All for Love by John Dryden as a Heroic Tragedy

A heroic tragedy is a type of play prevalent in Restoration England during the

1660s and 1670s.The heroic tragedy is distinct from the heroic play in two chief
points. The first is that the heroic tragedy abandons rhyming and embraces blank
verse, a change influenced by Shakespeare. The second is that heroic tragedy
emphasizes deeper characterization, again influenced by Shakespeare, within a
structure adhering to the unities of time, place, and action (to which Shakespeare
did not adhere). Such plays presented characters of almost superhuman stature, and
their predominant, love, honor, courage, gallantry, adventure and so on. The heroic
play usually based on the traditional epic and romance.
There are a series of rules for this type of play .First; the play should be composed
in heroic verse (closed couplets in iambic pentameter). Second, the play must focus
on a subject that pertains to national foundations, mythological events, or
important and grand matters. Third, the hero of the heroic drama must be powerful,
crucial, and, like Achilles, dominating even when wrong. Forth, the plot of the play
involves the fate of an empire. All for Love followed all of these rules. The story
was that of the national foundation of Rome, and the hero, Antony, was a man of
great martial prowess and temperament.
Dryden certainly the best and probably the first of the typical restoration heroic
play writer. All the heroic plays of Dryden are written on the same pattern. In each
is portrayed a hero of larger-than-life prowess and sublime ideas. Also there is a
heroine of rare beauty. In several of the characters we find in the inner conflict,
between love and honor. The story stirs martial enthusiasm leading to great
dramatic interest.
It is characteristic of a heroic play that the hero is placed in a conflict between his
love and honor .This pattern is believed to be drawn from the French playwrights
especially, Corneille. Usually the situation presented in a tragedy is that of the
protagonist whose duty to the king ,country and the social more in conflict with his
relation to his wife or sweet-heart. Throughout the play All for Love, Antony
wrestles with the conflict between his love for Cleopatra and his duties to the
Roman Empire. In Act I, scene i, he engages Cleopatra in a conversation about the
nature and depth of their love, dismissing the duties he has neglected for her sake:

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch

Of the ranged empire fall
In the very next scene, however, Antony worries that he is about to lose [him]
self in dotage and fears that the death of his wife is only one of the ills that his
idleness doth hatch. Thus, Antony finds himself torn between the Rome of his
duty and the Alexandria of his pleasure.
The plays are written in a bombastic style and in the verse there is more of rhetoric
than poetic imagination .Mostly they are written in rhymed iambic pentameter,
though rarely blank verse too was used. Dryden says in his preface that, In my
style, I have professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare, which that I might
perform more freely, I have disencumbered myself from rhyme. He gave up
heroic couplet of his early plays and accepted the blank verse to give an elevated
style in the Shakespearean manner. His handling of the blank verse in the play is
surely skilful.
For being a successful tragedy, an unbeaten tragic hero is needed .Antony is a
tragic hero who is a person of noble birth with heroic or potentially heroic
qualities. But he is fated to doom and destruction. Because of some personality
flaw, Antony fails in this epic struggle against fate. He shirks his political duty for
the sake of his love relationship with Cleopatra. His peers deem Marc Antony's
actions to be irresponsible and believe will be the cause of his downfall.
In his "Preface" to All for Love ,Dryden explains his view that the love between
Antony and Cleopatra is an "illegal love" based on "vice," which engenders little
pity on its own. So one has to conclude, the glorifying of illicit love between
Antony and Cleopatra is his deliberate act. Therefore the plat fails to attain moral
aim. If that excellent morality was to be shown, the unlawful lover ought to punish
for their sins.
Heroic tragedy contains fall of great emperior because of the character flaw of
heroes. In Dryden's tragedy, Antony loses his major confrontation with Octavius in
large part because of Cleopatra's actions. When Antony comes out of seclusion in
the temple of Isis in Alexandria, he says in front of Ventidius, his trusted general
that he curses the day he was born and he and Ventidius weep together over the

reality that Antony destroyed much of the Roman Empire because of his love for
Cleopatra. It lies in Antony's confession that the Roman Empire was devastated by
his love for Cleopatra.
In Cleopatras portrayal too Dryden displays the characteristics of the heroic play.
She is model perfection. Nowhere in the play, not even when she is banished, has
she deviated from her steadfast love for Antony. She says,
I love you more, even now you are unkind
Than you have loved me most
She considers her love so sacred that even the pretence of love she displays for
Dollabella is done with great reluctance. Such a portrayal of heroine of perfection
is found only in heroic plays.
Ending with death is a most important feature of tragedy. All for Love ends with
death of hero and heroine fulfilling this convention of tragedy. Altogether five
people commit suicide in the last act of the play - Antony, Cleopatra, Ventidius and
two maids. All of them do this for their affection and regard for someone. The
suicide of Antony and Cleopatra are historical facts. But those of the others are of
doubtful historicity. So many people committing suicide and that too for their
regard for others should be viewed as characteristics of heroic plays.
Though there are some elements of heroic play in All for Love, it cannot be
strictly called one. While heroic plays are written in heroic couplets, we find
Dryden using blank verse here. In the language of the play too, we find deviation
from that of the heroic play. The rant and bombast of his earlier plays are not to be
seen in this one. Further extreme exaggeration of passion, a typical characteristic
of the heroic tragedies is missing here. Very little of absurd and probable events are
to be found in this play. No incident of the play appear as incredible to us, except
perhaps the surprise victory Antony, even without any help from his commander
Ventidius. This surprise victory over Octavius with the numerically and
qualitatively inferior Egyptian troops is unbelievable. However, the grandiose
manner of the hero found in heroic plays is not given to Antony of All for Love.
He does not display any superhuman bravery. Ventidius talks of Antony's war like
qualities, but it is concerned with a distant past. All these facts make All for
Love, far from a perfect historic play.