John Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy (also Essay of Dramatick Poesie) was likely written in 1666 during the Great Plague of London and published in 1668. Dryden's claim in this essay was that poetic drama with English and Spanish influence is a justifiable art form when compared to traditional French poetry.
The treatise is a dialogue among four speakers: Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander. The four speakers are Sir Robert Howard [Crites], Charles Sackville (then Lord Buckhurst) [Eugenius], Sir Charles Sedley [Lisedeius], and Dryden himself (Neander means "new man" and implies that Dryden, as a respected member of the gentry class, is entitled to join in this dialogue on an equal footing with the three older men who are his social superiors).
