ABSTRACT
The appearance of Dryden’s All for Love in 1677 is a watershed event; or at least it should be treated as such by English professors and Shakespeare lovers the world over. For here we have a case in our study of adaptation where the son equals, if not betters, the father. A review of the criticism of the two plays-Dryden against Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra-demonstrates that-collectively, at least-this evaluation is the just conclusion. In his Lives of the Poets, Samuel Johnson provides this assessment of Dryden’s All for Love:
It is, by universal consent, accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest improprieties of style or character; but it has one fault equal to many, though rather moral than critical, that, by admitting the romantick omnipotence of love, he has recommended as laudable, and worthy of imitation, that conduct which, through all ages, the good have censured as vitious, and the bad despised as foolish. (vol. 1, 361)
Of course, Johnson chastised Shakespeare on the same grounds-that is, that he wrote for no moral purpose. Specically when it comes to Antony and Cleopatra, Johnson in short order relegates that play to the back bench: “The events, of which the principal are described according to history are produced without any connexion or care of disposition” (qtd in Steppat, 496). Dryden likely concurred with Johnson’s judgment, for in his preface to All for Love he emphasizes that in his adaptation he recast the plot to conform to the classical unities: one time, one action, one place. Turning to Coleridge, we read this joint assessment: “if you would feel the judgment as well as the genius of Shakespeare in your hearts’ core, compare this astonishing drama with Dryden’s All for Love” (4.95). Certainly, Dryden encouraged readers and theater goers to engage in this exercise, and though Coleridge clearly favors Shakespeare’s poetry as awe inspiring, the preponderance of critics have found that by most other yardsticks, Dryden succeeded in his venture when he selected this play to adapt and in so doing, surpassed his model.
