All For Love | Page 7

and country? The honour and gallantry of the Earl of
Lindsey is so illustrious a subject, that it is fit to adorn an heroic poem; for he was the
protomartyr of the cause, and the type of his unfortunate royal master.
Yet after all, my lord, if I may speak my thoughts, you are happy rather to us than to
yourself; for the multiplicity, the cares, and the vexations of your employment, have
betrayed you from yourself, and given you up into the possession of the public. You are
robbed of your privacy and friends, and scarce any hour of your life you can call your
own. Those, who envy your fortune, if they wanted not good-nature, might more justly
pity it; and when they see you watched by a crowd of suitors, whose importunity it is
impossible to avoid, would conclude, with reason, that you have lost much more in true
content, than you have gained by dignity; and that a private gentleman is better attended
by a single servant, than your lordship with so clamorous a train. Pardon me, my lord, if I
speak like a philosopher on this subject; the fortune which makes a man uneasy, cannot
make him happy; and a wise man must think himself uneasy, when few of his actions are
in his choice.
This last consideration has brought me to another, and a very seasonable one for your
relief; which is, that while I pity your want of leisure, I have impertinently detained you
so long a time. I have put off my own business, which was my dedication, till it is so late,
that I am now ashamed to begin it; and therefore I will say nothing of the poem, which I
present to you, because I know not if you are like to have an hour, which, with a good
conscience, you may throw away in perusing it; and for the author, I have only to beg the
continuance of your protection to him, who is,
My Lord, Your Lordship's most obliged, Most humble, and Most obedient, servant, John
Dryden.
PREFACE
The death of Antony and Cleopatra is a subject which has been treated by the greatest
wits of our nation, after Shakespeare; and by all so variously, that their example has
given me the confidence to try myself in this bow of Ulysses amongst the crowd of

suitors, and, withal, to take my own measures, in aiming at the mark. I doubt not but the
same motive has prevailed with all of us in this attempt; I mean the excellency of the
moral: For the chief persons represented were famous patterns of unlawful love; and their
end accordingly was unfortunate. All reasonable men have long since concluded, that the
hero of the poem ought not to be a character of perfect virtue, for then he could not,
without injustice, be made unhappy; nor yet altogether wicked, because he could not then
be pitied. I have therefore steered the middle course; and have drawn the character of
Antony as favourably as Plutarch, Appian, and Dion Cassius would give me leave; the
like I have observed in Cleopatra. That which is wanting to work up the pity to a greater
height, was not afforded me by the story; for the crimes of love, which they both
committed, were not occasioned by any necessity, or fatal ignorance, but were wholly
voluntary; since our passions are, or ought to be, within our power. The fabric of the play
is regular enough, as to the inferior parts of it; and the unities of time, place, and action,
more exactly observed, than perhaps the English theatre requires. Particularly, the action
is so much one, that it is the only one of the kind without episode, or underplot; every
scene in the tragedy conducing to the main design, and every act concluding with a turn
of it. The greatest error in the contrivance seems to be in the person of Octavia; for,
though I might use the privilege of a poet, to introduce her into Alexandria, yet I had not
enough considered, that the compassion she moved to herself and children was
destructive to that which I reserved for Antony and Cleopatra; whose mutual love being
founded upon vice, must lessen the favour of the audience to them, when virtue and
innocence were oppressed by it. And, though I justified Antony in some measure, by
making Octavia's departure to proceed wholly from herself; yet the force of the first
machine still remained; and the dividing of pity, like the cutting of a river into many
channels, abated the strength of the natural stream. But this is an objection which none of
my critics have urged against me; and therefore I might have let it pass, if I could