John Dryden
Tuesday
This past Sunday at Otey Parish, our minister preached a sermon about David and Absolom that appeared to reference Donald Trump’s noxious influence on race relations. Rev. Lamborn noted that David’s shenanigans with Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite gave permission for his children to act out, including Absolom killing his half brother for raping their sister.
To be sure, the Trump parallel was not the sermon’s major point, which focused on exploring our own racial history. Just as the Hebrew Chronicles are willing to expose the failings of even Israel’s greatest king, so we need to acknowledge that Bishop Otey was a slave owner. The sermon, however, got me thinking about Dryden’s Absolom and Achitophel and how it might apply to the president.
Dryden walks a fine political line in this brilliant allegory. Absolom is the Duke of Monmouth, Charles I’s oldest illegitimate son, who eventually led a revolt so that he, an Anglican, would succeed Charles rather than Charles’s Catholic brother James. Dryden opposed Monmouth’s plots but, because of Charles’s fondness for Monmouth (like David’s fondness for Absolom), blamed everything on the Duke of Shaftesbury, Monmouth’s scheming advisor whom the poet casts as David’s turncoat counselor.
Applied to our situation, Trump would be a combination of Absolom, Achitophel, and Corah (who rebelled against Moses), the latter representing Titus Oates. Oates panicked the nation with his anti-Catholic conspiracy theories, most notably “the Popish Plot”:
On 28 September, Oates made 43 allegations against various members of Catholic religious orders—including 541 Jesuits—and numerous Catholic nobles. He accused Sir George Wakeman, Queen Catherine of Braganza‘s physician, and Edward Colman, the secretary to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York, of planning to assassinate Charles.
Although Oates may have selected the names randomly, or with the help of the Earl of Danby, Colman was found to have corresponded with a French Jesuit who was confessor to Louis XIV, which was enough to condemn him….Despite Oates’ unsavoury reputation, his confident performance and superb memory made a surprisingly good impression on the Council. (Wikipedia)
As a result of his efforts, 15 innocent people were hanged.
I equate Trump with Oates because he is just as ready to fabricate to gain power. Note Dryden’s sarcasm as he describes the Oates figure:
His memory, miraculously great,
Could plots exceeding man’s belief, repeat;
Which therefore cannot be accounted lies,
For human wit could never such devise.
If Oates/Corah is Trump the Conspiracy Monger, then Shaftesbury/Achitophel is Trump the Intriguer. Dryden describes him as “bold and turbulent of wit,” “unfixt in principles and place,” “a fiery soul,” and someone who is most effective “when the waves went high.” He is “in friendship false, implacable in hate,” leading Dryden to conclude, “Great wits are sure to madness near allied”:
Of these the false Achitophel was first:
A name to all succeeding ages curst.
For close designs, and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit:
Restless, unfixt in principles and place;
In pow’r unpleas’d, impatient of disgrace.
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay:
And o’er inform’d the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas’d with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near alli’d;
And thin partitions do their bounds divide…
I think of the way that Trump thrives best in chaos, constantly stirring the pot so that everyone is off balance.
Shaftesbury/Achitophel jockeys for power by breaking up the “triple bond” of England, Sweden, and the Netherlands (think NATO), which in turn makes England/Israel more susceptible to “a foreign yoke” (France for Dryden, Russia for us). And to ward off attacks, he loudly proclaims himself a patriot, which Dryden says is a great way “to cancel private crimes”:
In friendship false, implacable in hate:
Resolv’d to ruin or to rule the state.
To compass this, the triple bond he broke;
The pillars of the public safety shook:
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke.
Then, seiz’d with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurp’d a patriot’s all-atoning name.
So easy still it proves in factious times,
With public zeal to cancel private crimes…
Just as Trump rallies his base to distract attention from the charges leveled against him, Achitophel appeals to the people to cushion himself against charges of treason:
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the people’s will:
Where crowds can wink; and no offense be known,
Since in another’s guilt they find their own.
