The Dunciad
The Dunciad is a landmark, mock-heroic, narrative poem by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times from 1728 to 1743. The poem celebrates a goddess, Dulness, and the progress of her chosen agents as they bring decay, imbecility, and tastelessness to the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Versions
The first version – the "three-book" Dunciad – was published in 1728 anonymously. The second version, the Dunciad Variorum, was published anonymously in 1729. The New Dunciad, in a new fourth book conceived as a sequel to the previous three, appeared in 1742, and The Dunciad in Four Books, a revised version of the original three books and a slightly revised version of the fourth book with revised commentary, was published in 1743 with a new character, Bays, replacing Theobald as the "hero".Origins
Pope told Joseph Spence that he had been working on a general satire of Dulness, with characters of contemporary Grub Street scribblers, for some time and that it was the publication of Shakespeare Restored by Lewis Theobald that spurred him to complete the poem and publish it in 1728.Part of Pope's bitter inspiration for the characters in the book comes from his soured relationship with the royal court. The Princess of Wales Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II, had supported Pope in her patronage of the arts. When she and her husband came to the throne in 1727 she had a much busier schedule and thus had less time for Pope, who saw this oversight as a personal slight against him. When planning the Dunciad he based the character Dulness on Queen Caroline, as the fat, lazy and dull wife. The King of the Dunces as the son of Dulness was based on George II. Pope makes his views on the first two Georgian kings very clear in the Dunciad when he writes "Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first".
However, Pope's reputation had been impugned, as the full title of Theobald's edition was Shakespeare restored, or, A specimen of the many errors, as well committed, as unamended, by Mr. Pope: in his late edition of this poet. Designed not only to correct the said edition, but to restore the true reading of Shakespeare in all the editions ever yet published.
Pope had written characters of the various "Dunces" prior to 1728. In his "Essay on Criticism", Pope describes some critics of a witless nature. In his various Moral Epistles, Pope likewise constructs characters of contemporary authors of poor taste. The general structure owes its origins to the communal project of the Scriblerians and other similar works such as the mock-heroic MacFlecknoe by John Dryden and Pope's own The Rape of the Lock.
The Scriblerian club most consistently comprised Jonathan Swift, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Robert Harley, and Thomas Parnell. The group met during the spring and summer of 1714. One group project was to write a satire of contemporary abuses in learning of all sorts, in which the authors would combine their efforts to write the biography of the group's fictional founder, Martin Scriblerus, through whose writings they would accomplish their satirical aims. The resulting The Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus contained a number of parodies of the most lavish mistakes in scholarship.
For the mock-heroic structure of the Dunciad itself, however, the idea seems to have come most clearly from MacFlecknoe. MacFlecknoe is a poem celebrating the apotheosis of Thomas Shadwell, whom Dryden nominates as the dullest poet of the age. Shadwell is the spiritual son of Flecknoe, an obscure Irish poet of low fame, and he takes his place as the favourite of the goddess Dulness.
Pope takes this idea of the personified goddess of Dulness being at war with reason, darkness at war with light, and extends it to a full Aeneid parody. His poem celebrates a war, rather than a mere victory, and a process of ignorance, and Pope picks, as his champions of all things insipid, Lewis Theobald and Colley Cibber.
Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, who wrote a biting commentary on Pope's Essay on Man, found that Pope had "reserved a place for him in the Dunciad".
The three-book ''Dunciad A'' and the ''Dunciad Variorum''
Publication
Pope first published The Dunciad in 1728 in three books, with Lewis Theobald as its "hero". The poem was not signed, and he used only initials in the text to refer to the various Dunces in the kingdom of Dulness. However, "Keys" immediately came out to identify the figures mentioned in the text, and an Irish pirate edition was printed that filled in the names. Additionally, the men attacked by Pope also wrote angry denunciations of the poem, attacking Pope's poetry and person. Pope endured attacks from, among others, George Duckett, Thomas Burnet, and Richard Blackmore. All of these, however, were less vicious than the attack launched by Edmund Curll, a notoriously unscrupulous publisher, who produced his own pirate copy of the Dunciad with astounding swiftness, and also published "The Popiad" and a number of pamphlets attacking Pope.Pope issued the first authorised Dunciad with commentary as The Dunciad. With Notes Variorum in 1729. A re-issue of the same text—now bound up with a long prolegomenon and additional prefatory matter—appeared in his collected Works, vol. V, in 1732. Although the poem itself was little altered, the 1729/1732 Variorum supplies an extensive apparatus of mock-scholarship; for example, the ‘Letter to the Publisher’ is signed “William Cleland” but was almost certainly written by Pope. The Variorum also introduces several new targets by name, among them James Ralph, whom Pope ridicules in Book III, lines 165–166:
Silence, ye Wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls
And makes Night hideous—Answer him, ye Owls!
