The Dunciad

The Dunciad is a landmark literary satire by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times. The first version (the "three book" Dunciad) was published in 1728. The second version, where Pope confirmed his authorship of the work, appeared in the Dunciad Variorum in 1735. The New Dunciad, in four books and with a different hero, appeared in 1743. The poem celebrates the goddess Dulness and the progress of her chosen agents as they bring decay and imbecility and tastelessness to the kingdom of Great Britain.

The four book Dunciad of 1743

In 1741, Pope wrote a fourth book of the Dunciad and had it published the next year as a stand-alone text. He also began revising the whole poem to create a new, integrated, and darker version of the text. The four-book Dunciad appeared in 1743 as a new work. Most of the critical and pseudo-critical apparatus was repeated from the Dunciad Variorum of 1738, but there was a new "Advertisement to the Reader" by Bishop Warburton and one new substantial piece: a schematic of anti-heroes, written by Pope in his own voice, entitled Hyper-Critics of Ricardus Aristarchus. The most obvious change from the three book to the four book Dunciad was the change of hero from Lewis Theobald to Colley Cibber.

Related Topics:
1741 - 1743 - Bishop Warburton

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Colley Cibber: King of Dunces

Colley Cibber's Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian appeared in 1740. There may have been a personal insult given in the autobiography, in that Cibber tells an anecdote of going with Pope and friends to a brothel. Since Pope was only about 4' tall, with a hunch back, due to a childhood tubercular infection of the spine, Cibber regarded taking Pope to a prostitute as a joke, and he congratulates himself on saving English poetry by pulling Pope off of an unsafe woman. Whether this betrayal of trust and scandalous anecdote is true or not, Pope's explanation of the change of hero is more than sufficient without recourse to such biographical details. First, Cibber, and his son, Theophilus, had been satirized in the three book Dunciad (see above). Secondly, the Apology was inarguably a work of personal vanity that the age in general found offensive. Moreover, Pope, in the guise of Ricardus Aristarchus, explains in detail why Colley Cibber is the perfect hero for a mock heroic parody.

Related Topics:
1740 - Brothel - Theophilus - Found offensive

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Aristarchus's "hyper-criticism" establishes a science for the mock heroic and follows up some of the ideas set forth by Pope in Peri Bathos in the Miscellanies, Volume the Third (1727). In this piece, the rules of heroic poetry could be inverted for the proper mock-heroic. The epic hero, Pope says, has wisdom, courage, and love. Therefore, the mock-hero should have "Vanity, Impudence, and Debauchery." As a wise man knows without being told, Pope says, so the vain man listens to no opinion but his own, and Pope quotes Cibber as saying, "Let all the world impute to me what Folly or weakness they please; but till Wisdom can give me something that will make me more heartily happy, I am content to be Gazed at." Courage becomes a hero, Pope says, and nothing is more perversely brave that summoning all one's courage just to the face, and he quotes Cibber's claim in the Apology that his face was almost the best known in England. Chivalric love is the mark of a hero, and Pope says that this is something easy for the young to have. A mock-hero could keep his lust going when old, could claim, as Cibber does, "a man has his Whore" at the age of 80. When the three qualities of wisdom, courage, and love are combined in an epic hero, the result is, according to Pope, magmanimity that induces admiration in the reader. On the other hand, when vanity, impudence, and debauchery are combined in the "lesser epic" hero (Pope uses the term "lesser epic" to refer to the satirical epic that would function like a satire play in the Classical theater), the result is "Buffoonry" that induces laughter and disgust. Finally, Pope says that Cibber's offenses are compounded by the outlandishness of his claims. Although he was "a person never a hero even on the Stage," he sets himself out as an admirable and imitable person who expects applause for his vices.

Related Topics:
Peri Bathos - Chivalric love

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The argument of the four book Dunciad

Most of the argument of the Dunciad B is the same as that of Dunciad A: It begins with the same Lord Mayor's Day, goes to Dulness contemplating her realm, moves to Cibber (called "Bays," in honor of his being Poet Laureate and thereby having the laurel wreath and butt of sherry) in despair, announces Cibber's choice as new King of Dunces, etc. Other than a change of hero, however, Pope made numerous adaptations and expansions of key passages. Not only are the topical references altered to fit Cibber's career, but Pope consistently changes the nature of the satire subtly by increasing the overarching metaphor of Cibber as "Anti-Christ of Wit," rather than Classical hero of Dulness. Most of the adaptations increase the parody of the Bible at the expense of the parody of Virgil.

