Who's Who in "Absalom and Achitophel"?

Author(s): Alan Roper

Source: Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 1/2, John Dryden: A Tercentenary
Miscellany (2000), pp. 98-138
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3817866 .
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Who's Who in
Absalom and
Achitophel?
ALAN ROPER
I
n
Spectator
no.
512
Addison once
again displayed
his interest in the
psychol-
ogy
of
response
and the
process
of
reading.
That interest is best known from
the earlier
papers
on the "Pleasures of the
Imagination,"'
but in no.
512
Addison
applied
its terms to the
reading
of Absalom
andAchitophel:
[I]f
we look into Human
Nature,
we shall find that the Mind is
never so much
pleased,
as when she exerts her self in
any
Action
that
gives
her an Idea of her own Perfections and Abilities. This
natural Pride and Ambition of the Soul is
very
much
gratified
in
the
reading
of a
Fable;
for in
Writings
of this
Kind,
a Reader comes
in for half of the
Performance;
Every thing appears
to him like a
Discovery
of his
own;
he is busied all the while in
applying
Characters and
Circumstances,
and is in this
respect
both a Reader
and a
Composer.
It is no wonder therefore that on such
Occasions,
when the Mind is thus
pleased
with it
self,
and amused with its
own
Discoveries,
that it is
highly delighted
with the
Writing
which
is the Occasion of it. For this Reason the Absalon and
Achitophel
was one of the most
popular
Poems that ever
appeared
in
English.
The
Poetry
is indeed
very
fine,
but had it been much finer it would
not have so much
pleased,
without a Plan which
gave
the Reader
an
Opportunity
of
exerting
his own Talents.2
Addison reduced the author's role to the
production
of
"very
fine"
poetry
and slid
too
easily
from a
single
"Reader" to the
poem's popularity,
which
obviously
re-
quires
the
approval
of
many
readers. He nonetheless laid hold of
something
im-
portant
when he stressed that
meaning
is at least
partly
created in the act of
reading.
1. See William H.
Youngren,
"Addison and the Birth of
Eighteenth-Century
Aesthetics,"
Modern
Philology
79 (1982): 267-83.
2. The
Spectator,
ed. Donald F.
Bond, 5
vols.
(Oxford, 1965), 4:318.
-
O99
~~~~i~~~r"~~~~~~l ::I '' ..' ;';. ; ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~6I.
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HK iw
.Si
Prepitsf
....... .... ..
A.:. . t i. l
i.... --... li~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. .....
r
To p k
if"~~~~~~
Figure
i. The title
page
of Narcissus Luttrell's
copy
of Absalom
andAchitophel,
with his
annotations,
now in the
Huntington Library.
100 '. ALAN ROPER
When
Johnson
came to discuss the success of Absalom
andAchitophel
in the
Life of
Dryden,
he recalled Addison's
claim,
defined the author's contribution
less
vaguely,
and
correctly spoke
of readers in the
plural:
Addison has
attempted
to derive
[the
popularity
of Absalom and
Achitophel]
from the
delight
which the mind feels in the
investiga-
tion of
secrets;
and thinks that
curiosity
to
decypher
the names
procured
readers to the
poem.
There is no need to
enquire why
those verses were
read,
which to all the attractions of
wit,
elegance,
and
harmony
added the
co-operation
of all the factious
passions,
and filled
every
mind with
triumph
or resentment.3
Although
Johnson improved
in some
ways
upon
Addison's terms,
he also trans-
lated the central
perception
into
something
crude and
simple
in order to dismiss
it,
and
Johnson's
alternative source of
attraction,
the
engaging
of
party prejudice,
is much less
sophisticated
than Addison's. But was Addison
right?
Modern crit-
ical studies
usually ignore
the issue he
raised,
even those concerned with estab-
lishing
a historical context for Absalom
andAchitophel.
The Restoration identities
of most of
Dryden's
characters are taken for
granted,
as
though
fixed in the
poem,
and the few that are
disputed
become the
property
of scholars who contend to
one
side,
away
from the mainstream of criticism.
For most modern readers of
Dryden's poem
it suffices to know the
Restoration
equivalents
of the titular characters and of David and Zimri. Some
might
add Shimei and Corah to this
list,
or even stretch to Barzillai. The re-
maining
characters are
usually
understood to
represent,
in
Browning's phrase,
"certain
people
of
importance
in their
day"
who no
longer
have identities: a knot
of disaffected
nobles,
some factious
commoners,
one
group
of ecclesiastical and
another of
political dignitaries,
a
pair
of murder
victims,
two
wives,
and one mis-
tress. If
you
seek more
precision, you
will find it in texts
prepared
for
students,
which
may
annotate the characters as
they appear
or where
you may
find a list
coupling
biblical and Restoration names and
concluding
with an assurance that
"all these references would have been
recognized by
the
contemporary
reader
without the
help
of notes."4 Since those
encountering
such a list are modern-
not
contemporary readers-they
have small reason to know that the assurance is
ill founded.
"The
contemporary
reader,"
of
course,
never existed,
just
as the readers re-
ferred to in modern
discourse-general,
common,
lay,
ideal,
implied,
actual,
Samuel
Johnson,
Lives
of
the
English Poets,
ed.
George
Birkbeck Hill,
3
vols.
(Oxford, 1905), 1:373-74.
Louis I. Bredvold, et al., eds.,
Eighteenth-Century Poetry
and Prose
(New York, 1956;
1st ed.
1939), 1196.
3-
4-
ALAN ROPER 100 -n
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
informed,
he or
she-merely
serve as avatars or
puppets
of the critics and schol-
ars who call them into
being.
But there
certainly
were
contemporary
readers of
Absalom
andAchitophel,
and
many
of them recorded in
copies
of
early
editions
the Restoration
equivalents
of the
poem's
characters and
places.
Until
recently,
these annotations were
usually ignored by
modern scholars and dismissed when
mentioned. Scholars have instead
supported
their
conjectures by referring
to
early printed keys among
other
sources,
although they
have also
argued
that some
items in those
keys
issue from an
imperfect understanding
of the times.
They
argue
thus,
I
believe,
because modern studies have
presented
us with a
printed
poem
that ended a
process
traceable in terms of
causes, sources,
analogues,
and
antecedents,
a
printed poem equipped
with fixed
meanings always
available to a
patient
scholar however much
they may
elude a
hasty
reader. Such studies have
value and
relevance, and,
without
questioning
their
usefulness,
I wish to con-
sider the
printed poem
as also
beginning
a
process
traceable in terms of various
attempts
to understand and
thereby
to create the
poem's contemporary
refer-
ence. Both Addison and
Johnson
in their different
ways recognized
such a
process;
it
began immediately upon
the
publication
ofAbsalom
andAchitophel-
and will continue
beyond
this
essay
in the
responses
of such readers as it
may
find.
With his motto from Horace in the title
page Dryden challenged
readers to in-
terpret
his
poem:
Si
Propius
stes / Te
CapietMagis;
"if
you
stand
closer,
it will take
you
more." Absalom
andAchitophel,
more
obviously
than most
poems, requires
an audience to
complete
its
meanings.
Absalom does not
equal
Monmouth,
nor
Achitophel Shaftesbury,
until a reader
says
so,
and
saying
so
enlarges
the
poem's
meanings by
an act of
interpretation.
As
John
Wallace
put
it,
echoing
Addison's
perception,
we must take
"responsibility
for
having
introduced the
allegorical
equation,
or so the author could tell us-even the author of Absalom and
Achitophel";5 especially
the author ofAbsalom
andAchitophel,
we
may
want to
say.
We need a
history
of
interpretations,
in order to
see,
among
other
things,
how one reader
imposes upon
another or
upon
others. Annotated
copies
of
early
editions
supply
the
beginning
of that
history
and
challenge
us to undertake an
archeology
of
readership,
since most annotators
neglected
to
sign
their work and
since
many copies
were
subsequently cropped, leaving only fragmentary
mar-
ginalia.
We need to ask not which
glosses
strike us as
correct,
which as
incorrect,
but what reasons
contemporaries might
have had for
annotating
as
they
did.
5. "Dryden
and
History:
A Problem in
Allegorical Reading,"
ELH36
(1969): 265-90, quoting 273.
VI
101
102 '. ALAN ROPER
Answering
that
question
takes us into the
busy, gossipy
world of Restoration
pol-
itics,
out of which Absalom
andAchitophel emerges
with such assurance and seem-
ing clarity.
Of the
149
copies
I have
examined,
67
contain
manuscript keys
or
marginalia
or both
together. Although
I considered
only
editions
published
in
1681 and 1682, I found some
copies
with identifications
reflecting
titles conferred
or inherited several
years
later. Sometimes two
people
annotated the same
copy.
A few annotators marked the
opening pages
then bored of the
game.
Others re-
quired
the
help
of notes in order to understand the
poem.
Those
helpful
notes
sometimes took the form of
early printed keys,
of which there were
four;
it
seems
likely
that
manuscript keys
also circulated. I have no villains to chronicle.
However,
I can feature an attractive
rogue
called
Ford,
Lord
Grey
of
Warke,
who
at one time or another has served as Restoration
equivalent
for no fewer than
five of
Dryden's
characters,
although
he is now in
danger
of
losing
all his former
honors.
My
heroes are two
young
men:
Jacob
Tonson,
who had
just
turned
twenty-six,
and Narcissus
Luttrell,
who was
twenty-four
when Tonson
published
the first edition of Absalom
andAchitophel
and
gave
a
copy
to Luttrell.
Luttrell noted on the title
page
of his
copy,
now in the
Huntington Library,
that he received it "Ex dono Amici
Jacobi
Tonson"
(figure
i),6
and some of
Luttrell's other notes on the title
page may
reflect information
passed along by
Tonson with the
copy.
The
poem
sold for one
shilling; although published anony-
mously,
it was written
"By John Dryden"; according
to one
interpretation,
it was
first available for sale on
"17
Novemb."
1681,
although
Luttrell's date
may
instead
signify
the
day
of
acquisition,
which would have been close
to,
perhaps
identi-
cal
with,
the
day
of
publication.7
Luttrell's
general
comment
presumably
owes
nothing
to Tonson: "An excellent
poem, agt
ye
Duke of
monmouth,
Earl of
Shaftsbury
& that
party,
& in vindica6n of the
King
and his freinds."
Tonson,
though, may
have
supplied
information that Luttrell
incorporated
into his co-
pious marginalia
to the
poem
(for
examples,
see
figure
2, p. 114).
6. Luttrell's
copy (135868) corresponds
to
izaiii
in the classification of
Hugh
Macdonald,
John Dryden:
A
Bibliography ofEarly
Editions and
ofDrydeniana
(Oxford, 1939; reprint, London, 1966);
hereafter
Macdonald.
Copies
ofAbsalom
andAchitophel
are identified in notes
by
collection,
shelf-mark when
available;
and Macdonald's number for the edition.
7.
Edmond Malone,
in The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works
of John Dryden, 4
vols. (London, 1800),
assumed that Luttrell's dates were those of
acquisition
(vol. i, pt. 1:156). James
M.
Osborn,
in "Reflections
on Narcissus Luttrell
(1657-1732),"
The Book
Collector,
6
(1957): 15-27, argued
that "Luttrell was
noting
the
day
of
publication,
which,
of
course,
was often the
day
of
purchase"
(p. 22).
Phillip
Harth,
in
Penfor
a
Party: Drydens Tory Propaganda
in Its Contexts
(Princeton, N.J., 1993)
revived and endorsed
Osborn's
argument (p.
x).
Evidence that Luttrell was
signifying
the
day
of
publication
comes
only
from
1680,
the first
year
in which he
consistently
recorded the
precise date-day,
month,
year-on
his
pur-
chases. Note that Luttrell dated his
copy
of A
Panegyrick
On the Author
ofAbsalom andAchitophel
(in
the
Huntington Library)
"20. Dec.
1681.,"
whereas the Clark
Library
copy
of the same broadside is dated
"
19 December 1681."
ALAN ROPER 102
'v
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
Luttrell's
marginalia
are best understood in relation to other annotated
copies
of
early
editions,
some of them
evidently
influenced
by
the
printed keys,
which
we
may
therefore
appropriately
consider at this
point.
The earliest formed
part
of a wretched
piece
of
doggerel
entitled A
Key
(With
the
Whip)
To
Open
the
Mystery
and
Iniquity of
the Poem Call'dAbsalom
6&Achitophel.
Written
by
a dis-
senting preacher
named
Christopher
Nesse and
published anonymously,
it be-
came available some
eight
weeks after
Dryden's poem;
Luttrell dated his
copy,
now in the
Dyce
Collection at the Victoria and Albert
Museum,
"13. Jan."
1681/82. While
quarreling
with
Dryden's handling
of biblical
history,
Nesse
sup-
plied
Restoration
equivalents
for
twenty
of
Dryden's
characters,
printing
the
name as a sidenote as well as
discussing
the individual in the text. Two months
later,
Luttrell
acquired
a
copy,
now in the
Huntington Library,
of a set of verses
called Absolons IX Worthies:
Or,
A
Key
to a late BOOK or
POEM,
EntituledA. B. &
A. C. and dated it "10. March. 1682/1." Not
properly
a
key,
Absolons IX Worthies
allocates a satiric
quatrain
to each of
eight
characters from
Dryden's poem,
asso-
ciating
the biblical
names-Achitophel,
Zimri,
and so on-with
biographical
details of Restoration
figures
it leaves
unidentified,
so that
it, too,
needs to be
glossed,
and Luttrell
duly
annotated his
copy.
It lists
only disloyal
characters,
omitting
one of
Dryden's,
Issachar,
and
filling up
its titular number
by adding
one
of its
own,
Uriah
Junior.
Modern scholars sometimes treat Absolons IX Worthies
as a reliable extension of Absalom and
Achitophel by combining
details from
the two
poems
to
support
an
argument
that a character
corresponds
to one
Restoration
personage
rather than another. But
nothing
establishes Absolons IX
Worthies as an authoritative
commentary upon
Absalom and
Achitophel
rather
than a set of
conjectures
or
interpretations by
a
contemporary.
Scholars
discussing
the Restoration
identity
of
Dryden's
characters have never
cited the next
printed key
as
support
for a case. It first
appeared
at the head of a
cheaply printed quarto offering
a double-column text ofAbsalom
andAchitophel
but without the author's address "To the Reader" and without
imprint.
It has been
dated to
1708
or
just
before,
because in
1708 James
Read
put
his name to an-
other
cheap quarto
(it
sold for one
penny),
also with double-column
text,
man-
ifestly
set from the
anonymous quarto,
and
claiming
to be "The
Eight
Edition"
ofAbsalom
andAchitophel.
Still,
in
1708 Henry
Hills
printed
and sold a
cheap
oc-
tavo edition ofAbsalom
andAchitophel,
"For the Benefit of the
Poor,"
and warned
of a rival edition at the end of his text:
To
prevent
the Publicks
being impos'd
on,
this is to
give
notice,
that the
Book
lately
Publish'd in
4to
is
very Imperfect
and Uncorrect in so much
<"
103
104 x ALAN ROPER
that above
Thirty
Lines are omitted in several
Places,
and
many gross
Errors
committed,
which
pervert
the Sence.
