All for Love, John Dryden’s play about Antony and Cleopatra

The full title is All for Love, or the World Well Lost. 

1/ When I was reading Racine, I was thinking that his greatness must have mainly been in the alexandrine verse that got lost in translation. But now I can read Dryden in the original, I can savour his lines.

“ANTONY They tell me ’tis my birthday, and I’ll keep it

With double pomp of sadness. 

’Tis what the day deserves which gave me breath. 

Why was I raised the meteor of the world, 

Hung in the skies, and blazing as I travelled, 

Till all my fires were spent, and then cast downward 

To be trod out by Caesar?” 

(Act 1) 

Dryden focuses on the last several hours of Antony and Cleopatra, using other sources as well as Shakespeare’s play, but they’re very different: Shakespeare’s play is rich and opulent, spanning across continents and featuring a large cast of characters; Dryden is more restrained, and we can see the influence of classical plays and French neoclassical plays; All for Love only has 13 characters (including the two daughters of Antony and Octavia). 

Dryden’s language is also clearer, more straightforward: 

“ANTONY (having thrown himself down) 

Lie there, thou shadow of an emperor: 

The place thou presset on thy mother earth 

Is all thy empire now; now it contains thee: 

Some few days hence, and then ’twill be too large, 

When thou’rt contracted in thy narrow urn, 

Shrunk to a few cold ashes…” 

(ibid.) 

That’s moving.

2/ Ventidius comes to persuade Antony to leave Cleopatra. As he speaks to Alexas (Cleopatra’s eunuch), saying Antony has become “unmanned” and “made a woman’s toy”, he says:  

“VENTIDIUS […] O Antony! 

Thou bravest soldier, and thou best of friends! 

Bounteous as Nature; next to Nature’s God! 

Couldst thou but make new worlds, so wouldst thou give ’em, 

As bounty were thy being…” 

(ibid.) 

Later, when he speaks to Antony and speaks disparagingly of the Queen of Egypt: 

“ANTONY Ventidius, I allow your tongue free licence

On all my other faults; but on your life, 

No word of Cleopatra: she deserves 

More worlds than I can lose.” 

(ibid.) 

Love that: “new worlds”, “more worlds”. 

Antony must leave Cleopatra. 

“ANTONY While within your arms I lay, 

The world fell mouldering from my hands each hour, 

And left me scarce a grasp…”

(Act 2) 

And yet, the moment Antony realises Cleopatra “sets [his] love above the price of kingdoms”, he melts, and Ventidius knows he has been defeated. 

“ANTONY Die? Rather let me perish! Loosened Nature 

Leap from its hinges; sink the props of Heaven, 

And fall the skies to crush the nether world! 

My eyes, my soul, my all!—” 

(ibid.) 

That is reminiscent of a famous passage from Shakespeare: 

“ANTONY Let Rome in Tiber melt, and my wide arch

Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space, 

Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike 

Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life

Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair 

And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind,

On pain of punishment, the world to weet 

We stand up peerless.” 

(Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1 scene 1)

And when Shakespeare gives us “Other women cloy/ The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry/ Where most she satisfies” (Act 2 scene 2), Dryden writes:

“ANTONY […] There’s no satiety of love in thee: 

Enjoyed, thou still art new; perpetual spring

Is in thy arms; the ripened fruit but falls, 

And blossoms rise to fill its empty place, 

And I grow rich by giving.” 

(Act 3) 

The interesting part is that Dryden has Antony praise Cleopatra (also in his “purple sails” speech), whereas Shakespeare does the unusual thing of giving the most magnificent speeches praising Cleopatra to Enobarbus. 

3/ Dryden does quite a few interesting things in All for Love. Octavius gives his sister Octavia to Antony in marriage, to bury their discord and strengthen their bond, but what does she think about it? How does she feel when Antony returns to Cleopatra? Dryden wonders, and expands the role of Octavia, who only has several lines in Shakespeare’s play. 

“OCTAVIA […] Sir, you are free, free even from her you loathe. 

For though my brother bargains for your love, 

Makes me the price and cement of your peace, 

I have a soul like yours; I cannot take

Your love as alms, nor beg what I deserve…” 

(ibid.) 

Proud, dignified. Dryden also depicts a confrontation between Octavia and Cleopatra. 

(A side note: one advantage Dryden had over Shakespeare was that in his time, professional actresses were finally allowed onstage).  

In the first three—perhaps even four—Acts, Dryden gives us several voices condemning the solipsism and thoughtless obsession and irresponsibility of Antony and Cleopatra; he even gives us Octavia, who calls Cleopatra “a strumpet” and “a prostitute”. But he also gives great lines of poetry to Cleopatra and Antony, and in the final Act, depicts some deeply moving moments between the two of them. 

“ANTONY […] Think we have had a clear and glorious day, 

And Heaven did kindly to delay the storm

Just till our close of evening. Ten years’ love, 

And not a moment lost, but all improved 

To th’utmost joys: what ages have we lived! 

And now to die each other’s; and so dying, 

While hand in hand we walk in groves below, 

Whole troops of lovers’ ghosts shall flock about us, 

And all the train be ours.

