Dryden's audiences in 1671, both aristocratic and middle-class,
would
have been quick to respond to the themes of disputed royal
succession,
Francophilia and loyalty among subjects in his most
successful
tragicomedy. In the tragic plot, written in verse, young Leonidas
has
to struggle to assert his place as the rightful heir to the throne
of
Sicily and to the hand of the usurper's daughter. In the comic
plot,
written in prose, two fashionable couples (much more at home in
London
drawing-rooms than at the Sicilian court) play at switching
partners in
the 'modern' style. The introduction of this edition argues
that
Dryden's own ambivalence about King Charles and his entourage, on
whom
he came to rely more on more for patronage, manifests itself in
both
plots; most of all perhaps in the excessively Francophile Melantha,
whose affectation cannot quite hide her endearing joie-de-vivre.
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