Steven Schwartz wrote in reply to my post taking issue with his earlier
post stating John Dryden's "All for Love" was a rewrite of Shakespeare's
"Antony and Cleopatra":

>Well, according to my professors it was (18th century, not my field), and I
>can certainly see their point . . .

Dryden an 18th century poet? Come on, Steve. Dryden's dates (1631-1700)
place him neatly in the 17th century.

>It's the Antony and Cleopatra story re-written according to the Aristotlean
>unities.... I dimly recall a preface by Dryden in which he himself
>explicitly courts comparison to the Shakespeare play.

Steve, Shakespeare didn't have a copyright on the Antony and Cleopatra
story.  It is history, and the story was often told in one form or another,
before Shakespeare and right down to our own time with Samuel Barber's
1965-66 opera, in which case Shakespeare's play was, in fact, adapted.
Would you fault Barber for adapting Shakespeare's play for opera as you
fault Dryden for adapting Milton's "Paradise Lost" for the stage?

Furthermore, in Dryden's preface to "All for Love," the playwright writes
of the oft told tale that he supposed the cause of the story's popularity
among poets was "the excellency of the moral.  For the chief persons
represented were famous patterns of unlawful love; and their end
accordingly was unfortunate." In effect, by using the terms "among poets"
and "famous patterns." Dryden is acknowledging a body of literature on the
subject greater than just Shakespeare.

"All for Love," by the way, was immensely popular and established Dryden's
reputation.  It was hardly a work you could say London theatergoers in the
1670s found "incredibly dull."

But I will agree with Steve that without Purcell's music, Dryden's rhymed
couplets would get little airing today outside academe.

John Dalmas, BA English Literature, UCLA, 1961
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