(IV. viii. 19.)
There would be a general sympathy of attitude, and it even extends to something in the poet himself analogous to the headlong ardour of Antony. In the years that had elapsed since Shakespeare gave the first instalment of his story in Julius Caesar, a certain change had been proceeding in his art. The present drama belongs to a different epoch of his authorship, an epoch not of less force but of less restrained force, an epoch when he works perhaps with less austerity of stroke and less intellectualism, but—strange that it should be so in advancing years—with more abandonment to the suggestions of imagination and passion. In all these respects the fortunes of Antony and Cleopatra would offer him a fit material. In the second as compared with the first Roman play, there is certainly no decline. The subject is different, the point of view is different, the treatment is different, but subject, point of view and treatment all harmonise with each other, and the whole in its kind is as great as could be.
Perhaps some such considerations may explain why Shakespeare, after he had been for seven years expatiating on the heights of free tragic invention, yet returned for a time to a theme which, with his ideas of loyalty to recorded fact, dragged him back in some measure to the embarrassments of the chronicle history. It was all so congenial, that he was willing to face the disadvantages of an action that straggled over years and continents, of a multiplicity of short scenes that in the third act rise to a total of thirteen and in the fourth to a total of fifteen, of a number of episodic personages who appear without preparation and vanish almost without note. He had to lay his account with this if he dramatised these transactions at all, for to him they were serious matters that his fancy must not be allowed to distort. Indeed he accepts the conditions so unreservedly, and makes so little effort to evade them, that his mind seems to have taken the ply, and he resorts to the meagre, episodical scene, not only when Plutarch’s narrative suggests it, but when he is making additions of his own and when no very obvious advantage is to be secured. This is the only explanation that readily presents itself for the fourth scene of the second act, which in ten lines describes Lepidus’ leave-taking of Mecaenas and Agrippa.[197] There is for this no authority in the Life; and what object does it serve? It may indicate on the one hand the punctilious deference that Octavius’ ministers deem fit to show as yet to the incompetent Triumvir, and on the other his lack of efficient energy in allowing his private purposes to make him two days late at the rendezvous which he himself has advocated as urgent. But these hints could quite well have been conveyed in some other way, and this invented scene seems theatrically and dramatically quite otiose. Nevertheless, and this is the point to observe, it so fits into the pattern of the chronicle play that it does not force itself on one’s notice as superfluous.
It is partly for this reason that Antony and Cleopatra holds its distinctive place among Shakespeare’s masterpieces. On the one hand there is no play that springs more spontaneously out of the heart of its author, and into which he has breathed a larger portion of his inspiration; and on the other there is none that is more purely historical, so that in this respect it is comparable among the Roman dramas to Richard II. in the English series. This was the double characteristic that Coleridge emphasised in his Notes on Shakespeare’s Plays: “There is not one in which he has followed history so minutely, and yet there are few in which he impresses the notion of angelic strength so much—perhaps none in which he impresses it more strongly. This is greatly owing to the manner in which the fiery force is sustained throughout, and to the numerous momentary flashes of nature counteracting the historical abstraction.” The angelic strength, the fiery force, the flashes of nature are due to his complete sympathy with the facts, but that makes his close adherence to his authority all the more remarkable.
CHAPTER II
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA,
A HISTORY, TRAGEDY, AND LOVE POEM;
AS SHOWN BY ITS RELATIONS WITH PLUTARCH
The obligations to Plutarch, though very great, are of a somewhat peculiar kind. Shakespeare does not borrow so largely or so repeatedly from the diction of North as in Coriolanus or even in Julius Caesar. His literal indebtedness is for the most part confined to the exploitation here and there of a few short phrases or sentences, generally of a not very distinctive character. Thus Octavia is described as “having an excellent grace, wisedom and honestie, joined unto so rare a beawtie”; which suggests her “beauty, wisdom, modesty,” in the play (ii. ii. 246). Thus, after the scourging of Thyreus, Antony sends Caesar the message:
“If this mislike thee,” said he, “thou hast Hipparchus[198] one of my infranchised bondmen with thee: hang him if thou wilt, or whippe him at thy pleasure, that we may cry quittaunce.”
This becomes:
If he mislike
My speech and what is done, tell him he has