The other way’s a Mars.
(iI. v. 116.)
Even when he is fallen and worsted, she has no doubt how things would go were it a merely personal contest between him and his rival. When he returns from his last victory, she greets him: “Lord of lords! O infinite virtue!” (iv. viii. 16). When he dies, the world seems to her “no better than a sty” (iv. xv. 62). When she recalls his splendour, his bounty, his joyousness, it seems not a reality, but a dream, which yet must be more than a dream.
If there be, nor ever were, one such,
It’s past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff
To vie strange forms with fancy; yet, to imagine
An Antony, were nature’s piece ’gainst fancy,
Condemning shadows quite.
(V. ii. 96.)
Various interpretations have been given of these lines, but on any possible interpretation they exalt Antony alike above fact and fancy.[226] And when we run through the whole gamut of the words and deeds of the pair, from their squabbles to their death, it seems to me possible to doubt their love only by isolating some details and considering them to the exclusion of the rest.