The Dunciad
His poem celebrates a war, rather than a mere victory, and a process of ignorance, and Pope picks, as his champions of all things insipid, Lewis Theobald (1728 and 1732) and Colley Cibber (1742).
In the Dunciad Variorum, Pope complains that he had put out newspaper advertisements when he was working on Shakespeare, asking for anyone with suggestions to come forward, and that Theobald had hidden all of his material.
Theobald's writings for John Rich, in particular, are singled out within the Dunciad as abominations for their mixing of tragedy and comedy and their "low" pantomime and opera; they are not the first to bring the Smithfield muses to the ears of kings, but they ferried them over in bulk.
The goddess Dulness notes that her power is so great that "Time himself stands still at her command, / Realms shift their place, and Ocean turns to land" (I 69-70[4]), and thus claims credit for the routine violation of the Unities of Aristotle in poetry.
of Greece and Rome / Well-purg'd, and worthy Withers, Quarles, and Blome" (I 125-126[6]) (a Vatican Library for Northern European authors, and especially notable for vainglorious and contentious writing and criticism).
The phantom poet is named More, a reference to James Moore Smythe, who had plagiarised both Arbuthnot (Historico-physical Account of the South-Sea Bubble) and Pope (Memoirs of a Parish Clark), and whose only original play had been the failed The Rival Modes.
The booksellers immediately set out running to be the first to grab Moore, with Bernard Lintot setting forth with a roar (Lintot had been James Moore Smythe's publisher), only to be challenged by Edmund Curll: As when a dab-chick waddles thro' the copse, On feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops; So lab'ring on, with shoulders, hands, and head, Wide as a windmill all his figure spread, ... Full in the middle way there stood a lake, Which Curl's Corinna chanc'd that morn to make, (Such was her wont, at early down to drop Her evening cates before his neighbour's shop,) Here fortun'd Curl to slide; loud shout the band, And Bernard!
Pope describes the resulting game thus: 'Twas chatt'ring, grinning, mouthing, jabb'ring all, And Noise, and Norton, Brangling, and Breval, Dennis and Dissonance; and captious Art, And Snip-snap short, and Interruption smart.
Others attempt the task, but none succeed like Leonard Welsted (who had satirised Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot's play Three Hours after Marriage in 1717), for he goes in swinging his arms like a windmill (to splash all with mud): "No crab more active in the dirty dance, / Downward to climb, and backward to advance" (II 298–299[15]).
He wins the Journals, but Smedly reappears, saying that he had gone all the way down to Hades, where he had seen that a branch of Styx flows into the Thames, so that all who drink city water grow dull and forgetful from Lethe.
On Sundays, he would discuss theology, and on Wednesdays any other subject, and those who went to hear him would pay a shilling each ("Oh great Restorer of the good old Stage, / Preacher at once, and Zany of thy Age!"
Next come the theatres: a Dr. Faustus was the toast of the 1726–1727 season, with both Lincoln's Inn Fields and Drury Lane competing for more and more lavish stage effects to get the audiences in: Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth, A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball, Till one wide Conflagration swallows all.
(III 234–236[22]) Even though Pope was on good terms with some of the men involved (e.g. Henry Carey, who provided music for the Drury Lane version), the two companies are fighting to see who can make the least sense.
how calm he sits at ease Mid snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease; And proud his mistress' orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
He mentions William Benson as the proper judge of architecture: While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends, Gay dies un-pension'd with a hundred Friends, Hibernian Politicks, O Swift, thy doom, And Pope's translating three whole years with Broome.
Most of the critical and pseudo-critical apparatus was repeated from the Dunciad Variorum of 1738, but there was a new "Advertisement to the Reader" by Bishop Warburton and one new substantial piece: a schematic of anti-heroes, written by Pope in his own voice, entitled Hyper-Critics of Ricardus Aristarchus.
In the third book of the first version of Dunciad (1728), Pope had referred contemptuously to Cibber's "past, vamp'd, future, old, reviv'd, new" plays, produced with "less human genius than God gives an ape".
when shall rise a Monarch all our own, And I, a Nursing-mother, rock the throne, 'Twixt Prince and People close the Curtain draw, ... And suckle Armies, and dry-nurse the land: 'Till Senates nod to Lullabies divine, And all be sleep, as at an Ode of thine.
However, when Curll prays to Cloacina, Pope provides more motivation for her hearing his prayer: Oft had the Goddess heard her servant's call, From her black grottos near the Temple-wall, List'ning delighted to the jest unclean Of link-boys vile, and watermen obscene.
Curll here competes with Thomas Osborne, a bookseller who had claimed to sell Pope's subscription edition of Iliad at half price, when he had merely pirated it, cut the size of the book to octavo, and printed on low quality paper.
Smedley and Concanen are the same, but Pope adds a new section on party political papers: Next plung'd a feeble, but a desp'rate pack, With each a sickly brother at his back: Sons of a Day!
In keeping with the insertion of Webster and Whitfield, earlier, Pope takes a new turn and has the winner of the depth dive be the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Potter (1674–1747), and he is surrounded by an army of minor authors, "Prompt or to guard or stab, to saint or damn, / Heav'n's Swiss, who fight for any God, or Man" (B II 357–358[39]).
(B III 163–164[41]) As in the previous version, these struggling hack writers and political character assassins are contrasted to the glorious dunces who win all the money and fame of the kingdom, while worthy ministers and divines go ignored.
(B III 198–200[42]) As in the three book Dunciad, Settle shows the happy triumph of Dulness on the stage, but the lines are compressed and take on a new parodic context: All sudden, Gorgons hiss, and Dragons glare, And ten-horn'd fiends and Giants rush to war.
Hell rises, Heav'n descends, and dance on Earth: Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth, A fire, a jigg, a battle, and a ball, 'Till one wide conflagration swallows all.
Thence a new world to Nature's laws unknown, Breaks out refulgent, with a heav'n its own: (B III 235–242[43]) The theatre is providing a mockery of the Apocalypse and the second coming, an inverted, man-made spectacle of the divine.
The Dog-star shines, the lunatic prophets speak, and the daughter of Chaos and Nox (Dulness) rises to "dull and venal a new World to mold" (B IV 15[46]) and begin a Saturnian age of lead.
Doctor Busby, headmaster of Westminster School appears, "Dropping with Infant's blood, and Mother's tears" (B IV 142[50]) from the birch cane that he used to whip boys, and every man in the hall begins to tremble.
Busby tells Dulness that he is her true champion, for he turns geniuses to fools, "Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd, / We hang one jingling padlock on the mind" (B IV 161–162[51]).
Picking fine arguments on letters and single textual variants and correcting authors, he will make all wits useless, and clerics, he says, are the purely dull, though the works of Isaac Barrow and Francis Atterbury might argue otherwise.
