Thursday
In our Faculty Dante-Virgil-Dryden-soon-to-be-Pope Discussion Group—which I think I’ll just start calling our Faculty Discussion Group—I’ve been leading our exploration of Dryden’s Absalom and Architophel. Considered one of the world great political satires, it’s proving to be eerily prescient of Trumpism’s attacks on American democracy. Hold on while I explain.
Written in 1681, the poem deals with the attempt by the forerunners of the Whig party to exclude Charles II’s brother from succeeding to the throne after Charles died. Because James was Catholic, the Earl of Shaftesbury wanted to bypass him and have the throne descend to his illegitimate son, the solidly Anglican Duke of Monmouth. Requiring political chaos to pull this off (at least in the poem), the character representing Shaftesbury (Architophel) attempts to take advantage of an allegorical version of the “Popish Plot,” a supposed plan to assassinate Charles that was actually the fantasy of the unscrupulous Titus Oates. The accusation had as much truth as Donald Trump’s claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election, but because enough people took it seriously, at least 22 Catholics were executed, some of them horribly.
Shaftesbury was not allied with Oates but sought to take advantage of the ferment to push the Exclusionary Bill—a bill excluding James from succession—through Parliament. In the poem, Architophel/Shaftesbury says at one point, “the people have a right supreme/To make their kings; for kings are made for them.” Charles, correctly viewing this as an affront to the divine right of kings, fought it.
Charles won the battle in the short run as Parliament voted down the Exclusionary Bill. (In the movie Libertine, poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, is depicted as persuading the House of Lords to reject the bill.) James succeeded him to the throne and subsequently put down Monmouth’s rebellion, but Shaftesbury’s views prevailed in the end. James shortly thereafter was ousted in the Glorious Revolution and his Anglican daughter Mary, along with her husband William of Orange, came to the throne. England finally got the constitutional monarchy that Dryden feared and Shaftesbury fought for.
The poem is set up as an allegory, purportedly about the Bible’s King David and his rebellious son Absalom, with David standing in for Charles and Absalom for Monmouth. As Dryden tells the story, Architophel/Shaftesbury persuades Absalom to stand up against his father’s desires.
It so happens that I’m more with Architophel than David/Charles when it comes to the politics, preferring a constitutional monarchy to the vision of the king as divinely appointed. But put that aside. Dryden understands how demagogues take advantage of political unrest, and that’s where the poem lines up with our current situation.
Think of Trump first as Titus Oates—Corah in the poem—a radical priest who fabricated evidence to whip up anti-Catholic hysteria. In Trump’s case, it’s anti-immigrant and racist hysteria. Dryden pours on the sarcasm when describing Corah/Oates, and I like the following passage since Trump too likes to boast about his own prodigious memory. The passage also raises a question people have had about Trump: is he lying if he actually believes his wild stories (“exceeding man’s belief”)? Dryden says that, when Corah/Oates’s grasp of facts breaks down (“where the witness failed”) he just gives himself over to the visionary spirit:
His memory, miraculously great,
Could plots, exceeding man’s belief, repeat;
Which therefore cannot be accounted lies,
For human wit could never such devise.
Some future truths are mingled in his book;
But where the witness failed the prophet spoke:
Some things like visionary flight appear;
The spirit caught him up, — the Lord knows where,
And gave him his rabbinical degree,
Unknown to foreign university.
Maybe Trump gets his “alternative facts” from Trump University.
In any event, the result of Corah/Oates’s anti-Catholicism is the same as Trump’s racism and Islamophobia. Suddenly hate speech and racist violence, dormant in America for years, are breaking out again. Here’s how Dryden describes the process:
For as, when raging fevers boil the blood,
The standing lake soon floats into a flood,
And every hostile humour, which before
Slept quiet in its channels, bubbles o’er;
So several factions, from this first ferment,
Work up to foam, and threat the government.
January 6 was the foaming result of Trump’s lies and a dire threat to the government. We’re increasingly discovering that the event was a planned attempt to pressure Republican legislators and Vice-President Mike Pence not to certify the election. Had Pence refused to do so (and the pressure on him was intense), the House of Representatives would have chosen the president–one vote for each state—giving the Republicans an edge. As it was, for the first time in American history most legislators in the losing candidate’s party voted not to certify the result, even though Biden was the clear winner.
Architophel is like those Republicans who, while distancing themselves from Trumpist violence, nevertheless seek to take advantage of it. In the GOP’s case, they are using Trump’s “big lie”about a stolen election to push voter suppression measures and replace bureaucrats responsible for overseeing elections with Trumpists. Dryden’s description of Architophel’s coalition is not a bad description of today’s pro-Trump GOP:
So several factions, from this first ferment,
Work up to foam, and threat the government.
Some by their friends, more by themselves thought wise,
Opposed the power to which they could not rise;
Some had in courts been great, and, thrown from thence,
Like fiends, were hardened in impenitence;
Some, by their monarch’s fatal mercy, grown
From pardoned rebels kinsmen to the throne,
Were raised in power and public office high;
Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie.
The “fatal mercy” is a reference to Charles pardoning many of those who overthrew his father. If the Democrats and the Justice Department don’t hold people responsible for January 6, they will be seen as Architophel sees Charles, his mildness as a weakness. As it is, many Trumpists view Joe Biden as a doddering old man. (In Trump, by contrast, they see “manly force.”) Here’s Architophel seducing Absalom to rebellion:
Not that your father’s mildness I contemn;
But manly force becomes the diadem.
‘Tis true, he grants the people all they crave;
And more, perhaps, than subjects ought to have;…
But when should people strive their bonds to break,
If not when kings are negligent, or weak?
Dryden then goes on to lecture those who want to set up their own kings. While I don’t agree with Dryden’s monarchical views here, if one replaces “king” with Constitution, I’m on board. If you abandon foundational principles (“give away” your “native sway”), then you are “left defenseless to the sword/ Of each unbounded, arbitrary lord”:
What shall we think? Can people give away,
Both for themselves and sons, their native sway?
Then they are left defenseless to the sword
Of each unbounded, arbitrary lord…
And:
For who can be secure of private right,
If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might?
Nor is the people’s judgment always true:
The most may err as grossly as the few;
And then, in a passage which gets at how GOP legislators are in thrall to the Trump base, Dryden says that the Sanhedrims (the Jewish assembly/Parliament) may be infected by the anti-king sentiment—or as I’m applying it, anti-democracy sentiment:
Nor only crowds but Sanhedrims may be
Infected with this public lunacy,
And share the madness of rebellious times,
To murder monarchs for imagined crimes.
If they may give and take whene’er they please,
Not kings alone, the Godhead’s images,
But government itself, at length must fall
To nature’s state, where all have right to all.
“Nature’s state” is a reference to Thomas Hobbes’s nightmare vision of a society without laws in Leviathan, where he writes, “Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
I noted in a recent post that President Biden reminded me of David/Charles when, upset that persuasion was no longer working with vaccinations, started mandating them for the federal work force and large businesses. In Dryden’s poem, David/Charles is tired of indulging Absalom/Monmouth and finally lays down the law. “For lawful power is still superior found,” he says, “When long driven back, at length it stands the ground.”
Dryden looks to heaven to affirm David/Charles’s claim, which is how those who believe in the divine right of kings see it. In our case, all we have is the Constitution and the laws of the land. Let us desperately hope that their “peals of thunder” will indeed shake the firmament:
He said; the 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 godlike David was restored,
And willing nations knew their lawful lord.
May our nation, red states as well as blue, hold fast to representative democracy. Otherwise we’ll end up with an unbounded, arbitrary lord.