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Life
?-?1678; said to have been Irish priest [Jesuit]; printed privately poems and prose works, incl. A Relation of Ten Years Travels in Europe, Asia, Affrique, and America (1656); A Short Discourse on the English Stage (1664); Marvel’s met Flecknoe in Rome in 1643 and lampooned him in ‘An English Priest at Rome’ (1645), which suggested to Dryden his satire on Shadwell as ‘MacFlecknoe’ [var. Macflecknow], in which he called Flecknoe ‘Monarch of Dulness’, with Thomas Shadwell his son and heir; much of Flecknoe’s work appeared in Miscellanea (1653). DIW PI CAB ODNB JMC
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Works
The Marriage of Oceanus and Brittania, masque, 1659 (not extant); Erminia or The Fair and Vertuous Lady, tragi-com. (unacted), 1661, 1665; contains preface castigating theatre management; The Demoiselles a La Mode, com. (unacted) 1667; plot and subplot taken from Molière’s Les Precieuses Ridicules, and L’École des Femmes and the Two Naturals from L’École des Maris. [See Kavanagh, 1946, infra]
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References
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912), lists Miscellanea (1653), Love’s Dominion, dramatic piece (1654), The Diarium of Journall, drolling verse (Lon 1656), Epigrams (1670), The Fair and Virtuous Lady, tragi-com. (1661), Marriage of Oceanus and Brittania, an allegorical fiction (1659), Damoiselles a-la-Mode (1667). ‘A far better poet than tradition would imply’.
Charles Read, ed., A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols., 1876-78), cites his first work, Hierothamalium, or the Heavenly Nuptials (1926); further notes that Marvel speaks of him as an old man, in Rome 1643; ceased to assume character of priest after Restoration; stayed a time in Lisbon, kindly treated by King John of Portugal; his Love’s Dominion, a Dramatick Piece (1654), dedicated to Lady Elizabeth Claypole; rep. as Love’s Kingdom (1664 [sic]); Christie gives this reason for the animosity to Flecknoe in his Globe edition of Dryden’s Works, ‘The plan of the poem required a dead author, and Flecknoe suited the purpose’; it may be that Dryden believed Flecknoe to be author of a pamphlet by R. F., publ. in 1668, in defence of Sir Robert Howard against Dryden in a controversy about rhyme and blank-verse, and had nursed his wrath for 14 years. CAB selects ‘Silence’; ‘Of Drinking’; ‘On Travel’; ‘To Dryden’ [‘the muse’s darling and delight/Than whom none ever flew so high a flight ...’]; ‘On the Death of Our Lord’ [‘... and wouldst thou die/for such a wretched worm as I’]; ‘extract from Love’s Kingdom [Palemon, First Priest, Philander, Second Priest speak]; ‘On who Turned Day into Night [of Solomon, from Choicest Epigrams and Characters]; ‘The Sower of Dissension’ [‘He is the devil’s day labourer ... God bless my friends from them’; from ibid.]
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), selects “Of Drinking” and “Of Travel”, and calls him Irish by birth, Order of Jesus; rescued from oblivion by satirical genius of Dryden: ‘All human things are subject to decay; / And when fate summons, monarch must obey. / This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young / Was called to empire, and had governed long; / In prose and verse was owned without dispute / Throughout the realms of nonsense absolute.’ JMC finds this utterly unjust and defends him as a traveller who made a voyage from Lisbon to Brazil, 1646-50; other works cited are Love’s Dominion (1654), the only one of his plays acted, reprinted as Love’s Kingdom (1674 [?err; see CAB, infra]); Damoiselles a la Mode (1677), addressed to Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, and Sir W. Davenant’s Voyage to the Other World [n.d], both witty exposés of literary and dramatic foibles; witty and graceful epigram on Dryden by return; unpopularity with actors due to his attacks on the immorality of the stage; The Idea of His Highness Oliver [Cromwell], late Lord Protector (London: 1659) gives appreciative estimate of his character as soldier and statesman; also Ermina, or the Chaste Lady; The Marriage of Oceanus and Britannia; Epigrams and Enigmatical Characters (1670); Miscellanea (1653, being various kinds of poems and other pieces; Diarium, or the Journal, in 12 ‘Jornadas’, in burl. verse (London: 1656), 12o; Discourse on the English Stage; d. 1678. JMC selects 3-stanza song, ‘Of Drinking’ [‘the fountains drink caves subterren/The rivulets drink the fountains dry // ... // By this who does not plainly see, / How in our throats at once is hurled-/Whilst merrily we drink be- / The quintessence of the world? / ... Let us too drink as well as they.’]; ‘On Travel’ [... The best of every country where they come; / Their language, manners, fashions, and their us, / Purged from their dross ... Or else return far worse by bringing home / The worst of every land where he does come.’
