ALL FOR LOVE- DRYDEN P-6-2

Three great dramatists have written plays on Cleopatra-“the legendary beauty Queen of Egypt”.
Shakespeare’s plays is Antony and Cleopatra, Dryden’s All for love and Shaw’s Caesar and
Cleopatra.
We shall discuss All for love by Dryden. He was a great figure of the Restoration age. In 1660
Charles II came back from France and became the King of England. All for Love was first staged
eighteen years after the restoration. This drama is not a Heroic Tragedy.
The Heroic Tragedy was written in the heroic couplet. This means rhymed lines of iambic
pentameter that Pope uses in “The Rape of Lock”. The famous Heroic Tragedies of Dryden are: The
Indian Emperor, The Conquest of Granada and Aurengzeb.
All for Love is in blank verse. This means unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. Dryden saw the
poetic power of blank verse in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Dryden left the Heroic
Couplet and used the blank verse in All for Love.
All for Love is the tragic love story of Antony and Cleopatra. Antony was a Roman. He was a blind
supporter of Caesar. Caesar sent Antony to Conquer Egypt. Cleopatra was the beautiful Queen of
Egypt. Antony becomes the Victim of her beauty. This is his “tragic flows” or “hamartia”.
Antony is married to Caesar sister Octavia. Antony forgets a husband’s duty. He has two
daughters. He forgets a father’s duty.
Cleopatra knows that in spite of all her love and sacrifice, she is only a mistress. Octavia has the
dignity of a wife. Cleopatra gives moral to Octavia that “Don’t be only a lump of flesh. Have
passion and satisfy your husband.”
Antony feels young when he enjoys Cleopatra. In the tug of war between Cleopatra and Octavia,
Cleopatra wins.
At the time of parting, Octavia tells her husband, “I have become a window. I will look after my
two daughters.”
Egypt is suffering because of the Queen’s blind love for Antony. The Roman soldiers do not want to
fight for Antony because he has become a slave of Cleopatra.
Octavia and Caesar are angry with Antony. Octavia and Cleopatra come face to face. Octavia is a
Roman lady. She tells Cleopatra- “Remember that the Roman can make or unmake a Queen.”
Cleopatra reply is, “Your husband, who is a Roman, is a slave of my love”.
Alexas, Cleopatra’s Eunuch, gives the false news to Antony that Cleopatra is dead. Antony is
showed. He stabs himself. When Cleopatra comes, he says to her- “Give me a kiss, this has more
value than all my empire. Her reply is, “ Take ten thousand kisses”, But Antony dies.
Cleopatra uses snakes to kill herself. She thinks that this is a painless way of dying. She commits
suicide for two reason, First She cannot live without Antony and second She does not want to be a
slave of Caesar.
Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra has influenced Dryden’s All for Love. But Dryden is not a blind
follower of Shakespeare.
Unlike Shakespeare, Dryden follows the Three Unities in Aristotle’s Poetics.
All for love has one scene- “Alexandria”.
Dryden play has one plot- the love story of the Queen of Egypt. This makes Dryden’s All for Love
more compact than Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.
To conclude, Dryden adopts the blank verse of Shakespeare. But unlike Shakespeare’s Dryden
follows the Three unities advocated by Aristotle. In this way, All for Love becomes a unique
tragedy.
ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD-THOMAS GRAY
Elegy written in a country Church- yard is a famous elegy by Thomas Gray (1716-71). Gray has
composed very few poems. We are mentioning two: The Bard and , The Descent Odin.
An elegy is a poem or song that shows sadness. This is generally written for somebody who has
died. It is said that Gray composed his Elegy after the death of the poet Richard West.
The setting of the poem is a country church-yard. It is evening. The Ploughman and the animals are
returning home. The poet is in darkness: “And leaves the world to darkness, and to me.”
The darkness outside expresses the emotion in the poet. In the words of the great critic T.S. Eliot-
“There is an objective correlative in the poem.”
The air is still. We have the image of an “Owl”. There is no scope for a nightingale.
Many men with bad temper are “sleeping” in the graves. The dead persons will not be able to
enjoy the fresh breeze of the morning. They will not enjoy the twittering of birds. The dead will not
wake up when a cock crows! The dead will not enjoy the food cooked by their wives. The children
will not wait for the return of the dead persons. A child will not climb “his knees” for “envied kiss”.
The dead persons will not be able to do harvesting.
The poet gives a moral. The rich should not be proud of “the pump of power”. The beautiful and
the rich all will die.
“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
The dead cannot become alive no matter how many prizes we give them. Perhaps a powerful ruler
is buried in this graveyard.
We have the famous lines of Gray: “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its
sweetness in the desert air.”
After studying the Elegy, it is clear that Gray has departed from the poetic style of Dryden and
Pope. Pope Wrote- ‘The rape of lock’ in heroic couplet -rhymed lines of iambic pentameter. Pope
wrote about a rich fashionable lady, Belinda.
Gray’s poetry is of-“ the outdoor type”
Gray, Cowper and Collins are pre-Romantic poets. They prepare the way for the great Romantic
poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats.
In Gray’s Elegy, the rhyme scheme is alternate. This means that the first line of a stanza rhymes
with the third line. The second line rhymes with the fourth line. For example, see the second
stanza:
….sight (a)….holds (b)….flight (a)….folds (b)
We may scan a line:
The paths| of glo|ry lead | but to | the grave
(iambic pentameter)