(III. ii. 230.)
Note the last words: for though Antony feels entitled to indulge in this farcing and enjoys it thoroughly, he does not forget the serious business. He keeps recurring more and more distinctly to the suggestion of mutiny, and for mutiny the citizens are now more than fully primed. All this, moreover, he has achieved without ever playing his trump card. They have quite forgotten about the will, and indeed it is not required. But Antony thinks it well to have them beside themselves, so he calls them back for this last maddening draught.
And all the while, it will be observed, he has never answered Brutus’ charge on which he rested his whole case, that Caesar was ambitious. Yet such is the headlong flight of his eloquence, winged by genius, by passion, by craft, that his audience never perceive this. No wonder: it is apt to escape even deliberate readers.
Such a man will go fast and far. We next see him practically the ruler of Rome, swaying the triumvirate, treating Octavius as an admiring pupil whom he will tutor in the trade, ordering about or ridiculing the insignificant and imitative Lepidus.[186]
But he has the hybris of genius, unaccompanied by character and undermined by licence. It would be an anomaly if such an one were to be permanently successful. Shakespeare was by and by, though probably as yet he knew it not, to devote a whole play to the story of his downfall; here he contents himself with indicating his impending deposition and the agent who shall accomplish it. There is something ominous about the reticence, assurance, and calm self-assertion of the “stripling or springall of twenty years” as Plutarch calls Octavius. At the proscription Lepidus and even Antony are represented as consenting to the death of their kinsfolk: Octavius makes demands but no concessions. When Lepidus is ordered off on his errand, and Antony, secure in his superiority, explains his methods, Octavius listens silent with just a hint of dissent, but we feel that he is learning his lessons and will apply them in due time at his teacher’s expense. Already he appropriates the leadership. Before Philippi, Antony assigns to him the left wing and he calmly answers:
Upon the right hand I, keep thou the left.
Antony. Why do you cross me in this exigent?
Octavius. I do not cross you: but I will do so.
(V. i. 18.)
All these touches are contributed by Shakespeare, but the last is especially noticeable, because, though the words and the particular turn are his own, the incident itself is narrated not of Antony and Octavius but of their opponents.