00041--Discuss the views of Dryden on the use of rhyming verse in drama.

            Dryden refutes the contention that rhyming verse is proper for the drama on the stage.  The central point of his argument is that normally we do not talk in rhyming verse.  Dryden says:  “I am of opinion that rhyme is unnatural in a play, because dialogue there is presented as the effect of sudden thought; for a play is the imitation of nature: and since no man without premeditation speaks in rhyme, neither ought he to do it on the stage”.  For this reason, says Aristotle, it is best to write tragedy in that kind of verse which is the least such, or which is nearest prose.  The verse nearest to prose for the ancients was the Iambic, and with the moderns it is blank verse.  A normal person would not speak in rhyme in day-to-day conversation.  Would it be natural to call a servant, or bid a door be shut in rhyme?  Rhyme may be a better form of writing, but not a more natural form.  However, rhyming verse can be recommended for an unmixed serious play.  So Dryden says:  “In serious plays where the subject and character are great, and the plot unmixed with mirth, rhyme is there as natural and more effectual than verse”.  It may be remembered that Shakespeare wrote all his plays in blank verse, and therefore while defending the use of blank verse, Dryden was actually defending Shakespeare and other contemporary dramatists of England.