Dryden has committed a great mistake in bringing Octavia and her children on the scene, and in immediate contact with Cleopatra. To have thus violated the truth of history[78] might have been excusable, but to sacrifice the truth of nature and dramatic propriety, to produce a mere stage effect, was unpardonable. In order to preserve the unity of interest, he has falsified the character of Octavia as well as that of Cleopatra:[79] he has presented us with a regular scolding-match between the rivals, in which they come sweeping up to each other from opposite sides of the stage, with their respective trains, like two pea-hens in a passion. Shakspeare would no more have brought his captivating, brilliant, but meretricious Cleopatra into immediate comparison with the noble and chaste simplicity of Octavia, than a connoisseur in art would have placed Canova's Dansatrice, beautiful as it is, beside the Athenian Melpomene, or the Vestal of the Capitol.
The character of Octavia is merely indicated in a few touches, but every stroke tells. We see her with "downcast eyes sedate and sweet, and looks demure,"—with her modest tenderness and dignified submission—the very antipodes of her rival! Nor should we forget that she has furnished one of the most graceful similes in the whole compass of poetry, where her soft equanimity in the midst of grief is compared to
The swan's down feather
That stands upon the swell at flood of tide,
And neither way inclines.
The fear which, seems to haunt the mind of Cleopatra, lest she should be "chastised by the sober eye" of Octavia, is exceedingly characteristic of the two women: it betrays the jealous pride of her, who was conscious that she had forfeited all real claim to respect; and it places Octavia before us in all the majesty of that virtue which could strike a kind of envying and remorseful awe even into the bosom of Cleopatra. What would she have thought and felt, had some soothsayer foretold to her the fate of her own children, whom she so tenderly loved? Captives, and exposed to the rage of the Roman populace, they owed their existence to the generous, admirable Octavia, in whose mind there entered no particle of littleness. She received into her house the children of Antony and Cleopatra, educated them with her own, treated them with truly maternal tenderness, and married them nobly.
Lastly, to complete the contrast, the death of Octavia should be put in comparison with that of Cleopatra.
After spending several years in dignified retirement, respected as the sister of Augustus, but more for her own virtues, Octavia lost her eldest son Marcellus, who was expressively called the "Hope of Rome." Her fortitude gave way under this blow, and she fell into a deep melancholy, which gradually wasted her health. While she was thus declining into death, occurred that beautiful scene, which has never yet, I believe, been made the subject of a picture, but should certainly be added to my gallery, (if I had one,) and I would hang it opposite to the dying Cleopatra. Virgil was commanded by Augustus to read aloud to his sister that book of the Eneid in which he had commemorated the virtues and early death of the young Marcellus. When he came to the lines—
This youth, the blissful vision of a day,
Shall just be shown on earth, then snatch'd away, &c.
The mother covered her face, and burst into tears. But when Virgil mentioned her son by name, ("Tu Marcellus eris,") which he had artfully deferred till the concluding lines, Octavia, unable to control her agitation, fainted away. She afterwards, with a magnificent spirit, ordered the poet a gratuity of ten thousand sesterces for each line of the panegyric.[80] It is probable that the agitation she suffered on this occasion hastened the effects of her disorder; for she died soon after, (of grief, says the historian,) having survived Antony about twenty years.
VOLUMNIA.
Octavia, however, is only a beautiful sketch, while in Volumnia, Shakspeare has given us the portrait of a Roman matron, conceived in the true antique spirit, and finished in every part. Although Coriolanus is the hero of the play, yet much of the interest of the action and the final catastrophe turn upon the character of his mother, Volumnia, and the power she exercised over his mind, by which, according to the story, "she saved Rome and lost her son." Her lofty patriotism, her patrician haughtiness, her maternal pride, her eloquence, and her towering spirit, are exhibited with the utmost power of effect; yet the truth of female nature is beautifully preserved, and the portrait, with all its vigor, is without harshness.