Shaky Marriage and Insecure Restoration: The Crisis of Restoration Ideology Projected in John Dryden’s Marriage A-la-Mode

The purpose of this paper is to examine how John Dryden vindicates the Restoration through the dual plot structure in the Marriage A-la-Mode (1671) on the eve of the third Anglo-Dutch War when the English support for Charles II could not be taken for granted. First, this paper investigates Dryden's argument for the dual plot structure in English tragicomedy in his Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1666). Second, this paper examines how Dryden attempts to justify the authority of birth through his protagonists of the heroic plot who try to maintain their fidelity to timeless value in the face of rapid change and how Dryden's attempt of this kind fails to be a convincing justification of the Restoration. Then, this paper scrutinizes the protagonists of the comic plot's attempt to find change and pleasure outside their marriages when their marriages cease to provide any pleasure and their eventual decision to return to their marriages through the contract not to invade each other's property. This paper argues that the authority of contract emerged in the comic plot jumps over the boundary of the dual plot structure when the protagonists of the comic plot come to the rescue of the protagonist of the heroic plot and contribute to the restoration of the rightful king. Finally, this paper argues that, as the result of the co-habitation of the ideologies of the heroic and comic plot, the Marriage A-la-Mode comes to reveal the Restoration England in transition from the traditional hierarchical society to the individualistic bourgeois society where the emergent authority of contract comes to be dominant.