It will be noted that in direct quotation, in incident and allusion, in general structure, Shakespeare owes far more to his authority in the last half of the play than in the first: for the closer observance of, and the larger loans from, the biography begin with the central scenes of the third act. But it is at this stage of the narrative that Cleopatra, for a while in the background, once more becomes the paramount person; and few are the allusions to her from the period of Actium that Shakespeare suffers to escape him. Moreover such independent additions as there are in the latter portion of the play, have mostly to do with her; and in six of the invented scenes in the earlier acts she has the chief or at least a leading role. Clearly, when she is in evidence, Shakespeare feels least need to supplement, and when she is absent he has to fill in the gap. And this is significant of his whole conception. Gervinus tries to express the contrast between the Antony of Plutarch and the Antony of Shakespeare by means of a comparison. “We are inclined,” he writes, “to designate the ennobling transformation which the poet undertook by one word: he refined the crude features of Mark Antony into the character of an Alcibiades.” In a way that is not ill said, so far as it goes; but it omits perhaps the most essential point. The great thing about Shakespeare’s Antony is his capacity for a grand passion. We cannot talk of Alcibiades as a typical lover in the literature of the world, but Antony has a good right to his place in the “Seintes Legende of Cupyde.” When three-quarters of a century after Shakespeare Dryden ventured to rehandle the theme in the noble play that almost justifies the audacity of his attempt, he called his version, All for Love or the World well lost. We have something of the same feeling in reading Shakespeare, and we do not have it in reading Plutarch. Plutarch has no eyes for the glory of Antony’s madness. He gives the facts or traditions that Shakespeare reproduced, but he regards the whole affair as a pitiable dotage, or, at best, as a calamitous visitation—regards it in short much as the Anti-Shakesperians do now. After describing the dangerous tendencies in Antony’s mixed nature, he introduces his account of the meeting at the Cydnus, with the deliberate statement which the rest of his story merely works out in detail:
Antonius being thus inclined, the last and extreamest mischiefe of all other (to wit, the love of Cleopatra) lighted on him, who did waken and stirre up many vices yet hidden in him, and were never seene to any; and if any sparke of goodnesse or hope of rising were left him, Cleopatra quenched it straight and made it worse than before.
Similarly his final verdict in the Comparison of Demetrius and Marcus Antonius is unrelenting:
Cleopatra oftentimes unarmed Antonius, and intised him to her, making him lose matters of importaunce, and verie needeful jorneys, to come and be dandled with her about the rivers of Canobus and Taphosiris. In the ende as Paris fledde from battell and went to hide him selfe in Helens armes; even so did he in Cleopatras armes, or to speak more properlie, Paris hidde him selfe in Helens closet, but Antonius to followe Cleopatra, fledde and lost the victorie.... He slue him selfe (to confesse a troth) cowardly and miserably.
Shakespeare by no means neglects this aspect of the case, as Dryden tends to do, and he could never have taken Dryden’s title for his play. Nevertheless, while agreeing with Plutarch, he agrees with Dryden too. To him Antony’s devotion to Cleopatra is the grand fact in his career, which bears witness to his greatness as well as to his littleness, and is at once his perdition and his apotheosis. And so in the third place this is a love tragedy, and has its relations with Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and Cressida, the only other attempts that Shakespeare made in this kind: as is indicated even in their designations. For these are the only plays that are named after two persons, and the reason is that in a true love story both the lovers have equal rights. The symbol for it is an ellipse with two foci not a circle with a single centre.[202]
It has sometimes been pointed out that what is generally considered the chief tragic theme and what was an almost indispensable ingredient in the classic drama of France, is very seldom the Leit-motif of a Greek or a Shakespearian masterpiece. In this triad however Shakespeare has made use of it, and it is interesting to note the differences of treatment in the various members of the group. In Romeo and Juliet he idealises youthful love with its raptures, its wonders, its overthrow in collision with the harsh facts of life. Troilus and Cressida shows the inward dissolution of such love when it is unworthily bestowed, and suffers from want of reverence and loftiness. In Antony and Cleopatra love is not a revelation as in the first, nor an illusion as in the second, but an infatuation. There is nothing youthful about it, whether as adoration or inexperience. It is the love that seizes the elderly man of the world, the trained mistress of arts, and does this, as it would seem, to cajole and destroy them both. It is in one aspect the love that Bacon describes in his essay with that title.
He that preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas. For whosoever esteemeth too much of Amorous Affection quitteth both Riches and Wisedom. This Passion hath his Flouds in the very times of Weaknesse, which are great Prosperitie and great Adversitie, though this latter hath beene lesse observed. Both which times kindle Love, and make it more fervent, and therefore shew it to be the Childe of Folly. They doe best, who, if they cannot but admit Love, yet make it keepe Quarter, And sever it wholly from their serious Affaires and Actions of life; For if it checke once with Businesse, it troubleth Men’s Fortunes, and maketh Men that they can no wayes be true to their owne Ends.... In Life it doth much mischiefe, Sometimes like a Syren, Sometimes like a Fury. You may observe that amongst all the great and worthy Persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either Ancient or Recent), there is not One that hath beene transported to the mad degree of Love; which shewes that great Spirits and great Businesse doe keepe out this weake Passion. You must except, never the lesse, Marcus Antonius the halfe partner of the Empire of Rome.
Part Siren, part Fury, that in truth is precisely how Plutarch would personify the love of Antony: and yet it is just this love that makes him memorable. Seductive and destructive in its obvious manifestations, nevertheless for the great reason that it was so engrossing and sincere, it reveals and unfolds a nobility and depth in his character, of which we should otherwise never have believed him capable.
These three aspects of this strange play, as a chronicle history, as a personal tragedy and as a love poem, merge and pass into each other, but in a certain way they successively become prominent in the following discussion.