Since Hills
accurately
described both the
anonymous quarto
and Read's
quarto,
we cannot tell which he had in mind.8 In
any
case,
undeterred
by
other evidences
of
inaccuracy,
Hills
helped
himself to the
key
that both
quartos
featured and
placed
it at the end of the author's address in his octavo. We
may
call the
key
Read's,
even
though
it
strictly belongs
to the
anonymous quarto,
for
which,
of
course,
Read
may
also have been
responsible.
Read's
key
offered eleven identifi-
cations,
of which five were
idiosyncratic
in
ways reflecting
an
imperfect
knowl-
edge
of events no
longer
current.
Indeed,
these
partially keyed
editions
belong
to
years during
which there were several
attempts
to fix a literature
dealing
with a
recent but
fading past.
An edition of
Buckingham's
Rehearsal in
1709
offered an
exhaustive
key
to the
play,
and in the same
year
Garth's
Dispensary
also received
a
key.
In
1715
there were
keys
to Butler's Hudibras and to Tom Brown's
Works,
as
well as
Pope's
satire on the
practice
in A
Key
to The Lock.
The
following year, 1716,
Jacob
Tonson
printed
"A KEY to both Parts of
Absalom
andAchitophel"
in a new edition of
Miscellany
Poems.9 Tonson
supplied
identifications for
twenty-six
of the characters in
Dryden's poem, omitting only
Amnon
(line 39)
from
among
those with
names,
as well as a few that enter
merely
as relatives of other characters: David's brother
(line 353),
Absalom's mother
(line 368),
and Barzillai's son
(line 831).
Tonson's
key
remained
unquestioned
for
nearly
two hundred
years
and
probably represents
the closest we will ever come
to what
Dryden
would have said if asked the Restoration
identity
of his charac-
ters. Tonson need not have relied
upon
his
memory
when
compiling
his
key
but
may
instead have transcribed and
alphabetized marginalia
in old file
copies, up-
dating
the titles of a few historical
counterparts.
Such seems a
likely explanation
of the
key's containing
an "Isbosheth"
(as
"Rich.
Cromwell"),
even
though
the
character is so
spelled only
in Tonson's first two folios and in the two Dublin
quartos
derived from them. In all ofTonson's
subsequent
editions,
including
that
for
Miscellany
Poems in
1716,
the character is
spelled
"Ishbosheth." To be
sure,
the
key
also
glosses
an "Abethdin" as "Lord
Chancellor,"
and the lines
praising
Achitophel's
conduct of that
office,
absent from the first two
folios,
were added
in Tonson's first
quarto,
which he called "The Second Edition." But
Achitophel's
8. For these editions,
see D. E
Foxon,
English
Verse
1701-1750,
2 vols.
(Cambridge,
1975), 1:198.
The lines
missing
from both
quartos correspond
in a
complete
text to lines
333-34, 337-44, 349-66, lo0o-l5.
Most
of the
"gross
Errors" are common to both
quartos, although
Read's has some
peculiar
to
itself,
notably
the
omission of line
87,
a half
line,
which is found in the
anonymous quarto,
thus
making
clear that it
sup-
plied copy
for Read's
quarto
rather than the other
way
around.
9.
Italic and roman
reversed;
the
key
is at
2:36-37
of Macdonald
49.
104
V
ALAN ROPER
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
office is there
spelled
"Abbethdin"
(line 188);10
the
(incorrect)
spelling
with a sin-
gle
b occurs in The Second Part
ofAbsalom
and
Achitophel
(line 1014),
from his
copy
of which Tonson
presumably
took his
gloss.
We
may
set Tonson's
key
beside
Nesse's,
not to
argue
cases of
identity,
but to
find a
way
of
discriminating among
annotated
copies
of
early
editions. Tonson
and Nesse
disagree
on
only
two
identifications,
those for
Agag
(line 676)
and
Caleb
(line 574).
Nesse identified
Agag,
for whose murder Corah is said to
call,
as the
king's
brother,
James,
duke of
York,
but that
gloss
occurs elsewhere
only
once in the annotated
copies
I have seen." Tonson listed
Agag
as "Sir
E[dmund]
B[erry] Godfrey,"
an identification that received
some,
seemingly independent,
support
from
contemporary
annotators,'2
although
others favored the earl of
Danby,'3
or Lord
Stafford,'4
and
perhaps
Edward Coleman.'5 More
helpful
than
Agag
is
Caleb,
listed
by Dryden among opposition
lords and described as "cold."
Nesse identified Caleb as the earl of Essex and then
brooded,
as well he
might,
over the
significance
of "cold." "Is
it,
because for Children he's too old?" "Cold
Caleb" shares a line with "well
hung
Balaam," and we are told no more about
them. Tonson identified Caleb as
my rogue,
"Lord
Grey"
ofWarke,
a
by
no means
obvious
candidate,
as modern scholars have more than once
argued.
We should
expect
that Nesse's identifications would be
adopted by
at least
some readers anxious to annotate their
copies, especially
if
they
owned one or
other of the editions
published
in the
early
months of 1682 after Nesse's
Key ap-
peared.
As it
happens,
the clearest
example
I have found is a Clark
Library copy
of the first folio that was
presumably purchased
some weeks before Nesse's
Key
became
available.'6
Like
Nesse,
the owner of this
copy
identified
just twenty
of
the
characters,
although passing by Agag
and instead
annotating
Issachar,
un-
glossed by
Nesse.
They
not
only
have nineteen characters in
common,
but the an-
notator also transcribed several of Nesse's
peculiarities: "Mowgrave"
for Adriel
instead of
"Mulgrave";
"Ld
Seymour"
(Nesse
has "L.
Seimor")
for Amiel instead
o1. Quotations
from Absalom
andAchitophel
follow the text in The Works
of
John
Dryden
(hereafter
Works),
20 vols.
projected (Berkeley
and Los
Angeles, 1956-),
vol.
2, ed. H. T.
Swedenberg, Jr.,
and Vinton A.
Dearing
(1972): 5-36.
1. National Art
Library
(Victoria
and Albert
Museum)
Forster
7018
item 12
(12d).
12. Brotherton Collection
(University
of
Leeds) l2ai; Harvard
*fEC65. D8474A.
1681
(12ai);
Yale
Ij D848
+68ia
copy
1
(l2ai);
Folger D2212.3 (l2aiii);
Clark *fPR
3419
A21
i681fcopy
2
(izd);
British
Library 11630.
e.
19 (i2ei);
Clark *PR
3419
A21 168ih
(l2eii);
National Art
Library Dyce 3254 copy 1 (2f);
Claremont PR
3415
Ab 88 1682
(12f);
Brotherton
copy
of
12g.
13.
Huntington 106367 (12c);
Clark *PR
3419
A21 i68ie
(12c);
Clark *PR
3419
A21 1682a
copy
1 (12f).
14.
Folger
D2216
(12ei).
1. Harvard
*EC65. D8474A.
1682
(12f);
the
gloss
is
cropped
to "man." Coleman was the first to be
executed,
partly
on Oates's
testimony,
for
complicity
in the
Popish
Plot.
16. *fPR
3419
A21 i681
(l2ai).
v-
105
io6 ALAN ROPER
of "Mr
Seymour"
as,
properly,
in other annotated
copies;
and "Sr Wm
Jonas,"
from Nesse's
sidenote,
where the name of
Dryden's
character is substituted for
Jones,
the Restoration
equivalent.
As
important, they agree upon
Caleb as
Essex,
even
though
Caleb's Restoration
identity prompted
no consensus
among early
an-
notators. I have seen "Essex" for Caleb in two other
copies,
which seem not in-
debted to Nesse in other
respects.17
Marginalia
in the Clark
copy
of the first folio
evidently
derive from Nesse's
Key. Subsequently,
that
copy
was bound with a
copy
of The Second Part
of
Absalom
andAchitophel,
and a later owner transcribed Tonson's
key
to both
parts
into the front of the volume. Tonson's
key
also served as
principal
source for mar-
ginalia
in a
copy
of the London edition called "The
Fourth."'8
Although
the an-
notator included details not in Tonson's
key-for example, identifying
Absalom's
mother
(line 368)
as
"MrS Walters,
alias Barlow"-he
accepted Godfrey
for
Agag
and
Grey
for Caleb. Like
Tonson,
he identified Hushai as
"Hyde
Earl of
Rochester" and
Jotham
as "Mar: of Hallifax."
Lawrence,
Viscount
Hyde
became
earl of Rochester on
29
November
1682,
just
over a
year
after
publication
of
Absalom and
Achitophel,
and the earl of Halifax was not created
Marquis
until
22
August
1682.
Annotators,
including
Nesse and
Luttrell,
who
early responded
to the
poem
show these men as "Ld Hide" and "E. ofallifax" or d Hallifax."
These
early
annotators
displayed
a
usually
exclusive concern to
put
an answer
the
question
"Who's who in this
poem?"
Nesse,
it is
true,
sought
to
open
the
poems "Iniquity"
as well as its
"Mystery,"
but I have found
only
one
early
an-
notator who
similarly
diversified identification with
(hostile)
comment on the
poem's political
and
religious
sentiments.19 The rest attended to
people
rather
than
principles, although they
also took note of
parties
and
places along
the
way.
So it was with Luttrell's
response.
His
marginalia
consist of two main kinds. He
supplied
Restoration
equivalents
for all but six of the
thirty
characters, together
with similar identifications of
places
like Gath or
Egypt
and
groups
like
Jews
or
Jebusites.
He also entered
expansive glosses
that serve to
paraphrase,
describe,
or
explain
the text. Sometimes an
explanatory gloss accompanies
an
identifying
gloss
in order to show
why
this Restoration
personage
must be
signified by
that
biblical character. The
expansive glosses
will concern us
further,
but we should
17.
Clark *PR
3419
Az1 i681e
(2zc);
Chicago
PR
3418
A2 1682
(2zg).
18.
Clark *PR
3413
A1 1682 item 2
(2g).
l9. Folger
Dz212
(1iai).
106 o-- ALAN ROPER
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
first consider the
identifying glosses
in themselves because
they supply
the
point
of contact with other annotated
copies
and later annotated editions.
Luttrell's
glosses
are identical to those
printed by Jacob
Tonson
thirty-five
years
later,
except
that unlike
Tonson,
Luttrell offered no
gloss
for
Agag
(line 676),
nor for Saul and
Is[h]bosheth (lines 57-58),
who,
every glossator
has
agreed, rep-
resent Oliver and Richard Cromwell. The consonance between Luttrell and
Tonson
may
seem
insignificant.
After
all,
most
glossators agreed upon
the
Restoration
equivalents
of most of the
characters,
the
principal exception being
the
compiler
of Read's
key,
and even he
managed
Monmouth for
Absalom,
Shaftesbury
for
Achitophel,
Charles II for
David,
and Bethel for Shimei.
Setting
aside Read's
key,
we find that other annotators
usually agreed upon Mulgrave
for
Adriel,20
Seymour
for
Amiel,
Huntingdon
for
Balaam,21
Ormond for
Barzillai,
Oates for
Corah,
Jones
for
Jonas,22
Halifax for
Jotham,
Howard of Escrick for
Nadab,23
and
Buckingham
for Zimri.
Together
with some minor and obvious
characters such as
Michal,
who is David's and therefore Charles II's
queen,
and
Annabel,
who is Absalom's and therefore Monmouth's
bride,
all these identifica-
tions have survived to the
present.
Modern scholars have
questioned only
one,
Huntingdon
for
Balaam,
but
they
have also
accepted
other identifications with
an assurance not
always
matched
by Dryden's contemporaries.
Issachar
(line 738),
for
example,
enters
briefly
as Absalom's
"wealthy
western
friend" and host
during
Absalom's
triumphant progress through
the land. All
modern
editions,
whether meant for
scholarly
or classroom
use,
accept,
without
mentioning
an
alternative,
Thomas
Thynne
of
Longleat
in Wiltshire-"Tom of
Ten Thousand"-as the Restoration
equivalent
of
Issachar,
because
Thynne
lav-
ishly
entertained Monmouth
during
his
progress
in 1680
through
the southwest
of
England.
Luttrell, Tonson,
and most
contemporary
annotators who entered a
gloss
at this
point
also
agreed upon Thynne.
But a few
thought
otherwise. One
opted
for someone called "Mr
Teke,"24
probably meaning George Speke,
an
20.
Chicago
PR
3418
Az 1681
(12ai)
glosses
Adriel as
"Dorset,"
and
my copy
of izaiii has "Ld:
Buckhurst,"
another of Dorset's titles. Clark *PR
3419
A21
i681h (l2eii)
has "Gen
Monk,
Duke of
Albermarle,"
for
Adriel,
an unusual association
(Monk
died in
1670),
which is deleted in favor of
Mulgrave.
The
Brotherton
copy
of
izg
offers an undeleted "Duke of
Albermarle,"
perhaps signifying
the second
duke,
son of the
general.
Forster
7018
item 12
(izd)
glosses
Adriel as "Lauderdale."
21.
Rylands 7248
item 8
(i2g) glosses
Balaam as "Ld Bellasis" and Caleb as "Ld
Peeters,"
meaning Belasyse
and
Petre,
two of the
Popish
lords
imprisoned
in the Tower.
Newberry
Case fY
185. D85594 (2ih)
has "D of
Buckinga"
for
Balaam,
even
though
Zimri is also
glossed
as
Buckingham
a few lines earlier.
22. Bodleian Vet.
A3
c.
76 (i2ai)
has
"Justice Jeffries"
for
Jonas. Jeffreys
was a court servant
greatly
disliked
by
the
Whigs; Jonas
comes first in
Dryden's
"Rascall Rabble" of
disloyal
commoners
(line 579).
23.
Chicago
PR
3418 A2 i682
(2zg)
puts "Sr Wm
Jones"
beside
Nadab,
perhaps misplacing
the usual
gloss
for
Jonas
six lines later.
24.
Clark *PR
3419
A21 1682a
copy
1
(z2f).
O
107
io8 ALAN ROPER
irascible
Whig
member of Parliament from
Somerset,
who also
lavishly
enter-
tained Monmouth
during
his western
progress
in 1680.25 Another entered "Sr
W":
Coven,"26
perhaps
the Sir William
Coventry
later associated with Halifax's
Character
ofa
Trimmer.
Coventry,
an uncle
ofThynne's,
retired from Parliament
in
1679
and lived near
Witney
in Oxfordshire. He had no connection with
Monmouth, and the annotator
may
have confused him with Sir William
Courtenay,
who
"magnificently
entertain'd" Monmouth at Exeter
during
the
western
progress.27
These
possibilities
find some
support
from a
manuscript key
in the front of one
copy
that offers
equal
alternatives for Issachar: "either Sr
Willm
Courtney
or
Speak
in
Dorsetshire,"
relocating Speke
one
county
over.28 One in-
decisive annotator entered
"Esqr
Thinne or ... will
Courtney,"29
and another
bettered him with "Mr Thinn. or Mr
Speak.
Sr W"
Courtney."30 "Courtney"
alone adorns the
margins
of two
copies,3'
and the
margin
of another
yields
a
cropped "tny."32
Two more annotators
preferred
our friend "Ld
Grey,"33 perhaps
because Monmouth
began
the
progress
of 1680 at
Grey's
seat,
Uppark,
near
Chichester in Sussex.34
Indeed,
if we
accept
that Issachar stands for a
Whig mag-
nate who entertained Monmouth
during
his western
progress
and who is other-
wise
distinguished only by being "wealthy,"
then we have at least
eight
candidates
among
whom to choose.
