Which English poet wrote the neoclassical satire "Absalom and Achitophel"?

John Dryden wrote the neoclassical satire Absalom and Achitophel. First published in 1681, the poem retells a biblical rebellion as a pointed allegory about English political conflict during the Exclusion Crisis.

Dryden maps figures from the biblical story onto contemporary politics: the Duke of Monmouth becomes Absalom, King Charles II becomes David, and the Earl of Shaftesbury becomes Achitophel. Through this disguise, Dryden comments on arguments over whether Catholics should be excluded from the succession and on the political tensions surrounding Charles’s reign.

The poem is written chiefly in heroic couplets, a rhyming pair of iambic pentameter lines strongly associated with polished neoclassical verse. Dryden’s first part stands as a complete poem, although Nahum Tate wrote a second part in 1682 with Dryden’s advice and limited contribution. Readers sometimes confuse Dryden’s work with later Augustan satire by Alexander Pope or Jonathan Swift, but neither wrote Absalom and Achitophel.