Satire and the Constitution of Theocracy in "Absalom and Achitophel"Author(s): Anne K. KrookSource: Studies in Philology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (Summer, 1994), pp. 339-358Published by: University of North Carolina PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4174493Accessed: 11/11/2010 08:46

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Satire and the Constitution of

Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

by Anne K. Krook

D _ ESPITE general agreement that Absalom and Achitophel does something well, there is remarkably little agreement on what or how.' Widely praised as Dryden's finest political poem,

often as his finest poem altogether, it has also provoked extensive dis- agreement over the nature of its strengths. As A. E. Wallace Maurer has recently demonstrated, one of the most durable debates concems its form, a startlingly basic aspect of the poem to continue so long as a matter of consistent dispute.2 This debate is in one sense repre- sentative of most other debates about the poem as well, for amid all the disagreements, the single term common to almost every critical description and analysis of Absalom and Achitophel is satire. Satire's his- tory as a so-called mixed genre, one that often incorporates a variety of diverse elements within a single work, makes it a term broad enough to encompass not only the many classically satiric moments in the poem, such as its opening or its portrait of Zimri, but also those ele- ments, notably the ending, that seem to oppose or detract from its overall satiric purpose.3 Calling Absalom and Achitophel a satire there-

I John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, The Works of John Dryden: Poems 1681-1684, ed. H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., vol. 2 of The Works of John Dryden, gen. ed. H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., 20 vols. to date (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956-), 2-36, hereafter cited as Works. Line numbers appear parenthetically in the text of the essay, as do page references to Dryden's preface and to the editors' notes, both of which are indicated by "p."

2 For Maurer's useful summary and discussion of the various contradictory opinions on the form of Absalom and Achitophel, see "The Form of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, Once More," PLL 27 (1991): 321-37.

3A representative example of finding the ending inadequate to the poem's over- all satiric tone and purpose appears in Robert H. Bell's article, "Metamorphoses of 'Heroic Enterprise' in Dryden and Pope," Massachusetts Studies in English 9 (1983): 22-35: "Dryden's strained reach for the inspirational is evident in his religious poems, odes,

339

? 1994 The University of North Carolina Press

340 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

fore makes it possible to entertain piebald, qualified descriptions of the poem's nature and strengths: it is, for example, a satire, except for the failed ending; or a satire, except for "serious" defenses of David and Charles; or a satire, except for the tribute to Barzillai, the Duke of Ormonde, and the accompanying elegy for his son, the Earl of Ossory; or, in short, a satire, except for the parts that aren't.

The difficulty with such descriptions lies not primarily with their in- adequacy as descriptions of Dryden's poem-after all, three hundred years of reading the poem haven't produced other generic terms or descriptions that seem any more adequate. Rather, it lies with their fail- ure to acknowledge the radical extent to which Dryden's satire claims to create a self-contained hermeneutic, one that gestures toward and redirects other interpretive possibilities in order to dismiss them. His satire does not merely tolerate divagations from its central purpose but turns them to its own uses, so that its inclusivity is not a pas- sive characteristic but an active strategy of appropriation.4 Diverse elements seemingly ill-suited to a single genre might thereby become well-suited to a single mode.5 Though Maurer's argument that Dryden found no single form suited to his poem is persuasive,6 it frames the discussion about the poem's nature in generic terms, a process that can neglect some of satire's overt pressure, successful or not, to create

and in Absalom and Achitophel, where Achitophel's temptation speech and the narra- tor's wonderfully derisive portraits underscore the inadequacy of the king's divinely- ordained rhetoric. King David's long speech, which abruptly dissolves the threat to his kingdom by divine fiat, and thus ends the poem, is an inadequate performance" (23).

Frank H. Ellis finds exactly the opposite: citing "the legend of the unsuccessful ending of the poem," he argues that "structure requires the poem to end in an action rather than in a story, . . . in drama, in spoken discourse" ("'Legends No Histories' Part the Second: The Ending of Absalom and Achitophel," MP 85 1i9881: 393-407; the quotation appears on p. 401).

4 Laura Brown makes an analogous argument about Dryden's use of the heroic cou- plet as a device to link two incommensurate or competing terms or figures. See her article, "The Ideology of Restoration Poetic Form: John Dryden," PMLA 97 (1982): 395- 407.

5 The distinction between mode and genre, and the relation of both to form, has been extensively developed by Alastair Fowler, in Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). See especially ch. 7, "Mode and Subgenre," 106-29, for an extended treatment of his contention that "modal terms never imply a complete extemal form" (107).

6"It displays no form fully or consistently.... Any of the traditional forms could substantially mislead or distract readers with apparent solutions too pat, however subtle and profound, for the magnitude of a peril of continually shifting contours in an unknown congeries of events" ("The Form of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, Once More," 334).

Anne K. Krook 341

a single logic of interpretation, one that might perhaps replace generic props as a means of ordering the poem. Dryden deploys satire to preserve the differences between David and all the other characters, differences necessary to establish David's sole right to the dominant human place in the theocratic hierarchy, and implicitly to assert a simi- larly dominant place for Charles II in the aftermath of the Exclusion Crisis. Michael McKeon has persuasively argued that "Absalom and Achitophel helps inaugurate the distinctively modem conviction that 'politics,' and the aesthetic autonomy of 'poetry,' are by their very nature incompatible."7 Dryden, consummate political propagandist, who was when he wrote this poem both poet laureate and historiog- rapher royal, might well have agreed.8 I shall here argue that Dryden's satire becomes the literary modal equivalent of monarchic autonomy, able to construct a world in which David remains both satirized and finally powerful and from which Charles himself can remain safely preserved, beyond the reach of any but the flawed interpretive strate- gies of David's opponents.

