Dryden: A Song for St Cecilia’s Day — 100 MCQs

Dryden was born at Aldwincle in Northamptonshire into a landed Puritan family. He went on to dominate the literature of the Restoration.

After Westminster School under the celebrated headmaster Richard Busby, Dryden took his BA at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1654.

Dryden became Poet Laureate in 1668 and Historiographer Royal in 1670. He is generally regarded as the first officially titled Poet Laureate.

The essay is a dialogue among Crites, Eugenius, Lisideius and Neander, debating ancient and modern, French and English drama. It earned Dryden the title 'father of English criticism' from Samuel Johnson. 2

Mac Flecknoe (written c. 1678, published 1682) ridicules Thomas Shadwell as the heir to the dull poet Flecknoe. It later became a model for Pope's Dunciad.

The biblical story allegorises the Exclusion Crisis. Absalom is the Duke of Monmouth, Achitophel is the Earl of Shaftesbury, and David is Charles II.

The Hind and the Panther (1687), the same year as the Cecilian ode, defends Catholicism through an allegory of beasts. Religio Laici (1682) had defended the Anglican position.

Dryden is a neoclassical poet who values order, reason and classical models. The Romantic emphasis on spontaneous feeling belongs to a later age. 3

The dates are 1667, 1681, 1687 and 1700. The sequence moves from his early historical poem through political and religious poetry to his last major collection.

As a Catholic loyal to James II he would not take the oaths to the new monarchs. He was replaced as laureate by Thomas Shadwell in 1689.

The ode was written for the Musical Society's St Cecilia's Day celebration of 1687. Dryden's second Cecilian ode, Alexander's Feast, followed in 1697.

22 November is the feast day of St Cecilia, patron saint of music. Annual London celebrations began in 1683.

The Musical Society, formed in 1683, held yearly St Cecilia's Day celebrations with an ode set to music. The Royal Society was a scientific body. 4

Draghi, an Italian-born composer working in England, set the 1687 ode. Handel set Dryden's Cecilian odes much later, in the eighteenth century.

The poem has stanzas of different lengths, line lengths and rhyme schemes, which marks the irregular Pindaric ode. It is an occasional, musical ode.

Cowley's Pindarique Odes (1656) introduced the loose, irregular form that Dryden later adopted. The English form only loosely follows Pindar's Greek model.

Pindar's odes were arranged in triads of strophe, antistrophe and epode. English 'pseudo-Pindaric' odes keep the elevated tone but drop this strict pattern.

1687 falls in the Restoration (1660–1688), the age of Dryden, marked by neoclassical values of order and harmony. 5

James II reigned from 1685 to 1688. Dryden's conversion to Catholicism put him on the side of the king.

James II issued the Declaration of Indulgence in 1687, alarming the Protestant establishment. It formed part of the political tension of the year of the ode.

James II was deposed in 1688 and William III and Mary II were installed. Dryden, as a Catholic, then lost his laureateship.

Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music (1697) was his second Cecilian ode. 'A Song for St. Cecilia's Day' was the first. 6

Handel's setting of Alexander's Feast was performed in 1736. His music helped keep Dryden's Cecilian odes alive.

Tradition made Cecilia, a Roman martyr, the patroness of music, and the organ became her emblem. Her feast day, 22 November, was celebrated by musicians.

The Second Nun's Tale in The Canterbury Tales is a life of St Cecilia derived from the Golden Legend. It shows her place in English literary tradition before Dryden.

The Pythagorean tradition of the 'music of the spheres' lies behind Dryden's opening and closing images. The universe is imagined as ordered by harmony. 7

Genesis 4:21 names Jubal as the ancestor of all who play the harp and pipe. Dryden uses him to mark the beginning of human music.

1 Corinthians 15:52 speaks of the last trump, when the dead shall be raised. The Chorus applies this apocalyptic image to music.

The Killigrew ode (1686) is Dryden's major Pindaric elegy, written just before the Cecilian ode. It shows his command of the irregular form.

