contemporaries by the wasteful strife of the previous generations, that
beyond a few fundamental matters the good citizen should make no close
scrutiny of details but rather render loyal support to the established
institutions of the State, by which peace is preserved and anarchy
restrained. Since the nation had recalled Charles II, overthrown
Puritanism, and reestablished the Anglican Church, it probably appeared to
Dryden an act of patriotism as well as of expediency to accept its
decision.

Dryden's marriage with the daughter of an earl, two or three years after
the Restoration, secured his social position, and for more than fifteen
years thereafter his life was outwardly successful. He first turned to the
drama. In spite of the prohibitory Puritan law (above, p. 150), a facile
writer, Sir William Davenant, had begun, cautiously, a few years before the
Restoration, to produce operas and other works of dramatic nature; and the
returning Court had brought from Paris a passion for the stage, which
therefore offered the best and indeed the only field for remunerative
literary effort. Accordingly, although Dryden himself frankly admitted that
his talents were not especially adapted to writing plays, he proceeded to
do so energetically, and continued at it, with diminishing productivity,
nearly down to the end of his life, thirty-five years later. But his
activity always found varied outlets. He secured a lucrative share in the
profits of the King's Playhouse, one of the two theaters of the time which
alone were allowed to present regular plays, and he held the mainly
honorary positions of poet laureate and historiographer-royal. Later, like
Chaucer, he was for a time collector of the customs of the port of London.
He was not much disturbed by 'The Rehearsal,' a burlesque play brought out
by the Duke of Buckingham and other wits to ridicule current dramas and
dramatists, in which he figured as chief butt under the name 'Bayes' (poet
laureate); and he took more than full revenge ten years later when in