Since the dispute with both kings concerned the succession to the throne, satire's ability to create a self-sufficient hermeneutic makes it an appropriate strategy for orchestrating a defense of David, and through David, of Charles. In constructing David's monarchic au- tonomy, Dryden effaces all challenges to the king's essential ability to interpret and therefore to rule, while allowing David himself to remain uninterpretable. He indicates the absolute degree of David's rule by having David assert the sole right to cut off others' responses by fiat. Owing to similarities between ruler and ruled, however, which allow the satire to proceed, David's exercise of that power becomes problem- atic. Because David does not seem different in kind from Absalom and Achitophel, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a given power being conferred on David, but not on Achitophel or Absalom, for any reason other than an arbitrary one. By the end of the poem, as David cuts off opposition and restores order by fiat and with divine appro- bation, the satiric structure that supports David has also made the uniqueness of his power appear indistinguishable from arbitrariness.

7 Michael McKeon, "Historicizing Absalom and Achitophel," in The New Eighteenth Cen- tury: Theory, Politics, English Literature, ed. Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown (New York: Methuen, 1987), 28.

8 For Dryden's appointment as poet laureate in 1668 and as historiographer royal in 1670, and for the payments attaching to those offices, see James Anderson Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 191, 208, and 527-28.

342 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

Furthermore, the rebellion, though finally blamed mostly on Absalom and Achitophel, appears to have many causes, so that David's focus- ing on Absalom and Achitophel seems an arbitrary decision, however appropriate a decision it might also be. When David's word and God's thunder effect the abrupt close of Absalom and Achitophel, David's fiat requires satire to sustain it. Rather than being a departure from the poem's satiric mode, the abrupt closure confirms the extent to which satire not only preserves but also constitutes David's place in the the- ocracy.

With Absalom and Achitophel, first published in 168i, Dryden inverts the process of characterization he used in some of his early poems about Charles, published just after the Restoration.9 The earlier poems most often begin with the king and other contemporary public figures as their subjects, develop them through parallels and comparisons to classical and biblical figures, and then return to the contemporary political context.10 In depicting the controversy between Charles and Parliament over who should control the succession to the throne," Dryden needed to walk a fine line between acknowledging potential criticism of Charles's handling of the Exclusion Crisis, perhaps most notably his long-standing tolerance for Monmouth, and supporting the king nonetheless. Partly as a result of the delicacy of that task, the later poem, unlike the earlier pieces, never directly mentions or addresses Charles; instead, drawing its explicit subject from an Old Testament narrative, Absalom and Achitophel organizes a world to which Charles and his handling of the Exclusion Crisis might be compared, a comparison depending for its effect on always implicit analogies be- tween David's role in the Old Testament narrative and Charles's role

9 See, for example, "Astraea Redux. A Poem on the Restoration of Charles the Sec- ond" (Works 1:21-31), and "To His Sacred Majesty, A Panegyrick on His Coronation" (Works 1:32-37).

10 For a discussion of the typological sources for Dryden's political verse, see Steven N. Zwicker, Dryden's Political Poetry: the Typology of King and Nation (Providence: Brown University Press, 1972), especially ch. i, "The Terms of Metaphorical History," and ch. 3, "The King and Christ."

11 For a discussion of Dryden as Tory satirist and his opposition to contractual theo- ries of kingship as articulated by Locke, see Winn, John Dryden and His World, ch. 1o, "The Tory Satirist: 1680-1683" (330-8o), especially p. 333 and p. 359; and Michael A. Conlon's excellent article, "The Rhetoric of Kairos in Absalom and Achitophel," in Rheto- rics of OrderlOrdering Rhetorics in English Neoclassical Literature, ed. J. Douglas Canfield (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 85-97; the quotation appears on p. 87.

Anne K. Krook 343

in contemporary politics. This is not to claim that the analogies were therefore less evident to the poem's audience in the i68os (the viru- lence of many contemporary responses indicates how closely Dryden made his points and how sharply his satire stung), only that they were implicit. Owing to Dryden's encoded approach to depicting Stuart politics, interpreting Charles's actions depends first on interpreting David's, so that Charles remains at least one hermeneutic remove from the poem's reach.12

In making David the subject of his "parallel history," Dryden pre- sents the prototype for monarchy in Israel, a monarchy represented as both divinely sanctioned and humanly problematic.'3 The episode in 2 Samuel on which Dryden bases his poem is itself part of a much longer narrative detailing the rise of kingship in Israel, encompass- ing Samuel's anointing of Saul, David's rise to military power and the throne, his subsequent struggles against his enemies, and the transi- tion to Solomon's rule. In the process of adjusting the political events and the biblical narrative to each other, Dryden only partially ren- ders the biblical text, as he acknowledges in "To the Reader" (p. 4). From the long biblical history he selects a moment in which David has already become king, delineating the Davidic hierarchy by detailing a moment of crisis for its previously established order. The narrative of the Davidic monarchy is likewise part of a much longer typological narrative, the succession of the royal line that, in Christian mythogra- phy, leads from Abraham through David and the Babylonian captivity to Christ, the three focal points in the chronology used by Matthew as he detailed, for a Jewish audience, the genealogical links from God to humankind and back again to God.'4 Because Christian typology provides the Davidic narrative with a future defined as a successful typological fulfillment of an antitype, Dryden's poem can show David in a moment of crisis retrospectively read as a relatively brief episode of chaos in the midst of greater order.

12 McKeon notes this distancing effect: "[tihe effect of Dryden's oratory is . . . to distance us both from its tropes and from biblical history: to disclose the typologi- cal framework as a trope rather than as a transparent truth, an instrumental use of religious argument that invites us to make a knowing engagement in its fictionality without expecting from us a full-scale engagement of belief" ("Historicizing Absalom and Achitophel," 28).