Just
as we have limited and therefore
insufficiently limiting
information
about
Issachar, so, too,
we know of Bathsheba
only
that David has
grown
old in
her embraces
(line 710),
and she
evidently
stands for one of Charles's mistresses.
Luttrell, Tonson,
and most
early
annotators
opted
for the duchess of
Portsmouth,
for ten
years
Charles's
principal
mistress;
she
appears
without rival in notes to
modern editions. The
compiler
of Read's
key, groping
for the
past, cautiously
concluded that Bathsheba
signifies
"D.
Portsmouth,
or
any
other
Concubine,"
because he
knew,
as we do
also,
that
Portsmouth,
although principal,
was not
25.
For a
contemporary description
of
Speke's
entertainment,
see A True Narrative
of
the Duke
ofMonmouths
Late
Journey
into the West ...
from
an
Eye-witness thereof(London,
1680),
2
(quoted
in
Works, 2:270).
26.
Huntington
106367 (12c);
a
cropped copy.
27.
True Narrative
of.
.. Monmouths Late
Journey,
3.
28. Clark *PR
3419
A21 i68ih
(l2eii).
29. My copy
of i2aiii.
30.
All Souls CW. 2. 10 item 28
(12ei).
31.
Brotherton
copy
of 12ai;
Bodleian Malone G1.
19 ( 2ei).
32.
Harvard
*EC65. D8474A.
1682
(12f).
33. Chicago
PR
3418
A2 1681 (12ai); Rylands
SC
1ol59C
item 6
(12ai)
has
"Grey
L.
Tan[the
rest of the word is
illegible]"; Grey
became earl of Tankerville in
1695.
34. J.
N. P. Watson,
Captain-General
and Rebel
Chief
The
Life of
ames, Duke
of
Monmouth
(London, 1979):
128-29.
108 8 ALAN ROPER
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
sole mistress. Three
annotators,
two with
copies
of the second Dublin
edition,
preferred
the duchess of
Cleveland,35
head mistress for the decade
preceding
Portsmouth's
ascendancy,
and
living
in Paris when Absalom
andAchitophel
was
published.
But she still
figured
in satires on
royal
mistresses in 1681 and
1682,36
and her
seniority might
seem reflected in the
king's growing
old in her embraces.
She became his mistress
shortly
before his restoration on his thirtieth
birthday.
He was
past forty
when Portsmouth
ascended,
past fifty
when Absalom and
Achitophel appeared.
Those
favoring
Cleveland
might
also have recalled that she
became Charles's mistress when wife of
another,
just
as Bathsheba became
David's,
whereas Portsmouth was unwed.
I make the case for the duchess of
Cleveland,
not to
challenge
the
majority
preference
for
Portsmouth,
but to understand
why
three
early
readers
opted
for
Cleveland. I am also concerned to establish the reasonableness of their choice at
the same time as I
accept
the reasonableness of
choosing
Portsmouth.
Dryden's
line,
while
asking
readers to think of a Restoration
equivalent
for
Bathsheba,
sup-
plies
insufficient detail to restrict the
possibilities
and enable us to
say
in unison
"she must be Portsmouth and cannot be Cleveland
or,
for that
matter,
the duchess
of Mazarin or Nell
Gwyn."
Those who
specify only
Portsmouth
(or Cleveland)
help
the
poem
to
mean,
at least for themselves. Some
may object
that Bathsheba
occupies only
a
line,
Issachar a
couplet,
and that other
problematic
characters
are
dispatched
with similar
brevity.
Can we not
assign
them to a
special category
and
argue
that
Dryden normally supplies
sufficient detail to restrict Restoration
equivalents
to
just
one
per
character? If
so, then,
except
for the
special
cases,
Dryden
has
wholly
created the
meaning
without our collusion.
Briefly
sketched
characters number no fewer than
seventeen,
just
over half the
total, and,
so far
from
being special
or
aberrant,
in fact
provide
a
sharper
version of the
poem's
nor-
mal
functioning by
reason of the extra demands
they
make on readers.
Some
briefly
sketched characters
proved
troublesome to
readers,
whereas oth-
ers did
not,
and we cannot
always
tell what made a character difficult or
easy
to
identify.
Thus,
each of the three ecclesiastical
dignitaries occupies
a
couplet
(lines 864-69).
Zadock and the
Sagan
of
Jerusalem
were
frequently
annotated and
nearly always
as the
archbishop
of
Canterbury
and the
bishop
of
London,
although
one
key
left the
Sagan unglossed
and listed Zadock as the
Bishop
of
London.37 But their
colleague,
"Him of the Western
dome,"
evidently puzzled
35.
Clark *PR
3419
A21 168ie
(12c);
Huntington 106367 (12c);
Chicago
PR
3418
A2 168ia
(pirated
from
Tonson's first
quarto;
see
Works, 2:413).
36.
See "An
Essay
of Scandal"
(summer 1681),
lines
32-36,
in
John
Harold
Wilson, ed., Court Satires
of
the
Restoration
(Columbus, Ohio,
1976), 64;
and A
Dialogue
between the D.
ofC.
and the D.
ofP.
at their
meeting
in Paris: Luttrell dated his
copy
(in the
Huntington Library)
"28. March. 1682."
37.
British
Library 643.
line
24
item 2
(12aii).
%e
109
ALAN ROPER
annotators,
most of
whom,
including
Luttrell,
passed
him
by.
I have found nine
who
anticipated
Tonson
by identifying
the character in one
way
or another as
John Dolben,
bishop
of
Rochester,
although only
two
responded
to
Dryden's
"Western"
by noting
that the
bishop
was also dean of Westminster.3 Seven oth-
ers also
responded
to "Western" but
thought
the character
signified
the
"Bp.
of
Sarum,"39
or
"Bp
of
Salisbury,"40
these
being
from
1667
to
1689
the alternative
titles of Seth
Ward,
a
vigorous opponent
of nonconformists. One annotator
looked even farther west and
opted
for the "Dean of
Exeter,"
signifying thereby
either
George Cary,
who died in
February
1681,
or his
successor,
the Honourable
Richard
Annesley.41
Still another favored the
"Bp
of
[Bath and] Wells,"42
mean-
ing
either Peter
Mews,
a
loyal
and well-rewarded
supporter
of Charles I and
Charles
II,
or another favorite of Charles
II's,
Thomas
Ken,
who succeeded Mews
in November
1684.
Richard Hickes of the Middle
Temple put
his name on a
copy
of the first folio and also favored "Bath & W,"43
although
a later owner
deleted Hickes's
gloss
and substituted "Dean of West." Another reviser deleted
"Rochester" from "Bish of Rochester" and inserted "Oxford" above and "Dr Fell"
below the deletion.44
Moreover,
annotators did not limit their
disagreement
to
briefly
sketched
characters,
for a few
challenged
the
majority opinion
about the
identity
of a character described
by Dryden
with some fullness.
Hushai
appears among
those
loyal
to David and is allocated five
couplets
celebrating
his
prudent management
of the
Exchequer.
Most annotators
agreed
that Hushai
corresponds
to
Lawrence,
Viscount
Hyde,
and Luttrell
explained
that Hushai must be
Hyde
because
Hyde
was
"very frugall
in
ye
managemt
of
ye
Exchequer
when was first lord cohnissione." Tonson endorsed the
identification,
which has remained
unchallenged
to the
present.
But some
early
annotators
thought
otherwise. Two read Hushai as
Danby,
sometime lord
high
treasurer,
al-
though
out of office and in the Tower for more than two and a half
years.45
One
manuscript key
lists Hushai as either
Hyde
or "Sr
Stephen
Fox,"
who served with
Hyde
as a lord
commissioner,46
and Fox
occupies
without
dispute
the
margin
of
38.
Brotherton
copy
of
i2ai;
Congregational
(Dr. Williams's)
82.
4. 4.
item io
(izd).
Folger
D 2216
(12ei),
a
cropped copy,
has
"Bp
Roche ... & dean."
39. Jesus, Oxford, R9. 8. Gall. item 2
(izai); my copy
of 12aiii; Bodleian AA
73
item 12 Art
(12d);
Texas
Aj
D848
+68iae
(12h).
40. Folger
D
2212.3 (lzaiii);
Bodleian Malone Gi. 19
(i2ei);
All Souls CW 2. . item 28
(i2ei).
41.
Yale
Ij
D848
+681a
copy
2
(2lai).
42.
Princeton
Taylor
i2ai.
43.
Guildhall
Bay
H. ].
3
No
19
item
1 (lzaiii).
44.
Princeton Ex
3722. 3103. Ilq
(12aiii).
45.
Yale
Ij
D848
+68ia
copy
2
(l2ai); Folger
D2213 (i2b).
46.
Clark *PR
3419
A21 168ih
(izeii).
110
-
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
another
copy.47
The annotater of a
copy pirated
from Tonson's first
quarto
fi-
nally opted
for "Lord Hide" but first entered then deleted "Sr Lionel
[that is,
Leoline]
Jenkins," secretary
of state since
April
168o,48
and still another favored
the earl of
Burlington,
lord treasurer of Ireland from 1660 to
1695.49
Two
more,
with
copies
of the second Dublin
quarto
in which
they
had
already
embraced
Cleveland rather than Portsmouth for
Bathsheba,
associated Hushai with "Earl
Radno[r]"50
and with "Old
Trurow."5'
These are the same
person: John,
Lord
Robartes
ofTruro,
created earl of Radnor in
July 1679,
lord
president
of the
Privy
Council in succession to
Shaftesbury
from October
1679
until
August
1684,
sev-
enty-five years
old in
1681,
and a
loyal
and able servant of his
king.
True
enough,
these annotators of a Dublin edition seem uncertain about ministerial
responsi-
bilities,
mistaking
the duties of a lord commissioner for those of a lord
president,
but an owner of the first folio also favored
"[R]adnor."52 Moreover,
as
Dryden
be-
gins
the character of Hushai a reader
might easily suppose
that here is a
veteran,
perhaps
the
king's contemporary
like
Danby,
or his senior like
Burlington
and
Radnor,
rather than a mere
thirty-year-old
like
Hyde,
one of the ministerial Chits:
Hushai the friend of David in
distress,
In
publick
storms of
manly
stedfastness;
By foreign
treaties he inform'd his
Youth;
And
join'd experience
to his native truth.
(Lines 888-91)
Hyde prevailed
over Radnor and the others both in his own time and for
pos-
terity.
He
prevailed
not because
Dryden
inscribed him
unmistakably
into
Hushai,
but because in his own time informed
readers,
perhaps
informed
by
other read-
ers,
for sufficient reasons declared him the
counterpart
of
Hushai,
and because
posterity, rummaging among
the records of the
dead,
has found no other candi-
date it has wished to advance.
Informed
contemporaries,
we have
seen,
agreeing upon many
Restoration iden-
tities,
usually disagreed
about
some,
so that it is unusual to find two
extensively
annotated
copies
that
agree
in all
important
details. Even the two owners who
47.
Brotherton
copy
of
12g.
48. Chicago
PR
3418
A2
1681a (see
note
35, above).
49. Newberry
Case fY
185. D85594 (12h).
5o.
Huntington
106367 (12c).
51.
Clark *PR
3419
A21 1681e
(12c).
52. My copy of 12aiii.
^
111
112 ' AL A N ROPER
annotated
copies
of the same Dublin edition and
agreed upon
Bathsheba as
Cleveland and Hushai as Radnor nonetheless cast different votes for
Issachar,
one
favoring
"Sr wm:
Coven[try],"5
the other
joining
the
majority
and
backing
Coventry's nephew, "Esqr Thynn."s4
The second also detected Essex in
Caleb,
whereas the first
passed by
Caleb without comment. These incidental but
per-
sistent
disagreements among
annotators
signal
that to some extent
they
worked
independently,
unless
they
were
simply
copying
from a
printed key.
On the other
side,
we can
easily
find a
contemporary
consensus over the Restoration identities
of all characters
except Agag,
Caleb,
and "Him of the Western dome." There
were
many
more
Hydes
than Radnors or
Danbys,
more Portsmouths than
Clevelands;
I have seen
thirty-eight Thynnes
but,
depending
on how and what
you
count,
only
seven
Courtenays,
three
Spekes,
and two
Greys.
The consensus
may testify
to the skill or the obviousness of
Dryden's
satire:
many things
follow
easily
if as a
contemporary
reader
you
deduce from the
prefatory
address that far
away
and
long ago signify,
as so
often,
here and now.
The consensus
may
also reflect
some,
perhaps widespread, sharing
of infor-
mation both written and oral. There must have been more letters
mentioning
and
identifying Dryden's
characters than the few calendered
by
the Historical
Manuscripts
Commission.55
People
must have talked about the
poem
in
London,
Dublin,
and
elsewhere,
especially during
the first six months of its
life,
when it
ran
through
edition after
edition,
was twice turned into Latin
by
Oxford schol-
ars,
and was
celebrated, attacked, answered,
and imitated.
Manuscript
as well as
printed keys may
have been available. A
copy
of the first edition at Yale has a
contemporary key
laid
in;
it lists items
by page
and line as well as
by
character
or
place, giving,
for
example, "Solymaan
Rout-ye
Cittie
Rabble,"
for
page
16,
line
25.56
The
glosses
from this
key
are also found in the
margins
of a
copy
of the
third edition at
Claremont,57
where the
"Solymaan
Rout"
(line 513)
is identified
as "The
City
Rabble." I have seen fifteen other
copies
that
gloss
the
phrase,
but
none as in the Yale and Claremont
copies.
The two
copies
contain the same
glosses, except
that Claremont identifies
Adriel,
omitted from the Yale
key,
as
Mulgrave.
Some
details-Achitophel's
son
(line 170),
the Pillars of the Laws
(line 874)-are
glossed only
in these two
copies
and with the same or
very
sim-
ilar
phrasing.
The Yale
key may represent
a coffee-house
purchase,
the Claremont
53. Huntington
106367.
54.
Clark *PR
3419
A21 168ie.
55.
Tenth
Report, Appendix,
Part IV:
174-75; Ormonde, n.s., 6:233, 236.
See also
Correspondence of
the
Family of
Hatton,
in Camden
Society,
n.s., 23 (1878):
1o.
56. Ij D848
+68ia
copy
1
(l2ai).
57.
PR
3415
Ab 88
1682 (12f).
ALAN ROPER 112 2
~
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
marginalia
a
transcription
of the same
key
or another
copy
of it. A British
Library
copy
of the first edition has a list of characters
facing Dryden's epistle.58
The list
looks as
though
it has been
copied
from another source or taken down in dicta-
tion: there are
blots,
a
deletion,
a
reforming
of the letters in Escricks name. The
compiler
followed the consensus for
nearly
all the listed characters but
thought
or was told that Zadock
signified
the
bishop
of London instead of the
archbishop
of
Canterbury.
He also
glossed
Caleb as Lord
Radnor,
thus
associating
the
king's
servant with malcontent lords
given
to
petitioning
for Parliaments.
