The Conquest of Granada

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The Conquest of Granada was a play written by John Dryden and acted in 1670. It was notable both as the beginning of the "heroic drama" pioneered by Dryden and as the subject of later satire.

Dryden wrote the play in closed couplets of iambic pentameter. He proposed, in the Preface to the printed play, a new type of drama that would celebrate heroic figures and actions in a meter and rhyme that would emphasize the dignity of the action. Dryden's innovation is a notable turn in poetic diction in England, as he was attempting to find an English meter and vocabulary that could correspond to the ancient Latin heroic verse structure. The closed iambic couplet is, indeed, referred to as the "heroic couplet" (although couplets had certainly been used before, and with an heroic connotation, as Samuel Butler's parody in tetrameter couplets, Hudibras shows). As for subject matter, the hero of an heroic drama would have to demonstrate, Dryden said, the Classical virtues of strength and decisiveness. Inasmuch as the British Restoration stage was already under attack for the licentiousness of its comedies and the example set by its lewd actresses, Dryden was attempting to turn the tide to admirable subjects.

The play concerns the battle between the Moors and Spanish at the historical fall of Granada. The Spanish are kept generally in the background, and the action mainly concerns two factions of Moors, the Abencerrages and the Zegrys. The hero is Almanzor, who fights for the Moors. He falls in love with Almahide, who is engaged to Boabdelin, king of the Moors. She loves him, too, but she will not betray her vows to Boabdelin, and Boabdelin is torn between his jealousy and need for Almanzor. Almanzor and Almahide remain separated until the death of Boabdelin in the last act, when impediments are removed and the forbearing lovers can be united. There are two other crossed love plots in the play as well. Abdalla, brother of king Boabdelin, and Abdelmelich, the head of the Abencerrages faction, vie in love for the hand of Lyndaraxa, the sister of the leader of the Zegrys. Also, Ozmyn, a young Abencerrage man, loves Benzayda, a Zegry. It turns out during the play that Almanzor is the lost son of the Duke of Arcos, a Spaniard, but he fights for the Moors for his duty.

The exceptional tangle of the plot, and especially the bombast of the speeches Almanzor makes, made The Conquest of Granada the play satirized by The Rehearsal, written by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Furthermore, Henry Fielding, in Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1730) also takes aim at the silliness of some of The Conquest of Granada. The build up of the lofty aims of the "Preface" to the play seem mismatched to the performance of the play. That said, the play was extremely successful in the theater and provided a great deal of spectacle for theater-goers.