SOURCE: "The Authority of Nature's Laws," in Players' Scepters: Fictions of Authority in the Restoration, University of Nebraska Press, 1979, pp. 253-314.

In the following essay, Staves discusses the contradictory critical readings of Hudibras in order to analyze the object of Butler's satire.

… [The] real locus classicus of Augustan antipuritan, antidissenter satire is Hudibras, Samuel Butler's … popular burlesque. This poem has evoked contradictory readings. Early readers usually assumed that Hudibras was a spirited and malicious attack on the puritans; later readers express doubts. Dr. Johnson's view is typical of early interpretations. Distributing praise and blame with his accustomed judiciousness, he admired Butler's "inexhaustible wit," but worried that much of the "humour which transported the last century with merriment is lost to us, who do not know the sour solemnity, the sullen superstition, the gloomy moroseness, and the stubborn scruples of the ancient Puritans."²⁸

Modern criticism, however, resists accepting any...