Where the Abencerrages and Zegrys Try to Team Up

Three Plays: The Conquest of Granada, Parts I & II; Marriage a La Mode; Aureng-zebe by John Dryden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

[I'm only reviewing the first play, The Conquest of Granada, part I.]

I like the play. Let's start there. It's pretty enjoyable, and parts almost made me make it a 4. To be fair, it is a 3.5 to me: fun, well written, generally a pleasure to sit down with, and encouraging enough that I want to read the next play by him.

I don't love plays written in heroic verse, and I'd rather this wasn't, but I kinda agree with Dryden that it works for big stories like this, epic stories about kings and conquerors. To me, the rhyme makes the play more artificial, harder to immerse yourself in, but it works in a way. It's their convention, those people of 400 years ago, and there's no point arguing with them about it. It's fine.

This is the story of the last Muslim kingdom in Spain before the Christians drove them out, down in Granada. Part I, this play, is almost entirely about the rivalries and wars within the small kingdom, with two families or clans opposing each other (and thereby weakening the country, but people can't help themselves sometimes). We also have a king's younger brother driven to rebel in order to win an ambitious woman's love (even though she's a horrible narcissist). And we have a hero whose worth is not respected, whose contributions are overlooked, like a Coriolanus or Achilles, who swings the tide of war by changing sides (which I think is going to be bigger in part II). I can't say I digested the play that well; I did a lot of flipping back to the names at the front, trying to recall who was doing what, and what side they were on, especially when their names are so similar. I definitely fumbled the meaning of lots of speeches. But I got the overall gist and will probably come back to it someday to get a bit deeper into it.

That said, the broad outlines are clear enough, and I got that. And I did, in fact, enjoy much of the language more than I expected; there are some great lines worth noticing and rereading, even if you're a rhyme grouch like me.

So--as good as I hoped, anyway, and good enough to recommend to curious readers. I'm gonna study up a little on the story and then start the second part. I know how this ends, but I'm curious how Dryden ties it all up. Here we go.

View all my reviews