13 The phrase "parallel history" is J. R. Crider's. See " 'Agag's Murther' as Parallel History in Absalom and Achitophel," ELN 21 (1983): 34-42; the quotation appears on p. 39.

14 See Matthew 1: 1-17 for this chronology, which structurally resembles many simi- lar chronologies in the Old Testament (for example, Genesis 5:1-32), making a formal as well as asserting a human link between the two kinds of history.

344 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

The moment of crisis, for which Absalom and Achitophel are largely held responsible, takes place within a context of satirically utopian, precarious stability, for which David is largely held responsible. Absa- lom and Achitophel has a bifurcated opening, the scope of whose satire encompasses both the rebels and David. On the one hand, the title announces a poem based on two well-known biblical figures, lead- ing the reader to expect, not entirely without reason, that two char- acters called Absalom and Achitophel will do something to justify their eponymous status. On the other hand, the opening couplets im- mediately branch away from the title's announcement, introducing a framework within which David, no less than Absalom or Achitophel, initially falls within the scope of the satire:

IN pious times, e'r Priest-craft did begin, Before Polygamy was made a sin; When man, on many, multiply'd his kind, E'r one to one was, cursedly, confind: When Nature prompted, and no law deny'd Promiscuous use of Concubine and Bride; Then, Israel's Monarch, after Heaven's own heart, His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart To Wives and Slaves: and, wide as his Command, Scatter'd his Maker's Image through the Land.

(1-10)

The explicit opposition of piety to "Priest-craft" establishes a satirically utopian time for the poem's action, in which piety exists indepen- dently of the ways of priests. "Nature" 's prompting in "man" replaces priestly control over behavior. The parallelism of "In . . . When . . . When ... Then . . ." through the first four couplets makes the pious state, produced by the absence of either priests or priestly machina- tion, manifest in David. As a result, the general rubric of the satire set out in the first three couplets encompasses the specific topic intro- duced by "Then," David's sexual activity, so that the common, polyga- mous behavior appropriate in those satirically .pious times appears in "Israel's Monarch," who behaves "after Heaven's own heart."

With this opening, David is partly praised, in locker-room fash- ion, and partly satirized, establishing the credibility of the satirist, whose contemporary audience could not very well have missed the many living, breathing consequences of Charles's sexual profligacy, in- cluding Monmouth. Indeed, Charles himself acknowledged this trait

Anne K. Krook 345

(and some of these offspring).'5 This satirized admiration of David is the sign of the status quo of benevolent licentiousness; it also isolates David from some kinds of criticism. In these lines, Dryden sidesteps intervention by priests, the group whose members by definition in- terpret and manage everyone's relation to the supreme, divine power. Prophets likewise have no place in that pious time. By the point in 2 Samuel at which Dryden begins his narrative, the prophet Samuel, under whose auspices David rose to power against Saul, has long since died. The prophet Nathan, however, who rebuked David for committing adultery with Bathsheba, and who prophesied that their bastard child would die, appears in the chapters of 2 Samuel immedi- ately before the episode with Absalom and Achitophel. By initially circumventing both priests and prophets, who ordinarily play the role of criticizing the monarch's behavior, Dryden creates a world of uto- pian sexual license in which David's sexual proficiency is a matter for a joke rather than a rebuke. David can have no unmediated relation to "Heav'ns own heart" except in the utopian "pious times" of the poem that precede priest-craft and that free him from traditional sources of criticism. Even though Absalom and Achitophel are the eponymous objects of Dryden's satire, the opening introduces a poem whose first moment of satire not only defines the chain of command within the theocratic state but also takes David as one of its objects. David's place at the top of the theocratic human hierarchy establishes him as the standard from which Absalom and Achitophel thereafter deviate; they are not satirized until David's role is first established. That role is itself, however, encompassed by the satire and independent of traditional interpreters.

The theocracy limned in the opening lines has other advantages for

15 On being called father of his people, Charles supposedly once responded, "Well, I believe that I am, of a good number of them!" See The Roxburghe Ballads, ed. J. Woodfall Ebsworth, 8 vols. (Hertford: Stephen Austin and Sons, 1883; New York: AMS Press, 1966), 4:597. Lines from a sixteen-line coda to a ballad dated 2 February 1679/80 and entitled "The Good Old Cause Revived" provide a closely contemporary example of language describing Charles as father:

This People, common Father, hold on still To do them good, although against their will. What real Prudence dictates, that pursue, But slight the Murmurs of a giddy crew. This had thy Father done, we ne're had known A Tyrant sitting on the Royal Throne.

(Roxburghe Ballads 4:602)

346 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

isolating David from his critics. First, since the poem's utopian chain of command gives power in descending order to God and David, neatly bypassing priests and prophets, every Israelite, including but not limited to Absalom and Achitophel, is held directly responsible for rebelling. Though never explicitly mentioned in the poem, Dryden's desire to make the multitudes at least partly responsible for the re- bellion explains a great deal of his vituperation against them, and partly explains the scorn of phrases like "The Jews, a Headstrong, Moody, Murmuring race" (45), "Popularly Mad" (336), and "Adam- wits, too fortunately free" (51), which last likens the multitudes to the first man who willingly disobeyed a clear command and suffered for it. This strategy, like many others in the poem, distributes blame for the rebellion widely, -giving David and Absalom as much company as possible as satiric targets, so that neither Charles nor his favorite, Monmouth, comes in for exclusive blame. In this poem, blame can go almost everywhere, while the power to punish the rebels remains in David's hands.

