The “Spanish Friar” was brought out in 1681-2, when the nation was in a ferment against the Catholics on account of the supposed plot.  It is dedicated to John, Lord Haughton, as protestant play inscribed to a protestant patron.  It was also the last dramatic work, excepting the political play of the “Duke of Guise,” and the masque of “Albion and Albanius,” brought out by our author before the Revolution.  And in political tendency, the “Spanish Friar” has so different colouring from these last pieces, that it is worth while to pause to examine the private relations of the author when he composed it.

Previous to 1678, Lord Mulgrave, our author’s constant and probably effectual patron, had given him an opportunity of discoursing over his plan of an epic poem to the king and Duke of York; and in the preface to “Aureng-Zebe” in that year, the poet intimates an indirect complaint that the royal brothers had neglected his plan.[37] About two years afterwards, Mulgrave seems himself to have fallen into disgrace, and was considered as in opposition to the court.[38] Dryden was deprived of his intercession, and seems in some degree to have shared his disgrace.  The “Essay on Satire” became public in November 1679, and being generally imputed to Dryden, it is said distinctly by one libeller, that his pension was for a time interrupted.[39] This does not seem likely; it is more probable, that Dryden shared the general fate of the household of Charles II., whose appointments were but irregularly paid; but perhaps his supposed delinquency made it more difficult for him than others to obtain redress.  At this period broke out the pretended discovery of the Popish Plot, in which Dryden, even in “Absalom and Achitophel,” evinces a partial belief.[40] Not encouraged, if not actually discountenanced, at court; sharing in some degree the discontent of his patron Mulgrave; above all, obliged by his situation to please the age in which he lived, Dryden did not probably hold the reverence of the Duke of York so sacred, as to prevent his making the ridicule of the Catholic religion the means of recommending his play to the passions of the audience.  Neither was his situation at court in any danger from his closing on this occasion with the popular tide.  Charles, during the heat of the Popish plot, was so far from being in a situation to incur odium by dismissing a laureate for having written a Protestant play, that he was obliged for a time to throw the reins of government into the hands of those very persons to whom the Papists were most obnoxious.  The inference drawn from Dryden’s performance was that he had deserted the court; and the Duke of York was so much displeased with the tenor of the play, that it was the only one of which, on acceding to the crown, he prohibited the representation.  The “Spanish Friar” was often objected to the author by his opponents, after he had embraced the religion there satirised.  Nor was the idea