20 pages • 40 minutes read

Absalom and Achitophel

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1681

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Historical Context

The biblical subject matter of “Absalom and Achitophel” is an allegory for the events of 1679-1681, which became known as the Exclusion Crisis. King Charles II’s brother James, the Duke of York, was next in line to the throne. When James converted to Roman Catholicism, his conversion provoked heated opposition amongst certain members of Parliament, who believed Catholicism threatened England’s established Anglican Church and national Protestant identity. The Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Cooper, became the leader of the opposing faction, and he introduced a bill in Parliament to exclude James from the succession in favour of James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, who was one of Charles’s illegitimate sons and a Protestant. The members of Parliament involved in the pro-exclusion faction became known as the Whig Party, while the King’s supporters became known as the Tory Party.

Although the Duke of Monmouth had always enjoyed his father’s favor, the king showed no willingness to legitimize him. Instead, King Charles repeatedly rejected the Whigs’ attempts to exclude his Catholic brother from the succession. The Duke of Monmouth, for his part, actively participated in the schemes to legitimize his heirdom, which eventually led to a permanent estrangement from his father. King Charles exercised his royal prerogative to dissolve every parliament that tried to pass the exclusionary bill, until the bill met its ultimate defeat in the House of Lords in 1681. That same year, the Earl of Shaftesbury was arrested and charged with high treason for his role in the crisis, although he was later acquitted. Undeterred, the Earl of Shaftesbury plotted an open uprising against the crown the following year, but he soon fled the country and died in exile. When King Charles died in 1685, his brother James became king, just as Charles had desired, and ruled as James II until his forced abdication in 1688.

Ideological Context

The legacy of England’s Civil War in the mid-17th century continued to cast a long shadow over the restored Stuart monarchy of Charles II. While some English subjects—such as Dryden himself—willingly accepted the restored rule of Charles II and professed royalist sympathies, vestiges of anti-monarchical sentiment remained in other contemporary leading political and literary figures. While the Exclusion Crisis was rooted in the Whigs’ desire to supplant royal heirdom without replacing the institution of monarchy itself, the faction’s open contempt for the king’s authority was a marked departure from subjects’ earlier veneration of the monarchy. The Whigs’ vocal advocacy for their active role in the succession speaks to the era’s growing parliamentary power, but it also reveals a radical, permanent shift in attitudes towards the monarchy after the Civil War era: Absolute monarchy was no longer acceptable to many Englishmen, and the political discourse now more greatly emphasized subjects’ rights and political consent.

The Whigs’ deeply anti-Catholic motivations also speak to a dominant contemporary religious ideology. After the deep rivalry that developed between Protestant England and Catholic Spain during the reign of Elizabeth I, English anti-Catholicism still ran very high. Persistent rumours of a so-called “Popish Plot” —based on a belief that disgruntled Catholic subjects would rebel against the king—circulated widely at the time of the Exclusion Crisis. For men like Shaftesbury, these rumors fed the fears that an openly Catholic monarch like James would lead to the ruin of England’s Protestant identity and compromise its national sovereignty. This fear created an atmosphere of religious hostility and tension during much of Dryden’s life, and this is why his poem alludes to religious fanatics and political plotters.

Authorial Context

Dryden’s family background had Puritan and Parliamentarian allegiances—details pertinent to a reading “Absalom and Achitophel”because Dryden’s shift in allegiances reflects England’s tumult at the time. Dryden was far from the only subject who changed political and religious positions during his life, and whether he did so out of opportunism or genuine conviction is impossible to know. Regardless of Dryden’s motivations, “Absalom and Achitophel” openly asserts royalist convictions and stresses that Dryden was anxious to avoid the civil discord that had shaped his youth. In breaking with his family’s convictions, Dryden allied himself with stability and tradition over the more democratic innovations of the pro-Parliamentary faction; “Absalom and Achitophel” reflects Dryden’s belief in the need for England to have a strong monarchy to maintain peace.