Sir Charles
Lyttelton
dubbed them "malcontent lords" in March
168o,59
a few
months after sixteen of them
petitioned
the
king
on
7
December
1679
for a meet-
ing
of Parliament.60
Anticipating
the
event,
a newsletter of 2 December
1679
de-
clared the "most considerable" to be "Lords
Shaftesbury, Grey,
Howard, North,
Huntingdon,
Chandos and Kent."6' Essex came over a
year
later.
Dryden repre-
sented this
group
of malcontent lords
by
means of an
elegant
rhetorical
preteri-
tion,
naming
in
passing
those whom he
professed
to find
unworthy
of mention:
Titles and Names 'twere tedious to Reherse
Of
Lords,
below the
Dignity
of Verse.
Wits, warriors, Common-wealthsmen,
were the best:
Kind Husbands and meer Nobles all the rest.
And,
therefore in the name of
Dulness,
be
The well
hung
Balaam and cold Caleb free.
And
Canting
Nadab let Oblivion
damn,
Who made new
porridge
for the Paschal Lamb.
Let
Friendships holy
band some Names assure:
Some their own
Worth,
and some let Scorn secure.
(Lines 569-78)
Here we have
only
three biblical characters to share
among
five or six times that
number of
Whig
nobles,
and we
might expect contemporaries
to
apportion
them
variously
or to leave them
unglossed.
Some indeed
passed
them
by,
but those
who annotated the
copies
I have seen
nearly always agreed upon
Balaam and
Nadab while
disagreeing
about Caleb. Luttrell
helps explain
the
agreement
over
two and
signals
the
problem
with the third.
Proprietor
of a whole
couplet,
not a mere
hemistich,
Nadab looks easier than
the other two. Unexercised
by "Canting,"
Luttrell focused on the second half of
58. 643.
line
24
item 2
(12aii).
59.
Correspondence of
the
Family of
Hatton in Camden
Society,
n.s.,
22
(1878): 223.
60. K. H. D.
Haley,
The First Earl
of Shaftesbury
(Oxford, 1968), 560-61.
61. Calendar
of
State
Papers,
Domestic Series, 1679-8o,
296.
l
113
C
0
0
u
0
0
o .C
cd
L4
4C-
iZ.f
0
CZ
<
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
Nadab's
couplet:
"Ld Howard of Escrick who took
ye
sacramt in lambs
wool," in
mulled
ale,
that
is,
flavored with the
pulp
of roasted
apples.
I mentioned that
Luttrell
frequently
entered such
expansive glosses,
but one
contemporary,
anno-
tating
a
copy
of the first
folio,
favored the curt
style,62 offering
a "D.
Mon:," a
"D. Y."
(for York),
an
"Oats,"
and a "B. Cant." He so
styled
all his
glosses except
that for Nadab: "Howard
ofEsgrig
& because t'is sd he took the sacramt once in
Lambs wooll." It looks as
though
Nadab
initially puzzled
an otherwise confident
annotator,
who
subsequently
received and
perhaps sought
a solution to his dif-
ficulty.
If
so,
he must have missed a
flimsy pamphlet
that
appeared just
a
few months before
Dryden's poem,
told the
story
in
full,
and even
glossed
Dryden's "Canting"
in advance
by
allusion to Howard's
early
career as
dissenting
preacher.63
Of
course,
even so recent a
story might
have eluded some of
Dryden's
readers because in an
age
addicted to a
politics
of
gossip many
other stories com-
peted
for attention.
Among
those stories some concerned the earl of
Huntingdon
(or
Hunting-
ton,
as his name was
nearly always spelt),
and
many contemporary
annotators
had no
difficulty
in
seeing
him in "well
hung
Balaam,"
although only
Luttrell ex-
plained
the
epithet
as well: "Ld
Huntington
who hath a
swinging
P-. as is said."
Who said so and where?
Well,
"The
Quarrel
between Frank and Nan" circulated
in
manuscript
in 1681 and included
among
sketches of
Whig
lords one of
Huntingdon
with his
long
tool,
Not as his mark of man but
fool,
Whose tail and follies make his life
Only
useful to his wife.64
As we shall
see,
modern scholars have
enlarged
the
meaning
of "well
hung,"
if I
may
so
express
the matter. We
may
therefore note in
passing
that
contemporaries
who
glossed
the
epithet
never understood it in
anything
but Luttrell's sense. One
annotator,
seeing Buckingham
in
Balaam,
added that the
epithet
served "to de-
scribe a
good p."65
Both Nesse and the author ofAbsolons
IXWorthies
transmuted
"well
hung"
into
Priapus,
and Francis
Atterbury,
later
bishop
of Rochester but
62.
Dyce 3252 (12aiii).
63.
A Letter to a Friend, Occasioned
by my
Lord Howard
ofEscricks
Letter To His Friend, With his Protestation at
the
Receiving
the Blessed Sacrament in the Tower, July 3. 1681
(London, 1681).
64.
Lines
61-64:
see Poems on
Affairs ofState: Augustan
Satirical Verse,
1660-1714
(hereafter POAS), 7
vols.
(New Haven, Conn., 1963-75),
vol.
2,
ed. Elias F.
Mengel Jr. (1965), 238.
For other references to
Huntingdon's
endowment,
see The Poems
ofJohn Dryden,
ed. Paul
Hammond, 4
vols.
projected
(London
and New York
1995-), 1:497
(hereafter
Hammond).
65. Newberry
Case fY
185. D85594 (12h).
115
ii6 ALAN ROPER
then an Oxford wit of
twenty,
turned "well
hung"
into "membrosior"
(than
Caleb)
for his Latin version of
Dryden's poem.66
The near
unanimity
of
contemporaries
about Balaams Restoration counter-
part
makes him less
interesting
than his close
companion
"cold Caleb," or,
as
Atterbury
turned
him,
"Frigidus
in Venerem Caleb." Caleb and his Restoration
identities answer more
fully
to Addison's
explanation
of how Absalom and
Achitophel
functions than
anything
else in the
poem,
which insists that Caleb
has a Restoration
identity
but then defines it
only by placing
Caleb
among
dis-
affected lords and
calling
him "cold." It looks as
though early
readers found it dif-
ficult to
specify
a lord so
qualified,
and some therefore discarded either coldness
or disaffection in order to make a
satisfying
association with a
contemporary.
Discarding
coldness could
easily
license an earl of Kent as
Caleb,
because his
name was often
coupled
with
Huntingdon's among
malcontent lords. In The
Cabal,
which Luttrell dated "18. Feb."
1679/80, they
stand
together
as
"bawling
Huntington,
and Kent the mute."67 Readers
might
have
supposed
that in Absalom
and
Achitophel
the same two nobleman were once more
paired antithetically,
if
on different
grounds,
and I can
report
seven or
eight
who annotated their
copies
with
Huntingdon
for Balaam and Kent for Caleb.68
Discarding
disaffection as a
criterion
may
account for the
person
who listed Radnor as Caleb.
Although loyal,
Radnor was of advanced
years
and much older than
Essex,
whom Nesse
thought
Caleb and called "cold"
perhaps
"because for Children he's too old."
To be
sure,
Nesse was
trying
to think of a lord who both
belonged
to the
op-
position
and could
qualify
as "cold." Such a
thought
perhaps prompted
the
gloss
of"Ld Wharton" for Caleb in four
copies,69
and "Ld Wharton or Ld
Grey"
in two
others.70 Wharton was
nearly seventy,
of Puritan
stock,
and
certainly
of the
op-
position, although
he held back from
signing
the
petitions
of
Whig
lords.
Indeed,
his son was a more active exclusionist than he. Another annotator identified
Caleb as "E. of
Stamford,"7'
perhaps
to reflect coldness of a different kind. One
66. Absalon
etAchitophel:
Poema Latino Carmine Donatum
(Oxford, 1682),
22.
Atterbury
was assisted
by
Francis Hickman. The other Latin
version,
William Coward's Absalon et
Achitophel:
Carmine Latino
Heroico
(Oxford 1682), 20,
follows the
contemporary
consensus on the
spirit
of
Dryden's phrase by way
of
complicated
allusion to a
bawdy
line of
Juvenal's.
67.
British
Library
Lutt. II.
23;
included in
POAS,
2:327-38;
see line 180.
68. Texas
Aj D848
+681a (12ai);
Folger
D2212
(12ai);
Dyce 3252 (i2aiii);
Clark *fPR
3419
A21 i681f copy
2
(i2d);
Folger
D2216
(i2ei); Trinity
Coll.,
Cambridge,
H. o1.
146
item
I (i2ei);
Clark *PR
3419
A21 1682a
copy
(12f);
Clark *PR
3419
A21 i68ih
(i2eii)
has "Earl of
Huntington"
for Balaam and "Ld
Grey,
or Earl
of Kent" for Caleb.
69. Jesus, Oxford, R9. 8. Gall. item 2
(12ai);
Bodleian AA
73
item 12 Art
(i2d);
Balliol
915.
h.
1 item 18 (12f);
Texas
Aj D848
+681ae (12h).
70.
Yale
Ij D848
+68ia
copy
1
(i2ai);
Claremont PR
3415
Ab 88 1682
(i2f).
71.
All Souls CW 2. 10 item 28
(12ei).
116 1 ALAN ROPER
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
of the
petitioning peers,
Stamford was
only twenty-eight
in 1681 but was a re-
puted
cuckold with a wanton wife.72 Luttrell was
evidently thinking along
the
same lines as Nesse when he
glossed
"cold Caleb" as "Ld
Grey
cold because no
children." It
happened
that
Grey
had a
child,
but
only
a
girl,
who was
only
six
in 1681 and
perhaps sequestered
at
Uppark.73
Moreover,
recurrent rumors of an
affair between Monmouth and
Lady Grey finally
reached
print early
in
1681,74
and
beginning
with
Scott,
scholars
favoring Grey
as Caleb have sometimes cited
the rumor and
argued
that "cold"
signifies Grey's
indifference to his wife's ac-
tions and
especially
her
reputed infidelity. Grey
and
Huntingdon
thus share a
line as
complaisant
cuckold and
lusty
womanizer,
and I have found ten annota-
tors who
agreed
with Luttrell in
making
them the
counterparts
of Caleb and
Balaam.75 One scholar
points
out that
reading
"cold" in this
way
"corroborates"
Dryden's
reference to "Kind Husbands"
just
two lines before Caleb's
entry76
But
an
admittedly sparse contemporary
record dissociates "cold Caleb" from "Kind
Husbands."
I said earlier that Absolons IX
Worthies,
proposing
itself as a
key
to Absalom
andAchitophel,
names a character unmentioned
by Dryden,
and we can now ac-
count for that additional character. Absolons IX Worthies lists its characters
by
their order of
appearance
in
Dryden's poem,
first
Achitophel,
"Next Zimri,"
"Then kind Uriah
Junior,"
"Next
Priapus-Balaam,"
and so on to "last Corah." We
must therefore seek Uriah
Junior
in
Dryden's
lines
569-72,
between the end of
Zimri and the
beginning
of
Balaam, and,
as
signaled by
his
epithet,
he
repre-
sents
Dryden's
"Kind
Husbands,"
being
"kind Uriah
Junior
whose distress'd /
Lady
the beauteous Absalon caress'd." We cannot claim that Uriah
Junior
signi-
fies
Grey,
but his author
certainly distinguished
him from "Chast Caleb ... whose
chill embraces charm / Women to Ice." One annotator ofAbsalom
andAchitophel
also favored such a
distinction,
glossing
"Kind Husbands" as
"Grey"
and Caleb
as
"Kent,"77 and two annotators of Absolons IX Worthies
glossed
Uriah
Junior
as
72.
See
Wilson,
Court Satires:
52, 55, 56, 112-13, 122,
127,
288.
73.
See Cecil
Price,
Cold Caleb: The Scandalous
Life ofFord Grey,
First Earl
of
Tankerville
1655-1701 (London,
1956),
26.
74.
See A True Relation
of
a
Strange Apparition
which
appear'd
to the
Lady Gray, commanding
her to deliver a
Message
to his Grace the Duke
ofMonmouth
(London, 1681).
For its
publication
in
January
1681, see
Narcissus
Luttrell,
A
BriefHistorical
Relation
of
State
Affairs
from September 1678
to
April 1714,
6 vols.
(Oxford, 1857; reprint,
Westmead,
England, 1969), 1:64.
75.
Princeton
Taylor
12ai;
my
copy
of
12aiii; Bodleian Ashmole G. 16 item 2
(l2aiii); Worcester, Oxford,
LR.
8. 18
(12aiv);
Yale
Ij D848
+68ia
copy 4 (i2a/d);
Cambridge
Hib.
7. 692.
1 item 16
(12b);
Forster
7018
item
12
(i2d);
Brotherton
copy
of
i2ei;
Dyce 3254 copy
1
(i2f);
Clark *PR
3413
Ai 1682 item 2
(12g).
76.
Mengel
in
POAS,
2:476.
77. Folger
D2216
(12ei).
'
117
ALAN ROPER
Grey
but then found
they
had a
problem
with Caleb. One left Caleb
unglossed
along
with Balaam and
Shimei,78
the other entered "Escrick" then
smudged
it out
when he found he needed Howard of Escrick for Nadab.79 Confronted with an
uncanonical
character,
Luttrell underlined Uriah
Junior
in his
copy
of Absolons
IX Worthies but entered no
gloss,
as was elsewhere his
practice
when he discov-
ered a reference he could not
place.
Caleb he knew or
thought
he knew from
Absalom
andAchitophel
and
duly
wrote "Ld
Grey"
in the
margin.
Luttrell's
gloss
of
Grey
for Caleb
anticipated
Tonsons
printed gloss by thirty-
five
years,
and I would like to
think,
although
I cannot
prove,
that at this
point
and
perhaps
others in the
poem
Tonson
helped
his friend to
interpret
a difficult
allusion,
having already
assembled the materials for his eventual
key.
Whether or
not he
did,
it seems
likely
that Luttrell in his turn was
willing
to share his mar-
ginalia
with others. A
copy
in the
Dyce
Collection of the London
quarto
called
"The Third Edition" contains annotations that answer to Luttrell's in
puzzling
ways.80
Two
people
annotated that
copy.
The
first,
call him
Dyce
A,
entered sim-
ple
identifications of characters that have interest because
Dyce
A is one of
only
three annotators I have found beside Luttrell who identified most of the charac-
ters and
agree
with Tonson in all
cases,
including Grey
for Caleb.8'
Dyce
A also
identified
Amnon,
the
poems
other murder
victim,
the
only
named character
omitted
by
Tonson
and,
with
Agag,
the least
likely
to be
glossed
in
copies
of
early
editions. The second
annotator,
call him
Dyce
B,
subsequently
transcribed
Luttrell's comments into the
copy.
On the title
page
he added
"by
M"
John
Dryden" together
with Luttrell's
general
comment verbatim but omitted
price
and date as well as "Ex dono Amici
Jacobi
Tonson,"
presumably
because such
data were not true of the
copy
he was
annotating.
Identifications of characters re-
quired
no
adjustment
because Luttrell and
Dyce
A
agreed upon
all cases
they
had in
common,
although Dyce
B
repaired
one of
Dyce
As omissions
by copy-
ing
Luttrell's
gloss
of York for David's brother. But
Dyce
B found much to
copy
from Luttrell's
descriptive, paraphrastic,
and
explanatory glosses.
