John Dryden on the Jews

The seventeenth century English poet and playwright John Dryden is widely considered to have been one of the most prominent exponents of his art who has ever lived. (1) Dryden's very originality won him numerous enemies in his own day and ever since. (2)

What isn't widely acknowledge about Dryden was that he a bit of rebel in his own day (3) and at a time of broad philo-Semitism he criticized the jews. He wasn't alone in doing taking such an unpopular stand as he knew the works of the English polymath Sir Thomas Browne. (4)

Dryden's views on the subject of the jews have been misrepresented by the few authors who have touched on the subject. Montagu Modder in his 'The Jew in the Literature of England' is the most egregious example of this when he claims that Biblical references made my Dryden are equivalent to admiration for the jews. (5)

That Dryden made a lot of Biblical references is true enough. (6)

Yet this is complete and utter drivel since Modder makes his case using Old Testament references where the Israelites are mentioned positively. Using this logic more broadly would therefore mean that Martin Luther loved the jewish people since he frequently quoted the biblical history of Israelites as a positive historical precedent for his ideas. That Dryden didn't use biblical references to reflect his personal admiration for the jews of his day is clear from the fact that he never ever mentions the jews of his day in a positive way unlike Samuel Pepys in his diaries.

In fact as we shall we see what he does have to say is negative not positive in nature.

Modder is also intellectually dishonest when he references the second part of the poem 'Absalom and Achitophel', which we know Dryden didn't write - Nahum Tate did - as evidence of such. (7) Even then it is once again a Biblical reference made by Tate and no value judgement is given by the text other than reflecting the author's Christian faith.

The author also misrepresents Dryden's 'The Hind and the Panther' when he removes the context of Dryden's conversion to Catholicism to claim that a reference to 'captive Israel' (i.e., Catholics in a Protestant land) is actually a positive reference to the jewish people newly returned to England. (8)

In 'The Hind and the Panther' Dryden emphasizes the alien nature of the jewish people – as with the Turks and Muslims who he groups them with – to England and styles them both as dedicated foes of Christianity. That Modder fails to mention this seriously detracts from the credibility of his argument.

Modder also misrepresents Dryden's only clear reference to contemporary jews in the first part of 'Absalom and Achitophel' as being allegorical (which is untrue). The passage concerned runs as follows:

'The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murmuring race

As ever tried the extent and stretch of grace;

God's pampered people, whom, debauched with ease,

No King could govern nor no God please.'

Dryden is here referring to the jewish Diaspora as being the punishment for the conduct of the jews in rejecting Jesus as well as deifying themselves, while being frivolous and mercenary in their identification and worship of the divinity.

It isn't an anti-Semitic statement to be sure, but it is one that is strongly opposed to Judaism and which suggests that the Diaspora itself is a punishment for the behaviour of the jews. This then informs us that Dryden viewed the 'sufferings of the jews' as being just and righteous punishment for their conduct not as being unjust or disproportionate to their behaviour.

Therefore we can see that, in spite of Modder's claims, John Dryden was no friend of the jews and expressed one clear instance of his opposition to Judaism in his works.

References

(1) Nancy Klein Macquire, 1992, 'Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660-1671', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 11

(2) Martin Butler, 1984, 'Theatre and Crisis 1632-1642', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. 161-162; Ben Ross Schneider, Jr., 1971, 'The Ethos of Restoration Comedy', 1st Edition, University of Illinois Press: Chicago, p. 11; John Loftis, 1959, 'Comedy and Society from Congreve to Fielding', 1st Edition, Stanford University Press: Stanford, pp. 30-31

(3) Nancy Klein Macquire, 2000, 'Tragicomedy', p. 94 in Deborah Payne Fisk (Ed.), 2000, 'The Cambridge Companion to Restoration Theatre', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York

(4) Anne Barbeau, 1970, 'The Intellectual Design of John Dryden's Heroic Plays', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, p. 99

(5) Montagu Frank Modder, 1969, [1939], 'The Jew in the Literature of England: To the End of the 19th Century', 1st Edition, Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, pp. 42-43

(6) Barbeau, Op. Cit., pp. 187-190; 197; 203-204

(7) Modder, Op. Cit., p. 42

(8) Ibid., p. 43