All for Love (play)

"All for Love" or, the World Well Lost, is a heroic drama by John Dryden written in 1677. Today, it is Dryden’s best-known and most performed play Fact|date=February 2007. It is a tragedy written in blank verse and is an attempt on Dryden's part to reinvigorate serious drama Fact|date=February 2007. It is an acknowledged imitation of Shakespeare’s "Antony and Cleopatra", and focuses on the last hours of the lives of its hero and heroine.

Combining the unities of classical theatre and the style of Shakespearean drama, Dryden creates an elaborately formal production in which fashionable philosophies of the time could be discussed and debated in a public atmosphere.Fact|date=February 2007 Dryden used the theatre as a forum for testing problematic philosophical, moral and political questions.Fact|date=February 2007 The results of these investigations were to form the basis of his later works.Fact|date=February 2007

The original 1678 production by the King's Company starred Charles Hart as Marc Antony and Elizabeth Boutell as Cleopatra, with Michael Mohun as Ventidius and Katherine Corey as Octavia. [John Downes, "Roscius Anglicanus", London, 1708; Montague Summers, ed., London, Fortune Press [no date] ; reprinted New York, Benjamin Blom, 1963; p. 11.]

References

External links

* [http://www.bartleby.com/18/1/ Great Books Online]