Dryden Seminar (English 205)

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Dryden Seminar (English 205).rtf 10.03.29 9:26 PM

The Heart Has its Reasons that Reason Knows Nothing Of:The Many Failings of All for Love.

by

Guy A. Duperreault

Student Number xxxxx

Engl 205-3

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Literature

Seminar Presentation

November 25, 1998

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The Heart Has its Reasons that Reason Knows Nothing Of: The Many Failings of All for Love.

When I subscribed to undertake this seminar it was to have been a comparison between Antony's character as portrayed by Dryden and Shakespeare. Since I find Shakespeare's Antony to be an interesting and complex character I took on the task without having first read All for Love. After having read it I was left with the somewhat daunting task of comparing an Antony that had about as much character as a lobotomized Bill Gates to that of Shakespeare's vital description of a powerful and ambitious man self-destructing in what we might call, today, a mid-life crisis.

After some discussion with various people about my antipathy to All for Love, and an exploration of Dryden outside of the play, I decided to redirect my attention to why All for Love fails as an exploration of character and even as an example of Neoclassical writing. (For me, personally, the one "good" consequence of my having read the play is that I found in its failure the inspiration to write my own verse — a satire of Dryden in form, content and spirit which I will foist upon you later, so ready your spit-balls.)

I begin this critique with a quick biographical overview of Dryden, because a key to All for Love's failure is found in Dryden's attitudes towards writing and life. So briefly, some key, curious, and/or suggestive incidents:

He was born in 1631 into a protestant family. He was the first of fourteen children (which is interesting given the psychological research into family birth order).

He had a classic education at Westminster "high" school and then at Cambridge, from which he graduated with a B.A.. (More on his schooling later.)

He worked in a minor post within Cromwell's bureaucracy alongside Milton and Marvell.In 1658 he wrote "Heroic Stanzas", a memorial of Cromwell.Then in 1660 he wrote "A Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of His Sacred

Majesty" for Charles II.In 1682 he wrote Religio Laici which defended the Church of England. (Some critics see

this as Dryden getting close to Catholicism (Davison 134). See Religio Laici in the appendix for an excerpt in which he criticizes fanatical protestants.)

When the Catholic James II ascended the throne in 1685, Dryden became a Catholic and condemned protestantism through satire and verse. For example:

The bloody Bear an Independent beast,Unlicked to form, in groans her hate expressed.Among timorous kind the Quaking HareProfessed neutrality, but would not swear...The bristled Baptist Boar, impure as he,(But whitened with the foam of sanctity)With fat pollutions filled the sacred place....

"The Hind and the Panther" I.34...45 (cited in Davison 142)In 1668 he was made Poet Laureate.In 1689 James II was forced off the throne and replaced by the Protestant William.

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Thomas Shadwell replaced Dryden as Poet Laureate.He died in 1700, still a Catholic, after mounting several unsuccessful plays and publishing

several successful translations.

Obviously this skeleton needs some expansion. His flip-flopping between political and religious ideologies has resulted in him being labelled an "opportunist", although recent biographies argue he was "a man of integrity and firm convictions, responding with admirable consistency to the thorny problems of religions and politics" (Davison 14). I cannot say which is the case, although I tend to lean towards the former, but for subjective rather than objective reasons. In the two biographies I read, and All for Love's preambles, I did not get a feeling for the man behind the words except anger. My own personal impression is that Dryden looked outside himself for the truths of life, and as he grew older these truths needed to change, not because he was maturing "spiritually" within himself in relation to his world, but because the changing circumstances around him were clashing with his persona. In Jungian jargon, he mistook his persona for his Self. Biographer George Wasserman writes:

...Dryden identified his personal religious beliefs with the broad via media of Anglicanism. But his orthodoxy seems more expedient than genuine, for the strongly anti-rational emphasis of [the poem Religio Laici] cannot have stopped short of Anglicanism and the latitude of opinion its moderation encouraged.... [Religio Laici] provides ample evidence of this tempermental readiness to submit to an omniscient authority in spiritual matters (30-1).

