Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Tyrannick Faith: Martyr Drama, The Heroic Mode, And Dryden’S Tyrannick Love, Geremy Carnes

Faculty Scholarship

Religious uniformity (as promulgated under the 1662 Act of Uniformity and later renewals of the act) was Restoration England’s chief strategy for addressing the nation’s deep religious divisions. The ultimate failure of the Stuart monarchy may be attributed in part to the failure of this strategy, which kept alive the wounds of the Civil War and amplified political dissent. Recognizing the dangers that uniformity posed to their reigns, the Stuart kings often pursued other strategies, including toleration (which they attempted to grant in 1660, 1672, and 1687, with increasingly disastrous results). As their poet laureate, John Dryden also explored the …