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946), cites Southey on Flecknoe: ‘not the despicable writer that one might suppose him to be from the niche in which his mighty enemy has placed him’ [that is, in his role as Dryden’s King of Dullness]; quotes from MacFlecknoe, ‘In prose and verse was own’d without dispute / Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute.’ In a note to Pope’s Dunciad (1751), which opens with the lines, ‘High on the gorgeous seat that far outshone / Henley’s gilt tub, or Flecknoe’s Irish throne [...]’, he is referred to as an Irish priest; visited by Andrew Marvell in Rome in 1645, writing satirical verses on his poetic and musical ineptitude. The evidence of his death date is in a poem of Dryden’s, dedicating his Limberham to Lord Vaughan, where he compares himself for ‘worst poet’ in the world with Flecknoe, ‘he of scandalous memory, who left it last.’ Walter Scott characterised him in his edition of Dryden as ‘fitted for an incorrigible scribbler, by a happy fund of self-satisfaction, upon which neither the censures of criticism nor the united hisses of a whole nation could make the slightest impression.’ Kavanagh lists Love’s Dominion, tragi-com. (Lincoln’s Inns Fields 1664) 1654; reissued in 1664 under the title Love’s Kingdom and printed with prefixed Discourse of the English Stage, intended as a pattern for the reformed stage; comments, further, ‘It was through his criticism of theatrical immorality that Flecknoe incurred the enmity of Dryden. Langbaine records that, whatever about its “excellent Morality” and its adherence to the three unities, “it had the misfortune to be damned by the audience”; constrainted to represent moral plots rendering “Folly ridiculous, Vice odious, and Vertue and Noblenesse amiable and lovely.” The essay includes a homage to Charles II; rep. in J. E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of 17th Century, Vol. ii, 91-96. [See Peter Kavanagh, Irish Theatre, 1946, Chap. IV.]
Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature (OUP 1986), notes that he was said to be Roman Catholic priest, interested in experimental forms, many of his works publ. privately; Miscellanea includes defence of stage, in ‘Discourse upon Languages’ and a lament for the silence of the theatres under the Commonwealth; his Ariadne (1654) prob. first English opera, music - by himself - now lost; preface discusses the use of recitative showing him familiar with contemp. Italian developments; Love’s Dominion, pastoral with songs (1654), performed privately on the continent; acted as Love’s Kingdom after the Restoration; reputation for insipidity results from Marvell’s earlier satire (?1645) which suggested to Dryden his attack on Shadwell. SEE ALSO, sep. entry for Dryden’s MacFlecknoe, or A Satyr upon the True-Blew-Protestant Poet, T. S., poem, publ. 1682, def. edn. 1684, representing Shadwell as heir to the kingdom of dullness, currently [err] governed by the minor writer Flecknoe, it brilliantly exploits the crudity of Shadwell’s farces, notably The Virtuoso, ... &c. Note that the Sir Paul Hervey (Oxford Companion, 1967 edn.) reproduces ODNB short version verbatim [‘said to have been an Irish priest, &c’].
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Commentary
Andrew Marvell, “An English Priest at Rome” (1645): ‘... so thin / He stands, as if he only fed had been / With consecrated wafers, and the host / hath sure more flesh and blood than he can boast / This basso-relievo of a man ...’.
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