Of course whether or not his changes in attitude were motivated by what was occuring outside or within himself is unanswerable. From the little I've read the answer is not likely to be found in Dryden's writings, except very indirectly and tenuously, such as has been done above, with Religio Laici. And biographer Dennis Davison writes that Dryden did not share his personal self in a way which is readily apparent. Davison elaborates by saying that Dryden was more alive in the world of ideas than ever he was in the material world. (See Appendix "A Man Alive..." for the complete quoatation, which is very interesting.)

His having come to be more alive in the world of ideas and his fascination with Neoclassicism was grounded in his "classical" training begun in Westminster. To give you an idea of what the classically trained student experienced, here is a description of the four year "programme":

The day began at quarter past five and ended twelve of fifteen hours later. After Latin prayers, morning ablutions from the common washbasin, and breakfast, the boys were marched, two by two, to their lessons. At six they began a two-hour session of repeating their grammar — Latin out of Lily and Greek out of Camden.... In a semicircle before the master, they recited the rules and then made extempore verses in Latin and Greek upon themes suggested by the master. On alternate mornings, instead of making verses, they were called upon to expound some part of a Latin or Greek author, such as Cicero, Livy, Isocrates, Homer, or Xenophon. From eight to nine they were allowed time for 'beaver', a refreshment period. At nine they met for another two-hour period devoted to the reading of those exercises, in prose and in verse, which they had prepared in their rooms the night before. After lunch they came back at one o'clock for another two-hour session. On this occasion the master expounded a selection from Virgil, Cicero, Euripodes or Sallust, commenting on rhetorical figures, grammatical constructions, and explaining prosody. Then followed an afternoon respite. The final meeting of the day was devoted to

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the repetition of a 'leaf or two' out of a book of rhetorical figures or proverbs, or sentences chosen by the master. Then a theme was assigned, upon which the student was to compose prose or verse essays in Latin or Greek before the next morning (Davison 20-1).

And university was not, it seems, much better. (See Appendix "Cambridge Sucks" for Milton's and others' thoughts.) But Dryden liked his education!

To me this "schooling" sounds little different from military boot-camp and cult indoctrination techniques, both of which are designed to suppress creative, individual thinking for that of compliance to group-thought and the acceptance of authoritarian structures. And I wonder if Dryden having liked it was his survival technique, not unlike what happens emotionally between kidnapper and captive. In this case Dryden's creativity was kidnapped onto the coat tails of Classicism as interpreted by Elizabethan and Italian intellectuals into Neoclassicism. And this schooling, coupled with his obvious natural affinity towards intellectualism, was enough to propel Dryden into a world of ideas, one largely untouched by, and even contemptuous of, the prosaic ploddings of diurnal life.

And this is suggestive to me of why All for Love fails — and goes towards explaining the nature of many of Dryden's satires and criticisms. While Dryden largely kept himself, except for his anger, out of his writing, unlike Shakespeare he could not keep his ideology out. It was more important to him to have his writing conform to his sense of truth and propriety than allow the characters to come alive and mess those ideals up. (See the appendix, "Translations", to see the extent to which Dryden tames Juvenal's brutal portrait of an unfaithful woman.) For example, early in All for Love we are introduced to the agony of Antony's love:

I'm now turned wild, a commoner of nature;Of all forsaken, and forsaking all,Live in a shady forest's sylvan scene,Stretched at my length beneath some blasted oak.I lean my head upon the mossy bark,And look just of a piece, as I grew from it;My uncombed locks, matted like mistletoe,Hang o'er my hoary face;... (I.232-39).

I cannot help but be reminded of Rosalind's jesting that Orlando does not have the look of love in Shakespeare's As You Like It. Instead of allowing the character of Antony to express his pained love, Dryden uses Antony to express an idealization of love's pain, an idealization Shakespeare had Rosalind spoof with:

There is none of my uncle's marks [of love] upon you.... [They are a] lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not;... Then your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbotton'd, your shoe unti'd, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation (III.ii.389-400).

