Nor is it irony when Enobarbus, in reply to Antony's complaint (i. 2), "She is cunning past man's thought," makes answer, "Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love." This is literally true—only that the love is not pure in the sense of being sublimated or unegoistic, but in the sense of being quintessential erotic emotion, chemically free from all the other elements usually combined with it.
And outward circumstances harmonise with the character and vehemence of this passion. He lays the kingdoms of the East at her feet; with reckless prodigality, she lavishes the wealth of Africa on the festivals she holds in his honour.
[XXVIII]
THE DARK LADY AS A MODEL—THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC A WORLD-CATASTROPHE
Assuming that it was Shakespeare's design in Antony and Cleopatra, as in King Lear, to evoke the conception of a world-catastrophe, we see that he could not in this play, as in Macbeth or Othello, focus the entire action around the leading characters alone. He could not even make the other characters completely subordinate to them; that would have rendered it impossible for him to give the impression of majestic breadth, of an action embracing half of the then known world, which he wanted for the sake of the concluding effect.
He required in the group of figures surrounding Octavius Cæsar, and in the groups round Lepidus, Ventidius, and Sextus Pompeius, a counterpoise to Antony's group. He required the placid beauty and Roman rectitude of Octavia as a contrast to the volatile, intoxicating Egyptian. He required Enobarbus to serve as a sort of chorus and introduce an occasional touch of irony amid the highflown passion of the play. In short, he required a throng of personages, and (in order to make us feel that the action was not taking place in some narrow precinct in a corner of Europe, but upon the stage of the world) he required a constant coming and going, sending and receiving of messengers, whose communications are awaited with anxiety, heard with bated breath, and not infrequently alter at one blow the situation of the chief characters.
The ambition which characterised Antony's past is what determines his relation to this great world; the love which has now taken such entire possession of him determines his relation to the Egyptian queen, and the consequent loss of all that his ambition had won for him. Whilst in a tragedy like Goethe's Clavigo, ambition plays the part of the tempter, and love is conceived as the good, the legitimate power, here it is love that is reprehensible, ambition that is proclaimed to be the great man's vocation and duty.
Thus Antony says (i. 2):