John Dryden was one of the more well known and dominate English poets and dramatist of the Restoration period.  He was born on August 19, 1631, in Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, England.  His parents were Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering.  John was the eldest of fourteen children of his parents.  Dryden was a King’s scholar while studying at Westminster, he then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge.  He graduated in February of 1654, and began working in London in 1657, with the civil service and he began writing plays of heroic tragedy and satires of varying success.  His first important work was Heroic Stanzas which was written in 1658, deals with the death of Oliver Cromwell.  Dryden’s reputation as a writer and grew very quickly, and in 1668 he gained the title of Poet Laureate of England.  He was working for Thomas Killigrew’s theatrical company writing heroic tragedies, but perhaps sensing the demise of his short-lived genre, he turned to comedy.  It was during this time that he produced Marriage A-la-Mode.  Shortly there after, Dryden quit working with Killigrew’s company which was floundering in debt.
    Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard (1638-1714), the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, on December 1, 1663.  The couple would have three sons.  After the revolution of 1688 however Dryden would lose his Laureateship, because of his refusing to take an oath of allegiance with the accession of William III.  His sole source of income came from his plays and translations of poetry from Greek and Latin.  As Dryden aged he turned more and more towards poetry.  It was this move that solidified his reputation as the leading writer of the day with such masterpieces as Absalom and Achitophel.
    John Dryden died on May 12, 1700 from gout.  the writer is burried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey, London, England.  He is buried nearby to his longtime friend William Congreve.