University of Virginia Library

Shaftesbury Cursed: Dryden's Revision of the Achitophel Lines
by
Edward L. Saslow

The first edition of Absalom and Achitophel (November 1681) lacks sixteen lines to be found in the third (1681) and all subsequent editions,[1] four concerning Absalom (957-960) and these twelve in the portrait of Achitophel:

Within a few months a "Non-conformist Parson" claimed that Dryden had added the brief praise of Shaftesbury out of fear or cupidity.[2] Andrew Kippis in 1778 offered the absurd story that soon after the publication of the first edition Shaftesbury, as a governor of Charterhouse, gave Dryden's son Erasmus-Henry a scholarship, and that Dryden added ll. 188-191 to the third edition in gratitude.[3] The first useful comment was that of Noyes, who suggested that the twelve lines were in Dryden's "original draught" since "their absence occasions an abrupt and awkward transition."[4] Macdonald found "some confirmation" for Noyes' conjecture on bibliographic grounds: In the first edition, a folio in 2's, the lines would have come immediately after the last line on sig. C1v (p. 6), and it is precisely at this point that the make up of the volume is odd. C1 is conjugate with A1 ("To the Reader") and is followed by an unsigned single leaf.[5] C1v exists in four different states in which four misprints and an incorrect catchword have been progressively corrected. Some change, then, was made while the poem was in the press, and Macdonald concludes that "it does not seem possible to explain the bibliographical eccentricity of this edition by the mere excision at the last moment of the twelve lines; and the fact that the only wrong catchword in the pamphlet, 'Not' at the foot of p. 6, occurs here, may indicate that Dryden's text was not originally quite as it is in this edition or in final form."[6] I shall offer what I believe to be the most probable reconstruction of Dryden's original text, together with some brief comments upon it. First, however, it will be necessary to consider the reconstruction given by Professor Vinton Dearing in the recently published second volume of the California Dryden.[7]

Professor Dearing believes that the first edition had the last six lines of the twelve (186-191) at the bottom of p. 6 and that it lacked both the first six (180-185) and the seven lines (173-179) that now precede them. Dryden presented the "first copy from the press" to Charles who objected to the six lines. Dryden "tears out C1, writes the [seven] new lines," to take up the space occupied by the cancelled 186-191, "and hands it to the printer. The compositor starts with this page, and when he comes to the foot turns it over, uses the first word on the front of the leaf ('Not') as catchword and resets the front of the leaf."[8] However Dryden "refuses to be censored. He also writes an address to the reader in which the penultimate paragraph makes much the same points" as the six lines had, and in the second edition he restores them and adds six more lines (180-185) "to improve the transition" between the seven new lines and the original six. As evidence that the ll. 173-179 are a late addition Dearing remarks on changes made in l. 179 in the first and third editions. Since the California volumes will be the standard edition of Dryden's works for many years to come, Dearing's argument requires careful consideration.

The events that Dearing supposes are individually unlikely, and next to impossible collectively. Dryden presents this first copy to Charles without any contemporary recording the fact in a diary or letter.[9] Charles takes time from his other activities to read the thousand lines of the poem with sufficient care to single out ten (Dearing applies his argument to ll. 957-960 as well) that he finds objectionable. Although he commands that Dryden strike out:

he is willing to let stand: Among the seven new lines that Dryden writes is the triplet on the breaking of the Triple Alliance (175-177). Thus Dearing holds that Dryden had omitted this important and well-known charge from his original portrait of Shaftesbury.[10] Nor do the changes in l. 179, the switching back and forth between "Patron" and "Patriott" and the substitution of "usurp'd" for "assum'd", indicate that ll. 173-179 are a late addition. "Patron" is simply a misprint—Macdonald saw this—that was corrected in the second state of the first edition, but which managed to find its way back into the third state before finally being eliminated in the fourth. "Usurp'd" is only one of a number of slight changes (cf. ll. 19, 235, 369, 381, 416, 482, 585, 665, 680, 688, 777, 846, 847, 882, 966) that Dryden introduced in the third edition.

What Dearing has Dryden do next seems most unlikely of all. He adds an address to the reader in which he puts back into the work those ideas that he has just taken out at Charles's order and then restores the offending lines themselves at the very first opportunity. Dryden's loyalty to Charles, his diffidence, and his financial dependence on governmental favor in the early 1680's need no urging, and twice in his career he explicitly states that he has himself censored his writings in response to the disapproval (either actual or expected) of the great. In the dedication to Limberham Dryden writes that he has "taken a becoming care, that those things which offended on the stage, might be either altered, or omitted in the press; for their authority is, and shall be, ever sacred to me, as much absent as present, and in all alterations of their fortune, who for those reasons have stopped its further appearance on the theatre. And whatsoever hindrance it has been to me in point of profit, many of my friends can bear me witness, that I have not once murmured against that decree." His words in the dedication to King Arthur are even more interesting: "[N]ot to offend the present times, nor a government which has hitherto protected me, I have been obliged so much to alter the first design, and take away so many beauties from the writing, that it is now no more what it was formerly, than the present ship of the Royal Sovereign, after so often taking down and altering, is the vessel it was at the first building."[11] If Dryden would sacrifice the "beauties" of his opera to avoid offending William's government can we suppose that he would restore the six lines and offend Charles himself?

