An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

Instead of writing the piece as a short prose essay, Dryden instead employs dialogue: a conversation among characters who are avatars of his friends and patrons. While not strictly speaking a Socratic dialogue (which employs questions and answers to engage reflection and reach consensus), the essay does pay implicit homage to the ancient philosophical method. The essay’s dialogue also provides different points of view, arguments and counterarguments, and varied examples in a spontaneous manner—though the reader knows the end result is scripted. In this way, it reflects the conversations within the essay itself: The dialogue mirrors the poesy of the essay’s title, imitating (and improving) on nature rather than exactly mimicking it.

Dryden employs metaphors to vivid effect throughout the essay; the essay itself, as discussed above, relies on an extended metaphor of battle. He also employs a metaphor to illustrate how the moderns surpass the ancients in their playwriting: The ancients knew not to divide plays into particular acts, which is akin to “building an house without a model” (164). Later, plots are compared to cloths “weaved in English looms” (196), which both makes them unique and fit for a particular culture.