All for Love E-Book

John Dryden

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The NHB Drama Classics series presents the world's greatest plays in affordable, highly readable editions for students, actors and theatregoers. The hallmarks of the series are accessible introductions (focussing on the play's theatrical and historical background, together with an author biography, key dates and suggestions for further reading) and the complete text, uncluttered with footnotes. The translations, by leading experts in the field, are accurate and above all actable. The editions of English-language plays include a glossary of unusual words and phrases to aid understanding. All for Love is John Dryden's version of the Antony and Cleopatra story, told as a heroic tragedy. Antony and Octavius Caesar are struggling for control of what was to become the Roman Empire. Antony and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, are lovers and political allies, but their forces have been defeated at the battle of Actium. The play is set in Alexandria, under siege by Octavius Caesar. Edited and introduced Trevor R. Griffiths.

Leseprobe

DRAMA CLASSICS

ALLFOR LOVE

byJohn Dryden

edited and introduced byTrevor R. Griffiths

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Note on the Text

Further Reading

Key Dates

Preface

Prologue

Characters

Act I

Act II

Act III

Act IV

Act V

Epilogue

Glossary

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

John Dryden (1631-1700)

John Dryden was born in Northamptonshire on 19 August 1631. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1654, and published Heroic Stanzas in memory of Oliver Cromwell in 1659. However, his 1660 poem Astrea Redux: A Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of His Sacred Majesty Charles the Second is a more accurate guide to the ways in which his political sympathies would develop. His first play, The Wild Gallant (1663), was not a major success but The Indian Queen (1664), co-written with his brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard, a major shareholder in the King’s Company, which performed all his plays until 1678, established his reputation. In 1668 he published one of the key works of English literary criticism, his essay ‘Of Dramatic Poesy’, and then pursued an active writing career devoted to literary criticism, drama and poetry, much of it politically as well as aesthetically engaged.

On the death of William Davenant, his collaborator on a 1667 adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, he succeeded him as Poet Laureate in 1668 by way of reward for his pro-monarchical propaganda. He was also appointed Historiographer Royal in 1670. He wrote both comedies and heroic tragedies and also tried his hand at the quixotic task of making Milton’s Paradise Lost into an opera (The State of Innocence, published but not performed, 1677).

Dryden’s political and religious views were conservative and he converted to Catholicism when James II became king in 1685. However James’s overthrow in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 inevitably led to Dryden losing office, and he turned to translating and editing as means of generating income. His translations included poems and satires by the Roman writers Virgil and Juvenal as well as works by Chaucer and Boccaccio. He died on 1 May 1700.