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.