A second and related advantage of Dryden's system for the pur- poses of the title's satire is that it establishes David as the public ex- emplar, albeit a satirized one, of the proper relation to God, a point Dryden reinforces throughout the poem. David, who from the first is said to behave "after Heaven's own heart" in begetting his numer- ous offspring, is consistently referred to by other Israelites, not by the priests, as exemplifying godly-not just kingly-behavior. In at- tempting to make himself seem reasonable and devoted to the state's welfare, Achitophel craftily grants divine approval of David's position and power as king as the starting point of his own attempt to convince Absalom to rebel (262 ff.). Likewise, Absalom acknowledges both the power of the hierarchy within which David rules and the justice of that rule as ensconced in the hierarchy, giving a long, willy-nilly panegyric of David as he debates whether to join Achitophel's rebellion (315- 72). In this respect, the thunder of divine approbation at the poem's end merely confirms what others, including and especially David's enemies, acknowledge all along.

Having established David as the exemplar of divinely appointed be- havior and preserved him from the opinions of those in the theocracy who might think otherwise, Dryden makes Absalom and Achitophel appear within the context defined in terms of David at the opening, but to which David himself does not return until the poem's end. David's

Anne K. Krook 347

absence from the long middle section of the poem in which Dryden details the causes for the rebellion contributes to preserving his status as uninterpreted, godly monarch, a condition requiring that David be safely removed from the reach of the rebels' attempt to interpret his behavior, as he was initially kept safe from the prophets' and priests' reach. As a result, while the actions and motivations of Absalom and Achitophel are explained to the reader at length, David's behavior receives no such elucidation. Indeed, Dryden gives attempts at elu- cidation the status of ill-motivated, obfuscating guesswork, making Achitophel remark to Absalom, "And who can sound the depth of David's Soul? / Perhaps his fear, his kindness may Controul" (467-68). David himself disdains the inaccuracy of others' attempts to interpret his behavior: "How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan, / Beware the Fury of a Patient Man" (1004-5). From David's point of view, none of the rebels, whether priest, son, or subject, adequately interprets his relation to God, the key to his power.

When Absalom and Achitophel do enter this poem, they appear as characters whom Dryden satirizes and whom David punishes because they have deviated from their proper places in the theocratic hierarchy. Absalom and Achitophel have meaning in this poem largely as they are defined against David, by whose authority they initially go about their business, against whom first one and then the other rebels, and to whom they almost compulsively refer as they continue the plot, looking over their shoulders, as it were, waiting to see what will hap- pen as they invoke his name. In this poem they could be, and once were, properly derivative of and dependent on David. Dryden care- fully, though briefly, links Absalom's exceptional beauty, strength, and ability to please to his illustrious father's "vigourous warmth" and dot- ing care (8, 17-30). Achitophel's role as rebel derives politically from David's role as king: he plots against David's power, taking advantage of the Jebusites' rebellion in order to further his own political aims (200-215). Achitophel's legitimate political role likewise depended on David, in whose government he used to be a judge, a role in which he found and might have continued to find propriety of place and praise, had he been content to remain in it:

Oh, had he been content to serve the Crown, With vertues only proper to the Gown; Or, had the rankness of the Soyl been freed From Cockle, that opprest the Noble seed:

348 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

David, for him his tunefull Harp had strung, And Heaven had wanted one Immortal song.

(192-97)

Propriety of place and praise means place as specified by David and praise as sung and spoken by David. In his long psalm-like pronounce- ment at the end of the poem, David, taking up the role of judge and punisher sometimes given to God in the Psalms, declares Absalom and Achitophel's deviation from their proper roles, and his judgment suffices to condemn them and thereby to conclude the poem. The blis- tering satire that Dryden employs in his first description of Achitophel indicates that Achitophel will bear much of the blame for initiating the rebellion, and though Absalom receives less stinging invective for his role, even the favorite son cannot escape his father's judgment, as David says, "If my Young Samson will pretend a Call / To shake the Column, let him share the Fall" (955-56).

Though David's place at the top of the theocratic hierarchy seems absolute, some details indicate that David's position as the uninter- pretable source of earthly power is neither unique nor perfect. Among the earliest indications is an ambiguous physiognomic detail of Absa- lom: "And Paradise was open'd in his face" (30). Prelapsarian beauty as a description of Absalom's postlapsarian appearance points to com- pany, if not competition, for David as visible public exemplar of man's relation to God, for though David rules alone at the head of a utopian, postlapsarian order, Absalom nonetheless also provides a vision of the beauty and power of the prelapsarian world of Lucifer, the bril- liant son of the morning, whose "count'nance, as the Morning Starr that guides / The starrie flock, allur'd them" (Paradise Lost V.7o8-9).'6 Further Miltonic allusions link Absalom with Adam, as Dryden's line also recalls the prelapsarian state of Adam and Eve, in whose "looks Divine / The image of thir glorious Maker shon" (PL IV.291-92).

Though the allusions to a prelapsarian world in each case refer to an eventually fallen being, not to mention the fallen Republican (and not yet ascendant poet) Milton, they also thereby allude to an un- mediated relationship between an individual and God. In identifying Absalom with the unfallen state of Lucifer and Adam, Dryden places Absalom in the position of having to make a choice about the power at the head of the hierarchy. The choices Lucifer and Adam make,

16 John Milton, Paradise Lost, vol. 2 of The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank Allen Patterson et al. i8 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931-38).