He had no room
in the
quarto's margins
for Luttrell's
explanations
of
why
Balaam is "well
hung"
and Caleb is "cold" but
copied
Luttrell's reference to sacramental lamb's wool be-
neath
Dyce
A's
identification of Nadab as Howard of Escrick.
When and
why Dyce
B made his
transcription
must remain uncertain. The
handwriting
could date to 1682 or to
forty years
later,
and we
ought
to allow for
an interval before the
copy passed
from
Dyce
A to
Dyce
B. For whatever
reason,
78.
Harvard
*EB65.
Aioo.
681a7.
79.
Bodleian Ashmole G. 16 item i.
80.
Dyce 3254 copy 1 (12f).
81. See also Bodleian Ashmole G. 16 item 2
(izaiii); Worcester, Oxford,
LR. 8. 18
(izaiv).
118 -m
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
Luttrell's annotations had value and
perhaps authority
for
Dyce
B,
and we have
other evidence that Luttrell was
willing
to share his
knowledge
and
marginalia.
Luttrell's annotations to Settle's Absalom Senior were transcribed almost
certainly
during
the Restoration into another
copy
of the
poem.82
The
copyist
entered all
of Luttrell's
glosses except
for three that he
probably
omitted
by oversight.
He
added none of his own and
always respected
the substance of Luttrell's
phrasing,
while
changing spelling
and accidentals in a
clearly contemporary style. Dyce
B
similarly
introduced his own
spelling
and accidentals when
copying
Luttrell's
marginalia
to Absalom
andAchitophel, although Dyce
B also
changed
the
phras-
ing
from time to time but never the sense of a
gloss.
Luttrell's annotated
copy
and Tonsons
printed key
mark off the first
stage
of Absalom and
Achitophets posterity,
the
period during
which Addison's de-
scription
of the
poem's appeal corresponds
most
closely
to what we can
gather
from the
manuscript
record. But when Addison
published Spectator
no.
512,
on
17
October
1712,
a
generation
had
passed
since Absalom
andAchitophel
first
ap-
peared,
and
many
who wished to
experience
it on Addison's terms must have
needed the kind of assistance that Tonson's
key
soon
supplied.
Even
Addison,
a
boy
of nine in
1681, could never have
known,
other than
vicariously,
the excite-
ment of
reading Dryden's poem
as he describes it and to which
contemporary
marginalia abundantly testify. By
the time of
Spectator
no.
512,
most of the his-
torical
counterparts
to
Dryden's
characters had died.
Henry Compton, bishop
of
London
(Sagan
of
Jerusalem),
held on until
1713,
and Louis XIV
(Pharaoh)
until
1715;
the earl of
Mulgrave
(Adriel)
died in
1721
as duke of
Buckingham,
the title
having
become extinct in
1687
at the death of
George
Villiers
(Zimri)
and there-
fore available for a new creation in
1703.
Two of the women lasted
longest.
The
duchess of Monmouth
(Annabel)
remarried after her husband's execution in
1685
and survived until
1732.
The duchess of Portsmouth
(Bathsheba)
died unwed in
1734,
a few months before the fiftieth
anniversary
of Charles II's death.
We can sense how much
early-eighteenth-century
readers needed a reliable
key
to
Dryden's poem by returning
to Read's
key, copied by
Hills in
1708
and
printed
"For the Benefit of the Poor." I mentioned that five of Read's eleven iden-
tifications are
idiosyncratic.
The three malcontent lords in
Dryden's summary
dismissal, Balaam, Caleb,
and
Nadab,
become three commoners in Read's
key,
Algernon Sidney,
Sir Thomas
Armstrong,
and Robert
Ferguson
("the Plotter"),
all of whom achieved maximum
notoriety
with the
discovery
of the
Rye
House
Plot
eighteen
months after Absalom and
Achitophel
was
published.
Corah be-
comes
Stephen College,
"the Protestant
Joiner,"
tried and executed in the sum-
mer of
1681,
even
though
Corah is a
priest
and
College
was not.
Zimri,
on whose
82.
Huntington 135883 (Luttrell's
copy);
Texas
Aj
Se
78
+682a
copy 3.
,
119
120 ALAN ROPER
Figure
3.
Read's
key,
recorded in an unknown hand in a
copy
of Tonson's "Third
Edition,"
now in the
Huntington Library.
character
Dryden
later
congratulated
himself in a
way
that indicates the associ-
ation with
Buckingham,83
proves in Read's
key
one more avatar of our
friend,
"L.
Gray."
Who could trust such a
key?
Well,
an otherwise unmarked
copy
of the
first folio
reproduces
Read's
key
on the verso of the tide
page,
with "Ld
Grey"
first
entered for Zimri then deleted in favor of "Villiers Duke of
Buckingham."84
A
copy
of the second folio
displays
Read's identifications and no others in its mar-
gins
and also lists them in tabular form at the end of the text.85 A later hand
struck out the five
idiosyncratic glosses
in the
margins
and terminal list and en-
tered
equivalents
that
agree
with Tonson's in
1716, except
that
Caleb,
eliminated
as "S Tho:
Armstrong," acquires
no alternative
identity.
One
eighteenth-century
owner,
with an unmarked
copy
ofTonson's "Third
Edition,"86
copied
Read's
key
to face the
beginning
of the
poem (figure
3);
the
separate glosses
were also entered
83.
In the Discourse
concerning
the
Original
and
Progress ofSatire
(Works,
vol.
4,
ed. A. B.
Chambers,
William
Frost,
and Vinton A.
Dearing [1974]: 71).
84.
St.
John's,
Cambridge,
Hh. 2. 20 item
5 (12aiii).
8s.
Yale
Ij D848
+681aa
copy
1
(12d).
86.
Huntington 438606 (12f).
ALAN ROPER 120
's
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
in the
margins
in a different
hand,
but no one came behind with corrective
pen.
Two other owners of "The Third Edition" also
copied
Read's
key
into the
pre-
liminary
matter and one of them added "the
Papists"
in the
margin
beside
"Jebusites" (line 86),
perhaps
as a mark of
independent thought.87
One
already
an-
notated
copy
of the first folio received additional
glosses
in the
eighteenth
cen-
tury,
some of them
supplying
Read's identifications as alternatives to the first
annotator's. We find
"Huntingt."
for Balaam in one
hand,
"or
Sidney"
in an-
other;
so too with "Oates or
Stepn Colledge"
for Corah and "How ... Escrick
or
Ferguson"
for Nadab.88 Read's
key
teaches us
that,
had Tonson not issued his
authoritative
key
in
1716,
the later
history
of Absalom
andAchitophe's interpre-
tation would have looked
very
different from what we have.
The first
stage
of that later
history,
and the second of the
poem's posterity,
lasted
for
225 years, during
which almost no one
questioned
the
accuracy
of Tonson's
identifications,
although
there was an
early
rival. Four Dublin editions of the
first
part
alone,
appearing
between
1727
and
1735,
"added an
explanatory Key
never Printed
before,"
which is
partly
but not
entirely
derived from Tonson's and
which omits seven of
Dryden's
characters. Its
dependence
on Tonson's
key
shows
in the
gloss
for Hushai: "E. Ro. &
Hyde," mistaking
the
family
name for
part
of
the title because Tonson
put
"Earl
ofRochester,
Hyde,"
in order to
distinguish
this Rochester from the famous
John
Wilmot,
earl of
Rochester,
whose title be-
came extinct with his son's death in 1681 and available for
Hyde's
creation a
year
later.
Although
the two
keys agree
on almost all characters
they
have in com-
mon,
the Dublin
compiler
also included details
certainly
not derived from
Tonson. He
glossed
Shimei as "L: M. of
Lon.,"
and even Read knew that Shimei
represented
"Sheriff
[Slingsby]
Bethel." Some
glosses may
have come from an an-
notated
copy
of one of the
early
editions,
as
"En[glish]
Virtuosi" for "These
Ad[am]
wits"
(line 51)
or "The round heads Cant" for "The
good
old Cause"
(line 82)
resembles someone's
marginal
note more
obviously
than an
entry
in a
key.
But this
partial
rival to Tonson's
key
seems to have
enjoyed only
a
brief,
Irish
currency,
and thereafter Tonson's "KEY to both Parts"
reappeared
in edition after
edition from the
eighteenth century
to the
early
twentieth. Some
editions,
beginning
with Thomas
Broughton's
in
1743,89
included from The Second Part
87. Cambridge
Aaa.
35
item 1
("the
Papists");
Clark *PR
3419
A21 1682a
copy
2
(if).
88.
Worcester, Oxford,
LR. 8. 18
(12aiv).
89.
Original
Poems
(London, 1743).
The
publishers
were
Jacob
III and Richard
Tonson,
who continued the
family
business after the death in
1735
of their
father, Jacob II,
nephew
to
Jacob
I
(Dryden's
and Luttrell's
Tonson),
who retired in
1718
and died in
1736.
V
121
122 ' ALAN ROPER
only
the two hundred lines that Tonson had attributed to
Dryden
in
Miscellany
Poems of
1716 (2:3-4). They accordingly
discarded the characters and
glosses
be-
longing
to Tate's share. Samuel Derrick
reprinted
Tonson's
complete key
in his
edition of
176o,90
expanding
some
glosses, adding
an
entry
for Gath as well as
historical
details,
and
making
"J.
H.,"
Tonson's
gloss
for "rotten Uzza" in
Dryden's
contribution to The Second Part
(line 407),
into
"Jack
Hall,"
an iden-
tification that remained canonical until
questioned by George
R.
Noyes
in
1950.91
By 1798,
in "Cooke's Edition" of the Poetical
Works,
the accretion of further his-
torical or
explanatory
detail makes the
key
resemble a list of dramatis
personae.
Ten
years
after "Cooke's Edition" Scott discarded the tabular
key
and dis-
tributed Tonson's
glosses among
notes to the
poems.
Those notes contain a wealth
of
supplementary
material,
as befits the first full
scholarly
edition of
Dryden's
works,
and Scott
repaired
Tonson's omission
by identifying
Amnon. Scott also re-
ferred to Luttrell's
annotations,
as have
subsequent
editors down to the
present,
although nineteenth-century
citation of Luttrell's
marginalia
was
chiefly
sec-
ondhand. Both Malone and Scott had access to Luttrell's
copy
when
preparing
their
editions,
Malone of the Prose Works in
1800,
Scott of the
complete
Works
in
1808,
but Scott
merely
alluded to without
quoting
Luttrell's
explanation
of
why
Balaam is "well
hung"
and cited none of Luttrell's other
marginalia
to the
poem.92
Malone transcribed several of Luttrell's notes into a
copy
of Tonson's
first
quarto
now in the Bodleian
Library93
and made them available for the
Wartons' edition of the Poetical Works in 181
1,
where each ends with "MS. Note
by
Mr. Luttrell. Malone" or "MS. Luttrell. Malone." These notes were
appro-
priated
(with
"Malone" reduced to
"M")
for the Aldine editions of
Dryden's
Poetical
Works,
first
published by Pickering
in
1832-33
and
frequently reprinted.
From
Pickering's
edition the notes
passed
into
Dryden's
Works in Verse and Prose
published
at New York
by
Dearborn in
1836
and
reprinted
there
by Harper.
Some of Malone's
transcriptions
in his
copy
of the
quarto
and for the Wartons'
edition
paraphrase
rather than
reproduce
the
original,
and one
wrongly
attributes
a statement to
Luttrell,
presumably
because Malone confused his own notation
with Luttrell's. Luttrell
merely glossed
"Bull-fac'dJonas" (line 581)
as
"Sr
William
jones."
Malone annotated his
copy
with "Sir Wm
Jones[.]
He drew the Habeas
Corpus
Act,"
and the
gloss
so
appears
in the Wartons' edition followed
by
"MS. Luttrell. Malone." From there the
gloss passed
to the Aldine editions
90. Miscellaneous Works
(London, 1760),
also
published by
J.
and R. Tonson.
91. The Poetical Works
ofDryden,
2d
ed.,
rev.
(Boston, 1950;
ist ed.
1909), 1042,
io6i.
92.
The Works
ofJohn Dryden,
ed. Sir Walter
Scott,
rev.
George Saintsbury,
18 vols.
(Edinburgh,
1882-93),
9:264.
93.
Mason H
185
item
4 (12ei).
ALAN ROPER 122 -'
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
and
beyond, surviving
in
print
until around
1960
and
crediting
Luttrell with
misinformation.94
The Wartons' edition of 1811 also reinstituted the tabular
key,
but
aug-
mented it with
expansive
footnotes,
many
of them
featuring splenetic
comments
on the
poem
and
poet by Joseph
Warton,
Dryden's
most
unsympathetic
editor.
Thereafter,
most editions included some version of Tonson's
key, treating
his
glosses
as
canonical,
or distributed those
glosses among
notes in the manner of
Scott,
or offered a combination of
key
and notes in the manner of the Wartons.
Even the unannotated text of
Dryden's
Poems
prepared
for the "Oxford Standard
Authors"
by John
Sargeaunt
in
1910
included a
lightly
edited version ofTonson's
"KEY to both
Parts,"
and
Sargeaunt's
edition remained in
print
for
fifty years.
It
thus survived into the third
stage
of the
poem's posterity along
with
sundry
texts
prepared
for the school and
college
markets in Britain and North America late
in the second
stage
and
kept
in
print,
unrevised,
for several decades.
E. S. de Beer
inaugurated
the third and current
stage
of the
poem's posterity
in
July 1941,
when he announced:
Commentators on Absalom have
always
relied for identifications
on the
"Key" published
in
1716
in the
Miscellany
Poems;
they
have
never
seriously questioned
its
authority.
In its favour is the fact that
the book was
published by Dryden's publisher,
Tonson,
within a
comparatively
short
period
of
Dryden's
death. On the other hand
the identification of
Agag
as Sir Edmund
Berry Godfrey
does not
make
sense,
and no
attempt
is made to
identify
Amnon. While
most of the identifications in the
Key
are
correct,
some are
wrong
and some are
open
to discussion.95
As
preacher
of a new
dispensation,
de Beer
appropriately
had a
precursor. Thirty
years
earlier A. W. Verrall had referred to Tonsons
key
as "a mere
compilation
without
Dryden's authority, reprinted by
modern
commentators,"
when lectur-
ing
on
Dryden
at
Cambridge.96
At this
point
in his lecture Verrall was exercised
94.
Habeas
Corpus
was enacted in
May 1679,
when
Jones
was still
attorney-general.
He did not become a
supporter
of
Shaftesbury,
who
managed
Habeas
Corpus through
Parliament,
until November
1679.
He
did not become a member of Parliament until November
168o,
when he committed himself to
urging
the
Exclusion
Bill,
the most
likely
referent of the "Statutes" that
Jonas
could "draw / To mean
Rebellion,
and
make Treason Law."
95.
"Absalom and
Achitophel: Literary
and Historical
Notes,"
Review
ofEnglish
Studies
17 (1941): 298-309,
quoting 306.
96. Lectures on
Dryden,
ed.
Margaret
de G. Verrall
(Cambridge, 1914), 76.
Verrall delivered the lectures in
1911.
