Again, in amazement at his tearful pathos, she exclaims: “What does he mean?” And with an effort at cynicism, Enobarbus, who has scoffed at Antony’s emotion over the bodies of Caesar and Brutus, replies: “To make his followers weep”; for Enobarbus tries to think that it is merely the orator’s eloquence that runs away with him in his melting mood. Nevertheless his own sympathies are touched for the moment: “I, an ass, am onion-eyed.” In truth none can mistake the genuine feeling of Antony’s words, though at the hint he can at once change their tone and give them an heroic and even a sanguine turn.[210]
Know, my hearts,
I hope well of to-morrow; and will lead you
Where rather I’ll expect victorious life
Than death and honour.
(IV. ii. 41.)
But whatever deductions be made, Antony’s last days in Alexandria bring back a St. Martin’s summer of genial power and genial nobility that are doubly captivating when set off against the foil of Caesar’s coldness. The grand proportions of his nature, that are obscured in the vintage time of success and indulgence, show forth again when the branches are bare. No doubt he again and again does the wrong things, or at least the things that lead to no useful result. His patron god deserts him as in Plutarch, but that god in Shakespeare is not Bacchus but Hercules, and he departs earlier than in the story and not on the last night before the end; for the withdrawal of the divine friend is now less the presage of death than the symbol of inefficacy. Antony’s insight and judgment may be failing; his flashes of power may be like his flashes of jealousy, and indicate the dissolution of his being. Still when all is said and done, he seems to become bolder, grander, more magnanimous, as the fuel is cut off from his inward fire and it burns and wastes in its own heat. His reflux of heroism cannot save him against the material superiority and concentrated ambition of Octavius, for it is not the consequent energy that commands success and that implies a consequent purpose in life: but all the more impressive and affecting is this gallant fronting of fate. As Cleopatra arms him for his last little victory, he cries with his old self-consciousness:
O love,
That thou couldst see my wars to-day, and knew’st
The royal occupation! thou shouldst see