Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Part 1 Pleasures of the imagination
- Part 2 A literary life in Restoration England
- 7 Dryden’s London
- 8 Dryden’s theatre and the passions of politics
- 9 Dryden’s anonymity
- 10 Dryden and the modes of Restoration sociability
- Part 3 Courting and complying with danger
- Further reading
- Index
- Series List
10 - Dryden and the modes of Restoration sociability
from Part 2 - A literary life in Restoration England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Part 1 Pleasures of the imagination
- Part 2 A literary life in Restoration England
- 7 Dryden’s London
- 8 Dryden’s theatre and the passions of politics
- 9 Dryden’s anonymity
- 10 Dryden and the modes of Restoration sociability
- Part 3 Courting and complying with danger
- Further reading
- Index
- Series List
Summary
Dryden's literary life would have been completely different had it not been for the coffee houses of Restoration London. Indeed, coffee houses came to occupy a pivotal position in a series of overlapping literary spheres that swept from the elite culture of the Restoration court to the popular life of the town. Coffee houses were a new type of urban space that first appeared in Oxford in 1650 and then in London in 1652. Dryden early acknowledged as much when he addressed the audience “of Court, of Coffee-houses, or Town” in the “Epilogue” to The Indian Emperor (1667) (Works ix: 112), and Pepys records Dryden's presence in Will's Coffee House even earlier, in 1664:
In Covent-garden tonight, going to fetch home my wife, I stopped at the great Coffee-house there, where I never was before - where Draydon the poet (I knew at Cambridge) and all the wits of the town, and Harris the player and Mr. Hoole of our college; and had I had time then, or could at other times, it will be good coming thither, for there I perceive is very witty and pleasant discourse. But I could not tarry and it was late; they were all ready to go away.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to John Dryden , pp. 181 - 196Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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