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Title: All for Love: The World Well Lost by John Dryden, William-Alan Landes ISBN: 0-88734-274-4 Publisher: Players Press Pub. Date: February, 1994 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $7.50

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Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Dryden's Restoration version of Antony and Cleopatra
Comment: John Dryden's 1677 tragedy "All For Love" or "The World Well Lost" was based on William Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra." This would be a minority opinion, but I really think this Restoration Drama is comparable to the Shakespeare version in many regards. Of course "borrowing" from Shakespeare cannot be considered much of a crime when the Bard of Avon appropriated so many plots from other dramatists as well. Shakespeare's play covers ten years in settings scattered across the eastern Mediterranean, while Dryden confines all of his events to one day in the Temple of Isis. For me the dramatic highpoint of the Dryden version is the ugly confrontation between Cleopatra and Octavia, Roman wife of Mark Antony, but I also like the final death scenes better than what we find in Shakespeare. Just do not ask me to explain how "All for Love" reflects Restoration sensibilities rather than the Elizabethan values of "Antony and Cleopatra." I first read this play and decided to use it as the final play in a mini-trilogy of one-act that used Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" and Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," and had no problem given Dryden the anchor position. Certainly classes studying English drama can benefit by having students read both the Shakespeare and Dryden versions with an eye out towards better understanding the works of both playwrights. If you are only going to read one play by Dryden, then the only other choices besides this one would be "Aureng-Zebe," his last and best example of the heroic genre or his comedy masterpiece "Marriage a-la-mode." But I would still pick "All For Love."

Rating: 2
Summary: Basically Boring!
Comment: I had to read this book for school, which always makes reading it more difficult because I knew I would have to write about it. The story of Antony and Cleopatra is a tragic one and better then fiction but Dryden makes it uninteresting and in blank verse which makes the writing dull and prolonged. In fact, I would've stopped reading half way through if I wasn't required to read the whole thing. Trust me, there are better "classic books" out there! Dont pick this one!