the French dramatists in the delineation of character,
but he thought that the scope of the action might be restricted, and the
parts bound more closely together with advantage. _All for Love_ and
_Antony and Cleopatra_ are two excellent plays for the comparison of the
two methods. Dryden gave all his strength to _All for Love_, writing the
play for himself, as he said, and not for the public. Carrying out the
idea expressed in the title, he represents the two lovers as being more
entirely under the dominion of love than Shakespeare's Antony and
Cleopatra. Shakespeare's Antony is moved by other impulses than the
passion for Cleopatra; it is his master motive, but it has to maintain a
struggle for supremacy; "Roman thoughts" strike in upon him even in the
very height of the enjoyment of his mistress's love, he chafes under the
yoke, and breaks away from her of his own impulse at the call of
spontaneously reawakened ambition. Dryden's Antony is so deeply sunk in
love that no other impulse has power to stir him; it takes much
persuasion and skilful artifice to detach him from Cleopatra even in
thought, and his soul returns to her violently before the rupture has
been completed. On the other hand, Dryden's Cleopatra is so completely
enslaved by love for Antony that she is incapable of using the
calculated caprices and meretricious coquetries which Shakespeare's
Cleopatra deliberately practises as the highest art of love, the surest
way of maintaining her empire over her great captain's heart. It is with
difficulty that Dryden's Cleopatra will agree, on the earnest
solicitation of a wily counsellor, to feign a liking for Dolabella to
excite Antony's jealousy, and she cannot keep up the pretence through a
few sentences. The characters of the two lovers are thus very much
contracted, indeed almost overwhelmed, beneath the pressure of the one
ruling motive. And as Dryden thus introduces a greater regularity of
character into the drama, so he also very much contracts the action, in
order to give probability to this temporary subjugation of individual
character. The action of Dryden's play takes place wholly in Alexandria,
within the compass of a few days; it does not, like Shakespeare's,
extend over several years, and present incessant changes of scene.
Dryden chooses, as it were, a fragment of a historical action, a single
moment during which motives play within a narrow circle, the culminating
point in the relations between his