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Book I

The invocation changes from "the one who brings" the Smithfield muses to the ears of kings to "The Mighty Mother, and her Son who brings," thus immediately making Cibber the fatherless son of a goddess, and the poem addresses "how the Goddess bade Britannia sleep,/ And pour'd her Spirit o'er the land and deep" (I 7-8). From the invocation, the poem moves to an expanded description of the Cave of Poverty and Poetry, near Bedlam. Cibber is the co-master of the cave, as "o'er the gates , by his fam'd father's hand/ Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand" (I 31-2) (referring to statues constructed by Caius Cibber, Colley Cibber's father), and the cave is now the source of "Journals, Medleys, Merc'ries, Magazines" (I 42).

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When Dulness chooses her new king, she settles on Bays, who is seen in his study surveying his own works: "Nonsense precipitate, like running Lead,/ That slip'd thro' Cracks and Zig-zags of the Head" (I 123-4) and "Next, o'er his Books his eyes began to roll,/ In pleasing memory of all he stole" (B I 127-8). The base of Cibber's pile of sacrificed books is several commonplace books, which are the basis of all his own productions. Although Cibber confesses "Some Daemon stole my pen... And once betray'd me into common sense," he prays to Dulness for inspiration, insisting that "Else all my Prose and Verse were much the same;/ This, prose on stilts; that, poetry fall'n lame" (I 187-90). The accidental common sense was The Careless Husband. When Cibber casts about for new professions, he, unlike Theobald in 1732, decides, "Hold-to the Minister I more incline;/ To serve his cause, O Queen! is serving thine" (I 213-4). The "minister" is Robert Walpole, an extremely unpopular Whig leader, and the "queen" is both Dulness and Queen Caroline of Hanover. When the new king is about to burn his books in despair, Pope heightens the religious imagery, for Cibber says to his books, "Unstain'd, untouch'd, and yet in maiden sheets;/ While all your smutty sisters walk the streets" (I. 229-30), and it is better that they be burned than that they be wrapped in "Oranges, to pelt your Sire" (I. 236). Again, Dulness extinguishes the pyre with a sheet of the ever-wet Thule.

Related Topics:
Commonplace books - Robert Walpole - Queen Caroline of Hanover

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Cibber goes to Dulness's palace, and Pope says that he feels at home there, and "So Spirits ending their terrestrial race,/ Ascend, and recognize their Native Place" (I 267-8). The Christian Heaven-home of Puritan songs is altered for Cibber to the originating sleep of Dulness. While in the Dunciad A the palace had been empty, it is here crowded with ghosts (the same dunces mentioned in 1727, but all having died in the interim). Dulness calls forth her servants to herald the new king, and the book ends with Dulness's prayer, which takes an apocalyptic tone in the new version:

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:"'O! when shall rise a Monarch all our own,

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:And I, a Nursing-mother, rock the throne,

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:'Twixt Prince and People close the Curtain draw,

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:. . . And suckle Armies, and dry-nurse the land:

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:'Till Senates nod to Lullabies divine,

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:And all be sleep, as at an Ode of thine.'" (Dunciad B I 311-18)

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Book II

Most of Book II of the Dunciad B is the same as Dunciad A. The Dunce Games are largely the same, with a few changes in personnel. Cibber watches all, with "A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead" (II 44). The contest of booksellers is generally as it was in 1727, with Curll slipping on bedpan slops. However, when Curll prays to Cloacina, Pope provides more motivation for her hearing his prayer:

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:"Oft had the Goddess heard her servant's call,

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:From her black grottos near the Temple wall,

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:List'ning delighted to the jest unclean

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:Of link-boys vile, and watermen obscene." (B II 97-100)

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Further, Cloacina aids Curll win the race herself, and not by intercession with Jove, and Pope here explains how she propels him to victory: she makes the odure nourishment to Curll, and he "Imbibes new life, and scours and stinks along" (B II 106). Again, the phantom poet, More, vanishes. The game for Eliza Heywood's person and poetry is the same as the previous version, except that the promised gift for the victor is a chamber pot. Curll here competes with Osborne, a bookseller who had claimed to sell Pope's subscription edition of Iliad at half price, when he had merely pirated it, cut the size of the book to octavo, and printed on low quality paper. Curll win's Eliza, and Osborne is crowed with the pot.

