Dryden’s All For Love, Post 1

Antony and Cleopatra was the first book in a long time to appeal to both the literary and fannish sides of my brain, and as such, it leaves a terrible vacuum, which I have filled in a fannish way.

Specifically, I’m reading John Dryden’s All For Love or, The World Well Lost, written about seventy years later in explicit response to Antony and Cleopatra; a rewrite of the play, but with the additional, incredibly bravely-taken challenge of obeying the Greek tragic unities – distilling the whole sprawling epic (which makes so much of its years-long pauses, and its death scenes in which characters have to wait for hours until they bleed out) into a single day of defeat.

Thus far (middle of Act II) I’m not sure whether he’s going to make it. It doesn’t help that his versions of the characters are not so complex, fascinating and ultimately pitiful as Shakespeare’s; they’re literary-fiction characters, tight and satirical, not the sprawling edifices I’m used to. We are not meant to sit in their brains, but rather to watch them helplessly, aghast at the terrible decisions they’re making, and at the terrible effects their self-absorption will have on their subjects and companions.

Because the other thing about Dryden is that he refuses to participate in Shakespeare’s neutral view of history. His story is not actually about Antony and Cleopatra, but about Egypt and Rome, and he actively condemns the leads for putting their romance above the needs of their station; indeed, he presents them as somewhat clueless royal creatures, relying for motivation upon their retainers, Ventidius the Roman general (a strikingly modern character, a bit of a self-conscious parody of the macho, blinkered action hero, though also a very clever man) and Alexas the Egyptian eunuch (an urbane realist who smilingly accepts Ventidius’ jokes about his missing balls while coldly out-talking and out-maneuvering people of much greater manifest intellectual capability). (Ventidius and Alexas hate each other.)

Comparatively, when we first see Antony, he’s somewhat unsuccessfully (but with a fair degree of pathos and poetry, since the whole point of Antony is that he can pretty much do anything except get younger) Hamleting around an Egyptian stronghold, a man of action clumsily trying to get his fists around the idea of depression. On Dryden’s chosen day, his empire is already lost, and he flings himself down and delivers a long, passionate monologue in which he fantasizes about running off to live in the kind of woodland pastoral only a lifelong urbanite would imagine. When Ventidius, who’s been watching him secretly, finally reveals himself, Antony breaks off his ramble (which, through exhaustive description of the forest scene, is made to seem extraordinarily long and involved although it actually isn’t) and they share a beautiful moment of understatement:

ANTONY

Art thou Ventidius?

VENTIDIUS

Are you Antony? I’m liker what I was, than you to him I left you last.

ANTONY

I’m angry.

VENTIDIUS

So am I.

This is a great exchange, half restrained tragedy and half well-timed wry comedy, but again, Dryden seems removed from his characters, and it shows in the suddenness of the transition from a near-break with reality to a moment of total self-awareness. It’s not an insane thing to imagine, but it’s something Shakespeare finessed better (partly by keeping most of the transitions between scenes, and partly by establishing Antony’s character earlier, so that the different fragments refer to an earlier and more coherent self). Played out so baldly, and without setup, it doesn’t work as well, even though you have to admire Dryden for trying to lay the whole matter before you in such a transparent way.

His Cleopatra is, thus far, a disappointment: manipulative without mastery, melodramatic without strength, lacking any more than a practical Brutus’ wit. It’s difficult to believe that she’s a queen who rules by charisma, and Dryden also makes a couple of absolutely inexplicable decisions in his portrayal of her history. Foremost among these is the idea that Antony has been responsible for much of her rise to power. Apparently, he has admired her chastely from afar almost since childhood, and her earlier relationship with Julius Caesar was horrible rudeness on Caesar’s part (and not much more). This decision takes most of the agency from Cleopatra, which would be a legitimate character decision – except that it means we suddenly know nothing about her. If Antony has always had her life firmly in hand, if she started (indeed) as his de facto ward, then who is she, and what does she want? If you’re going to do it this way, then the whole play is now about Antony, and that’s a sad loss.

Though, again, so far the significant characters are Ventidius and Alexas anyway; even Antony’s level of agency is modest compared to Ventidius’ drive (why has he actually interrupted Antony’s forest reverie? To convince him to come and lead an emergency army he happens to have raised). In its relentless focus on the nominally minor parts, it’s almost a proto-proto-proto Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I suspect Dryden (again, in a very modern way) is simply bored with traditional heroes in a particular way that I think shows limitation rather than imagination.

This is my response merely to the first act and part of the second, of course. I found this kind of early-impression post useful the last time I wrote about a play, so I’m putting it up even though I find it quite likely (since Dryden displays a good deal of intelligence and humor) that there are massively improving reversals and twists to come.