We can imagine that Shakespeare began by worshipping his lady-love, complaining of her coldness and hardness, celebrating her fingers in song, cursing her faithlessness, and feeling himself driven nearly wild with grief at the false position in which she had placed him; this is the standpoint of the Sonnets. In the course of years the fever had stormed itself out, but the memory of the enchantment was still visibly fresh, and his mind pictured the loved one as a marvellous phenomenon, half queen, half gipsy, alluring and repellant, true and false, strong and weak, a siren and a mystery; this is the standpoint of Antony and Cleopatra. Then, possibly, when life had sobered him down, when he had cooled, as we all do cool in the hardening ice of experience, he suddenly and sharply realised the insanity of an exotic enthusiasm for so worthless an object. He looks upon this condition, which invariably begins with self-deception and must of necessity end in disillusionment, as a disgraceful and tremendous absurdity; and his wrath over wasted feelings and wasted time and suffering, over the degradation and humiliation of its self-deception, and ultimately the treason itself, seeks final and supreme relief in the outburst, "What a farce!" which is in itself the germ of Troilus and Cressida.
[1] Heine, some hundreds of years later, expresses the same feeling in his
"O König Wiswamatra,
O welch ein Ochs bist du,
Dass du so viel kämpfest und brüssest
Und Alles für eine Kuh!"
Giovine donna è mobile, e vogliosa
E negli amanti molti, e sua bellezza
Estima più che allo specchio, e pomposa
Ha vanagloria di sua giovinezza;
La qual quanto piacevole e vezzosa
E più, cotanto più seco l'apprezza
Virtù non sente, nè conoscimento,
Volubil sempre come foglia al vento."
"Her armes smale, her streghte bak and softe,
Her sides long, fleshly, smothe, and white,
He gan to stroke; and good thrift bad ful oft.
Her snowish throte, her brestes round and lite:
Thus in this hevene he gan him to delite,
And then withal a thousand times her kiste
That what to dou for joie unnethe he wiste."