(III. xii. 14.)
Here he touches the bottom mud of degradation and almost sinks to the level of Lepidus who did obtain permission to live under surveillance at Circeii “till death enlarged his confine.” And here too Shakespeare follows Plutarch, but here too with a difference. For in the biography this incident comes after some time has elapsed, and new disappointments and new indulgences have made deeper inroads in Antony’s spirit. In one aspect no doubt he is less pitiable in thus being brought to mortification by degrees. In Shakespeare he adopts this course before ever he has seen the Queen, and in so far shows greater weakness of character. Like Richard II. he bows his head at once, and without an effort takes “the sweet way to despair.” Yet just for that reason he is from another point of view less ignoble. It is the sudden sense of disgrace, the amazement, the consternation at his own poltroonery that turns his knees to water. But the very immediacy and poignancy of his self-disgust is a guarantee of surviving nobility that needs only an occasion to call it forth. The occasion comes in the refusal of his own petition and the conditional compliance with Cleopatra’s. Antony’s answer to this slighting treatment is his second challenge. This too Shakespeare obtained from Plutarch, but of this too he altered the significance and the date. In Plutarch it is sent after Antony’s victorious sally, apparently in elation at that trifling success, and is recorded without other remark than Octavius’ rejoinder. In Shakespeare it is the retort of Antony’s self-consciousness to the depreciation of his rival, and it is the first rebound of his relaxed valour. When the victor counts him as nought he is stung to comparisons, and feels that apart from success and external advantages he is still of greater worth:
Tell him he wears the rose
Of youth upon him; from which the world should note
Something particular: his coin, ships, legions,
May be a coward’s; whose ministers would prevail
Under the service of a child as soon
As i’ the command of Caesar: I dare him, therefore,
To lay his gay comparisons apart,
And answer me declined, sword against sword,