Dryden and the Staging of Popular Politics

Abstract My theme in this chapter is Dryden’s distinctive contribution to the theatrical representation of popular politics, in particular of the mechanisms by which public opinion is swayed and controlled. By ‘popular politics’ I mean the role played in political conflict by people outside those elites of power which centred on the king, court, and Parliament: that is, by people who would not normally have had a say in policy-making, but whose opinions had none the less to be taken into account, especially in times of political crisis. To define ‘popular politics’ in this way may seem an oversimplification. First, as Tim Harris and others have shown, late seventeenth-century lower orders played a prominent part in government, even if only at the local level. For example, they participated in law enforcement in the city (and in rural parishes) in their capacity as constables and members of the militia.