This realism was regarded on the basis of its moral value. "The function of a satirist was to show people as they were and the age as it was like" (Elkin, 81). Dryden regretted that fools against whom the satire is directed are mostly insensitive to it. They are the ones who need to note it must and they disregard it. He said of raillery, 'A witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not'.
There are two types of satires, Horatian and Juvenalian. Horatian satire is usually witty, wise and self-effacing, whereas, Juvenalian satire is angry, caustic, resentful and personal. Dryden followed the Juvenalian satire. Some of the satiric devices are humor, irony, invective, mock-enconium, grotesque, comic- juxtaposition, mock epic/heroic etc. The object of an action in a satire is identified on the basis of the stance taken against it. Depiction of things is usually absurd, disreputable and hypocritical if the satirist deems them so. "Like pain, satire is either extensive or local, constant or intermittent, extreme or mild, sharp or dull, present or absent." (Seidel, 2) A satirist takes everything personally. From civic programs, political fashion to aesthetic theory everything is personal for a satirist.
Keeping in mind the different means used by a satire and a libel, it would be incorrect to term Mac Flecknoe as a libel. Dryden's motive behind writing this piece of work was to ridicule Shadwell's "bad art" and not to make a personal attack on him. Nevertheless, there are some personal attacks made on Shadwell which are made just to make fun of him. Nowhere do these personal attacks overshadow the major attack being made on Shadwell's writing skills. They are just add-ons to the larger scheme of things in the poem. By attacking Shadwell's writing skills, Dryden deflates his ability to compete. "The bad successor poet, Shadwell, is not only a rival poet- competing with Dryden as a playwright- but one who represents a particularly broad and farcical style of humor comedy that Dryden had long attacked as primitive in implicit opposition to the higher style, taste, and wit of the Stuart court in the Restoration.