Much of All for Love is filled with these exagerated manifestations of emotion. And it is these idealizations which explain a great deal of the failures of character in All for Love. Instead of imagining or developing characters who emote, Dryden used caricatures to express idealized emotion with the result that his "characters" are flat and unconvincing. Even the writings of fairy tales or fantasy cannot fail to have believable behaviours and characterizations within their un-reality — we have to believe in the reality of Little Red Riding Hood if we are going to accept a talking wolf, who in turn must be believable within the context, otherwise the text is forgotten.

A second equally fundamental failure of characterization is having characters frequently

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swearing eternal love, unconditional forgiveness and the like, only to reverse them a few lines later, or in having a character describe another in terms which are continuously and frequently contradicted. Such histrionics are taxing on both patience and credibility, and perhaps the worst example of many comes when Dolabella says to Cleopatra:

I find your breast fenced round from human reach,Transparant as a rock of solid crystal,Seen through, but never pierced (IV.202-4).

This verse is poetical enough, but not fify lines earlier Cleopatra fainted in front of Dolabella from the strain of lieing! How do I reconcile the stone shrouded heart with the one pierced by the emotions which are killing her? This is not just bad characterization, it is simply bad writing. It might be more believable if the level of Dolabella's hurt was understandable, but Dolabella knew before talking with her that the chance of his love being requited was slim to zero.

The second idealization Dryden apparently struggled to apply were those of the rules of Neoclassicism. In this he also failed, but at a more fundamental level. Ironically, the rules of Neoclassicism were themselves an idealization of classical writing which failed to catch the spirit of that writing.

So what is "Neoclassicism"? Well, it is actually a complex construct, in two parts, as suggested by its nearly oxymoronic construction. The first part is that it ascribes to reason the mandate of controlling imagination and the evils of passions. (For elaborations, see the Appendix "Neo-Classicism — Definition".) The second aspect of it is that it claimed to have learned from the classical writers the right or ideal way to tell a story. From Wasserman, citing Dryden, the classical construct of a play was as "'A just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the change of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind'" (56). Wasserman continues:

In no sense did the Classical concept of imitation of 'nature' mean a literal copying of the 'great outdoors'. 'Nature', for the ancients, was the general and unchanging order which was perpetually operating in the universe. In imitating this order, the poet produced images of the essential and persisting forms of things, ignoring their temporal, local, or accidental aspects (56).

Wasserman then cites Dryden's take on what this meant:'Nature always intends a consumate beauty in her productions, yet through the inequality of matter the forms are altered.... For which reason, the artful painter and the sculptor, imitating the Divine Maker, form to themselves, as well as they are able, a model of superior beauties'. Dryden's translation...expresses the idealistic bias of his [Italian] source: the represented image of 'nature' in art is superior to the unreal shadows of ideas in the world of matter (57, from Dryden's "The Essay of Dramatic Poesy", II.118)).

Wasserman then elaborates on how Neoclassicism developed:It was the labour of succeeding centuries to 'methodize' or to codify these Classical conceptions of art into a system of rules; the tradition extends from Horace, through the sixteenth-century...to the seventeenth-century...and its most vigourous English exponent Thomas Rhymer. As originally conceived, the Neoclassical rules of art aimed at achieving decorum and symmetry in imitation and at maintaining probability through the handling of parts as they contribute to a whole.... 'If the rules be well considered,' Dryden later quoted Rapin as saying, 'we shall find them to be made only to reduce Nature into a method, to trace her step by step, and not to suffer the least mark of her to escape us: 'tis only by these, that probability in fiction is maintained, which is the soul of poetry. They are

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founded upon good sense, and sound reason, rather than on authority' (Essay I.228). But even though the rightness of the rules could be theoretically justified by their relation to nature and the laws of reason, their practical influence upon many critics was authoritarian; for they tended to divert the attention of writers from 'Nature,' and to limit imitation either by the precedent of those ancients from whom the rules derived, or by the common sense criteria of an approximate realism. Nature and Homer were the same: so ran the first article of the Neoclassicist's faith. As Aristotle had noticed, many of the ancients contrived their dramatic actions singly, without interruption or variation of interest; many plays, moreover, limited the time and place of the action to the time of its representation and the space of its stage. By following their example, a play might be justified as an imitation of nature: thus was the most characteristic regulation of Neoclassical criticism — the doctrine of dramatic unities — ratified as a law. Imitation of 'nature' had become imitation of Classical models; and probability, 'the soul of poetry,' had become synonymous with verisimilitude (57-8).