123
124
A
by
Tonson's
glossing
of Hebron as
Scotland,
and
although evidently contemp-
tuous of "the bookseller's
'Key'...
in the
posthumous
edition of
1716,"
Verrall
challenged
none of its
glosses
for characters
except
to insist that
Agag
has no
Restoration
equivalent
and therefore cannot
signify
Sir Edmund
Berry Godfrey
(pp. 71-72).
De Beer had other
game
in view.
Accepting
"most of [Tonson's]
identifications,"
de Beer had alternative Restoration identities to
propose
for four
of
Dryden's
characters,
Agag
and
Amnon,
Balaam and
Caleb,
and he also
sought
to
assign
a Restoration
identity
to
Stephen
the
Protomartyr,
mentioned in line
643
and never before
glossed by
editors.
In
effect,
de Beer
changed
the rules of
readership, although
he
gave
no
sign
of
realizing
that he had. For more than two hundred
years
the
key accompanied
the
poem.
You did
not,
indeed
you
could
not,
read the
poem
without
it,
because
the
key
unlocked
meanings
fixed in the
poem by
its author. Editors could em-
bellish the
key by,
for
example, expanding
initials into full names or
by supply-
ing
the
name,
lacking
from Tonson's
original,
of the
bishop
of London in 1681.
They might
even
enlarge
the
key
on occasion
by adding
an
entry,
as Derrick in
1760
repaired
Tonson's omission
by glossing
Gath
(line 264)
as "the Land of
Exile,
more
particularly
Brussels,
where
King
Charles II
long
resided"
(1:248).
Scott
turned Derricks
gloss
into a footnote
(9:245),
and other editors
incorporated
it
into their versions of the
key
so that
by
1909
this
piece
of tradition had become
part
of the
original
testament: "Gath.
Explained
in Tonson's
Key, published
in The
Second Part
ofMiscellany
Poems,
1716,
as,
'The Land of
Exile,
more
particularly
Brussels,
where
King
Charles II
long
resided.'"97 Verrall
might grumble,
but the
key
remained in
place,
with two centuries of tradition
ornamenting
its
original
simplicity.
Thus
embellished,
the
key enjoyed
a
long tyranny
over editors and therefore
over readers, as we can see
by returning
to
Hebron,
the
place
that so exercised
Verrall. Tonson
glossed
Hebron as Scotland
presumably
because he was
supply-
ing
a "KEY to both Parts of Absalom
andAchitophel'
and because in The Second
Part the word Hebron and its derivatives occur nine
times,
six in
Dryden's,
three in Tate's
share,
and
always signify
Scotland, Scotsman,
or Scottish.98
Unfortunately, Dryden
once referred to Hebron in the first
part
as
well,
during
his character of the
Jews,
"Who banisht David did from Hebron
bring,
/
And,
with
a Generall
Shout,
proclaim'd
him
King"
(lines 59-60).
One
early
annotator trans-
lated the first line as "Charles from
Breda,"99
and Scott
glossed
Hebron as
"Here,
Flanders or
Holland;
afterwards Scotland"
(9:232), presumably meaning
"in The
97. George
R.
Noyes,
ed.,
The Poetical Works
of Dryden
(Boston, 1909;
2d ed., rev.,
195o), 960.
98.
Hebron:
328, 352, 793, 803;
Hebron's:
o165;
Hebronite:
320, 330, 348;
Hebronitish:
333.
99.
Clark *fPR
3419
A21 1681f
cop.
2
(lzd).
ALAN ROPER
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
Second
Part"
by
"afterwards." In the middle of the nineteenth
century
Robert Bell
incorporated
relevant
components
of the
key
into
separate
introductions to each
of the two
parts.
Among
"Places" in the first
part
he included "Hebron and
Tyre,
indifferently
used to
designate
Holland,"
and he ended his
key
to The Second
Part
by noting
that "for some
unexplained
reason,
Tate alters the
allegorical ge-
ography,
and
Hebron,
which
formerly represented
Holland,
here stands for
Scotland."'00 But Tonson's
key
said
simply
and
unelaborately
that Hebron means
Scotland,
and versions of that
key
continued to
appear
in other
editions,
notably
the Aldine editions issued
by
various
publishers during
the nineteenth
century.
W. D. Christie rehearsed and tried to resolve the
problem
of two Hebrons or
one in his Globe edition of the Poetical
Works,
published by
Macmillan in
1870:
Hebron,
in the Second Part of "Absalom and
Achitophel,"
in which
the names of the
original poem
were continued with the same
ap-
plications,
means
Scotland;
and it is so used in
Dryden's portion
of
the continuation as well as
by
Tate. Here
[in
the first
part]
one
would
expect
Hebron to mean the
Netherlands, or,
still more suit-
ably,
Brussels. But Gath stands for Brussels in line
[264].
A refer-
ence is
perhaps
made to
Monk's
march from Scotland to effect the
Restoration,
or to Charles's
having
been
already
crowned
King
of
Scotland.
(P. 93)
The
following year
Christie
produced
for the Clarendon Press a volume of se-
lections from his Globe edition and abbreviated his
original
note on Hebron
by
omitting
the reference to Charles's Scottish coronation.'10 Christie died in
1874,
and
nearly twenty years
later C. H. Firth revised Christie's notes for a fifth edi-
tion of the Clarendon
selections,
which
eventually yielded
a
separate,
annotated
text ofAbsalom
andAchitophel manifestly
meant for the schoolroom.102 When re-
vising
Christie's note on
Hebron,
Firth discarded the
puzzling
over
geographical
inconsistency
and the tentative
proposal
of a reference to Monks march. In their
place
Firth resurrected Christie's second
proposal
from the Globe edition and
rewrote it as
dogma:
0oo.
Poetical Works
ofJohn Dryden, 3
vols.
(London, 1854), 1:230,
266.
1ol. The volume contained six
poems
and
appeared
in the "Clarendon Press Series" of
"English
Classics." It is
sometimes referred to as Selected Poems,
the title on the
spine,
but its
proper
title is
Dryden:
Stanzas on the
Death
of
Oliver Cromwell, followed
by
the titles of some or all of the other five
poems.
102. Clarendon
published
the fifth edition in
1893
and continued to reissue it as "the fifth edition."
By 1911
Clarendon had detached Absalom
andAchitophel
from its fellow selected
poems
and
put
it into a
strange
little volume
by
itself
together
with the
introduction, notes,
and
pagination
of the fifth edition of the
parent
work. An
impression
of
1958
was
presumably
the last and still announced itself as Absalom and
Achitophel, edited
by
W. D.
Christie,
fifth
edition,
revised
by
C. H. Firth.
u-
125
ALAN ROPER
Hebron means Scotland. Charles II was crowned
king
in
Scotland,
Jan.
1,
1651;
in
England
not till
April,
1661. So David
reigned
first
seven
years
and six months in
Hebron,
and then
thirty-three years
in
Jerusalem.
Verrall,
while
complaining
about
Dryden's inconsistency
and Tonson's unau-
thoritative
key,
insisted that in line
59
of Absalom and
Achitophel
Hebron
"ap-
parently
stands for the
Continent,
perhaps
in
particular
the Low Countries or
Brussels,
from which Charles was
brought
to
England....
It is clear that Hebron
in Part I does not mean Scotland"
(p. 76).
But
by
1911
it was
already
too late.
Firths note
appeared
in a Clarendon edition that remained in
print
until around
1960,
by
which time
James Kinsley
had issued his Clarendon edition of
Dryden's
Poems.
Kinsley incorporated
Firth's
note and
repeated
it in the Oxford edition of
Absalom
andAchitophel
that he and his wife
published
in
1961
to
replace
the old
Firth/Christie edition. Two
years
before Verrall
lectured,
Noyes adopted
Firth's
note for an American edition of
Dryden's
Poetical Works that remained in
print
for
seventy-five years
and influenced
many
texts
prepared
for the American col-
lege
market. With
prestige
on both sides of the
Atlantic,
a note that abandons the
obvious in favor of the intricate has
appeared
with
only
minor
rephrasing
in al-
most all annotated texts of the twentieth
century.
Most editors follow Firth's
orig-
inal and
suppress
all mention of the Netherlands. The
very
few who mention
the obvious sense
reject
it for the intricate.103 We have been too
long
in
Hebron,
but one last version of Firths
gloss
will illustrate how editorial
ingenuity may
be
presented
as authorial intention: "Charles II was crowned
King
in Scotland
in
1651
but not in
England
until
1661; therefore,
although
he entered
England
in
1660 from the
Continent,
Dryden
can
say
that his
people brought
him from
Scotland."'04
Dryden,
of
course,
said no such
thing,
even
though
a
century
of
scholarship
has
sought
to
persuade
readers that he did.
Dryden
said
merely
that
the
Jews brought
"banisht David ... from Hebron."
Hebron as Scotland shows how Tonson's
key
has dominated those who mis-
read it and also how
meanings
can be attached to a text that does not demand
them. It also demonstrates the
tyranny
of
editors,
who
are,
in one
way
of
seeing,
readers who seek to
impose
their
interpretations
on other readers and who have
a better chance of success than mere
critics,
proprietors
of
essays
like this
one,
be-
cause
they
can offer the extra inducement of a text to read. Editors would not
put
the matter so
darkly,
of
course,
but the
enterprise
of modern
scholarship
unde-
103.
Hammond
(1:460) glosses
Hebron as "Either Scotland ... or ... Brussels ...
though
[Charles's]
place
of
exile is called 'Gath' at line
264."
104. Dryden:
Poems and Prose,
ed.
Douglas
Grant
(Penguin
Books, 1955; reprint 1985),
20. Grant took the note
from his earlier edition of
Dryden's Poetry,
Prose, and
Plays
(London, 1952),
90.
126 N-
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
niably
benefited from de Beer's
challenge
to Tonson's
authority
in
1941.
Tonson's
key
directed readers how to understand
important
features of Absalom and
Achitophel. Diminishing
his
authority
freed scholars and editors to issue new di-
rections. Their
liberty might
have
proved
license,
but
they
restricted themselves
to
debating
the identities of the four characters
proposed by
de Beer for reas-
signment, Agag
and
Amnon,
Balaam and Caleb. De Beer's
attempt
to
give
a
Restoration
identity
to
Stephen
the
Protomartyr
(a
coincidence of names led him
to nominate
Stephen College,
"the Protestant
Joiner")
met with silence.10
Indeed,
de Beer's whole
essay
met with more than a decade of
silence, chiefly
because a war had to be
fought
and
James Kinsley
had to finish his
education,
begin
his
career,
and start
gathering
material for his Clarendon edition of
Dryden's
poems, published
in
1958. By 1955 Kinsley
was
ready
to
reject
all but one of de
Beer's
proposed
amendments to Tonson's
key;
de Beer's
response
the
following
year
came with a
reply by Kinsley appended.106
The new rules of
debate,
which
Kinsley
and de Beer established for
succeeding
decades,
stripped
Tonson's
key
of
its
privilege,
elevated Nesse and Absolons IX Worthies into
trustworthy
witnesses,
and licensed scholars to advance such new candidates as
they
discovered in his-
torical records. Much of this debate remained locked in
scholarly journals,
but
some
escaped
into new editions able to
impose interpretations upon
readers not
party
to the debate. We
may
consider in turn the later fortunes of each of the four
characters de Beer nominated for
reassignment.
Amnon has
long enjoyed
a
special
status because Tonson left him off the
key
and
because he was unidentified
by
Luttrell,
the
only contemporary
annotator cited
by
later scholars.
Indeed,
among sixty-seven
annotated
copies,
I have found
only
seventeen
glosses
for
Amnon,
one of them a
puzzling "Prodger."'07
Edward
Proger
or
Progers,
who seems
meant,
served the
king
as
groom
of the bedchamber and
procurer. According
to
hearsay
and Monmouth's
biographers,
he witnessed a mar-
riage
between Charles and Monmouth's mother.'8
According
to
rumor,
he him-
self fathered Monmouth.'9 But
Proger
survived into the next
century,
whereas
Dryden's
Amnon has
already
died at the hand or command of Absalom:
10o.
De Beer's
gloss
for
Stephen
is
anticipated by
Yale
Ij D848
+681a
copy
1 and
copy
2
(both 12ai),
Claremont
PR
3415 Ab 88 i682
(12f),
Rylands 7248
item 8
(12g),
and Harvard *fEC6S.
D8474A.
1682c
(12h).
The
Brotherton
copy
of 12ei
glosses Stephen
as Lord
"Staffor[d]."
1o6. "Historical Allusions in Absalom
andAchitophel,"
RES, n.s.,
6
(1955): 291-97;
7
(1956): 410-15.
107. Princeton Ex
3722. 3103. 13 (12g).
o18.
See,
for
example,
Watson,
Captain-General, 275.
109. POAS, 2:222.
'
127
128 ' ALAN ROPER
Some warm
excesses,
which the Law
forbore,
Were constru'd Youth that
purg'd by boyling
o'r:
And Amnon's
Murther,
by
a
specious
Name,
Was call'd a
Just
Revenge
for
injur'd
Fame.
(Lines 37-40)
Dyce
A identified Amnon as "A Bell-Man in Whetstones Park" and another
annotator as "A Watchman killd in Whetstones
Park,""'1
thus
associating
him
with a beadle called Peter
Vernell,
who was killed
by
Monmouth and other
"per-
sons ... of
great quality"
late in
February 1670/71."1
Two
poems describing
the
affair circulated in
manuscript
and one was later
printed
in Poems on
Affairs of
State
(1697).112
Whetstone Park was and is a narrow street in the
parish
of St. Giles-in-the-
Fields
running
east-west between Lincoln's Inn Fields to the south and Holborn
to the north. One
contemporary, annotating
a
subsequently cropped copy
of
the third
folio,
glossed
Amnon as "kild in
Holborne,""3
and another as the
"Watchman of St:
Giles.""4
A
manuscript key
lists Amnon as "A Constable mur-
derd
by ye
Duke of
Monmouth,"'"5
and similar
phrasing
occurs in
marginalia
to
six other
copies."6
One
gloss
identifies the victim as "The Porter killed
by ye
D. of
Monmouth,""7
and the Yale
key reproduced
in Claremont
marginalia
ex-
plains
that
"ye
Duke of Monnmouth killed a watchman in a
nights
ramble.""8
Two other
copies identify
Amnon as "kild
by
D Monmouth" and "One slain
by
the Duke of
Monmouth,""9
seemingly unhelpful glosses
but in fact
something
to bear in mind when we encounter later scholars who understand "Murther" in
a Pickwickian sense. The first of these was
Scott,
who noted the beadle's murder
and described it as
"probably
one of the
youthful
excesses alluded to" just
prior
to "Amnon's Murther"
(9:230).
That murder Scott associated with an incident
two months earlier than the
killing
of the beadle.
Shortly
before Christmas
1670
Monmouth ordered his
troopers
to assault Sir
John Coventry
in
revenge
for
1lo.
Dyce 3254, copy
1
(12f);
All Souls CW. 2. o1 item 28
(12ei).
111. The
quotation
is from Marvell's letter
reporting
the incident: Poems and
Letters,
ed. H. M.
Margoliouth,
3d
ed. rev. Pierre
Legouis,
2 vols.
(Oxford, 1971), 2:133.
112. Both
poems
are
reprinted
in
POAS,
vol. 1,
ed.
George
de Forest Lord
(1963), 172-76.
