ceased to operate when his patron was
reconciled to the court, and received a share of the spoils of the
disgraced Monmouth.[1] If there wanted further impulse to induce Dryden,
conscious of his strength, to mingle in an affray where it might be
displayed to advantage, he had the stimulus of personal attachment and
personal enmity, to sharpen his political animosity. Ormond, Halifax,
and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, among the nobles, were his patrons; Lee and
Southerne, among the poets, were his friends. These were partisans of
royalty. The Duke of York, whom the "Spanish Friar" probably had
offended, was conciliated by a prologue on his visiting the theatre at
his return from Scotland,[2] and it is said, by the omission of certain
peculiarly offensive passages, so soon as the play was reprinted.[3] The
opposite ranks contained Buckingham, author of the "Rehearsal;"
Shadwell, with whom our poet now urged open war; and Settle, the
insolence of whose rivalry was neither forgotten nor duly avenged. The
respect due to Monmouth was probably the only consideration to be
overcome: but his character was to be handled with peculiar lenity; and
his duchess, who, rather than himself, had patronised Dryden, was so
dissatisfied with the politics, as well as the other irregularities, of
her husband, that there was no danger of her taking a gentle correction
of his ambition as any affront to herself. Thus stimulated by every
motive, and withheld by none, Dryden composed, and on the 17th November
1681 published, the satire of "Absalom and Achitophel."

The plan of the satire was not new to the public. A Catholic poet had,
in 1679, paraphrased the scriptural story of Naboth's vine-yard and
applied it to the condemnation of Lord Stafford, on account of the
Popish Plot.[4] This poem is written in the style of a scriptural
allusion; the names and situations of personages in the holy text being
applied to those contemporaries, to whom the author assigned a place in
his piece. Neither was the obvious application of the story of Absalom
and Achitophel to the persons of Monmouth and Shaftesbury first made by
our poet. A prose paraphrase, published in 1080, had already been
composed upon this allusion.[5] But the vigour of the satire, the happy
adaptation, not only of the incidents, but of the very names to the
individuals characterised, gave Dryden's poem the full effect of
novelty. It appeared a very short time after Shaftesbury had been
committe