(For Davison's take on how idealizing Classical writing limited the Neoclassicists, see "Delimitation of the Neoclassicists" in the appendix.)

From this history and definitions, it is clear that All for Love fails at being an example of "true" Neoclassical writing by, at the very least, not adhering to the silly verisimilitude requirement. But it also fails because its melodrama and hyperbole remove from it any natural expression of "natural" people: it is simply unreal, which is an amazing feat of writing given that the circumstances of the play were in fact real.

In All for Love Dryden idealized a form of writing and applied it to a story which simply could not be told that way. Ironically this idealization failed to catch the spirit desired by the Classical writers he had tried to imitate. And even worse, Dryden idealized human emotions outside of human beings which turned them into moaning and simpering caricatures with whom it is difficult to relate, let alone sympathize with. And All for Love was, above all, badly written.

If I hadn't done this paper I would not have considered reading anything else by Dryden, but in his critiques and satires, where his ideology and anger serves the forum, his writing is actually quite enjoyable, but he has not sense of how to write people.

And now for my verse satire of Dryden:

Critics, like poets, when wits have they noneHave one sure course, from their plodding words, run!This lesson's all 'round, I'll cite just this one,A melodrama, that canst be but made fun,By a dull windbag who thinks himself wise.But his sharp wit is just emperor's guise;He thumps his words with dull and heavy foot,The meaning grey with moans and groans and soot.Academic, thinker, hypocrite, teacher;From podium high 'tis easy, as preacher,To cast foppish stones at life in the muck,To denigrate others with words that still suck.Empty tripe spewed with his egotist's quip,Softly waxed hard with skilled sycophants' lip,

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Makes true nonsense of his own gaudy pants — He masturbates — to his own puerile cants — His mind, for his ideals are more vividThen ever notions of life well liv'd.The well-titled laureate, with words plush,Belies life's truth, which is awesome and flush,Needs clean-up Bill, his a-moralityAnd mire him in mere sentimentality.With ideals of love he is fixated;On twisting humans, unexpurgated,Into whimps, rants and evil simians,Who mock wit with flaccid simulcrumsOf the love-look Rosalind taunted poorOrlando the lack — the marks of ardour,The lean cheek, the dark eyes, the unkempt locksThe vital spirit and the tattered frocks.So we see melodramatic abscess,Antony's hot love puffed-up with excess;The empty gesture and the vacant stare,The look of life lost and truly bad hair!"Oh woe is me, oh shame and awful lifeI've left my state and screwed my wifeFor a shallow Queen with fair and white skin!"(Despite being of Greek and Arab kin — An anachronism, true, of petty size — But exhorted in Bill to exorcise.)How to make such drivel speak through TonyWhen Willie's messy words spoke vitally?Vital words, that's what gives us all life's chords!It's not in our stars but in his poor wordsThat Bill stands a colossus above him,And, he a mere sentimentalist, forgotten.

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APPENDIX

FROM RELIGIO LAICI:

The book thus put in every vulgar hand,Which each presumed he best could understand,The common rule was made the common prey,And at the mercy of the rabble lay.The tender page with horny fists was galled,And he was gifted most that loudest bawled:The spirit gave the doctoral degree;And every member of a companyWas of his trade and of the bible free...Study and pains were now no more their care;Texts were explained by fasting and prayer:This was the fruit the private spirit brought,Occasioned by great zeal and little thought.While crowds unlearned, with rude devotion warm,About the sacred viands buzz and swarm,The fly-blown text creates a crawling brood,And turns to maggots what was meant for food.A thousand daily sects rise up and die;A thousand more the perished race supply...(400-22).

(Cited in Davison 140.)

