http://www.arcamax.com/plays/b-1084-1
All for Love
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 years later
defended his new religion in "The Hind and the Panther," an
allegorical debate between two animals standing respectively for
Catholicism and Anglicanism.
The Revolution of 1688 put an end to Dryden's prosperity; and after a
short return to dramatic composition, he turned to translation as a
means of supporting himself. He had already done something in this
line; and after a series of translations from Juvenal, Persius, and
Ovid, he undertook, at the age of sixty-three, the enormous task of
turning the entire works of Virgil into English verse. How he
succeeded in this, readers of the "Aeneid" in a companion volume of
these classics can judge for themselves. Dryden's production closes
with the collection of narrative poems called "Fables," published in
1700, in which year he died and was buried in the Poet's Corner in
Westminster Abbey.
Dryden lived in an age of reaction against excessive religious
idealism, and both his character and his works are marked by the
somewhat unheroic traits of such a period. But he was, on the whole,
an honest man, open minded, genial, candid, and modest; the wielder of
a style, both in verse and prose, unmatched for clearness, vigor, and
sanity.
Three types of comedy appeared in England in the time of Dryden-- the
comedy of humors, the comedy of intrigue, and the comedy of
manners--and in all he did work that classed him with the ablest of
his contemporaries. He developed the somewhat bombastic type of drama
known as the heroic play, and brought it to its height in his
"Conquest of Granada"; then, becoming dissatisfied with this form, he
cultivated the French classic tragedy on the model of Racine. This he
modified by combining with the regularity of the French treatment of
dramatic action a richness of characterization in which he showed
himself a disciple of Shakespeare, and of this mixed type his best
example is "All for Love." Here he has the daring to challenge
comparison with his master, and the greatest testimony to his
achievement is the fact that, as Professor Noyes has said, "fresh from
Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra,' we can still read with intense
pleasure Dryden's version of the story."
DEDICATION
To the Right Honourable, Thomas, Earl of Danby, Viscount Latimer, and
Baron Osborne of Kiveton, in Yorkshire; Lord High Treasurer of
England, one of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and
Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.
My Lord,
The gratitude of poets is so troublesome a virtue to great men, that
you are often in danger of your own benefits: for you are threatened
with some epistle, and not suffered to do good in quiet, or to
compound for their silence whom you have obliged. Yet, I confess, I
neither am or ought to be surprised at this indulgence; for your
lordship has the same right to favour poetry, which the great and
noble have ever had--
Carmen amat, quisquis carmine digna gerit.
There is somewhat of a tie in nature betwixt those who are born for
worthy actions, and those who can transmit them to posterity; and
though ours be much the inferior part, it comes at least within the
verge of alliance; nor are we unprofitable members of the
commonwealth, when we animate others to those virtues, which we copy
and describe from you.
It is indeed their interest, who endeavour the subversion of
governments, to discourage poets and historians; for the best which
can happen to them, is to be forgotten. But such who, under kings,
are the fathers of their country, and by a just and prudent ordering
of affairs preserve it, have the same reason to cherish the
chroniclers of their actions, as they have to lay up in safety the
deeds and evidences of their estates; for such records are their
undoubted titles to the love and reverence of after ages. Your
lordship's administration has already taken up a considerable part of
the English annals; and many of its most happy years are owing to it.
His Majesty, the most knowing judge of men, and the best master, has
acknowledged the ease and benefit he receives in the incomes of his
treasury, which you found not only disordered, but exhausted. All
things were in the confusion of a chaos, without form or method, if
not reduced beyond it, even to annihilation; so that you had not only
to separate the jarring elements, but (if that boldness of expression
might be allowed me) to create them. Your enemies had so embroiled
the management of your office, that they looked on your advancement as
the instrument of your ruin. And as if the clogging of the revenue,
and the confusion of accounts, which you found in your entrance, were
not sufficient, they added their own weight of malice to the public
calamity, by forestalling the credit which should cure it. Your
friends on the other side were only capable of pitying, but not of
aiding you; no further help or counsel was remaining to you, but what
was founded on yourself; and that indeed was your security; for your
diligence, your constancy, and your prudence, wrought most surely
within, when they were not disturbed by any outward motion. The
highest virtue is best to be trusted with itself; for assistance only
can be given by a genius superior to that which it assists; and it is
the noblest kind of debt, when we are only obliged to God and nature.
