Portrait of a gentleman, three-quarter-length, in a blue coat and oyster satin waistcoat, pointing at a manuscript of Dryden's play All for Love', 1678, a landscape beyond

For a note on the artist, see lot 57.

All for Love, or the World Well Lost (1677), Dryden's tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, was the first of the dramatist's works to abandon his practice of presenting his plays in rhymed couplets. At the time it was considered a huge success, and unlike Shakespeare's drama, it concentrated on the dramatic dichotomy between Anthony's duties as a statesman and a Roman, and his passion for Cleopatra, rather than solely on the clash between the egoes of history's most famous lovers.