In these prefatory materials, Pope points out that the Keys were often wrong about the allusions, and he explains his reluctance at spelling out the names. He says that he wishes to avoid elevating the targets of the satire by mentioning their names, but he similarly did not want innocents to be mistaken for the targets. Pope also apologises for using parody of the Classics by pointing out that the ancients also used parody to belittle unworthy poets. Pope's preface is followed by advertisements from the bookseller, a section called "Testimonies of Authors Concerning Our Poet and his Works" by "Martinus Scriblerus", and a further section named "Martinus Scriblerus, of the Poem".
Martinus Scriblerus was a corporate identity employed by Pope and the other members of the Scriblerians. Therefore, these two portions of the preface could have been written by any of its members, but they, like the other prefatory materials, were most likely written by Pope himself. The various Dunces had written responses to Pope after the first publication of The Dunciad, and they had not only written against Pope, but had explained why Pope had attacked other writers. In the "Testimonies" section, Martinus Scriblerus culls all the comments the Dunces made about each other in their replies and sets them side by side, so that each is condemned by another. He also culls their contradictory characterisations of Pope, so that they seem to all damn and praise the same qualities over and over again.
The "Testimonies" also includes commendations from Pope's friends. The words of Edward Young, James Thomson and Jonathan Swift are brought together to praise Pope specifically for being temperate and timely in his charges. The conclusion asks the reader "to chuse whether thou wilt incline to the Testimonies of Authors avowed" "or of Authors concealed" – in short, "of those who knew him, or of those who knew him not".
"Tibbald" King of Dunces
Alexander Pope had a proximal, close and long term cause for choosing Lewis Theobald as the King of Dunces for the first version of the Dunciad. The immediate cause was Theobald's publication of Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors as well Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his late edition of this poet; designed not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the true Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever published in 1726. Pope had published his own version of Shakespeare in 1725, and he had made a number of errors in it. He had "smoothed" some of Shakespeare's lines, had chosen readings that eliminated puns, and had, indeed, missed several good readings and preserved some bad ones. In the Dunciad Variorum, Pope complains that he had put out newspaper advertisements when he was working on Shakespeare, asking for anyone with suggestions to come forward, and that Theobald had hidden all of his material. Indeed, when Pope produced a second edition of his Shakespeare in 1728, he incorporated many of Theobald's textual readings.Pope, however, had already a quarrel with Theobald. The first mention of Theobald in Pope's writings is the 1727 "Peri Bathous", in Miscellanies, The Last Volume, but Pope's attack there shows that Theobald was already a figure of fun. Regardless of the quarrels, though, Theobald was, in a sense, the nearly perfect King of Dunces. The Dunciads action concerns the gradual sublimation of all arts and letters into Dulness by the action of hireling authors. Theobald, as a man who had attempted the stage and failed, plagiarised a play, attempted translation and failed to such a degree that John Dennis referred to him as a "notorious Ideot", attempted subscription translation and failed to produce, and who had just turned his full attention to political attack writing, was an epitome, for Pope, of all that was wrong with British letters. Additionally, Pope's goddess of Dulness begins the poem already controlling state poetry, odes, and political writing, so Theobald as King of Dunces is the man who can lead her to control the stage as well. Theobald's writings for John Rich, in particular, are singled out within the Dunciad as abominations for their mixing of tragedy and comedy and their "low" pantomime and opera; they are not the first to bring the Smithfield muses to the ears of kings, but they ferried them over in bulk.