THE

WORKS

OF

JOHN DRYDEN,

NOW FIRST COLLECTED

IN EIGHTEEN VOLUMES.

ILLUSTRATED

WITH NOTES,

HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND EXPLANATORY,

AND

A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,

BY

WALTER SCOTT, Esq.

VOL. VII.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR WILLIAM MILLER, ALBEMARLE STREET,
BY JAMES BALLANTYNE AND CO. EDINBURGH.

1808.

---

CONTENTS

OF

VOLUME SEVENTH.

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THE

DUKE OF GUISE.

A TRAGEDY.

THE DUKE OF GUISE.

In the latter part of Charles the Second's reign, the stage, as wellas every other engine which could affect the popular mind, was eagerlyemployed in the service of the contending factions. Settle andShadwell had, in tragedy and comedy, contributed their mite to thesupport of the popular cause. In the stormy session of parliament,in 1680, the famous bill was moved, for the exclusion of theDuke of York, as a papist, from the succession, and accompaniedby others of a nature equally peremptory and determined. Themost remarkable was a bill to order an association for the safetyof his majesty's person, for defence of the protestant religion, forthe preservation of the protestant liege subjects against invasionand opposition, and for preventing any papist from succeeding tothe throne of England. To recommend these rigid measures, andto keep up that zealous hatred and terror of the catholic religion,which the plot had inspired, Settle wrote his forgotten tragedy of"Pope Joan," in which he revives the old fable of a female pope,and loads her with all the crimes of which a priest, or a woman,could possibly be guilty. Shadwell's comedy of the "LancashireWitches" was levelled more immediately at the papists, but interspersedwith most gross and scurrilous reflections upon theEnglish divines of the high church party. Otway, Lee, and

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