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Mac Flecknoe

"Mac Flecknoe" is aerodynamically designed to sound awesome when read aloud. End-stopped, end-rhymed, and about as heroic as it gets, the poem, written in iambic pentameter, takes on a rolling, dramatic quality. Think Chaucer. Think Shakespeare. Think epic.

Dryden also employs the lofty, sometimes melodramatic diction one might expect of a grandiose epic of gods and kings. Check out just one excerpt:

Methinks I see the new Arion sail,
The lute still trembling underneath thy nail.
At thy well sharpen'd thumb from shore to shore
The treble squeaks for fear, the basses roar:
Echoes from Pissing-Alley, Shadwell call,
And Shadwell they resound from Aston Hall.
(43-48)

The elevated "praise" of Shadwell here is richly detailed… as echoing through a public urinal. In moments like this, Dryden's rich soundscape and heroic tone expertly juxtaposes with the lowbrow stupidity of the poem's subject matter. In this sense, "Mac Flecknoe" is a crash course in irony, with Dryden utilizing an elevated, epic voice to parody his buddy (maybe frenemy?), Thomas Shadwell.