Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman,
And Cydnus swell’d above the banks, or for
The press of boats or pride.[196]
(II. iv. 68.)
But it was not only the prodigality of charm that would enthral the poet. In the relation of the lovers, in the character of Cleopatra, in the nature of her ascendancy, there is something that reminds us of the story of passion enshrined in the Sonnets. No doubt it is uncertain whether these in detail are to be regarded as biographical, but biographical they are at the core, at least in the sense that they are authentic utterance of feelings actually experienced. No doubt, too, the balance of evidence points to their composition, at least in the parts that deal with his unknown leman, early in Shakespeare’s career; but for that very reason the memories would be fitter to help him in interpreting the poetry of the historical record, for as Wordsworth says: “Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity.” So once more Shakespeare may have been moved to “make old offences of affections new,” that is, to infuse the passion of his own youth into this tale of “old unhappy far-off things.” His bygone sorrows of the Sonnets come back to him when he is writing the drama, mirror themselves in some of the situations and sentiments, and echo in the wording of a few of the lines. It is of course easy to exaggerate the importance of these reminiscences. The Dark Lady has been described as the original of Cleopatra, but the original of Cleopatra is the Cleopatra of Plutarch, and in many ways she is unlike the temptress of the poet. She is dowered with a marvellous beauty which all from Enobarbus to Octavius acknowledge, while the other is “foul” in all eyes save those of her lover; her face “hath not the power to make love groan”; and in her there is no hint of Cleopatra’s royalty of soul. Nor is the devotion of Antony the devotion of the sonneteer; it is far more absolute and unquestioning, it is also far more comrade-like and sympathetic; at first he exults in it without shame, and never till the last distracted days does suspicion or contempt enter his heart. Still less is his passing spasm of jealousy at the close like the chronic jealousy of the poet. It is a vengeful frenzy that must find other outlets as well as the self-accusing remonstrances and impotent rebukes of the lyrical complaints. The resemblance between sonnets and play is confined to the single feature that they both tell the story of an unlawful passion for a dark woman—for this was Shakespeare’s fixed idea in regard to Cleopatra—whose character and reputation were stained, whose influence was pernicious, and whose fatal spells depended largely on her arts and intellect. But this was enough to give Shakespeare, as it were, a personal insight into the case, and a personal interest in it, to furnish him with the key of the situation and place him at the centre.
And there was another point of contact between the author and the hero of the tragedy. It is stated in Plutarch’s account of Antony: “Some say that he lived three and fiftie yeares: and others say six and fiftie.” But the action begins a decade, or (for, as we shall see, there is a jumbling of dates in the opening scenes like that which we have noted in the corresponding ones of Julius Caesar) more than a decade before the final catastrophe. Thus Shakespeare would imagine Antony at the outset as between forty-two and forty-six, practically on the same niveau of life as himself, for in 1607-1608 he was in his forty-fourth year. They had reached the same stadium in their career, had the same general outlook on the future, had their great triumphs behind them, and yet with powers hardly impaired they both could say,
Though grey
Do something mingle with our younger brown, yet ha’ we
A brain that nourishes our nerves, and can
Get goal for goal of youth.