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Wish-fulfillment fantasies in Dryden's Aureng-Zebe.(John Dryden)(Critical essay)

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From: Philological Quarterly
Date: 20040101
Author:Brady, Jennifer

But wishes, Madam, are extravagant. They are not bounded with things possible: I may wish more then I presume to tell: Desire's the vast extent of humane mind.

--Aureng-Zebe, 2.1.52-55

The prologue and the dedication to Dryden's Aureng-Zebe, staged at the Royal Theatre in the late fall of 1675, announce the playwright's growing disaffection with writing rhymed heroic plays. "What Verse can do, he has perform'd in this, / Which he presumes the most correct of his," Dryden proclaims in the prologue, already beginning the process of dissociating himself from the genre he ...

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