113.
Yale
Ij D848
+681ae
(12h).
114. Folger
D2212.3 (izaiii).
S15.
Clark *PR
3419
A21
1681h (i2eii).
116. Jesus, Oxford, R9. 8. Gall. item 2
(l2ai);
Texas
Aj D848
+68ia
(12ai);
Bodleian AA
73
item 12 Art
(izd);
Balliol
915.
h.
1
item 18
(12f);
Brotherton
copy
of
i2g;
Texas
Aj D848
+681ae
(2lh).
117.
Brotherton
copy
of izai.
18.
Yale
Ij D848 +681a
copy
1
(12ai);
Claremont PR
3415
Ab 88 1682
(12f).
119. Folger D2213 (12b);
Clark *PR
3419
A21 i68ie
(i2c).
128 ;- ALAN ROPER
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
Coventry's slighting
remarks in the Commons about the
king's
taste in actresses.
The
troopers
mutilated
Coventry's
nose but did not kill him. If the Restoration
equivalent
of Amnon's murder indeed occurred more than ten
years
before
pub-
lication of
Dryden's poem,
then the
paucity
of
contemporary glosses
becomes
explicable.
Much had
happened
in those ten
years
to fade the
memory
of how
Monmouth and the others killed the beadle as he
begged
for
mercy
on his knees.
Luttrell and Tonson were
boys
at the time.
When de Beer addressed the
matter,
most editors had
accepted
Scott's evi-
dence. Some
specified Coventry
alone;
a few mentioned the beadle as a less
appealing
alternative. But others
rejected
both candidates. As Verrall
put
it,
"'Amnon's murder'
(39)-an
allusion which 'has never been
satisfactorily
ex-
plained,'
writes Prof.
J.
Churton Collins in his note on the
passage-need
not
have
any precise analogy
in the known actions of Monmouth."'20 De Beer
briefly
complicated
the matter
by trying
to find a Restoration match for Absalom's mur-
dering
his half-brother in
revenge
for Amnon's
ravishing
his sister. He
put
the case
for William
Fanshawe,
who married
Monmouth's
half-sister in
1676
and seem-
ingly
incurred
Monmouth's
disapproval
to an extent that cost him a
government
post
in 1681.
Kinsley
remarked in rebuttal that a withdrawal of
patronage
"stretches
the
meaning
of'Murther' too far" and
accordingly
reintroduced
Coventry's
nose,
perhaps
because,
though
also
stretching
the
meaning
of
"Murther,"
mutilation
does not stretch it too far. De Beer conceded
Coventry
in his
response
to
Kinsley,
who inserted
Coventry
alone into the notes both to the Clarendon edition of
Dryden's
Poems and to the Oxford text ofAbsalom
andAchitophel
in
1961.
Kinsley
thus
suppressed
the
beadle,
who nevertheless
acquired supporters
in
succeeding
decades,
although only
one was an editor and he with a
specialized
edition meant
principally
for scholars.'2' Another editor
writing
for scholars has found it "im-
possible
to choose between"
Coventry
and the
beadle,'22
but editors
seeking
a
wider audience in the school and
college
market either declare that Amnon's
Restoration
identity
remains uncertain or
opt
for
Coventry,
sometimes
qualify-
ing
their choice with a
"probably."
It all
depends
on which text
you
read.
120. Verrall:
71, alluding
to The Satires
ofDryden,
ed.
John
Churton Collins
(London, 1893), 93-94,
an edition
that remained in
print
until
1965
as a school text in the series called "Macmillan's
English
Classics."
Collins
rejected Coventry
because he was not murdered and the beadle both because he lacked the stature
called for
by
Amnon and because his death did not constitute
"Revenge
for
injur'd
Fame."
121.
Mengel
in
POAS, 2:459,
where
Coventry
is mentioned but deemed less
likely
than the beadle. See also
Edward S. Le
Comte,
"Amnon's
Murther,"
Notes
&e Queries
208
(1963): 418;
W. K.
Thomas,
The
Crafting
ofAbsalom
andAchitophel: Drydens "Penfor
a
Party" (Waterloo, Canada,
1978), 16o-6i;
and Colin
Visser,
"New
Testimony
on 'Amnon's
Murther,"' Restoration 6
(1982): 90-93.
Visser
argues
that the duke of
Albermarle killed the beadle with Monmouth as
accessory.
122.
Hammond, 1:458.
129
130 ALAN ROPER
Such is also the
case,
but
afortiori,
with
Agag,
the
poem's
other murder vic-
tim. Those few
contemporaries
who
glossed Agag
favored
Godfrey
over
Danby
as his Restoration
equivalent, although
Nesse
opted
for York. Tonson endorsed
Godfrey, perhaps
because a murder is in
question
and
Godfrey's
was
undeniably
the most sensational of the
period.
Verrall
complained
that
Agag
has no
Restoration
equivalent,
but
Godfrey
remained in
possession.
However,
Dryden
says
that Corah
might
call for
Agag's
murder,
and
everyone, except
for the com-
piler
of Read's
key, agreed
that Corah stands for Titus
Oates,
who could not
properly
be held
responsible
for
Godfrey's
murder.
Perhaps Agag signified
some-
one not
already
murdered but
simply opposed by
Oates,
who
perhaps
wanted
him dead. So Nesse
may
have
thought
in
designating
York,
although rejecting
the
charge against
Oates;
so those who favored
Danby may
have
thought,
because
Danby
was
among
the
many against
whom Oates testified and because
Danby
was still
famously
in the Tower. As
part
of his case for the
unreliability
ofTonson's
key,
de Beer
proposed
to
replace Godfrey
with Lord Chief
Justice
Scroggs,
whose
conduct of a
Popish
Plot trial
angered
Oates.
Oates,
though,
could
scarcely
be
described as
calling
for
Scroggs's
murder,
so
Kinsley
dismissed both
Godfrey
and
Scroggs
and nominated Lord
Stafford,
one of the
Popish
lords,
at whose trial
Oates testified with sufficient
plausibility
to secure Stafford's execution. I have
found
only
one
contemporary
who
anticipated Kinsley,
and his
copy
of the first
London
quarto
was
subsequenty cropped,
so that the name
appears
as
"afford";'23
so, too,
the
king
in his
mercy
remitted the sentence on a
sick,
old man from
hanging, drawing,
and
quartering
to
beheading.
On the
whole,
and at this
writing, Kinsley
has
triumphed.
Editors of schol-
arly
texts,
other than
Kinsley, judiciously
balance all three
candidates,
Godfrey,
Scroggs,
and Stafford
(Danby
found
support only among
his
contemporaries),
leaving
the decision to their
scholarly
readers.'24 One scholar reviewed those three
candidates before
reintroducing
Nesse's
nominee,
the duke of
York,
and has re-
cently
received a cautious second.'25 Another
challenged
York and the other three
in order to clear the
hustings
for Charles I but has attracted no voters.26 But
college
texts
prepared
since
Kinsley published
his
findings accept
Stafford,
al-
though
sometimes
prefacing
his name with
"perhaps"
or
"probably."
Two texts
prepared
between de Beer's
essay
and
Kinsley's
offered
Scroggs
to students.'27
123.
Folger
D2216
(2zei).
124.
Works,
2:269;
POAS,
2:481.
125.
Thomas,
Crafting ofAbsalom,
135-37;
seconded
by
Hammond
(1:509).
126. J. R. Crider,
"'Agag's
Murther' as Parallel
History
in Absalom and
Achitophel," English Language
Notes 21
(1983-84): 34-42.
127.
John
Dryden:
Selected Works, ed. William Frost
(San Francisco, 1953;
2d ed.
1971);
Seventeenth-Century
Verse
and
Prose,
ed. Helen C. White, et al.,
2 vols.
(New York, 1952).
ALAN ROPER
130
~^
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
Another
two,
also
prepared
between de Beer and
Kinsley, ignored
de Beer and ad-
vanced
Godfrey.
But one was more often used for its selection of earlier than of
later
seventeenth-century
works.'28 The other was a
Penguin
text of
Dryden
to
be
accompanied,
if
you
choose,
by
a
Penguin guide
to Absalom and
Achitophel
that lists
Agag
as
"(?)
Lord Stafford."'29
Agag
and Amnon enter the
poem
to illustrate the activities of other charac-
ters.
Agag
shows Corah's insolence to his
king;
Amnon
exemplifies
Absalom's
youthful
excesses. No
doubt,
part
of their elusiveness stems from their
being
of-
fered as victims of others rather than
just
as themselves. But at least
they
were in-
volved in
actions,
if
passively.
Balaam and
Caleb,
by
contrast,
do
nothing
and
have
nothing
done to them. Even Nadab
engaged
in an
idiosyncratic
act of ir-
reverence
permitting
an informed identification. But Balaam and Caleb are dis-
tinguished only by
their
epithets
and their
being grouped
with an indeterminate
number of disaffected lords. Cold Caleb's
epithet,
moreover,
is so
commonplace
that were it not antithetical to Balaam's "well
hung,"
it could never
signify any-
thing
or
anyone
in
particular.
Because Balaam and Caleb share a line and are fur-
ther linked
by
antithesis,
their later
history
has often been a
joint history.
But to
understand that later
history
we must first return to the nineteenth
century
and
take
up
a
problem
with Balaam alone.
The
problem,
of
course,
concerns his
epithet, especially
as
explained by
Lutt-
rell,
glossed by
Nesse and Absolons IX
Worthies,
and turned into Latin
by
Atterbury.
How to
explain
the
meaning
of "well
hung"
without
bringing
a blush
to the cheek or
snigger
to the
lips?
As
John
Churton Collins
put
it in
1893,
"the
explanation
of the
epithet
in the text had better be left where it is to be found in
Luttrel's MSS"
(p. 102).
This
unhelpful gloss probably
derives from
Scott,
who
noted that "a coarse reason is
given by
Luttrell,
in his MS
notes,
for the
epithet
... in the text"
(9:264).
But Scott also
quoted
Absolons IX Worthies:
"Priapus-
Balaam,
of whom 'tis
said,
/ His Brains did
lye
more in his Tail than's Head."
Other
nineteenth-century
editors left the
phrase
unannotated,
and one
frequently
reprinted
edition offered a text that substituted a line of asterisks for the
couplet
containing
Balaam.'30 Christie
indignantly
described Balaam's
epithet
as "a
coarse insult" in his Globe edition of
1870.
But such a remark drew attention to
the
vulgarism
even if it withheld
definition,
and Christie omitted it from his
Clarendon edition the
following year.
The final Victorian solution came with
128. Alexander M.
Witherspoon
and Frank
J. Warnke, eds.,
Seventeenth-Century
Prose and
Poetry,
zd ed.
(San
Diego, 1982;
ist ed.
1946).
129. Dryden:
Poems and
Prose,
ed.
Douglas
Grant
(1955);
Raman
Selden,
John
Dryden:
Absalom
andAchitophel,
Penguin
Masterstudies
(1986),
102.
130. The Works
ofJohn Dryden
in Verse and
Prose,
2 vols.
(New York, 1836).
This
edition,
published by George
Dearborn,
was
reprinted
in New York
by Harper
at least six times between
1837
and
1867.
.-1
131
132 ' ALAN ROPER
Firths revision of Christie's Clarendon text in
1893,
published eight years
before
the
Oxjord
English Dictionary produced
the volume
containing
"hung"
and
thirty-
five before the volume
containing "well-hung."
Firth
glossed
"well
hung"
as "vol-
uble,
fluent" and cited Oldham's imitation of
Juvenal's
third
satire,
written in
May
1682:
"Flippant
of
Talk,
and voluble of
Tongue,
/ With words at
will,
no
Lawyer
better
hung"
(lines 111-12).
Oldham is
playing upon
the
phrase
"a well-
hung tongue,"
a Gallicism
corresponding
to avoir la
langue
bien
pendue.
When
"well-hung"
means
"loquacious,"
it is
accompanied by "tongue,"
as in Oldham's
couplet,
or an
equivalent.
The OED citations make clear that other senses of
"well-hung"
are also determined
by
the noun it
governs.
When the noun
signi-
fies a man or
men,
the usual and still current sense of
"well-hung"
is
"having large
genitals,"
to
quote
the
OED,
which instances
Dryden's phrase among
others.1'3
Firth's
gloss
thus had the
disadvantage among
others of
suppressing
the
meaning
that
Dryden's contemporaries gave
the
epithet.
Later
scholarship
elim-
inated the
disagreement by combining meanings
into what it chose to call a dou-
ble entendre,
so that Balaam could
emerge
as
priapic
orator. De Beer believed that
someone so
variously
endowed could not
signify Huntingdon
and found "a
pos-
sible alternative" in
Ford,
Lord
Grey
of
Warke,
who in earlier
years,
we
saw,
had
served as
equivalent
for
Zimri,
"Kind
Husbands,"
and
Issachar,
as well as Caleb.
Putting Grey
in
Huntingdon's place
left Caleb
unassigned,
and de Beer
adopted
Nesse's
nominee,
the earl of Essex.
Kinsley rejected Grey
for Balaam and reaf-
firmed
Huntingdon.
But
Kinsley
also
accepted
the Nesse/de Beer nomination of
Essex for
Caleb,
thus
offering
to eliminate
altogether
the man who had served so
variously
and
valiantly
as historical
counterpart
to the
poem's
characters.
Kinsley
omitted
Grey
from his notes to the Clarendon Poems and the Oxford Absalom
andAchitophel,
and
Grey
now
clings precariously
to the
poem, entering
as
pos-
sible but
unlikely
alternative to Essex in conscientious
glosses
or
lingering
in un-
revised editions first
prepared
before it became clear that doubt
might
attach to
the Restoration identities of Balaam and Caleb. Two scholars
writing
after
Kinsley
have affirmed their faith in
Grey
as
Caleb,'32
but at
present
Essex seems the
person
most
likely
to be chosen for a
gloss
on Caleb in texts
prepared
for the col-
lege
market.
While this was
going
forward,
Balaam and his endowments came in for ad-
ditional
scrutiny.
Both de Beer and
Kinsley accepted
"well
hung"
as a double en-
tendre,
but a
year
after
Kinsley
issued his Clarendon
edition,
Wallace
Maurer,
131.
See also the
entry
for "well
hung"
in Gordon Williams,
A
Dictionary
of
Sexual
Language
and
Imagery
in
Shakespearean
and Stuart Literature, 3
vols.
(London
and Adantic
Highlands,
N.
J., 1994).
132. Mengel
in
POAS, 2:476;
and
Thomas,
Crafting ofAbsalom:
118-19.
Hammond
(1:498)
finds it
"impossible
to
adjudicate
between the claims of Essex and
Grey."
ALAN ROPER
132
2
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
conceding
"the coarse
meaning,"
featured the decorous in order to
propose
an-
other Restoration
worthy
as
original
of Balaam."33 This
person
was Sir Francis
Winnington,
an articulate
Whig lawyer
and
Parliamentarian,
who was listed
among equivalents
to
Dryden's
characters in a
contemporary
letter. Since the let-
ter-writer does not
specify
which characters
represent
the
contemporaries
he
lists,
we cannot be sure that he
thought
Balaam
signified Winnington.
But if he
did,
he was
probably
alone in his
conjecture.