A MAN ALIVE IN THE WORLD OF IDEAS:

His learning was considerable, especially in the classics and theology. But my impression is that Dryden read books about life, rather than experiencing it at first hand. What has Dryden to tell us about Nature, about human love, about the comical, poignant details of everyday life? He can translate Virgil's Georgics and Pastorals for us, where 'Amaryllis fills the shady groves' and on the altar Tityrus sacrifices 'the tender findings of my woolly breed', but of Marvell's or Herrick's English countryside there is little evidence. In the Heroic Plays human love is represented by rhetorical posturings gloating sexual desire, and Dryden's religious poems are mainly polemical or argumentative. Nobody has ever felt emotionally or spiritually nearer to Christ through reading Religio Laici or The Hind and the Panther, and I daresay many Christians have grimaced at Dryden's reference to religious faith in terms of insurance and banking:

Faith is the best insurer of thy bliss;The bank above must fail before the venture miss.

And whereas the diaries of Pepys or Evelyn, and the narratives of John Bunyan, teem with fascinating details of everyday life among many classes of society, Dryden rarely quits the

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world of ideas, of controversy, except to set a farcical scene for Shadwell's coronation, to suggest Charles' death-chamber, or to allude in his plays to aristocratic wenching exploits and middle-class indignation to them. Pepys tells us of parties, friendly visits, tiffs with Mrs. Pepys, flirtations with pretty girls in church, of state affairs and of seamen dying of hunger in the London streets, and both he and Bunyan unfold for us the variety of life among the middle and artisan classes. A bookish classical education and the scholastic disputing-matches still in vogue in Cambridge cannot be entirely responsible for Dryden's intellectual bent, or his lack of interest in the detail of contemporary life, but must surely have strengthened a natural inclination. And therefore the charge that Dryden's rational, if rhetorical, style and his attraction to arguing and persuading, excluded visual narrative effects and emotional intensity, has much truth in it (Davison 26-7 my emphasis).

CAMBRIDGE SUCKS:

Milton described scathingly his years at Cambridge University as listening to 'nothing but the scragged and thorny lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry'. John Hall, also at Cambridge, wrote sharply: 'We have hardly professors for the principle faculties, and these but lazily read — and carelessly followed'. Winstanley's comment on universities was even more pungent: 'standing ponds of stinking waters!' (Davison 22).

Translations from Juvenal's Sixth Satire:

by Dryden:She duly, once a month, renews her face;Meantime, it lies in daub, and hid in grease;Those are the husbands's nights; she craves her due,He takes fat kisses, and is stuck in glue.But, to the loved adult'rer when she steers,Fresh from the bath, in brightness she appears:For him the rich Arabia sweats her gum;And precious oils from distant Indies come:How haggardly soe'er she looks at home.Th'eclipse then vanishes; and all her faceIs opened, and restored to every grace.The crust removed, her cheeks as smooth as silk,Are polished with a wash of asses' milk...But, hadst thou seen her plastered up before,'Twas so unlike a face, it seemed a sore (Davison 110-11).

This sounds harsh, but is tame compared to a modern translation, which supposedly better captures "[s]omething of Juvenal's brutal attack and moral repugnance..." (Davison 111).

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by Rolfe Humphries (1958):Nothing is worse to endure than your Mrs. Richbitch, whose visageIs padded and plastered with dough, in the most ridiculous manner.Furthermore, she reeks of unguents, so God help her husbandWith his wretched face stunk up with these, smeared by her lipstick.To her lovers she comes with her skin washed clean. But at homeWhy does she need to look pretty? Nard is assumed for the lover,For the lover she buys all the Arabian perfumes.It takes her some time to strip down to her face, removing layersOne by one, till at last she is recognisable, almost,Then she uses a lotion, she-asses' milk; she'd need herdsOf these creatures to keep herself supplied...But when she's given herself the treatment in full, from the ground baseThrough the last layer of mud pack, from the first wash to a poultice,What lies under all this — a human face, or an ulcer? (Davison 111).

(Juvenal died around 140A.D.)

NEOCLASSICISM — DEFINITION:

The view of poetry which we are suggesting that Dryden took in 1660, a view which may in general be termed Neoclassical in the role it assigned to reason or judgement as a control of the imagination, constituted a critical phase in what W.K. Wimsat has called the 'long struggle ... between the custodian of pure ideas and pure fact, dialecticians and scientists, on the one hand, and on the other, the custodians of the riches of the "word,"'...(Wasserman 40).