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The "tickling" contest is the same, except that Thomas Bentley, nephew of Richard Bentley the classicist, replaces Richard Blackmore. This Bentley had written a fawning ode on the son of Robert Harley (a former friend of Pope's with whom he seems estranged). In the noise battle, Dulness tells her poets,

Related Topics:
Richard Bentley - Robert Harley

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:"With Shakespear's nature, or with Johnson's art,

Related Topics:
Shakespear's nature - Johnson's

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:Let others aim: 'Tis yours to shake the soul

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:With Thunder rumbling from the mustard bowl." (B II 224-6)

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In the braying contest that follows, there is a noise that seems to come "from the deep Divine;/ There Webster! peal'd thy voice, and Whitfield! thine" (B II 257-8). Webster was a radical Protestant religious writer who had demanded the scourging of the church, and Whitfield was George Whitfield, the notable collaborator with John Wesley, whom Pope describes as "a Field-preacher. . . thought the only means of advancing Christianity was by . . . the old death of fire and faggot" who agreed with Webster only "to abuse all the sober Clergy" (note to line 258). Richard Blackmore appears again as the single singer with the loudest "bray."

Related Topics:
George Whitfield - John Wesley

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The progress by Bridewell to Fleet-ditch and the muck-diving games are the same, but, again, with some changes of dunces. Oldmixon, who had appeared in 1727 as one of the ticklers, is here the elderly diver who replaces John Dennis. Smedley and Concanen are the same, but Pope adds a new section on party political papers:

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:"Next plung'd a feeble, but a desp'rate pack,

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:With each a sickly brother at his back:

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:Sons of a Day! just buoyant on the flood,

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:Then number'd with the puppies in the mud.

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:Ask ye their names? I could as soon disclose

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:The names of these blind puppies as of those." (B 305-310)

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These "sons of a day" are the daily newspapers that only had lifespans of a single issue. They were frequently printed with two different papers on the same sheet of paper (front and back), and Pope quotes the investigation into Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford (conducted by Walpole's administration) as showing that the Tory ministry of Pope's friends had spent over fifty-thousand pounds to support political papers. The dead gazettes are mourned only by "Mother Osborne" (James Pitt, who had run the London Journal under the name of "Father Osborne"; he had been called "Mother Osborne" for his dull, pedantic style). The champion of splattering in Dunciad B is William Arnal, a party author of the British Journal who had gotten ten-thousand pounds as a political hack. In keeping with the insertion of Webster and Whitfield, earlier, Pope takes a new turn and has the winner of the depth dive be the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Potter (1674 - 1747), and he is surrounded by an army of minor authors, "Prompt to guard or stab, to saint or damn./ Heav'n's Swiss, who fight for any God, or Man" (B II 357-8). These trimming religious authors are people like Benjamin Hoadley and John "Orator" Henley. Potter describes the vision of Hades and the Styx pouring into the Thames, but it is not merely Lethe that pours in. Lethe and the effluvia of dreams go into the Thames, so the effect is that it "Intoxicates the pert, and lulls the grave" (B II 344). The Archbishop of Canterbury becomes the Archbishop of Dulness.

Related Topics:
John Potter - 1674 - 1747 - Benjamin Hoadley

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The book concludes with the contest of reading Blackmore and Henley.

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Book III

Book III is, like Book II, largely the same text as the Dunciad Variorum. In light of the new fourth book and the subtle changes of Book I, however, some passages take on more menace. The openning, where Cibber rests with his head in Dulness's lap, is here a clear parody of the Madonna with child. The vision granted Cibber is less Christological, as Cibber is not given a mission in the same way with an infusion of the Unholy Spirit, as Book IV provides a new ending, but the general vision of Hades is the same. Cibber visits the shade of Elkannah Settle and is shown the translatio studii and its inverse, the translatio stultitia, as learning moves ever westward across the world, with the sun, and darkness springs up right behind it.

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In the survey of the formless poets waiting to be born (in print), Cibber sees the same faces as Theobald had, but with a few excisions and additions. The implied homosexual couple of critics from the Dunciad A are cut, but a mass of nameless poets contend, "who foremost shall be dam'd to Fame" (B III 158) (both cursed with fame and damned by the goddess Fama for being an idiot), and altogether,

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:"Down, down they larum, with impetuous whirl,

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:The Pindars, and the Miltons of a Curl." (B III 163-4)

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As in the previous version, these struggling hack writers and political character assassins are contrasted to the glorious dunces who win all the money and fame of the kingdom, while worthy ministers and divines go ignored. Thus, Settle features Orator Henley as a paragon,

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:". . . his breeches rent below;

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:Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands,

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:Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands." (B III 197-200)

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As in the three book Dunciad, Settle shows the happy triumph of Dulness on the stage, but the lines are compressed and take on a new parodic context:

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:"All sudden Gorgons hiss, and Dragons glare,

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:And ten-horn'd fiends and Giants rush to war.

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:Hell rises, Heav'n descends, and dance on Earth;

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:Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth,

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:A fire, a jigg, a battle, and a ball,

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:'Till one wide conflagration swallows all.

