[16]
Shadwell had been for some time in good habits with Dryden; yet an early
difference of taste and practice in comedy, not only existed between
them, but was the subject of reciprocal debate, and something
approaching to rivalry.
Dryden, as we have seen, had avowed his preference of lively dialogue in
comedy to delineation of character, or, in other words, of wit and
repartee to what was then called humour. On this subject Shadwell early
differed from the laureate. Conscious of considerable powers in
observing nature, while he was deficient in that liveliness of fancy
which is necessary to produce vivacity of dialogue, Shadwell affected,
or perhaps entertained, a profound veneration for the memory of Ben
Jonson, and proposed him as his model in the representation of such
characters as were to be marked by _humour_, or an affectation of
singularity of manners, speech, and behaviour. Dryden, on the other
hand, was no great admirer either of Jonson's plays in general, or of
the low and coarse characters of vice and folly, in describing which lay
his chief excellency; and this opinion he had publicly intimated in the
"Essay of Dramatic Poesy." In the preface to the very first of
Shadwell's plays, printed in 1668, he takes occasion bitterly, and with
a direct application to Dryden, to assail the grounds of this criticism
and the comedies of the author who had made it.[17] If this petulance
produced any animosity, it was not lasting; for in the course of their
controversy, Dryden appeals to Shadwell, whether he had not rather
countenanced than impeded his first rise in public favour; and, in 1674,
they made common cause with Crowne to write those Remarks, which were to
demolish Settle's "Empress of Morocco.
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