Anne K. Krook 349

however, address the authority of an absolutely powerful divine ruler, whereas Absalom faces a choice about a human king. This vital dif- ference between the Edenic world on the one hand and the Davidic and English worlds on the other reveals the central difficulty with Dryden's defining David's rule as divinely sanctioned and finally proof against rebellion. If Absalom is satirized, by association with Adam, as a potentially rebellious, powerful, and erring subject, then David takes the place in the hierarchy against which the Adam-figure Absa- lom rebels, the place analogous to that of either the Father or the Son. But unlike the scriptural and Miltonic versions of the divine hierarchy, which allow for and indeed require that God differ in nature from everyone else, Dryden's version, existing wholly within a human, sati- rized world, cannot show David as different in kind from Absalom, only different in the power he wields when he has the last word. If the Miltonic allusions show Absalom as soon-to-be fallen and always to be pitied, like Adam and Eve, and if they show Achitophel as once brilliant and now twisted, like the Lucifer who became Satan, those allusions also recall the independence of their choices.

Just as Absalom is linked more closely to the divine power with which David must claim the nearest relation, so David becomes linked more closely with Absalom. David himself remains inextricably bound in the same satirized world to which Absalom belongs, for in his beauty Absalom not only resembles Adam but David, who "view'd / His Youthfull Image in his Son renew'd" (31-32). Furthermore, Absa- lom's "Youthfull Image" and body "Too full of Angells Metal" (310) are the visible signs of Absalom's relation to his father. In showing the signs of his father in himself, he resembles not only Lucifer and Adam but the Son of Paradise Lost, in whom "all his Father shone / Substan- tially express'd, and in his face / Divine compassion visibly appear'd" (PL III.139-41). Beautiful like Lucifer, Adam, and the Son, and in his beauty revealing his origins as they all do, Absalom is also tempted like Lucifer and like Adam, though the narrator stresses the resem- blances to Adam over those to Lucifer. While Dryden's Absalom may be associated with the sin of Adam, he is also his father's son, bear- ing a resemblance to him that his father recognizes and enjoys. The differences between David the king and his rebel son begin to blur.

Despite various uncanny family resemblances, the angel-faced Ab- salom initially causes David no undue political embarrassment: "Thus Prais'd, and Lov'd, the Noble Youth remain'd, / While David, undis- turb'd, in Sion raign'd" (41-42). Unlike Absalom, however, Achitophel

350 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

has already at that early stage in the poem fallen out of his proper political relationship with David. He has, in short, already made the choice that Absalom will also make, but the reasons for that choice remain unclear. Locating the responsibility for Achitophel's rebellion from David is complicated by the pivotal word "or" in the lines de- scribing the causes for his rebellion: "had he been content to serve the Crown, . . . Or, had the rankness of the Soyl been freed / Of Cockle" (192, 194-95). Though these lines purport to offer the reader a choice between two causes of Achitophel's behavior, or between two explanations for one effect, the "or" makes it impossible to choose cor- rectly, to tell why Achitophel rebels, and implies that there is no way of precisely pinpointing the cause. If it was owing to excess "Cockle," the possibility remains that Achitophel's human nature, rather than pure malice aforethought, partially causes his rebellion, since presum- ably soil liable to infestation stems from Achitophel's natural, gen- eral human condition rather than from circumstances unique to him. Though spoken in a contrary-to-fact mood that renders them purely speculative, these possibilities tend once again to diffuse blame for the rebellion rather than focus it, as the passive voice of "been freed / Of Cockle" obscures the agent that could have left Achitophel not a rebel.

The satire that depends on defining David as different from the rebels attempts also to excuse Absalom and even, to some degree, Achitophel, as Dryden notes in "To the Reader" (p. 4). As a result, the natures of Absalom and, to a lesser extent, Achitophel manifest more and more similarities to David's as the poem progresses, simi- larities without which the poem's action cannot go forward. Absalom may have an unacknowledged or de-emphasized link to God; Absa- lom resembles David physically, a consideration that helps induce Achitophel to pick him for the rebellion; Achitophel may have rebelled against David not because of differences in kind but because of dif- ferences in development and circumstance. Such ambiguous relation- ships to David's position continue on another level in the reappearance of the satirically banished priests. Though the satire initially posits a world free from priests, or at least free from priestly machination, the priests and their machinations persistently reappear. They are both absent and present to perfect the satire, absent to consolidate David's power and uninterpreted status, present to foment rebellion and them- selves be objects of the satire. Though the opportunity to rebel that Achitophel seizes initially results from restlessness among the Jebusite priesthood, which can be explained away, as, after all, a heathen and

Anne K. Krook 351

therefore false hierarchy, Dryden claims that "Priests of all Religions are the same" (99), so that the Jebusitic priests in fact behave no worse than their Jewish counterparts. Within the context of a poem based on 2 Samuel, the Jewish priests cannot be dismissed as heathen, by definition erring and external, and they represent another access to divine power. In order for David to rule alone, the priests, like Absa- lom's beauty, must be disregarded, but in order for the poem's action to proceed, they, like Absalom's beauty, must be present for all to see.

If the rebels resemble David, David in his role as a ruler reveals him- self inextricably bound up with Absalom, Achitophel, and the priests in the causes and responsibility for rebellion. Though Dryden claims that, with respect to David's allies, "Naming is to praise" (8i6), almost every mention of David reveals yet another problematic aspect of his character. As the poem progresses, he comes to seem less like a natural ruler in a position properly his than a man having trouble with a job someone gave him. From the beginning, when it is unclear what David had to do with the exceptional energy, talent, and potentially danger- ous beauty of Absalom (19-20) through the rebellion itself, Dryden describes David's authority in terms that implicate David in the causes of the unrest stirring in Absalom, Achitophel, and the other rebellious Israelites. Like the cause of Achitophel's flaw, the source of Absalom's particular beauty is described as essentially unknowable, the various possible reasons linked by "or":

Whether, inspir'd by some diviner Lust, His Father got him with a greater Gust; Or that his Conscious destiny made way By manly beauty to Imperiall sway.