The
only
annotators I have found who
offered an alternative to
Huntingdon
were those seduced
by
Read's
key
into
gloss-
ing
Balaam with
Algernon Sidney,
one who
put Buckingham
for
Balaam,
and one
who
thought
that Balaam and Caleb stood for
Belasyse
and
Petre,
two of the
Popish
lords in the Tower.
Moreover,
if the writer
thought
that Balaam
signified
Winnington,
he was
reading inattentively. Winnington
was a mere
knight,
a com-
moner,
and
Dryden
claims to be
dealing
in these lines with "Lords" and "Nobles."
Despite
these
objections,
and there are
others,
Kinsley
was
sufficiently
im-
pressed by
Maurer's
argument
to list
Winnington
and
Huntingdon
as
equal
claimants to Balaam in the Oxford text of Absalom and
Achitophel.
But
Winnington experienced
a brief
glory. Only
the
Kinsleys adopted
him for a
pop-
ular or
teaching
text,
and that went out of
print by
1980;
later
scholarship barely
mentioned him.
Nonetheless,
his
candidacy
and the kind of
argument
needed to
support
him served to advance the
inappropriate
sense of "well
hung"
over the
appropriate
one. Most
college
texts now list "fluent" before
"licentious,"
and a
year
after the Oxford Absalom and
Achitophel
A. M.
Baumgartner
announced
that "the sum of the evidence
presented by
Maurer and
Kinsley
is
that,
of the
pos-
sible
meanings
of the word
'well-hung,'
it was the
fluency
or
volubility
of Balaam
that was
uppermost
in
Dryden's
mind,
rather than the sexual
meaning."'34
Of
course,
we no
longer say
such
things.
We know what is
uppermost
for modern
scholars and was for some of
Dryden's contemporaries
but not for
Dryden.
His
contemporaries,
we should
note,
managed
to
enjoy
the
line,
whereas most mod-
ern scholars seem not to have done.'35 Even Nesse saw the
joke, although
he did
not relish it.
Dryden's contemporaries
had the
advantage
of
reading
a
poem
that dealt with re-
cent
events,
current
issues,
and
living people,
even,
at
times,
with coffee-house
133. "Dryden's
Balaam Well
Hung?"
Review
ofEnglish
Studies, n.s.,
10
(1959): 398-401.
134. "Dryden's
Caleb and
Agag,"
Review
ofEnglish
Studies, n.s., 13 (1962): 394-97, quoting 394.
135.
Pierre
Legouis
translates line
574
as "Balaam membru comme
Priape
et le
frigide
Caleb" and
rejects
Firth's
interpretation (Dryden:
Poemes Choisis
[Paris, 1946], 253, 430).
Hammond
glosses
"well
hung"
as "with
large genitals"
and adds that "the
meaning
'fluent of
tongue,' preferred by
some
editors,
is irrelevant here"
(1:497).
~
133
134 ALAN ROPER
gossip.
Modern scholars
try
to
recapture
some of that
once-living knowledge
in
order to construct a version of
past experience,
and
they may
err
just
because
they
think of
past experience
as
single
instead of
multiple,
fixed instead of
fluid,
error-free instead of
error-prone.
Nonetheless,
scholars who address the
identity
of
Dryden's
characters are
responding
to
something special
about Absalom and
Achitophel,
which
is,
after
all,
the most successful
poeme
a clef in
English.
No
other
poem
has received so
many
editions over the centuries that
provide
a
key,
or
identifying glosses,
or both
together.
A
completely plain
text,
offering
no ed-
itorial
assistance,
has been uncommon since
1716
or even
1708. James Kinsley
supplied
such a text in
Dryden's
Poems and Fables
(1962)
to
replace Sargeaunt's
earlier edition for the "Oxford Standard
Authors,"
which had
included,
as I
mentioned,
a version of Tonson's
key.
When I took down the
circulating copies
of Poems and Fables in UCLA
libraries,
I found the
margins
of Absalom and
Achitophel
adorned in two of the three with "Charles II" and
"Monmouth,"
"Shaftesbury," "Buckingham,"
and
others,
as
though they
were
copies
of the first
folio or the second Dublin
quarto.
In one
copy
some of the
marginalia
had been
cropped prior
to
rebinding,
a
phenomenon
with which I became
very
familiar
when
gathering
annotations from
copies
of
early
editions. The other
copy
ac-
cepts
the
opinion
of most modern editors and
glosses
Hebron as Scotland and
Agag
as Stafford.
As much as
Dryden's contemporaries,
modern readers must
always
take re-
sponsibility
for
introducing
allegorical
equations
into Absalom and
Achitophel,
even
though
most will
merely
introduce
equations
dictated to them
by
editors.
In
doing
so,
they
differ not at all from those
eighteenth-century
readers
who,
unable to
rely upon
their own
knowledge,
transcribed Tonsons
key
or Read's
into
copies
of
early
editions;
nor do
they
differ
greatly
from those Restoration
readers who
perhaps purchased
a
manuscript key
in a coffee-house or
supple-
mented their
knowledge
of current affairs
by consulting
Nesse's
key
or an in-
formed
acquaintance,
such as
Luttrell,
or
perhaps
Tonson. No matter how or
where readers
gain
their
knowledge, they
must take
responsibility
for
using
it to
enlarge
their
experience
of the
poem. They
can
only
avoid
responsibility by
em-
bracing ignorance
or
denying
the value of historical
knowledge
and thus
forego-
ing part
of the
pleasure
offered
by
the
poem.
Johnson,
we
saw,
substituted for the Addisonian
pleasure
of
application
an
appeal
to
party prejudice,
which he believed filled the mind of
every
reader of
Absalom and
Achitophel
"with
triumph
or resentment." The Addisonian and
Johnsonian principles
can
obviously
coexist, even,
perhaps,
within the same
reader,
as is the case with one
early response
in a letter:
ALAN ROPER
134
i
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
In
Dryden's poem,
called Absolon and
Achitophel,
are
represented
the
lively
characters of the Duke of Monmouth and
Shaftsbury,
also
Howard,
Sir William
Jones,
Bethel,
Winnington,
and most
of that
party,
under
Jewish
names,
together
with the Doctor of
Salamanca,
as Corah. After which are
nobly
described the Duke
of
Ormond, Halifax, Hide,
Seymour,
and most of the
loyal party.136
There can be no doubt about this writer's
allegiance
and no doubt that he is also
pleased by
his
ability
to
identify
the Restoration
equivalents
of those
"lively
char-
acters." These are distinct
principles, although
Johnson,
sure of his own
princi-
ple,
dismissed Addison's.
Johnson's
reductive
argument
has
recently
been revived
by
Steven Zwicker
in an
essay
on
manuscript marginalia
in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century
books.'37
Much like
Johnson,
Zwicker distorts the
argument
for what he calls
"disinterested
reading"
in order to dismiss it
(p.
323).
In its
place
he assembles ex-
amples
of discursive
marginalia
that are
obviously polemical
and concludes that
all
marginalia
were
necessarily
and
always polemical,
even
when,
as is over-
whelmingly
the case with annotated
copies
ofAbsalom
andAchitophel,
such mar-
ginalia
consist of
simple
identifications. Zwicker takes note of the fact
by putting
and
answering
a
question:
Were
Dryden's contemporaries writing
Charles II for
David,
Queen
Catherine for
Michal,
Monmouth for
Absalom,
and
Shaftesbury
for
Achitophel
lest
they forget
who these characters were? The
keys
surely
were no reader's
glossary
like those
provided
for
English-
language
editions
ofTolstoy's
novels.
Manuscript
notations and
keys
suggest
neither an
unsteady grasp
of
design
nor an
equivocal
reader;
they suggest nothing
so much as that
powerful
drama of
partisan-
ship
that constituted the world of
popery
and Exclusion.
(P. 108)
In a few cases discursive annotations of Absalom
andAchitophel
are
clearly
con-
tentious. Zwicker
quotes marginalia
from a
copy
of Tonson's "Seventh Edition"
(1692),
which was included in a
composite
collection of
Dryden's
Works. The
marginalia display
a reader moved to irritated
application
of the
poem
to the cir-
cumstances of
1696.
In
addition,
and as I
mentioned,
a
copy
of the first folio has
scornful
annotations,
beginning
with the
very
first
line,
which elicited "The Poet
136.
Historical
Manuscripts
Commission,
Tenth
Report, Appendix,
Part
IV, 174-75.
The letter is calendared as
"London, Dec.
21," 1681, but
begins,
"On the
i7th
the
Pope
was burnt in
Smithfield,"
an
unlikely open-
ing
for a letter written late in December but most
appropriate
for one dated 21 November.
137. "Reading
the
Margins:
Politics and the Habits of
Appropriation,"
in Kevin
Sharpe
and Steven N.
Zwicker,
eds.,
Refiguring
Revolutions
(Berkeley,
Los
Angeles,
London, 1998), 101-15, 321-24.
%-
135
136
A
an Atheist
exceeding
Lucretius."'38 For the most
part,
however,
manuscript keys
plainly supply
readers'
glossaries
and function much like character lists at the
front of
printed plays.
A "drama of
partisanship"
is,
after
all,
a
drama,
and
you
still need to
keep
the characters
straight
as
you
read. Whether or not the author
of the
following key thought
that he was
supplying
the
equivalent
of a
cast-list,
he
certainly gives
no
sign
of
participating
in a drama of
partisanship:
The
King
The
Queen
The Duke Monmouth The Dutchess Monmouth
Oliver A
citoekpl
Earl
Shaftsbury
King
Freh
[?]
King
Lewis
Z. Duke
Buckingham
Nad: Howard Escrick
Sr Will
Jones
Shimei Bethell Corah Oats Bathsheba Portsmouth
Barzillai Ormond Zadok Sancroft Adriel
Mulgrave
Jotha.
Hallifax Hushai Hide Aiel
Seamor.'39
Most
early keys assign
Restoration identities to
specified
characters,
but the au-
thor of this
key begins
with
just
the names of
contemporaries represented
in the
poem,
much like the letter-writer
quoted
above,
before
settling
to a conventional
pairing
of characters with
contemporaries.
Both the
unassigned
and
assigned
names in this
key
would seem to record
the
pleasure
of
recognition-"I
know which
people
are in this
poem
or who this
character is
supposed
to be"-rather than a fit of
party prejudice. Similarly,
the
earl of Arran wrote to the duke of Ormonde on 22 November
1681,
just
a few
days
after Absalom
andAchitophel appeared,
"Mr.
Dryden's
late
poem
will divert
you [by]
characters he
gives
of the worthies here" in London.140
Just
as Arran
recommended the
poem
as a source of
pleasure,
so those who
copied
the
keys
of
others more
obviously expressed
a need to know than a need to contest. Those
who offered alternative
glosses,
or substituted a second identification for their
first,
or
disputed
the
gloss
of an earlier annotator were
engaged
in act of under-
standing,
not
partisanship.
It is true that biblical names for
groups
of
people
rather than individuals often
prompted
contentious
glosses.
Jebusites (line 95)
were
nearly always "Papists,"
as
they
are in Tonson's
key,
and the
"Solymaan
Rout"
(line 513)
drew a
range
of
opprobrious
terms from Tonson's "London Rebels" to
138. Folger
D2212
(12ai).
139. Newberry
Case Y
185.
D
8559,
Part 1
(Macdonald
iza/d: with the corrections of z1d and the ornament of
iza on Bi);
the
"Key"
is on the title
page.
140.
HMC, Ormonde, n.s., 6:236.
ALAN ROPER
WHO'S WHO IN "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL"?
"Fanatics,"
"Presbyterians,"
"Commonwealthmen,"
and
"City Rabble,"
although
it also elicited "Londoners" and "Citizens of London." The
Jews (line 45),
the
"English"
for
Tonson,
modern
readers,
and
many contemporaries,
were
"Fanatics,"
"Whigs," "Presbyterians,"
"Protestants,"
and "Dissenters" for other
contempo-
raries. Some of these
glosses may respond
to what is
perceived
as the
poem's par-
tisanship,
and
many
reflect in some
way
the contentious nature of the available
terms for
groups
and
positions.
When isolated from the
glosses
for individuals
and
places,
the
glosses
for
groups might support
a
Johnsonian
reductionism. But
when returned to their
proper
context
among
other
annotations,
these
glosses
seem far less
polemical
than their
phrasing might suggest.
However we resolve the
matter,
we should
agree
that neither Addisonian
pleasure
nor
Johnsonian passion adequately
accounts for the
poem's popularity,
which must have
depended
far more on the
"very
fine"
poetry,
as Addison called
it,
or "the attractions of
wit,
elegance,
and
harmony"
cited
byJohnson.
The dozen
or so
poems
written in imitation of
Dryden's
lack such attractions and accord-
ingly
bid for a favorable
reception by offering
readers little more than a set of al-
legorical
conundrums to
solve;
as one of their authors
put
it,
"A Veil drawn over
the
Design
in
Poetry
creates a
Curiosity,
if
not a Reverence."'4' Had
they
succeeded,
they
would have received more than
just
one or two editions in their own
day
and
would be read in ours
by
more than an occasional scholar. But we err on the
other side if we believe that Absalom
andAchitophel
has survived in
spite
of its
top-
icality. Among Dryden's strengths
as
poet, along
with the
diction,
prosody,
and
talent for
argument,
we must include his
ability
to
populate
his
poems
with
fig-
ures from his own
day,
from
history,
and from
myth.
His
poems
are full of
par-
ticular
people doing things; they
have
names,
and their
activity corresponds
to
the
energy
of the verse. In
attending
to those
people
and their activities we attend
to one of
Dryden's strengths.
Another of his imitators
found,
like
him,
an
epi-
graph
in Horace: Mutato
Nomine,
de Te I Fabula
narratur'42-"with
the name
changed,
the tale is told of
you"-and
the
phrase
could well serve as an alterna-
tive
epigraph
to Absalom and
Achitophel. Just
like
Dryden's contemporaries,
we
need to
change
the names as we
read,
in order to
prevent
the characters from
slipping
into mere
types
without
particular
relevance or satiric
point. Accordingly,
Absalom
andAchitophelhas
survived not in
spite
of but
together
with its
topicality
and because that
topicality
contributes to the
pleasure
offered
by
the
poem.
141.
Preface to Uzziah andJotham
(London, 1690).
For a list and discussion of
poems
written in imitation of
Dryden's,
see Alan
Roper,
"Absalom's Issue: Parallel Poems in the
Restoration,"
forthcoming
in Studies in
Philology.
142.
Thomas
Hoy, Agathocles
the Sicilian
Usurper
(London, 1683);
see
Horace, Satires,
1.1:69-70.
V
137
138
-
ALAN ROPER
Readers must
always
decide for themselves the size of that
contribution,
and
they
will find it
negligible
or considerable
according
to their interest in the dead. We
should not
try
to
legislate
the
pleasures
of others but
may properly
record our
own,
and after
taking
this turn around Robin Hood's
barn,
I have found
my
pleasure
enhanced
by thinking
of the historical
counterparts
to
Dryden's
char-
acters as
comprising
all the candidates
proposed by
others,
while
preferring
Tonson's in
every
case,
together
with the beadle for Amnon. I have also found that
if
you change
the names as
you
read and stand closer to Absalom
andAchitophel,
it will take
you
more.
University of California,
Los
Angeles