Flecknoe

Flecknoe, RICHARD, an Irish Roman Catholic priest and playwright, who after some ten years' travels in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Brazil (1640-50) came to London, mingled in the wars of the wits, wrote several plays, all of which are now forgotten, and died about 1678. His name is now remembered only as that of the stalking-horse over whom Dryden applied the merciless lash of his satire to Shadwell, the most virulent of his literary assailants. His famous satire, entitled Mue Flecknoe, is partly the model of Pope's more famous Dunciad. Flecknoe is represented as seeking for a successor to the throne over the realms of nonsense, on which he had long sat supreme, and as having fixed on Shadwell as the one of all his sons best fitted for it.