Absolm and Achitophel

 

Quots :

Oh, that my power to saving were confined!

Why am I forced, like heaven, against my mind,

To make examples of another kind?

Must I at length the sword of justice draw?

Oh curst effects of necessary law!

One of the things that makes David's relatively short speech so effective is that he suggests to the people that he has to go against his natural proclivities of tenderness and mildness and take up the literal and metaphorical sword against his enemies in order to protect the throne. Here, he values the power of the throne as far greater than his own, and he says that he must do as it requires. He knows what is required of him and he will do it, but the people must know he is at heart a peaceful man—he simply knows that there are bigger things than his love of his son. David has undergone the shift from "gentle, longsuffering father-king to severe, forceful executor of justice" (Marshall).

"This set the heathen priesthood in a flame;

For priests of all religions are the same"

Dryden has a lot to say about religious groups and their leaders, and none of it is very positive. He writes of the "moody" and "headstrong" Jews, or the English, who are loath to keep a ruler for more than twenty years, and acknowledges their apprehension of the Jebusites, the stand-in for Catholics. In this quote, he refers to Jebusite&Catholic priests as heathens, but he is insulting "priests of all religions." In fact, Dryden notes that "Of whatsoe'er descent their godhead be" they are quick to see kinship in other priests. Even if those priests do terrible things or support the wrong causes, those pledged to their faith will tacitly or explicitly condone them. Dryden is suggesting that religious men are just as self-interested as political men.

Absolm and Achitophel as a political allegory :

The definition of allegory has two senses. The first relates to when an author writes an allegory by design as did Edmund Spenser and John Bunyon. In this sense of allegory the characters are usually given titles rather than names: e.g., the Red Crosse Knight and Mr. Worldy Wiseman. The second sense of allegory depends on the reading given a particular work, passage, sentence, line. In other words, a particular reader may find allegory through his/her reading whereas another reader may not recognize allegory in the same work.

Having said this, John Dryden wrote Absalom and Achitophel as a satire to instigate political reform. The era was that during which a faction in England was trying to seat the illegitimate son of Charles II (after the Restoration) on the throne through a rebellion against Charles II. Dryden used a Biblical tale, that of the rebellion of Absalom against King David, in the humor of satire stated with the sweetening leaven of verse to point out the wrongfulness of a rebellion and the disastrous impending outcome of such a rebellion.

As you can see from the excerpted quote below, Dryden did not style Absalom and Achitophelas an allegory, as did Spenser and Bunyon, but he was certainly casting then contemporary figures in the role of Biblical heroes and villains. Therefore, an understanding of Absalom and Achitophel as an allegory revolves around the second sense of the definition of allegory, which is that a reading of allegory rests with the reader, literary analyst, literary critic.

Poem  as a satire :

Satire is a kind of poetry, without a series of action, invented for the purging of our minds; in which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things besides, which are produced from them in every man, are severely reprehended and partly dramatic. 

Dryden states that "the true end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction"

Absalom and Achitophel” is an attempt to that end. With this reference, Dryden implies that the Popish Plot is little more than a revival of the Good Old Cause and an attempt to dethrone a king.