An occasional poem is written for a specific event, and this ode was written for the 1687 festival. R therefore correctly explains A. 8

Music is presented as the creative principle of the cosmos. The poem therefore begins at Creation with music as the ordering force.

'Frame' means structure or fabric, so the phrase denotes the entire ordered universe. It is brought into being by harmony.

Before music, Nature lies as a heap of clashing atoms ('jarring' means discordant). The image is of formless chaos.

Nature is imagined as a helpless woman buried under a heap, unable to lift her head. The figure is personification. 9

The voice from on high calls inert matter into order, recalling the creative Word of Genesis. 'More than dead' suggests matter that was never alive.

Hot, cold, moist and dry were the basic qualities of matter in ancient physics. They 'leap' to their stations at the call of music, so chaos becomes order.

'Stations' means fixed positions, here in the ordered universe. The verb 'leap' shows eager obedience to music.

Diapason (Greek 'through all') denotes the complete compass of notes, or octave. The line pictures creation as a scale running through all notes. 10

The scale of creation passes through all things and closes with man as its fullest note. Man is thus the crown of the harmonious order.

The returning lines work like a musical refrain or recapitulation. They fix the central idea that harmony underlies creation.

The Chorus moves from the music of Creation to the trumpet of Judgment in majestic, elevated language. Awe rather than bitterness or play governs the close.

The question expects the answer that no passion lies beyond music's power. It announces the theme developed in the following stanzas. 11

The repeated line encloses the story of Jubal like a frame. The return of the opening line also has a musical, refrain-like quality.

To quell is to put down or calm. Music can 'raise' passions and also 'quell' them, so its power is complete.

Jubal strikes the corded shell, a lyre-like instrument whose hollow body resonates. It stands for the first human musical instrument.

They stand around, wonder, and fall on their faces 'to worship that celestial sound'. Their reaction shows music's apparent divinity. 12

The listeners could not believe that anything less than a god could produce such sound. The hyperbole stresses music's godlike power.

The shell is said to 'speak', which gives it human speech. This helps convey the expressive power of music.

Stanza I describes the music that made the universe; stanza II introduces Jubal and the first human music. The poem moves from heaven to earth.

Most lines end in '-ell', while 'around' and 'sound' supply the other rhyme. The insistent rhyme gives the stanza a ringing quality. 13

The trumpet 'excites us to arms' with 'shrill notes of anger / And mortal alarms'. It is the instrument of war.

The triple 'double' imitates the rapid beating of the drum, so that sound echoes sense.

The drum is personified: it 'cries' a warning in direct speech. The repeated 'Charge' captures the drum's insistent rhythm.

The repeated imperative and the exclamation give the panic and momentum of battle. Retreat is no longer possible.

'Mortal' here means deadly. The trumpet gives the signals that call men to fatal combat. 14

'Clangor'/'anger', 'arms'/'alarms', 'beat'/'retreat' and 'drum'/'come' give the pattern ababcddc. The enclosed final rhymes suit the closing charge.

The Chorus balances Creation, when sacred lays moved the spheres, against the end of the world. R therefore explains why A is true.

The flute 'discovers the woes of hopeless lovers', and the lute whispers their dirge. The stanza turns from war to sorrowful love.

The flute is imagined as 'complaining', like a person lamenting. The epithet 'soft' prepares the quiet mood of the stanza. 15

A dirge is a mournful song for the dead. The lute sings the lovers' grief as if at a funeral.

In older usage 'discover' means to uncover or reveal. The flute reveals the lovers' suffering through fading notes.

The repeated 'w' in 'whose', 'whisper'd' and 'warbling' produces a soft, whispering sound. It suits the sad music of the lute.

Trumpet and drum in stanza III are loud and fierce; flute and lute in stanza IV are soft and mournful. The contrast displays the range of music's power.

'Flute' and 'lute' enclose 'discovers' and 'lovers', giving an enclosed pattern abba. 16

Stanza IV (the flute and lute) has four lines, fewer than any other stanza. The brevity suits its hushed, delicate music.

