With the arm’d rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom,
To drench the Capitol: but that they would
Have one man but one man? And that is it
Hath made me rig my navy: at whose burthen
The anger’d ocean foams; with which I meant
To scourge the ingratitude that despiteful Rome
Cast on my noble father.
(II. vi. 14.)
But even if all this were quite genuine, it would not suffice to form a really distinguished character. In the first place Sextus never penetrates to the core of things but lingers over the shows. Thus he has no grip of his present strength or of the insignificance to which he relegates himself by his composition. For Shakespeare differs from Plutarch, and follows Appian, in making his rising a very serious matter.[206] It is this that in the play, and in complete contradiction of the Life, is the chief motive for Antony’s return to Italy: and he gives his reasons. He says that Pompey “commands the empire of the sea” (i. ii. 191),—a great exaggeration of Plutarch’s statement that he “so scoored[207] all the sea thereabouts (i.e., near Sicily) that none durst peepe out with a sayle.” He continues, that “the slippery people” begin to throw all the dignities of Pompey the Great upon his son (i. ii. 193), though there is no hint of this popular support in the history. And he concludes that Pompey’s
... quality, going on,