This then, my lord, is your just commendation, and that you have
wrought out yourself a way to glory, by those very means that were
designed for your destruction: You have not only restored but
advanced the revenues of your master, without grievance to the
subject; and, as if that were little yet, the debts of the exchequer,
which lay heaviest both on the crown, and on private persons, have by
your conduct been established in a certainty of satisfaction. An
action so much the more great and honourable, because the case was
without the ordinary relief of laws; above the hopes of the afflicted
and beyond the narrowness of the treasury to redress, had it been
managed by a less able hand. It is certainly the happiest, and most
unenvied part of all your fortune, to do good to many, while you do
injury to none; to receive at once the prayers of the subject, and the
praises of the prince; and, by the care of your conduct, to give him
means of exerting the chiefest (if any be the chiefest) of his royal
virtues, his distributive justice to the deserving, and his bounty and
compassion to the wanting. The disposition of princes towards their
people cannot be better discovered than in the choice of their
ministers; who, like the animal spirits betwixt the soul and body,
participate somewhat of both natures, and make the communication which
is betwixt them. A king, who is just and moderate in his nature, who
rules according to the laws, whom God has made happy by forming the
temper of his soul to the constitution of his government, and who
makes us happy, by assuming over us no other sovereignty than that
wherein our welfare and liberty consists; a prince, I say, of so
excellent a character, and so suitable to the wishes of all good men,
could not better have conveyed himself into his people's
apprehensions, than in your lordship's person; who so lively express
the same virtues, that you seem not so much a copy, as an emanation of
him. Moderation is doubtless an establishment of greatness; but there
is a steadiness of temper which is likewise requisite in a minister of
state; so equal a mixture of both virtues, that he may stand like an
isthmus betwixt the two encroaching seas of arbitrary power, and
lawless anarchy. The undertaking would be difficult to any but an
extraordinary genius, to stand at the line, and to divide the limits;
to pay what is due to the great representative of the nation, and
neither to enhance, nor to yield up, the undoubted prerogatives of the
crown. These, my lord, are the proper virtues of a noble Englishman,
as indeed they are properly English virtues; no people in the world
being capable of using them, but we who have the happiness to be born
under so equal, and so well-poised a government;--a government which
has all the advantages of liberty beyond a commonwealth, and all the
marks of kingly sovereignty, without the danger of a tyranny. Both my
nature, as I am an Englishman, and my reason, as I am a man, have bred
in me a loathing to that specious name of a republic; that mock
appearance of a liberty, where all who have not part in the
government, are slaves; and slaves they are of a viler note, than such
as are subjects to an absolute dominion. For no Christian monarchy is
so absolute, but it is circumscribed with laws; but when the executive
power is in the law-makers, there is no further check upon them; and
the people must suffer without a remedy, because they are oppressed by
their representatives. If I must serve, the number of my masters, who
were born my equals, would but add to the ignominy of my bondage. The
nature of our government, above all others, is exactly suited both to
the situation of our country, and the temper of the natives; an island
being more proper for commerce and for defence, than for extending its
dominions on the Continent; for what the valour of its inhabitants
might gain, by reason of its remoteness, and the casualties of the
seas, it could not so easily preserve: And, therefore, neither the
arbitrary power of One, in a monarchy, nor of Many, in a commonwealth,
could make us greater than we are. It is true, that vaster and more
frequent taxes might be gathered, when the consent of the people was
not asked or needed; but this were only by conquering abroad, to be
poor at home; and the examples of our neighbours teach us, that they
are not always the happiest subjects, whose kings extend their
dominions farthest. Since therefore we cannot win by an offensive
war, at least, a land war, the model of our government seems naturally
contrived for the defensive part; and the consent of a people is
easily obtained to contribute to that power which must protect it.
Felices nimium, bona si sua norint, Angligenae! And yet there are not
wanting malcontents among us, who, surfeiting themselves on too much
happiness, would persuade the people that they might be happier by a
change. It was indeed the policy of their old forefather, when
himself was fallen from the station of glory, to seduce mankind into
the same rebellion with him, by telling him he might yet be freer than
he was; that is more free than his nature would allow, or, if I may so
say, than God could make him. We have already all the liberty which
freeborn subjects can enjoy, and all beyond it is but licence. But if
it be liberty of conscience which they pretend, the moderation of our
church is such, that its practice extends not to the severity of
persecution; and its discipline is withal so easy, that it allows more
freedom to dissenters than any of the sects would allow to it. In the
meantime, what right can be pretended by these men to attempt
innovation in church or state? Who made them the trustees, or to speak
a little nearer their own language, the keepers of the liberty of
England? If their call be extraordinary, let them convince us by
working miracles; for ordinary vocation they can have none, to disturb
the government under which they were born, and which protects them.
He who has often changed his party, and always has made his interest
the rule of it, gives little evidence of his sincerity for the public
good; it is manifest he changes but for himself, and takes the people
for tools to work his fortune. Yet the experience of all ages might
let him know, that they who trouble the waters first, have seldom the
benefit of the fishing; as they who began the late rebellion enjoyed
not the fruit of their undertaking, but were crushed themselves by the
usurpation of their own instrument. Neither is it enough for them to
answer, that they only intend a reformation of the government, but not
the subversion of it: on such pretence all insurrections have been
founded; it is striking at the root of power, which is obedience.
Every remonstrance of private men has the seed of treason in it; and
discourses, which are couched in ambiguous terms, are therefore the
more dangerous, because they do all the mischief of open sedition, yet
are safe from the punishment of the laws. These, my lord, are
considerations, which I should not pass so lightly over, had I room to
manage them as they deserve; for no man can be so inconsiderable in a
nation, as not to have a share in the welfare of it; and if he be a
true Englishman, he must at the same time be fired with indignation,
and revenge himself as he can on the disturbers of his country. And
to whom could I more fitly apply myself than to your lordship, who
have not only an inborn, but an hereditary loyalty? The memorable
constancy and sufferings of your father, almost to the ruin of his
estate, for the royal cause, were an earnest of that which such a
parent and such an institution would produce in the person of a son.
But so unhappy an occasion of manifesting your own zeal, in suffering
for his present majesty, the providence of God, and the prudence of
your administration, will, I hope, prevent; that, as your father's
fortune waited on the unhappiness of his sovereign, so your own may
participate of the better fate which attends his son. The relation
which you have by alliance to the noble family of your lady, serves to
confirm to you both this happy augury. For what can deserve a greater
place in the English chronicle, than the loyalty and courage, the
actions and death, of the general of an army, fighting for his prince
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.