The Context of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel

Abstract

With very few exceptions, Dryden's Absalcnn and Achitophel maintains a narrative integrity that few political allegories ever reach; its fable (in our terms, its vehicle) achieves a kind of autonomy which renders it complete and satisfying in itself and perfectly transparent as a metaphor for other things. These very qualities hide the real achievement of the fable of Abbsalum and Achitophel by cloaking it with an inevitability which it by no means possesses. We have been sufficiently reminded of the frequency with which seventeenth-century political writers compared Charles to David to accept without demur the appropriateness of the biblical tale to the English situation. If we remember piously that Dryden has really reversed the roles of the biblical Absalom and Achitophel, the fact does little to alter our acceptance of Dryden's fable as a donnee rather than an apercu, a fiction. Yet the imaginative reordering of history, both Jewish and English, constitutes the excellence of Dryden's poem, and the 'fabulous' (in the root sense) nature of Dryden's narrative makes it so inevitable a vehicle of his meaning. This is the aspect of Absalom and Achitophel I would like to explore in this paper. In general terms, the most significant change Dryden has made in the biblical narrative lies in his radical transformation of its temporal and conceptual contexts, both of which he wrenches into a rich ambiguity. To clarify this, we shall have to examine the much-worked-over opening lines of the poem: