Shadwell, THOMAS

Shadwell, THOMAS, a dramatic writer of some note in his day, though now only remembered as the 'MacFlecknoe' of Dryden's satire, was born in 1640 in Norfolk. He was educated for the law, but not finding it a pursuit to his mind he deserted it, and after an interval of foreign travel betook himself seriously to literature. His first comedy of The Sullen Lovers (1668) had great success, and he continued from year to year to entertain the town with a succession of similar pieces, a complete edition of which was published in four volumes (1720). The immortality which these must have failed to achieve for him he was fated to attain in another way. With Dryden he seems at first to have been on terms of friendly intimacy, and indeed the great poet contributed the prologue to his True Widow; but when Dryden flung his Absalom and Achitophel and The Medal into the cause of the court Shadwell was rash enough to make a gross attack upon him in the Medal of John Bayes. Dryden heaped deathless ridicule upon his antagonist in the stinging satire of MacFlecknoe and as 'Og' in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. Though his works, hasty and careless as they are, exhibit lively talent and considerable comic force, all that the reading world now knows of Shadwell is that 'Shadwell never deviates into sense.' It was some consolation to succeed his enemy in the laureateship, which in 1688 it became necessary for Dryden to resign. He did not survive long to enjoy it, however, as in 1692 he died—of an overdose of laudanum, it is said. See FLECKNOE.