Of dull Octavia.
(V. ii. 54.)
It is easy to construct her picture from these hints. Calm, pure, devout, submissive; quite without vivacity or initiative, she presents the old-fashioned ideal of womanhood, that finds a sphere subordinate though august, by the domestic hearth. And this is in the main Plutarch’s conception of her too. But there are differences. The sacrifices of the lady to the exigencies of statecraft is emphasised by the historian: “She was maryed unto him as it were of necessitie, bicause her brother Caesars affayres so required it,” and that even in her year of mourning, so that a dispensation had to be obtained; since it was “against the law that a widow should be maried within tenne monethes after her husbandes death.” Nevertheless her association with Antony is far more intimate in Plutarch than in Shakespeare; she is the mother of his children, feels bound to him, and definitely takes his side. When relations first become strained between the brothers-in-law, and not, as in the drama, just before the final breach, she plays the peace maker, but successfully and on Antony’s behalf. She seeks out her brother; tells him she is now the happiest woman in the world; if war should break out between them, “it is uncertaine to which of them the goddes have assigned the victorie or overthrowe. But for me, on which side soever victorie fall, my state can be but most miserable still.” In Shakespeare this petition, eked out with reminiscences of the appeal of Blanch in King John, and with anticipations of the appeal of Volumnia in Coriolanus, is addressed to Antony, and the even balance of her sympathies is accented and reiterated in a way for which Plutarch gives no warrant.
In the Life again, even when Antony has rejoined Cleopatra, has showered provinces on her and his illegitimate children, and, after the Parthian campaign, is living with her once more, Octavia insists on seeking him out and brings him
great store of apparell for souldiers, a great number of horse, summe of money, and gifts, to bestow on his friendes and Captaines he had about him: and besides all those, she had two thowsand souldiers chosen men, all well armed, like unto the Praetors bands.
She has to return from Athens without seeing Antony, but, despite Caesar’s command, she still lives in her husband’s house, still tries to heal the division, looks after his children and promotes the business of all whom he sends to Rome.
Howbeit thereby, thinking no hurt, she did Antonius great hurt. For her honest love and regard to her husband, made every man hate him, when they sawe he did so unkindly use so noble a Lady.
And finally, when Antony sent her word to leave his house, she took with her all his children save Fulvia’s eldest son who was with his father, and instead of showing resentment, only bewailed and lamented “her cursed hap that had brought her to this, that she was accompted one of the chiefest causes of this civill warre.”
Her even more magnanimous care for all Antony’s offspring without distinction, when Antony is no more, belongs of course to a later date; but all the previous instances of her devotion to his interest fall well within the limits of the play, and yet Shakespeare makes no use of them.
It does not suit him to suggest that Antony ever deviated from his passion for Cleopatra or bestowed his affection elsewhere: indeed, on the eve of his marriage, he reveals his heart and intentions clearly enough. But Shakespeare also knows that without affection to bring it out, there will be no answering affection in a woman like Octavia. She will be true to all her obligations, so long as they are obligations, but no love will be roused to make her do more than is in her bond. And of love there is in the play as little trace on her part as on Antony’s. It is brother and sister, not husband and wife, that exchange the most endearing terms: “Sweet Octavia,” “My dearest sister,” and “my noble brother,” “most dear Caesar”; while to Antony she is “Octavia,” “gentle Octavia,” or at most “Dear Lady,” and to her he is “Good my lord.” At the parting in Rome Caesar has a cloud in his face and her eyes drop tears like April showers. At the parting in Athens there is only the formal permission to leave, on the one hand, and the formal acknowledgment on the other. Evidently, if, as she says, she has her