OR, THE WORLD WELL LOST; A TRAGEDY, IN FIVE ACTS; BY JOHN DRYDEN. AS PERFORMED AT THE THEATRE ROYAL, COVENT GARDEN. PRINTED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE MANAGERS FROM THE PROMPT BOOK. WITH REMARKS BY MRS. INCHBALD. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME, PATERNOSTER ROW. REMARKS. It is no slight honour to this play, that it was written by the illustrious author of the " Ode on St. Cecilia's Day." The play, in return, confers but little honour upon Dryden. The burning bosom, throbbing heart, the enchanting sensations, which the author, in his odes and poems, inspires, are rarely excited by his dramatic works. The stage, which exalts the muse of many an author, humbles that of the present great poet; and he ranks as a dramatist beneath those rivals who can move the passions by a more judicious adherence to nature and simplicity. 66 All for Love" was the author's favourite drama ;he said, he wrote it solely to please himself, and had succeeded in his design. Yet, were it not for the interest which attaches to the names of his hero and heroine, their characters are too feebly drawn to produce those emotions which an audience at a tragedy come prepared to feel. Who can be inattentive to the loves of Marc Antony and Cleopatra? Yet, thus described, their fate in representation seldom draws a tear, or gives rise to one transport of passion in the breast of the most observing auditor. The work is, nevertheless, highly valuable. It is one of the most interesting parts of Roman and Egyptian history; and the historianDryden. There is certainly in this short history, compared with more copious ones, a diminution of Cleopatra's faults yet her character is by no means so graced with virtues, and dignified by heroism in this drama, as in the tragedy of Pompée, by the great Corneille. The wife of Antony, in the present composition, is, unexpectedly, the most affecting personage in the whole piece and the comic sentences of Ventidius the sole support of those scenes, where the tragic parts, more particularly, decline into languor. The author was an advocate for tragi-comedy, and held, that all theatrical productions required alternate scenes of grief and joy, to render the whole a more perfect picture of nature, than could be given by one continued view of either. Some of his biographers have said, that, in his latter days, Dryden altered this opinion, and was convinced, that tragedy and comedy should never unite. It is probable he recanted; and it is consolatory to reflect, that this great man was as apt perhaps to change his mind upon all other subjects, as upon that in which his political interest was concerned. In politics, the author of this tragedy was so inconstant, that he wrote funeral lamentations on the death of Oliver Cromwell, and hymns of joy on the restoration of King Charles. He wrote "The Spanish Friar," to vilify the Roman Catholic religion, whilst that religion was persecuted; and translated an ancient Father, to prove it the true |