CLEOPATRA Your words are like the notes of dying swans, 

Too sweet to last…” 

(Act 5) 

Next to the love and passion of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavia seems too… “proper”, too small. As I wrote in a blog post about Shakespeare’s play: “Despite their irresponsibility and selfishness, despite their defeat in battle, one sides with them—with their love and passion and generosity and vitality—rather than the cold and orderly world of Caesar.” 

This is a great play. Very different from Shakespeare’s.

Marriage à-la-Mode by John Dryden

When Molière and Racine were writing and staging their plays in France, Shakespeare was long dead—the English stage was then dominated by Dryden. This play was first performed in 1673, the same year as Racine’s Mithridate and Molière’s The Hypochondriac/ The Imaginary Invalid.  

This is my first Dryden play, and first encounter with Restoration drama. 

1/ Marriage à-la-Mode begins with a rather cynical song about marriage: 

“Why should a foolish marriage vow

Which long ago was made, 

Oblige us to each other now 

When passion is decayed?

We loved and we loved, as long as we could, 

Till our love was loved out in us both: 

But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled: 

’Twas pleasure first made it an oath.” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

The song is sung by Doralice, who then meets and coyly flirts with a man named Palamede. But then Palamede meets his old friend and Doralice’s husband Rhodophil, and it turns out that Rhodophil and Doralice have only been married over two years. Um? 

2/ I read that Dryden was influenced by French neoclassical theatre and had more respect for the classical unities than Shakespeare and the Elizabethans did, but that’s not quite true in this case. Marriage à-la-Mode has two storylines: a comic plot in prose and a serious plot in verse. 

In the comic plot, Palamede returns from abroad and falls in love with Doralice, who is unhappily married to Rhodophile, who has an affair with Melantha, who is betrothed to Palamede. They’re even more entangled than in a Racine play! 

“RHODOPHIL: (aside) The devil’s in me, that I must love this woman. 

PALAMEDE: (aside) The devil’s in me, that I must marry this woman.” 

(Act 2 scene 1) 

The kind of comedy in Marriage à-la-Mode (satire, comedy of errors, etc.) is quite similar to the comedy of Molière.

In the serious plot, Polydamas, having usurped the throne and been left by his pregnant wife, is to find the child he has lost—I will not go into details—and the plot revolves around the star-crossed lovers, Leonidas and Palmyra. Dryden gives us some sweet scenes: 

“LEONIDAS When love did of my heart possession take, 

I was so young, my soul was scarce awake. 

I cannot tell when first I thought you fair, 

But sucked in love insensibly as air.” 

(ibid.) 

I like that. 

Dryden also gives us some very good scenes, such as:  

“LEONIDAS Sir, ask the stars, 

Which have imposed love on us, like a fate, 

Why minds are bent to one, and fly another? 

Ask why all beauties cannot move all hearts. 

For though there may 

Be made a rule for colour, or for feature; 

There can be none for liking. 

POLYDAMAS Leonidas, you owe me more 

Than to oppose your liking to my pleasure. 

LEONIDAS I owe you all things, Sir; but something too 

I owe myself.

POLYDAMAS You shall dispute no more; I am a king, 

And I will be obeyed.

LEONIDAS You are a king, Sir; but you are no god; 

Or if you were, you could not force my will.” 

(ibid.) 

That’s very good. Reminds me of The Winter’s Tale. 

“LEONIDAS Love either finds equality, or makes it. 

Like death, he knows no difference in degrees, 

But planes and levels all.” 

(Act 3 scene 1)

There are also two young women and two young men in the serious plot, though Leonidas and Almyra love each other, Amalthea has unrequited love for Leonidas, and her brother Argaleon has unrequited love for Almyra. There’s an arranged, or forced, marriage in both strands of the play—it is of course more serious in the serious plot, but Dryden doesn’t go for extremes and incongruence as Shakespeare does in The Winter’s Tale—even when there’s a threat of death or violence, there’s a light touch, an awareness that this is a comedy and we will get a happy ending. 

3/ There are many good lines, many witty lines in the play. 

“LEONIDAS E’er since you left me, 

I have been wandering in a maze of fate, 

Led by false fires of a fantastic glory, 

And the vain lustre of imagine crowns…” 

(Act 4 scene 1) 

That’s good. I like the alliteration. 

And as a Shakespeare fan, I obviously have to note the Shakespeare reference: 

“PALAMEDE: […] Fall on, Macduff, 

And cursed be he that first cries: hold, enough.” 

(Act 5 scene 1) 

4/ Through 8 characters—to leave aside the other characters in the play—Dryden covers nicely different kinds of love and relationships. 

Marriage à-la-Mode begins with a rather cynical song about marriage and Palamede and Rhodophil are twats, but it’s not a cynical play. Doralice for example has self-respect: 

“DORALICE I declare I will have no gallant; but if I would, he should never be a married man. […] For a man to come to me that smells of the wife! ’Slife, I would as soon wear her own gown after her as her husband.” 

(Act 5 scene 1) 

She’s love-starved, she’s cheated on, but she rejects Palamede. 