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::Thence a new world to Nature's laws unknown,

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:Breaks out refulgent, with a heav'n its own." (B III 235-42)

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The theater is providing a mockery of the Apocalypse and the second coming, an inverted, man-made spectacle of the divine. For these accomplishments, Settle blesses Cibber and mourns his own failure in Dulness's service. For Cibber,

Related Topics:
Apocalypse - Second coming

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:"Happier thy fortunes! like a rolling stone,

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:Thy giddy dulness still shall lumber on,

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:Safe in its heaviness, shall never stray,

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:But lick up ev'ry blockhead in the way." (B III 293-6).

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Settle then takes a glance at the loss of learning incipient in the age. In architecture, the fool triumphant is Ripley, who was making a new Admiralty building, while "Jones' and Boyle's" fail. Settle wishes for the day to come soon when Eton and Westminster are in permanent holiday. As with the earlier version of the poem, the book ends with Cibber excitedly waking from his dream.

Related Topics:
Jones' - Eton - Westminster

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Book IV

Book IV was entirely new to the Dunciad B and had been published first as a stand-alone concluding poem. Pope himself referred to the four-book version "the Greater Dunciad," in keeping with the Greater Iliad. It is also "greater" in that its subject is larger. Book IV can function as a separate piece or as the conclusion of the Dunciad: in many ways its structure and tone is substantially different from the first three books, and it is much more allegorical.

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It opens with a second, nihilistic invocation:

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:"Yet, yet a moment, one dim Ray of Light

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:Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!" (B IV 1-2)

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:"Suspend a while your Force inertly strong,

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:Then take at once the Poet, and the Song." (ibid. 7-8)

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The fourth book promises to show the obliteration of sense from England. The Dog-star shines, the lunatic prophets speak, and the daughter of Chaos and Nox (Dulness) rises to "dull and venal a new World to mold" (B IV 15) and begin a Saturnian age of lead.

Related Topics:
Dog-star - Chaos - Nox

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Dulness takes her throne, and Pope describes the allegorical tableau of her throne room. Science is chained beneath her foot-stool. Logic is gagged and bound. Wit has been exiled from her kingdom entirely. Rhetoric is stripped on the ground and tied by sophism. Morality is dressed in a gown that is bound by two cords, of furs (the ermines of judges) and lawn (the fabric of bishops sleeves), and at a nod from Dulness, her "page" (a notorious hanging judge named Page who had had over one hundred people executed) pulls both cords tight and strangles her. The Muses are bound in ten-fold chains and guarded by Flattery and Envy. Only mathematics is free, because it is too insane to be bound. Nor, Pope says, could Chesterfield refrain from weeping upon seeing the sight (for Chesterfield had opposed the Licensing Act of 1737, which is the chaining of the Muses). Colley Cibber, however, slumbers, his head in Dulness's lap. (In a note, Pope says that it is proper for Cibber to sleep through the whole of Book IV, as he had had no part in the actions of book II, slept through book III, and therefore ought to go on sleeping.)

Related Topics:
Sophism - Ermine - Bishop - Muse - Mathematics - Chesterfield - Licensing Act - 1737

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Into the audience chamber, a "Harlot form" "with mincing step, small voice, and languid eye" comes in (B IV 45-6). This is opera, who wears patchwork clothing (for operas being made up of the patchwork of extant plays and being itself a mixed form of singing and acting). Opera then speaks to Dulness of the Muses:

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:"Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence,

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:Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense:

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:One Trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage,

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:Wake the dull Church, and lull the ranting Stage;

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:To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,

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:And all thy yawning daughters cry, encore." (B IV 55-60)

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However, Opera warns Dulness that Handel is a threat to her. His operas make too much sense, have too strong a plot, and are too masculine in their performance. Accordingly, Dulness banishes Handel to Ireland.

