Discussion Topic
The significance of the title and ending of All for Love by John Dryden
Summary:
The title All for Love signifies the central theme of love's overwhelming power and its capacity to drive characters to extreme actions. The ending underscores this theme as Antony and Cleopatra's tragic deaths highlight the ultimate sacrifice made for love, emphasizing that their passion transcends life itself.
What is the significance of the title All For Love by John Dryden?
In this play, which was modeled on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, John Dryden makes a plea for moderation. Antony and Cleopatra lose everything because of their immoderate love and the play argues that this is not the best course of action. The significance of the title lies in that sacrificing "all" for love is a tragic mistake.
The play has been interpreted as advice to Dryden's patron, Thomas Osborne, the earl of Danby, to moderate his passion for his French-Catholic mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth. Despite his love for a Catholic, Danby also backed severe curtailments of both Catholic and Dissenter rights in England. Dryden uses the play to argue in general for moderation.
Antony and Cleopatra's excessive love lead to distrust as well as disastrous military and political miscalculations. They both end up committing suicide: doing all for love is not a good idea.
In his "Preface"...
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toAll for Love--which is an original structure that combines a "French classic tragedy" style with a deep characterization reminiscent of Shakespeare--Dryden explains his view that the love between Antony and Cleopatra is an "illegal love" based on "vice," which engenders little pity on its own because it was a purely voluntary choice as opposed to being compelled by some external circumstance. Therefore, both Antony and Cleopatra gave up all--their positions, their roles, their allegiance and duty, and their lives--for the pleasure of unjustifiable love; they gave All for Love. Dryden emphasizes this with the meeting between Cleopatra and Octavia. He refers to Octavia in his "Preface" as "virtue and innocence," saying that Octavia would want to triumph over Cleopatra when, at least for a time, virtuous love triumphs over the love stemming from vice.
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What is the significance of All for Love's ending?
In his play All for Love, John Dryden retells the story of Antony and Cleopatra with several additions and reinterpretations of his own. The play still ends as the original story does, with Antony and Cleopatra both dead by suicide, but Dryden inserts a few interesting twists that make this version significant in its own way.
First, just before Antony dies of suicide in Cleopatra's arms, he promises her that they will meet again in the afterlife. This is a different focus for the story, for it introduces a spiritual element that other versions lack. Cleopatra also promises that she will join Antony soon. This adds to her motive for suicide, though she still commits the act in order to rob Octavius of further triumph.
Further, Cleopatra makes her suicide into a spectacle. She puts on her royal garments and sits on her throne, having Antony propped up beside her. She then proclaims herself to be Antony's wife, claiming a legitimacy in their relationship that doesn't really exist but that she desperately desires. She allows the snake to kill her and calls out that Octavius will never separate her from Antony now.
Finally, after Cleopatra dies, Serapion enters the throne room. When he sees the couple dead upon the throne, he speaks about how noble they look and hopes they will be happy in heaven. Again, this spiritual aspect is quite different from other versions of the story. Dryden places a strong emphasis on the spiritual as he reflects on the limited nature of this world and the hope for a better world to come. Yet readers may also wonder whether Antony and Cleopatra found that better world (and Dryden intends this), for both of them committed suicide, an act of self-destruction against God's law. Dryden thus introduces an aspect of complexity and meditation into the tale.