Along with Trump the Conspiracy Monger and Trump the Intriguer, there is Trump the Candidate (Monmouth/Absolom). Here there are fewer similarities (Monmouth is young and good looking and affects a modest air), but both are charismatic and generate great enthusiasm:
Th’ admiring crowd are dazzled with surprise,
And on his goodly person feed their eyes:
His joy conceal’d, he sets himself to show;
On each side bowing popularly low:
His looks, his gestures, and his words he frames,
And with familiar ease repeats their names.
Thus, form’d by Nature, furnish’d out with arts,
He glides unfelt into their secret hearts…
His fans are entranced. In the following passage, substitute “government” for “kings” and “Learjet” for “chariots, horsemen, and a num’rous train”:
The crowd, (that still believe their kings oppress,)
With lifted hands their young Messiah bless:
Who now begins his progress to ordain;
With chariots, horsemen, and a num’rous train:
From East to West his glories he displays:
And, like the sun, the Promis’d Land surveys.
Fame runs before him, as the Morning-Star;
And shouts of joy salute him from afar:
Each house receives him as a guardian God;
And consecrates the place of his abode…
Why should people turn to a usurper when times are good? The monarchist Dryden, suspicious of the mob, says it’s because they have it so good:
The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murm’ring race,
As ever tri’d th’extent and stretch of grace;
God’s pamper’d people whom, debauch’d with ease,
No king could govern, nor no God could please…
In Dryden’s imagined happy ending, the law wins out as Charles II/David arises from his lethargy and reminds people of his prerogatives as king. To apply the poem to ourselves who are not monarchists, let’s say our “lawful lord” is the Constitution:
For lawful pow’r is still superior found,
When long driv’n back, at length it stands the ground.
He said. Th’ Almighty, nodding, gave consent;
And peals of thunder shook the firmament.
Henceforth a series of new time began,
The mighty years in long procession ran:
Once more the god-like David was restor’d,
And willing nations knew their lawful lord.
There is some wish fulfillment on Dryden’s part here, just as many of us are wishing that the GOP-run Congress would stand tall against Trump’s excesses. I wonder if Dryden, looking at us, would believe his fears of mob rule confirmed. After all, if Republican legislators fear the anger of their Trump-supporting base, and if some of them also colluded with Russia, then Dryden’s words directly apply:
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the people’s will:
Where crowds can wink; and no offense be known,
Since in another’s guilt they find their own.
Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky today has a column explaining how Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani are angling for precisely this result:
[Giuliani] understands that his client, as the president of the United States, can’t face indictment and trial in the normal way any other American citizen can. The legal system can’t catch up with him, at least while he’s president. Only the political system can. Congressional action is the only remedy for a lawless president. And Congress obeys (in theory) the will of the people. Get the people to hate the law, to believe that the law itself is lawless, and the people’s representatives will be cowed into inaction.
So that’s what Giuliani is up to: He, a former federal prosecutor, is trying to get the mob to destroy the law.
Dryden’s poem contributed towards the outcome he wanted: Charles played hardball with Parliament, dissolving it rather than sign a bill excluding his brother from the throne. And although Monmouth, like Absolom, led a rebellion, he suffered a similar defeat and was beheaded for treason. James ascended to the throne after Charles died.
Parliament won in the end, however, overthrowing James in “the Bloodless Revolution” and replacing him with his Anglican daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. The “lawful lord” became a constitutional monarchy.
Additional note: Although Charles II stood up to Oates and Parliament as Dryden wanted, he needed independent money to do so given that Parliament controlled the purse strings. This he did, as Dryden feared, by relying on a “foreign yoke”–which in his case was Louis XIV of France, who wanted a Catholic James to succeed Charles and so made him financially independent of Parliament. Think of Louis as a 17th century Putin messing in Great Britain’s internal affairs.