DELIMITATION OF THE NEOCLASSICISTS:

[Classical scholar Gilbert Highlet] tells us that 'all the Roman verse-satirists write in a bold, free-running hexameter, which has a range unequalled by that of any other metre except perhaps English blank verse at its fullest development. They can make it do almost everything from comical light conversation to sustained and lofty declamation'. On the contrary, the Drydens and Popes 'write in the stopped couplet — a metre capable of great delicacy and wit, but quite unable to attain a wide range of emotion, or a copious variety of effects'. He concludes that, compared with their classical models, they are 'severely limited'. ... Moreover, the forces of genteel respectability influenced Dryden somewhat...so that the colourful slangy talk, the eccentric vocabulary, or coarse abuse are replaced by polite innuendos or abstract terms. The verbal tricks of the Hudibras [by Samuel Butler published with praise from King Charles II in 1662], which Dryden disdained, are similar to some of the devices of the Roman satirists, and in refining his language and adopting the heroic couplet, Dryden also had to say farewell to the huge variety of Latin satire (Davison 108-110).

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NOTABLE PASSAGES IN ALL FOR LOVE AND COMMENTS:

Antony's finding strength from Ventidius's flattery reflects very poorly on his character!Ventidius. No prince but you

Could merit that sincerity I used,Nor durst another man have ventured it.But you, ere love misled your wand'ring eyes,Were sure the chief and best of the human race,Framed in the very pride and boast of nature,So perfect, that the gods who formed you wonderedAt their own skill, and cried, "A lucky hitHas mended our design." Their envy hindered,Else you had been immortal, and a pattern,When heav'n would work for ostentation sake,To copy out again.

Antony. But Cleopatra — Go on, for I can bear it now (I.400-13).

Poor Antony! Ventidius is a mere sycophant and Antony the butt to be kissed! And if this is not bad enough, Antony then praises Ventidius by dismissing all his other advisers as mere flatterers!

Thou only lov'st, the rest have flattered me (I.414).Not only is this ironic with respect to flattery, it is with respect to love as well. Antony's problem as he and Ventidius see it is an excess of love — for Cleopatra. But in Dryden's descriptions there is very little separating the "good" love of men for one another from that of the "evil" of loving a woman. For example, can you discern who said the following of Antony?

Heav'n's blessing on your heart for that kind word!May I believe you love me? Speak again (I.415-6).

Dryden likes to, at times, torture English!Alexas.

And yet she begs not now you would not leave her (II.162).

It is amusing that in Dryden's need to idealize Cleopatra, he "has" to remove her from her race!Antony.

I thought how those white arms would fold me in,And strain me so close, and melt into love; (III.1-2).

I found All for Love's general misogyny annoying. Perhaps the worst example is:Cleopatra.

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Can I do this? Ah, no; my love's so trueThat I can neither hide it where it is,Nor show it where it is not. Nature meant meA wife, silly, harmless, household dove,Fond without art, and kind without deceit;But Fortune, that has made a mistress of me,Has thrust me out to the wide world, unfurnishedOf falsehood to be happy (IV.89-96).

The misogyny I see in this is that Dryden is likely saw this description of an "honest" women as being a compliment, rather than being condescending and imprisoning in its idealization of womanhood.

While All for Love is filled to past the gag point with hyperbole, I just had to include at least one passage as an example of bad writing. Also, his characterization is so bad that the speaker her is indistinguishable, for the most part, from Antony or Dolabella. The fact that it is also an example of his idealization of the evil woman is just a bad-writing bonus:Ventidius.

I pity Dolabella, but she's dangerous.Her eyes have pow'r beyond Thessalian charmsTo draw the moon from heav'n. For eloquence,The sea-green Sirens taught her voice their flatt'ry,And while she speaks, night steals upon the day,Unmarked of those who hear. Then she's so charmingAge buds at sight of her, and swells to youth.The holy priests gaze on her when she smiles,And with heaved hands, forgetting gravity,They bless her wanton eyes. Ev'n I, who hate her,With a malignant joy behold such beauty,And while I curse, desire it (IV.233-44).

