slander him without fear of reprisal. “And...