(19-22)

David may or may not have something to do with the particular beauty of Absalom that not only aided his son in his rebellion but also showed that uncanny link to a prelapsarian time, with its attendant choices. Dryden likewise describes the king's indulgence toward his son by balancing willful blindness and innocent blindness on either side of an "or," rendering the question finally unanswerable: "What faults he had (for who from faults is free?) / His Father could not, or he would not see" (35-36). If his bastard son is weak-willed enough to listen to Achitophel, David is indulgent, perhaps excessively so (31-36); he is mild, though hitherto effective in controlling dissent (77-78); during the height of the rebellion, the moment at which a clear expression of

352 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

David's will might prevent crisis, Achitophel can convince Absalom that David's reactions will remain difficult to gauge (467-68). Charles was, as his contemporaries noted, well-known for each of these char- acteristics. Echoing an earlier comment about the king's "fatall mercy" (146), Dryden goes so far as explicitly to grant that David's leniency contributes to the unfortunate unrest: "How Fatall 'tis to be too good a King!" (812) . David's advisors certainly think so, telling him firmly "[t]hat no Concession from the Throne woud please, / But Lenitives fomented the Disease" (937-38). Hesitating as long as possible to take on the authority of the role for which he was anointed, David laments the necessity of exercising the power of his position (941-42, 957-60, 1000-1003), as Absalom hesitated before exercising his own talents on behalf of the rebelling Achitophel. Repeated references to David as the rebellion unfolds reveal how he resembles his son and continue Dryden's initial implication of the king that began with the open- ing lines.

One quality of David particularly begs the question of his authority and its relation to the rebellion. As Absalom asks himself whether he will obey his father or join Achitophel, he remarks on the power of David that could potentially prevent the question: "His Favour leaves me nothing to require; / Prevents my Wishes, and outruns Desire" (43- 44). Despite this admission, Absalom joins the rebellion, as evidently David's power to fulfill desire cannot entirely efface Absalom's urge to change the hierarchy so that he, rather than David, may rule. Dryden does not specify what kindles Absalom's desire and ultimately causes him to give in to Achitophel, failing to localize the stimulus for Absa- lom's vision of a new hierarchy because, for the narrator on the side of David, Charles, and the status quo, it is undesirable to locate it pre- cisely. A precise cause for Absalom's rebellion must implicate either

17 In his Character of King Charles the Second, Halifax mentions Charles's easiness of temper toward all matters nearly as often as Dryden mentions David's. See Marquess of Halifax (George Savile), A Character of King Charles the Second, The Complete Works of George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, ed. Walter Raleigh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), 187- 208 passim. One of Dryden's biographers, Sir Walter Scott, refers to Charles as Dryden's "good-humoured, selfish, and thoughtless patron," Scott, ed., The Works of John Dryden, 18 vols. (London: William Miller, 18o8) 1:291; in his prose tract His Majesties Declaration Defended, Dryden notes the king's "natural love to Peace and Quiet" (Works 17:197). Phillip Harth notes that the qualities that had become problematic had been described as virtues in Dryden's early poems about Charles; see his article, "Dryden's Public Voices," New Homage to John Dryden: Papers Read at a Clark Library Conference, February 13-14, 1981, ed. Phillip Harth, Alan Fisher, and Ralph Cohen (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1982, 1-28), 22.

Anne K. Krook 353

David or Absalom, as Dryden has structured Absalom's desire, but locating the cause in the figure who represents Charles or the figure who represents his brother could not have pleased the king. Not local- izing the cause for Absalom's rebellion also has its problems, however, for if desire recurs in Absalom despite the demonstrated lack of iden- tifiable stimulus for it within the confines of David's all-powerful rule, then some impetus remains beyond the reach of a king whom Dryden wants to portray as fully able to satisfy such desires. Dryden is caught in this unresolvable dilemma because David is not qualitatively differ- ent from Absalom-he cannot completely fulfill Absalom's desire for power without giving up his own, cannot allow Absalom to change his place in the hierarchy without endangering his own. Absalom ap- pears flawed by virtue of his admission, for he acknowledges that he rebels despite David's generosity towards him. He also, however, focuses attention on the need for David's power to be differentiated from everyone else's, if it is to be able to quash desire such as Absa- lom's and thereby to sustain the king's position. As a consequence of not localizing blame for the rebellion on the king or the chief rebels, the blame appears in more dubious but politically more palatable places, at least from Dryden's point of view:

govern'd by the Moon, the giddy Jews Tread the same track when she the Prime renews: And once in twenty Years, their Scribes Record, By natural Instinct they change their Lord.

(215-18)

Though the Miltonic allusions in Dryden's satire emphasize Absa- lom's resemblance to Adam, allusions to Absalom as an Adamic figure also recall the Son and Lucifer, because all three prelapsarian beings share and reveal qualities that define them primarily as created beings. All three are less than the God in whose hierarchy they participate, alike in their subordinate identity within the hierarchy, different in their degree of closeness to that divine power. Distinguishing David from Absalom and Achitophel as having access to the divine power and approval that they lack would require showing in what that dif- ference consists, but except for the abrupt closure the poem shows more how David resembles Absalom than how he differs from him. Recurrent desire in Absalom indicates the ineradicable presence of the unsurprising urge to escape the rigid hierarchy in which David safely resides at the top. Absalom's desire persists as he seeks to alter his role in a hierarchy that shows David with no exclusive visible relationship

354 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

to divine power, that admits the recurrent though satirized possibility of another institutional route to God's power via the priests, banished though they are, and that repeatedly reveals the resemblance between David's own nature and the rebels'. The essential singleness of the link between David and God as the assurance of and justification for his absolute power is questioned on all sides, failing decisively to distin- guish David's relation to God from any other while allowing Absalom's desire to continue.