For an example of how Dryden could not keep his morality out of the play, he has the manipulative and conniving eunuch, Alexas, preach on the moral consequences to the woman who comes between husband and wife! I find this bizarre and completely outside of his character. It is amusing that it also contains anachronistic references to Christian theology and morality. (It also requires either a strong stomach or vomit bag to read.)Alexas.

And yet, though love and your unmatched desertHave drawn her from the due regard of honour,At last heav'n opened her unwilling eyesTo see the wrongs she offered fair Octavia,Whose holy bed she lawlessly usurped.The sad effects of this improsperous warConfirmed those pious thoughts (V.359-65).

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At the end of act IV, Antony's mis-appraisal of Alexas is not just unbelievable, it is downright laughable. It belies his character, for if he had been unable to understand people and motivations, to see through manipulations, he might have remained a successful general but would never have come to rule the world. And Alexas is particularly transparent as described by Dryden. And while it could be argued that Antony was so besotted by his love for Cleopatra he could not see it, after eleven years and three children, as well as the so-called good advice of astute Ventidius, for him not to have at least an inkling of Alexas's character is preposterous.

I also noted a couple of passages which had the hallmarks of women accusing other of being witches and witch trials. The first example is in the conflict between Octavia and Cleopatra, in which Octavia says "Dost thou not blush to own those black endearments/That make sin pleasing" (III.443-4). This is subtle reference, if it is one at all, but the following is not! Upon hearing of Cleopatra's death, Antony found the proof of her innocence:Antony.

Then thou art innocent, my poor dear love,And art thou dead?O those two words! their sound should be divided:Hadst thou been false, and died; or hadst thou lived,And hadst been true — But innocence and death!This shows not well above (V.236-41).

MISCELLANY:

One of the most interesting aspects of Dryden is how he epitomizes one of the psychological types as described by Carl Jung. I see Dryden as a highly differentiated extraverted-thinking type. This would infer that his shadow would be introverted feeling, and highly undifferentiated. This simple observation goes a great length to explain why his "feeling" i.e. emoting characters, have no character — they are the manifestations of his undifferentiated shadow.

When Dr. Johnson wanted to describe Dryden's general significance for poetry he said 'He found it brick and left it marble' (Davison 108). [Smooth but cold.]

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. [Shakespeare was well aware of this, but Dryden pretended that the mind could completely overrule the heart. Hubris! A bane of existence — and good writing!]

(Blaise Pascal, Pensées.)

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Shakespeare:

From Othello on the use of time:Iago. Thou know'st we work by wit, and not by witchcraft;And wit depends on dilatory time (II.ii.387). [Too bad Dryden did not head these wise

words instead of attempting to stick to verisimilitude.](definition: dilatory. Tending to cause delay; having the purpose of gaining time)

Re. Othello and Believability:The conviction of reality is extraordinary, considering that the action, regarded in the light of reason, is full of improbability. But Shakespeare knew how easily the light of reason is extinguished in mean, especially in certain types of men, and he was, in 1604, so sure a master of characterization and of theatrical illusion, that he could make acceptable in his medium what would not be so in another. He further strengthens credibility by building the action upon relentlessly simple lines (Neilson: Othello 1094).

Re. Antony and Cleopatra and Characterization:[N]o play of Shakespeare's is less prosaic in style, and in none is the splendour of his imagination more superbly exhibited in the presentation of human character (Neilson: Antony 1295).

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WORKS CITED

Davison, Dennis. Literature in Perspective: Dryden. London, GB: Evans Brothers Limited, 1968.

Dryden, John. All for Love. Ed. David M. Vieth. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1972.

Neilson, William A. and Charles J. Hill, Eds. "Introduction to Antony and Cleopatra." Shakespeare: Complete Plays and Poems. Eds. William Allan Neilson and Charles Jarvis Hill. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1949.

Neilson, William A. and Charles J. Hill, Eds. "Introduction to Othello." Shakespeare: Complete Plays and Poems. Eds. William Allan Neilson and Charles Jarvis Hill. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1949.

Wasserman, George. John Dryden. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1964.

Documents

Dryden Seminar (English 205)