Dryden's last minute change, I suggest, was the addition of lines 152-158 and 167-172. The obvious explanation for the four misprints on p. 6 is

that proof was read before the original C1 was cancelled, and the cancellans C1 was not proofread until some sheets had been printed. Now of the errors on C1v "Kold" (l. 153) and "Kody" (l. 157) are of particular interest. The compositor twice set a "K" for a "B", an error which would be readily explicable only if he were working from handwriting. But to say that these words were handwriting as the new C1 was being set is to say that they were being added to it, for the compositor would work from the print of the cancellandum if he could. If lines were being added to C1, then others were being eliminated to retain the normal number of lines per page. We may then suppose that the twelve lines were originally the last on C1v and that the compositor, with or without instructions, removed them to provide the space he needed for the addition. As radical as this excision may seem to the modern reader, it did not obscure the sense of the poem, and indeed, the awkwardness it introduced remained unnoticed until Noyes's edition of 1909.[12] The addition must have included the couplet and triplet that contain the misprints and the couplet that lies between them: But more than these seven lines must have been added. The addition totalled thirteen lines, since the cancellandum contained the triplet on the breaking of the Triple Alliance, and a page with a single triplet regularly has thirty-three lines rather than the thirty-four of the cancellans. Thus six more lines were added, and the only six that can be removed from the cancellans text without creating an obvious gap are these:

Only this hypothesis or one very much like it will fit the facts of the case. As Dearing says, C1 is a cancellans. It was decided to cancel C1 before the preliminaries had been printed and for some reason, perhaps ease of binding, it was further decided to print "To the Reader" on A1r-v and to use A2 for the cancellans C1, with B quired within the A1.C1 fold. The title page was then printed on π2r and π1 was left blank. The original plan for printing the preliminaries was presumably to print the title page

on A1r and "To the Reader" on A2r-v, as was done in the second edition, a folio in 2's which collates regularly [A]2 B-I2. There is extremely strong evidence for this theory of cancellation. In the second edition, a page-for-page reprint, the title page ([A]1r), the first page of "To the Reader" ([A]2r), and lines 146-179, 523-1031 of the text (C1v, F-I2) were printed from the same settings of type as had been used in the first.[13] The only probable explanation for this state of affairs is that the text of the first edition was printed in order, that after the type for sheet E had been distributed it was decided to leave type standing for a second edition, and that the outer forme of A1.C1 was printed after this decision was made.[14] That C1v was printed after E implies that C1 is a cancellans. The cancellation must have been of C1 only, with C2 remaining as the unsigned single leaf, for had the entire sheet been cancelled the volume would now collate regularly. This point is worth mentioning, since Macdonald was misled by the incorrectness of the catchword on C1v into believing that C2 was the addition. Now C1 could not have been cancelled simply to remove the twelve lines, for the first six were unobjectionable. Hence Dearing is forced to complicate his hypothesis by supposing them a later addition. Further, if the last six were removed because of their meaning, why were they restored? What reason can be given for their removal that would not operate fully as powerfully against their restoration a few weeks later? If, however, the lines were cut simply to make room for others, both difficulties vanish; their meaning becomes almost irrelevant and their restoration desirable.[15]

If I am correct, Dryden's description of Shaftesbury as first printed read:

The couplet before the first addition introduces Shaftesbury, the four couplets between the additions give a brief character of him, and those that follow the second addition sketch the preceding decade or so of his public career. The personal abuse of the final version is lacking, and in its absence the deftness of Dryden's original portrait is easily discerned. The introductory couplet does not say that Shaftesbury's will be "a name to all succeeding Ages Curst." What it does say is that the Biblical Achitophel's name was so cursed, as indeed it was long before Dryden set pen to paper.[16] Shaftesbury soon becomes Achitophel, but in strict logic Dryden's charge against him here is that "Achitophel" is a fit name for him. The character (ll. 159-166) does not so much balance or combine praise and blame as develop both together. By being what he is, Shaftesbury is at the same time a "daring Pilot in extremity" and "for a Calm unfit". It is this negative side of Shaftesbury's "wit" (l. 162) that Dryden goes on to develop in the next two couplets (ll. 163-166). Again notice what Dryden does not say. He does not call Shaftesbury mad. He suggests rather that as a "great wit"—and that description is in itself a compliment—Shaftesbury is so close to madness as to do a mad thing. This description of Shaftesbury meets the standard for satire that Dryden set in the Discourse on Satire (1692):

The additional thirteen lines are a lengthening at both ends of the original character of Shaftesbury. Unlike the earlier lines they are unambiguously and personally derogatory. They obscure the wit of the original character and destroy the function of Dryden's praise of Shaftesbury as Lord Chancellor. "The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge," Dryden had written, and it is as statesman that Shaftesbury is to be attacked throughout the rest of the poem. By praising him as judge and emphasizing the antithesis Dryden creates an appearance of fairness and hence gains a more ready belief for his attack. But the abuse of Shaftesbury's infirmities and of his son are of a different order than condemnation of his excessive wit and Machiavellian statesmanship, and in the final text praise and blame exist together but uncombined, like oil and water.[18] However, we should be sorry to lose the additional lines, and not simply for their intrinsic worth. The poem as a whole shows Achitophel to be guilty of such wickedness that we would wonder at a character of him which alleged no more than folly. Whether Dryden added the thirteen lines for this reason or for some other is a matter of speculation; that he did add the lines as the poem was going through the press is the most probable inference from the bibliographical and critical evidence before us.[19]

Notes