Dryden's satire attempts to accomplish two incompatible tasks. On the one hand, it acknowledges Charles's part in allowing, or at least not preventing, Monmouth's bid for the succession. Charles's sympa- thy for his son becomes understandable, even admirable, because he so much resembles him. On the other hand, the satire needs to focus responsibility for the rebellion so that it does not fall wholly on the king or on his favorite son. The satire needs, in other words, both to diffuse and focus blame: diffuse it to reach everyone, including the king, and focus it on anybody but the king. Dryden's attempt to achieve both of these two goals begins, I have argued, with the bifurcation of the satire at the poem's beginning, showing David as king of a satirically uto- pian state. The title "points" the satire-it is what Dryden offers as an initial expression of the poem's purpose. By entitling the satire "Absa- lom and Achitophel," Dryden reveals both the assumption on which he proceeds and the end for which he fashions the poem, for the title first exemplifies the concept that the ruling monarch's power consists at least in part in focusing responsibility on someone or something by fiat. Within limits, that concept of David's rule works, allowing the narrator to admit certain likenesses between Absalom and David and some extenuating circumstances pertaining to Absalom's rebel- lion while still supporting David against his bastard son and, more readily, against Achitophel. As the title begins the defense against doubts that David's distinctiveness entitles him to power, so the con- clusion reinforces his distinctive power by divine approbation. After the poem's satiric examination of the title characters, the conclusion reasserts David's power over them, granting David the power to con- demn, to locate responsibility, and to decree judgment, thereby using the title's same focusing of the satire, which pinpoints responsibility, to contain and master the political chaos surrounding David.

David's own speech, his first and last in the poem, contains the ex- pected defensive assertions about his relationship to the rebels and his power, assertions in which he replies to every one of the objec-

Anne K. Krook 355

tions against his rule posed in the rest of the poem.'8 The few lines that follow David's speech, however, have historically given rise to the suspicion that David's power consists simply in having the last word, not in differing in any other respect from Absalom or Achito- phel. The structure of the poem allows David to remain aloof from the rebellion's progress by not bringing him in to speak until the action is over and by preserving him from needing to answer or even hear further criticism, once he delivers his decision, just as Charles had done when he abruptly dismissed the Oxford parliament in March. Dryden's attempt to counter the force that incites rebellion functions by giving David the power of restoring order by fiat, by naming David "Godlike" and by naming God himself as the source of approbation for David's final speech, just as the narrator's method in discussing those loyal to David is to oppose number with number, a list of loyal subjects and their service to the crown to counterbalance the list of traitors: "Yet some there were, ev'n in the worst of days; / Some let me name, and Naming is to praise" (815-16). Naming David and God in the last six lines of the poem, however, brings the poem to an ex- traordinarily abrupt and unconvincing halt, as the chaos caused by a thousand lines of debate and development swiftly resolves into the dubious decisiveness of a couplet: "Once more the Godlike David was Restor'd, / And willing Nations knew their Lawfull Lord" (1030-31).

However resonant the echoes of Restoration as the relatively peaceful end to a period characterized by civil war, the allusion rings false in this poem.'9 For whereas Charles was restored in 166o from a foreign country to one where he had never ruled, in Absalom and Achitophel David has been implicated, and present, from the first.

The formal structure of the satiric narrative and above all of its end- ing highlights the monarch's fiat and consequent absolute power as an arbitrary creation of the poem's satire. Dryden's ending deviates markedly from its biblical parallel in 2 Samuel, in which the outcome of Absalom's rebellion is decided, as are most disputes in David's reign, by warfare. David's line rose to power in military confrontation with Saul's line (see especially 2 Sam. 3:1), and David continues simi-

18For an account of David as classical orator, whose principal goal is oratory "in an attempt to sustain the state" (71), see W. Gerald Marshall, "Classical Oratory and the Major Addresses in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel," Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, i66o-1700 4 (1980): 71-80.

19 Conlon persuasively shows how at the ending the narrator "select[s] those aspects of events bewraying conspiracy and a nation on the verge of revolution" ("The Rhetoric of Kairos in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel," 89).

356 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

lar dealings with his other adversaries. In choosing to close his poem with a verbal proclamation rather than a military encounter, Dryden temporarily suppresses one of the dominant qualities of the biblical David's power, rendering his David either much more or much less powerful than the biblical one. Unlike the biblical David, the David of Absalom and Achitophel either does not need physical, military force, since his mere word restores political order, or is incapable of exer- cising it; in any case, David doesn't.20 Not only does the poem end with the same abruptness as Charles used in dismissing the Oxford Parliament, it echoes the language of fiat from the Lord Chancellor's enactment of the king's dismissal, which itself echoes the language of divine creation from the opening chapters of Genesis: "it is His Majesty's Royal Pleasure and Will, that this Parliament be dissolved: And this Parliament is dissolved.""2 Of course, Dryden may well have been right to prefer what Charles might say to what he might do, a common opinion about Charles embodied in a quatrain frequently attributed to Rochester:

God bless our good and gracious King, Whose promise none relies on;

Who never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one.22

20 Perhaps Dryden does not mention force because he does not want to associate Charles with military measures at home, a fresh memory from the Civil War period. In his preface, Dryden claims to have exercised mercy by "rebating the Satyre, (where Justice would allow it) from carrying too sharp an Edge. They, who can Criticize so weakly, as to imagine I have done my Worst, may be convinc'd, at their own Cost, that I can write Severely, with more ease, than I can Gently" (p. 3). Steven Zwicker and Derek Hirst have argued, however, that "moderation masks vengeance" in the poem (41); that the "poem emerges not from moderately held truisms but from vigorously held parti- san politics" (55); and that the poem makes "eventual sweeping recommendation of the sword" (50). See their article, "Rhetoric and Disguise: Political Language and Political Argument in Absalom and Achitophel," Journal of British Studies 21 (1981): 39-55.

