Melancholy in John Dryden’s All for Love

Antony, the mourner, sticks to his bondage to others by entering the bondage of love of Cleopatra. This makes the difficulty in acting independently. Antony shows most persuasively that he is seeking a life secure in the arms of Cleopatra. In Freud’s narcissism, secure life is achieved through the process of self-regard. This is a pathology. However, I argue that Antony does not incorporate Cleopatra into himself but loses her to demand a possibility, a mood, or an orientation toward the world. His feeling is changed into a mood that copes with the problems caused by the libidinous involvement with the object in Freud. He changes his feeling into a countenance towards the world, rather than a pathology. This is what Walter Benjamin calls melancholy.