The violins express 'jealous pangs and desperation, / Fury, frantic indignation'. They stand for the violent passions of rejected love.

The 'soft' flute gives way to 'sharp' violins. The change marks a movement from gentle sorrow to bitter passion.

'Depth' is balanced against 'height', and 'pains' against 'passion', in a symmetrical contrast. Such antithesis is characteristic of Dryden's style. 17

The violins express the lover's jealous torment on account of a beautiful but scornful woman. 'Dame' simply means lady.

The repeated 'f' in 'fury' and 'frantic' reinforces the violence of the feeling.

The outer rhyme frames the central lines about desperation and passion. Dryden varies the stanza forms throughout the ode.

The rhetorical questions express the inability of human skill to match the sacred organ. The device raises the organ above the other instruments. 18

After war, love and jealousy, the poem shifts to the sacred organ. The conjunction marks the ascent from earthly to heavenly music.

In contrast to the passions aroused by the other instruments, the organ inspires holy love, that is, devotion to God.

'Mend' here means improve. The organ's notes rise to heaven and enrich even the angelic choirs.

The notes are said to 'wing' their way, so they are imagined as winged beings flying upward. The metaphor links sound to heaven.

The 'sacred organ' of stanza VI leads to 'bright Cecilia' and her organ in the final stanza. 19

'Teach'/'reach' form a couplet, then 'praise'/'ways' and 'love'/'above' alternate, giving aabcbc.

In myth Orpheus' lyre charmed animals and even trees and stones. Dryden recalls this legend.

'Sequacious' comes from Latin 'sequax', meaning following. The trees follow Orpheus' music like obedient attendants.

Classical myth said that trees uprooted themselves to follow Orpheus' music. Dryden uses this as the pagan wonder that Cecilia surpasses.

The wonder worked by Cecilia is greater than Orpheus' because her music brings an angel from heaven. 20

'An angel heard, and straight appear'd, / Mistaking earth for heaven.' Her music draws a heavenly being down.

The angel's mistake is the highest tribute to Cecilia's music, which seems to belong to heaven.

Orpheus moves beasts and trees, but Cecilia draws an angel from heaven. The comparison places Christian music above pagan.

A is true because stanza VI turns to the organ and holy love. R is false because it is the organ, not the violin, that is associated with the sacred; the violins express jealousy in stanza V.

'Lay' is an old word for song. The sacred songs moved the spheres at Creation. 21

The spheres move and sing 'as from the power of sacred lays', the beginning of the cosmos. The image echoes stanza I.

As music set the spheres moving at the beginning, so it will sound at the end. The parallel gives the poem a circular shape.

The world is compared to a pageant that passes and decays. The image stresses the transience of earthly things.

The 'hour' is made a ravenous being that devours the world. The personification gives the Last Day a menacing force. 22

The trumpet in stanza III rouses soldiers; the trumpet of the Chorus is the last trump heard 'on high'. It marks the end of the world.

The reversed pairing (dead–live / living–die) is chiasmus, and the reversal of life and death is paradoxical. It expresses resurrection and judgment.

The same music that tuned the universe at Creation will untune it at the end. Music thus governs both beginning and end.

Three consecutive lines on the same rhyme make a triplet, a device Dryden used often. It gives the close a weighty finality. 23

Stanzas I–VII move from creation to Cecilia, and the Grand Chorus returns to the cosmic theme. The stanzas differ in length.

Stanza II has Jubal's shell, III the trumpet and drum, IV the flute and lute, V the violins and VI the organ. The order rises from earthly passions to sacred music.

The violins express jealousy and desperation (stanza V). The flute expresses love's woes, the organ holy love, and the trumpet war.

Music creates the universe, rules human passions, draws angels down and will sound at the Last Judgment. The poem is a celebration of its power. 24

Statements 1 and 2 are accurate. Statement 3 is false: the violins express jealousy and desperation, while the organ is the sacred instrument.