21 The dismissal is recorded, among other places, in the Journals of the House of Lords XIII: 1675-1680, 757 [Monday, March 28, 1680/81]:

His Majesty, sitting in His Royal Throne, adorned with His Crown and other Regal Ornaments (the Peers sitting without their Robes), commanded the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, to signify His Majesty's Pleasure to the House of Commons, "That they presently attend His Majesty."

Who being come, His Majesty made a short Speech, to this Effect: "My Lords and Gentlemen, That all the World may see to what a Point we are come, that we

are not like to have a good End, when the Divisions at the Beginning are such: Therefore, my Lord Chancellor, do as I have commanded you."

Then the Lord Chancellor said, "My Lords and Gentlemen, His Majesty has commanded me to say, That it is His Majesty's Royal

Pleasure and Will, that this Parliament be dissolved: And this Parliament is dissolved."

22 The text, entitled "Impromptu on Charles II," and discussion of its attribution ap-

Anne K. Krook 357

The counterpart to invoking God and naming David at the poem's end, entitling the poem "Absalom and Achitophel," provides a conve- nient, though deceptive, point for the satire, both as an encapsulation of its origin and as a final word about who bears the blame for the re- bellion. This summary focusing of blame belies the reader's perception of both the multiple causes of the rebellion and some essential simi- larities between ruler and ruled. The satire focuses blame for political turmoil on Absalom and Achitophel by granting David the status of uninterpretable, unanswerable monarch. Dryden locates final power to explicate and justify their roles in David as the head of a theocratic hierarchy, a hierarchy that provides closure and stability by asserting an absolute distinction between David and the rest and that asserts its order as the only integral political system available. At the end of the poem, Dryden re-establishes David's control over the political hierarchy of the Israelites by the fiat of satire when Absalom and Achitophel prove that control unacceptably vulnerable to internal un- rest by effacing the differences between themselves and David, if not entirely then at least enough to provoke rebellion. David's power re- quires closure by fiat, the device of the voice of authority that functions by pointing the satire in its title and invoking God in its conclusion to bolster David's pronouncements. The thunder at the end echoes an earlier line that also acknowledges divine approbation of David: "And Heav'n by Wonders has Espous'd his Cause" (20). The thunder is also meant to confirm the greater anger that lies behind his mercy, anger that David has already invoked: "How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan, / Beware the Fury of a Patient Man" (1004-5). That com- ment echoes Dryden's remark about his own relation to his critics and opponents in the preface to the poem: "They, who can Criticize so weakly, as to imagine I have done my Worst, may be Convinc'd, at their own Cost, that I can write Severely, with more ease, than I can Gently" (p. 3). Indeed, if Zwicker and Hirst are right, Dryden's poem urges Charles to carry out his vengeance with much greater force than he has previously used (see note 20 above). Cutting off further interpretive challenges, the conclusion prevents the poem's disorder from exploding David's kingdom, making the thunder an approba- tion, not a threat, just as the title helps prevent the poem's disorder from imploding upon the theocratic structure it would protect, dis-

pear in David Vieth, ed., The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 134, 209-10.

358 Satire and Theocracy in Absalom and Achitophel

order that threatens to take David to destruction along with Absalom and Achitophel.

Precariously balanced between explosion and implosion lies a theo- cratic hierarchy constituted and preserved by satire. David's peculiarly powerful position cannot exist without the utopian, satiric exclusion of priests in the first line, nor can he continue as uniquely powerful without the heavy-handed closure of the end. The satire of this poem does not derive from its stories but constitutes and sustains them, en- abling the chain of command to exist and preventing the desired chain leading from God to David from becoming a series of chains from God to David, God to priests, God to Absalom, God to Achitophel, God to God-knows-whom. The poetic cost of preventing God from directly addressing and empowering God-knows-whom is a hierarchy that re- veals both the arbitrary quality of its coherence and the absence of any mechanism other than satire to preserve and reproduce it. In the preface to the poem, Dryden repeats a critical cliche about the pur- pose of satire, a comment sounding more facile and closed than the rhymes generated in any of the poem's rhymed couplets: "[t]he true end of Satyre, is the amendment of Vices by correction" (p. 5).23 It is a gesture of explicit nondirection characteristic of this poem, a gesture that makes its satire seem derivative where it is originary, generically tired where it is thematically vital. Kevin Cope has directed readers to "watch for the purpose of satire" at "the judgment of the relationship between ideal and experience" (22).24 In this poem, the only possible hermetically sealed and therefore ideal power for Charles is the her- meneutically sealed power of David. Absalom and Achitophel indeed struggle against "Form and Order," but against the form and order of the fiat both made possible and exposed by satire.

University of Michigan

23 Dryden's much more extensive, later (1692) treatise on satire, the Discourse concern- ing the Original and Progress of Satire (Works 4: 3-90), most often shies away from precise definition, thereby sometimes producing similarly flat generalizations about the nature of satire: it should treat one subject or theme (79) and give the reader "some one Precept of Moral Virtue; and . . . caution him against some one particular Vice or Folly" (8o).

24 Kevin L. Cope, "The Conquest of Truth: Wycherley, Rochester, Butler, and Dryden and the Restoration Critique of Satire," Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 10 (1986): 19-40; the quotation appears on p. 22.