Two reasons why Dryden composed Mac Flecnoe

The poem is personal satire that has for its target Thomas Shadwell, another poet who had offended Dryden with his aesthetic and political leanings. It is also literary satire, and is considered one of the most famous mock-heroic verses in the English tradition. It is 218 lines of rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. Like Dante’s Inferno, the poem has numerous references to Dryden’s contemporaries.