John Dryden's All for Love was, in many ways, a late 17th-century response to Shakespeare's play from 70 years earlier, Antony and Cleopatra. Both these plays, however, took their inspiration from the real-life affair between the historical figures Marc Antony and Cleopatra VII Philopator of Egypt. While their affair is thought to have actually happened, many historians agree that fictional representations of the story are highly inaccurate.
While Antony and Cleopatra are some of the few celebrities of ancient times whose fame has survived into the contemporary moment, many researchers into the ancient world see their legacy as historically insignificant relative to other figures. In Antony and Cleopatra, a book about the couple, Adrian Goldsworthy writes, "Antony and Cleopatra did not change the world in any profound way, unlike Caesar and to an even greater extent Augustus." He goes on to write, "...fictional portrayals have reinforced the propaganda of the 30s BC, contrasting Antony, the bluff, passionate and simple soldier, with Octavian, seen as a cold-blooded, cowardly and scheming political operator. Neither portrait is true, but they continue to shape even scholarly accounts of these years."
In spite of the fact that fictional portrayals of the two lovers are historically inaccurate, it would seem that poets and audiences alike are more invested in the more mythical or archetypal elements of Antony and Cleopatra than they are in historical accuracy. Indeed, no contemporary biographies of Cleopatra exist, and Antony's biography is clouded by years of political propaganda. In light of this, a play like All for Love likely reflects more about philosophies surrounding politics and love during Dryden's time than it does about the 30s BC. Perhaps fictional representations of Antony and Cleopatra say something about society's collective's perception of doomed love and empire rather than about the historical figures on which they are tenuously base.
