Editing John Dryden (section)

==Early life==
Dryden was born in the village rectory of [[Aldwincle]] near [[Thrapston]] in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was the rector of [[All Saints Church, Aldwincle|All Saints]]. He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of [[Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Baronet|Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Barone]]<!--- The [[Gregorian Calender]] was introduced in 1752. Dryden's dates are often given using the Gregorian or [[Julian calendar]]s.--->[[Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Baronet|t]] (1553–1632), and wife Frances Wilkes, [[Puritan]] landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. He was a second cousin once removed of [[Jonathan Swift]]. As a boy, Dryden lived in the nearby village of [[Titchmarsh, Northamptonshire|Titchmarsh]], where it is likely that he received his first education. In 1644 he was sent to [[Westminster School]] as a King's Scholar where his headmaster was [[Richard Busby]], a charismatic teacher and severe disciplinarian.<ref>Hopkins, David, ''John Dryden'', ed. by Isobel Armstrong, (Tavistock: Northcote House Publishers, 2004), 22</ref> Having been re-founded by [[Elizabeth I of England|Elizabeth I]], Westminster during this period embraced a very different religious and political spirit encouraging royalism and [[High church|high Anglicanism]]. Whatever Dryden's response to this was, he clearly respected the headmaster and would later send two of his sons to school at Westminster.

As a [[Humanism|humanist]] public school, Westminster maintained a curriculum which trained pupils in the art of rhetoric and the presentation of arguments for both sides of a given issue. This is a skill which would remain with Dryden and influence his later writing and thinking, as much of it displays these dialectical patterns. The Westminster curriculum included weekly translation assignments which developed Dryden's capacity for assimilation. This was also to be exhibited in his later works. His years at Westminster were not uneventful, and his first published poem, an elegy with a strong royalist feel on the death of his schoolmate Henry, Lord Hastings, from smallpox, alludes to the execution of [[Charles I of England|King Charles I]], which took place on 30 January 1649, very near the school where Busby had first prayed for the King and then locked in his schoolboys to prevent their attending the spectacle.

In 1650 Dryden went up to [[Trinity College, Cambridge]].<ref>{{acad|id=DRDN650J|name=Dryden, John}}</ref> Here he would have experienced a return to the religious and political ethos of his childhood: the Master of Trinity was a Puritan preacher by the name of [[Thomas Hill (Cambridge)|Thomas Hill]] who had been a rector in Dryden's home village.<ref>''John Dryden The Major Works'', ed. by Keith Walker, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), ix–x</ref> Though there is little specific information on Dryden's undergraduate years, he would most certainly have followed the standard curriculum of classics, rhetoric, and mathematics. In 1654 he obtained his BA, graduating top of the list for Trinity that year. In June of the same year Dryden's father died, leaving him some land which generated a little income, but not enough to live on.<ref>''John Dryden The Major Works'', ed. by Keith Walker, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), x</ref>

Returning to London during [[the Protectorate]], Dryden obtained work with [[Oliver Cromwell]]'s Secretary of State, [[John Thurloe]]. This appointment may have been the result of influence exercised on his behalf by his cousin the Lord Chamberlain, Sir [[Sir Gilbert Pickering, 1st Baronet|Gilbert Pickering]]. At Cromwell's funeral on 23 November 1658 Dryden processed with the Puritan poets [[John Milton]] and [[Andrew Marvell]]. Shortly thereafter he published his first important poem, [[''Heroic Stanzas'']] (1659), a eulogy on Cromwell's death which is cautious and prudent in its emotional display. In 1660 Dryden celebrated the [[English Restoration|Restoration]] of the monarchy and the return of [[Charles II of England|Charles II]] with ''[[Astraea Redux]]'', an authentic royalist [[panegyric]]. In this work the [[Interregnum (England)|Interregnum]] is illustrated as a time of chaos, and Charles is seen as the restorer of peace and order.