Related Topics:
Handel - Ireland

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Fame blows her "posterior trumpet," and all the dunces of the land come to Dulness's throne. There are three classes of dunce. First, there are the naturally dull. These are drawn to her as bees are to a queen bee, and they "adhere" to her person. The second are the people who do not wish to be dunces but are, "Whate'er of mungril no one class admits,/ A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits" (B IV 89-90). These dunces orbit Dulness. They struggle to break free, and they get some distance from her, but they are too weak to flee. The third class are "false to Phoebus, bow to Baal;/ Or impious, preach his Word without a call" (B IV 93-4). They are men and women who do dull things by supporting dunces, either by giving money to hacks or by suppressing the cause of worthy writers. These people come to Dulness as a comet does: although they are only occasionally near her, they habitually do her bidding. Of this last group, Pope classes Sir Thomas Hamner, a "decent knight," who absurdly thinks himself a great Shakespeare editor and uses his own money to publish an exceptionally lavish and ornate edition (with a text that was based on Pope's own edition). He is outshone in darkness by one Benson, who is even more absurd, in that he begins putting up monuments of John Milton, striking coins and medals of Milton, and translating Milton's Latin poetry and who had then passed from excessive Milton fanaticism to fanaticism for Arthur Johnston, a Scottish physician and Latin poet. Unable to be the most fantastically vain man, Hamner prepares to withdraw his edition, but "Apollo's May'r and Aldermen" (B IV 116) take the page from him. (This was a reference to Oxford University Press, with which Pope had a quarrel based on their denying Bishop Warburton a doctorate in 1741). Dulness tells her followers to imitate Benson and tack their own names to statues and editions of famous authors, to treat standard authors as trophies (the busts made of them like hunting trophies), and thus "So by each Bard an Alderman shall sit" (B IV 131).

Related Topics:
Phoebus - Baal - Sir Thomas Hamner - Shakespeare - John Milton - Latin - Arthur Johnston - Scottish - Apollo - Oxford University Press - Bishop Warburton - 1741

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All of the dunces press forward, vying to be the first to speak, but a ghost comes forward who awes them all and makes all to shake in fear. Doctor Busby, headmaster of Westminster School appears, "Dripping with Infant's blood, and Mother's tears" (B IV 142) from the birch cane that he used to whip boys, and every man in the hall begins to tremble. Busby tells Dulness that he is her true champion, for he turns geniuses to fools, "Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd,/ We hang one jingling padlock on the mind" (161-2). Dulness agrees and wishes for a pedant king like James I again, who will "stick the Doctor's Chair into the Throne" (177), for only a pedant king would insist on what her priests (and only hers) proclaim: "The RIGHT DIVINE of Kings to govern wrong" (188), for Cambridge and Oxford still uphold the doctrine.

Related Topics:
Doctor Busby - Westminster School - James I

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As soon as she mentions them, the professors of Cambridge and Oxford (except for Christ Church college) rush to her, "Each fierce Logician, still expelling Locke" (196). (John Locke had been censured by Oxford University in 1703, and his Essay on Human Understanding had been banned.) These professors give way to their greatest figure, Richard Bentley, who appears with his Quaker hat on and refuses to bow to Dulness. Bentley tells Dulness that he and critics like him are her true champions, for he had "made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains" (212) and, no matter what her enemies do, critics will always serve Dulness, for "Turn what they will to Verse, their toil is vain,/ Critics like me shall make it Prose again" (213-214). Picking fine arguments on letters and single textual variants and correcting authors, he will make all wits useless, and clerics, he says, are the purely dull, though the works of Isaac Barrow and Francis Atterbury might argue otherwise. He says that it is "For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,/ And write about it, Goddess, and about it" (251-2). They cement over all wit, throwing stone back onto the figures that authors had chiselled out of marble. As he makes his boast, he sees "A whore, a pupil, and a French governor" come forward, and the devout Bentley skulks away.

Related Topics:
Christ Church - John Locke - 1703 - Richard Bentley - Quaker - Horace - Milton's - Isaac Barrow - Francis Atterbury

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The French governor attempts to speak to Dulness but cannot be heard over the French horn sound that emerges, so the pupil tells his story. The "governor" is an English nobleman who went to school and college without learning anything, then went abroad on the Grand Tour, where "Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too" (294). He went to Paris and Rome and "he saunter'd Europe round,/ And gather'd ev'ry Vice on Christian ground" (B IV 311-312). At the end of his travels, he is "perfectly well bred,/ With nothing but a Solo in his head" (323-4), and he has returned to England with a despoiled nun following him. She is pregnant with his child (or the student's) and destined for the life of a prostitute (a kept woman), and the lord is going to run for Parliament so that he can avoid arrest. Dulness welcomes the three -- the devious student, the brainless lord, and the spoiled nun -- and spreads her own cloak about the girl, which "frees from sense of Shame."

Related Topics:
Grand Tour - Paris - Rome - Nun - Parliament

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After the vacuous traveller, an idle lord appears, yawning with the pain of sitting on an easy chair. He does nothing at all. Immediately after him, Annius speaks. He is the natural predator for idling nobles, for he is a forger of antiquities (named for Annio di Viterbo) who teaches the nobles to value their false Roman coins above their houses and their forged Virgil manuscripts above their own clothing. He serves Dulness by teaching her servants to vaunt their stupidity with their wealth.

Related Topics:
Annius - Annio di Viterbo

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Themes of the four book Dunciad