As amorous of their strokes."
According to an exposition prepared with the sanction of the composer, the music, after this passage, proceeds as follows in relation to the progress of the tragedy:
"... A climax for the whole orchestra is succeeded by an allegro agitato depicting the approach of Antony and his army. A bold military theme is worked up to a powerful climax, but soon dies away in soft harmonies for the wind instruments and horns. The Cleopatra theme then begins, first with a sensuous melody for the violoncello, repeated by the violins and afterwards by the whole orchestra.
"Strange harmonies are heard in the muted strings. The English horn and clarinet sing short, passionate phrases, to which the soft trombones later on add a sound of foreboding. But suddenly the Cleopatra theme appears again, now transformed to a vigorous allegro, and Antony departs to meet defeat and death.
"The Antony theme is now fully worked out, mostly in minor keys and sometimes in conjunction with the Cleopatra motive. It ends with a terrific climax.... A long diminuendo, ending with a melancholy phrase for the viola, suggests Antony's final passing, and Cleopatra's lamentation follows.
"In this part much of the previous love music is repeated, and some of it is entirely changed in expression as well as in rhythm and instrumentation. At last it dies away in mysterious harmonies.
"The work closes with an imposing passage in which the burial of Antony and Cleopatra in the same grave is suggested by the two themes now heard for the first time simultaneously. For this, Shakespeare's line is, perhaps, not inappropriate:
"She shall be buried by her Antony;
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous ..."
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Without opus number.
[23] Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, was the third of the nine Muses born by Mnemosyne to Zeus.
[24] Without opus number.
[25] Without opus number.
[26] Thomas Heywood, dramatist, poet, scholar, actor, translator, historian, whom Lamb amused himself by calling "a prose Shakespeare," was one of the most voluminous and indefatigable writers in the history of English letters. He died about 1850.