John Dennis (dramatist)

John Dennis (16 September 1658 – 6 January 1734) was an English critic and dramatist.

He was born in the parish of St Andrew Holborn, London, in 1658. He was educated at Harrow School and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1679. In the next year he was fined and dismissed from his college for having wounded a fellow student with a sword. He was, however, received at Trinity Hall, where he took his M.A. degree in 1683.

After travelling in France and Italy, he settled in London, where he became acquainted with Dryden, and close to Wycherley, Congreve and the leading literary figures of his day; and being made temporarily independent by inheriting a small fortune, he devoted himself to literature. The Duke of Marlborough procured him a place as one of the queen's waiters in the customs with a salary of £20 a year. This he afterwards disposed of for a small sum, retaining, at the suggestion of Lord Halifax, a yearly charge upon it for a long term of years. In the years prior to 1704 he reigned as one of the leading coffee house wits alongside Congreve.

One of his tragedies, a violent attack on the French in harmony with popular prejudice, entitled Liberty Asserted, was produced with great success at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1704. For Appius and Virginia (1709), he invented a new kind of thunder. The play was not a success and the management of the Drury Lane Theatre withdrew it. But later at a performance of Macbeth there Dennis found the thunder produced by his method and said,

According to Brewer's entry (under the headword thunder), this is the origin of the phrase, "to steal one's thunder".

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