In the serious plot, Dryden not only gives us some sweet and romantic scenes between Leonidas and Almyra—a lovely couple that remind me of both Florizel and Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, and Romeo and Juliet—Dryden also gives us the generous and selfless love of Amalthea. That adds a melancholic note to the ending.

Enjoyable play. 

Jean Racine: Andromaque and Bérénice

I read both plays in the translations by Samuel Solomon, who used the Latin names (Andromache, Orestes, Cephisa, Berenice, Paulinus…) rather than the French versions (Andromaque, Oreste, Céphise, Bérénice, Paulin…), so I’m going to do the same. 

Andromaque, or Andromache 

For context: Andromache was first performed in 1667; Molière’s The Misanthrope was in 1666 and The Miser was in 1668. 

Remember that love monologue in Love and Death? 

“It’s a very complicated situation, cousin Sonja. I’m in love with Alexei. He loves Alicia. Alicia’s having an affair with Lev. Lev loves Tatiana. Tatiana loves Simkin. Simkin loves me. I love Simkin, but in a different way than Alexei. Alexei loves Tatiana like a sister. Tatiana’s sister loves Trigorian like a brother. Trigorian’s brother is having an affair with my sister, who he likes physically, but not spiritually.” 

Woody Allen is parodying Chekhov, but it also works for Racine’s play: Orestes loves Hermione (his cousin, by the way); Hermione loves Pyrrhus (son of Achilles/ Akhilleus); Pyrrhus is betrothed to Hermione, but loves his Trojan captive Andromache (Hector’s widow); etc. One can probably add, Andromache loves her dead husband. Not having read Euripides’s play or any other Greek text about the story, I have no basis for comparison and could just say that the conflict of the play is the, er, love square, and Andromache’s choice between marriage with Pyrrhus or dignity and the death of her son. 

There’s another similarity with Chekhov. Samuel Solomon notes in Act 2 scene 1: 

“Like a character in Chekhov, centuries later, Hermione ignores Cleone’s questions and continues with her own passionate thoughts.”

My impression is that Racine doesn’t seem to have much interest in the political aspects of the story; he’s only interested in love, in depicting and dissecting the love of the four characters. All the characters are well-written, especially Andromache and Hermione, but I think the most complex and fascinating in the play is Hermione: her love moves from love to delusion to heartbreak to hate to urge for revenge to regret and grief. The focus moves from Pyrrhus and Andromache, to Hermione, who becomes the central character in the final Act.  

I don’t have much to say about the play, suspecting that much of Racine’s greatness is in the alexandrine verse that gets lost in translation, but this passage is interesting: 

“HERMIONE […] Just think of it! without a single prayer, 

My mother’s cause made all Greece spring to arms! 

For her fair eyes alone, ten years of war 

Saw twenty kings, strangers to her, expire! 

And I, who only seek a recreant’s death, 

And charge a lover to avenge my insult, 

A lover who may win me at this price, 

I give myself and still am not avenged?...”

(Act 4 scene 2) 

A daughter envies her mother. 

This is also interesting: 

“ORESTES […] Am I indeed Orestes?

I strangled deep down my divinest conscience; 

I forced myself to kill a king I reverenced;

[…] And am become a murderer and blasphemer.

For whom?...” 

(Act 5 scene 4) 

That is very good, especially the line “Am I indeed Orestes?”.  

Bérénice

Racine’s Bérénice was premiered in 1670, in the same month as Corneille’s Tite et Bérénice, about the same subject. 

Similar to Racine’s other play, this play has a love triangle (Titus and Antiochus both love Berenice). The political conflict is more eminent—as the Emperor of Rome, Titus cannot marry a foreigner such as Berenice, the Queen of Palestine (Judea)—but I would say that Racine isn’t particularly interested in the politics. I don’t even think he’s interested in Titus’s dilemma between the empire and Berenice, between duty and love—Titus has made his decision—the focus of the play is how he’s going to carry out his decision and say it to her, how Berenice reacts to the news when she has been hoping for a wedding, and how Antiochus reacts to everything that’s going on, as a close friend of Titus and an unrequited lover of Berenice. 

Racine not only follows the classical unities (unity of place, unity of time, unity of action)—he also simplifies the story, cuts out everything unnecessary, and focuses on the feelings of the three main characters. But if Pyrrhus in Andromache behaves dishonourably towards both Andromache and Hermione, and the passionate love of various characters in that play is mixed with intense hate, the three main characters in Berenice are all noble and sympathetic. 

I’d note one thing: 

“BERENICE Ah, cruel man, why say such things so late? 

What have you done? I thought myself beloved. 

My soul used to the joy of seeing you 

Lives but for you. Did you not know your laws

When for the first time I confessed my heart?

Why did you lead me on to love so well?...”

(Act 4 scene 5)

Many women today are gonna find that relatable. 

But as we can see, Titus is a noble man, who has to make the difficult choice of giving up his love for duty. The ending is moving. 

I just can’t help thinking that, even though I can see Racine’s psychological insight and power of characterisation, much of his greatness seems to be in the verse—I can hear the grandeur of his poetry—that gets lost in translation.