All For Love | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Gary R. Young, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, June 1999.

Comments on the preparation of this e-text
SQUARE BRACKETS:
The square brackets, i.e. [ ] are copied from the printed book, without change, except that
a closing bracket "]" has been added to the stage directions.
CHANGES TO THE TEXT:
Character names have been expanded. For Example, CLEOPATRA was CLEO.
Three words in the preface were written in Greek Characters. These have been
transliterated into Roman characters, and are set off by angle brackets, for example,
.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The age of Elizabeth, memorable for so many reasons in the history of England, was
especially brilliant in literature, and, within literature, in the drama. With some falling off
in spontaneity, the impulse to great dramatic production lasted till the Long Parliament
closed the theaters in 1642; and when they were reopened at the Restoration, in 1660, the
stage only too faithfully reflected the debased moral tone of the court society of Charles
II.
John Dryden (1631-1700), the great representative figure in the literature of the latter part
of the seventeenth century, exemplifies in his work most of the main tendencies of the
time. He came into notice with a poem on the death of Cromwell in 1658, and two years
later was composing couplets expressing his loyalty to the returned king. He married
Lady Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of a royalist house, and for practically all the rest of
his life remained an adherent of the Tory Party. In 1663 he began writing for the stage,
and during the next thirty years he attempted nearly all the current forms of drama. His
"Annus Mirabilis" (1666), celebrating the English naval victories over the Dutch, brought
him in 1670 the Poet Laureateship. He had, meantime, begun the writing of those
admirable critical essays, represented in the present series by his Preface to the "Fables"
and his Dedication to the translation of Virgil. In these he shows himself not only a critic
of sound and penetrating judgment, but the first master of modern English prose style.
With "Absalom and Achitophel," a satire on the Whig leader, Shaftesbury, Dryden
entered a new phase, and achieved what is regarded as "the finest of all political satires."
This was followed by "The Medal," again directed against the Whigs, and this by "Mac
Flecknoe," a fierce attack on his enemy and rival Shadwell. The Government rewarded
his services by a lucrative appointment.
After triumphing in the three fields of drama, criticism, and satire, Dryden appears next
as a religious poet in his "Religio Laici," an exposition of the doctrines of the Church of
England from a layman's point of view. In the same year that the Catholic James II.
ascended the throne, Dryden joined the Roman Church, and two