And more explicitly in the Marcus Antonius:
(Antony) cast his coate armor (which was wonderfull rich and sumptuous) upon Brutus bodie, and gave commaundement to one of his slaves infranchised to defray the charge of his buriall.
By means of these additions and displacements Shakespeare shows the young Octavius with his tenacity and self-control already superseding his older and more brilliant colleague. We see in them the beginning as well as the prophecy of the end.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
CHAPTER I
POSITION OF THE PLAY AFTER THE GREAT TRAGEDIES.
SHAKESPEARE’S INTEREST IN THE SUBJECT
It may be taken as certain that Shakespeare did not at once set about continuing the story which he had brought to the end of one of its stages in Julius Caesar and of the future progress of which he had in that play given the partial programme. Antony and Cleopatra belongs to a different phase of his development.
Though not published, so far as we know, till it appeared in the Folio Edition of 1623, there is not much difficulty in finding its approximate date; and that, despite its close connection with Julius Caesar in the general march of events and in the re-employment of some of the characters, was some half-dozen years after the composition of its predecessor. The main grounds for this opinion, now almost universally accepted, are the following:
1. We learn from the Stationers’ Register that the publisher, Edward Blount, had entered a “booke called Antony and Cleopatra” on May 20th, 1608. Some critics have maintained that this could not be Shakespeare’s in view of the fact that in November, 1623, license was granted to the same Blount and the younger Jaggard, with whom he was now co-operating, to include in the collected edition the Shakespearian piece among sixteen plays of which the copies were “not formerly entered to other men.” But the objection hardly applies, as the previous entry was in Blount’s favour, and, though he is now associated with Jaggard, he may not have thought it necessary, because of a change of firm as it were, to describe himself as “another man.” Even, however, if the authorship of the 1608 play be considered doubtful, its publication is significant. For, as has often been pointed out, it was customary when a piece was successful at one theatre to produce one on a similar subject at another. The mere existence, then, of an Antony and Cleopatra in the early months of 1608, is in so far an argument that about that time the great Antony and Cleopatra was attracting attention.
2. There is evidence that in the preceding years Shakespeare was occupied with and impressed by the Life of Antony.
(a) Plutarch tells how sorely Antony took to heart what he considered the disloyalty of his followers after Actium.