Dryden and History: A Problem in Allegorical Reading

The attempt to understand the relation between history and literature in the seventeenth century encounters the problem of allegory immediately. The more closely we read certain plays and non-dramatic poems, the more they seem to be offering covert advice on contemporary politics, and the greater is the temptation to translate their figures (in both senses) into topical allusions. The process is invited by Absalom and Achitophel or The Duke of Guise, but what are we to make of the stag-hunt in Cooper's Hill, or Dryden's epistle to Dr. Charleton, or the political overtones of heroic tragedy? I shall refer mainly to works by Dryden, but one section of my argument will be illustrated from Denham, Sir Robert Howard, and Thomas Otway. I have already revealed that I am using the word " allegory," in a sense that is fast becoming antiquated, to mean the hiding of a specific reference, either conceptual or topical, behind a metaphoric veil. By definition, allegorical poems then possess " levels " of significance, translatable " meaning," and neat analogical equations. Spenserian criticism of the past five years, however, has mounted a concerted attack on the theory implied by such paraphrase, without altogether avoiding paraphrase in practice. The Faerie Queene has been cut loose from its moorings to a rigid conceptual framework outside the text, and has been explored either as a poem of rhetorical process which develops complex psychological reactions in the reader, or as a world of its own that generates subtle meanings within itself. It is becoming harder to distinguish allegory from other kinds of poetic discourse, although Rosemond Tuve has concluded that true allegory is always fundamentally religious and concerned with matters of right belief. The crest of the latest critical wave has not yet hit us, and the next five years are likely to see the rewriting of Northrop Frye's dictum that " all commentary is allegorical interpretation " so as to read " commentary turns all works into