Antoine. Mais cruel ravisseur de ses droits envahis.
Cesar. J’ay à Rome soumis tant de riches provinces.
Antoine. Rome ne peut souffrir commandement de Princes.
The scene with the conspirators Stirling treats very differently and much more freely. It had had, as we have seen, a peculiar history. In Muretus it was confined to Marcus Brutus and Cassius, in Grévin Decimus Brutus is added, in Garnier Decimus is retained and Marcus drops out. Alexander discriminates. He keeps one discussion for Marcus and Cassius, in so far restoring it to the original and more fitting form it had obtained from Muretus, though he transfers to Marcus some of the sentiments that Garnier had assigned to Decimus. But the half-apologetic rôle that Decimus plays in Garnier had impressed him, and he did not choose to forego the spice of variety which this contributed. So he invents a new scene for him in which Cicero takes the place of Cassius and solicits his support. But though the one episode is thus cut in two, and each of the halves enlarged far beyond the dimensions of the original whole, it is unquestionable that they owe their main suggestion and much of their matter to the Cornélie.
Since then Garnier, when his powers were still immature, could so effectively adapt these incidental passages, it is not surprising that he should by and by be able to stand alone, and produce plays in which the central interest was more dramatic.
Of these we are concerned only with Marc Antoine, which was acted with success at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1578, and was printed in the same year. In it Garnier has not altogether freed himself from his former faults. There are otiose personages who are introduced merely to supply general reflections: Diomedes, the secretary, on the pathos of Cleopatra’s fall; Philostratus, the philosopher, on the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy. There is no interaction of character on character, all the protagonists being so carefully excluded from each other that Octavianus does not meet Antony, Antony does not meet Cleopatra, Cleopatra does not meet Octavianus. The speeches are still over long, and the “sentences” over abundant. Nevertheless there is a real story, there are real characters; and the story and characters admit, or rather demand, an effective alternation of passion.
The time comprises the interval between Antony’s final reverse and the suicide of Cleopatra: it is short, but a good deal longer than what Jodelle allowed himself in the companion play. Further, the situation is much more complex and less confined, so that Garnier, while borrowing many motifs from Jodelle, or from their common authority, Plutarch, is able to avoid the monotony of Cléopatre Captive. Nor does the coherence suffer. It is true that the account of Antony’s death, announced by Dercetas, occurs as with Shakespeare in the fourth act; but the play is rightly named after him and not after the Queen. He is the principal and by far the most interesting figure, and it is his tragic fate to which all that precedes leads up, and which determines all that follows.
The first act, as so often in these Senecan plays, is entirely occupied with a soliloquy, which Antony declaims; but even this has a certain share of dramatic life, though rather after the fashion of a dramatic lyric than of a dramatic scene. He rages against what he supposes to be the crowning perfidy of his mistress, he recalls all that his infatuation has cost him; the worst of his woes is that they are caused by her; but he must love her still. The second act has at the opening and the close respectively the unnecessary monologues of Philostratus and Diomedes, but they serve as setting for the animated and significant conversation between Cleopatra and her women. From it we learn that of the final treason at least she is innocent, but she is full of remorse for the mischief that her love and her caprices have done, and determines, despite the claims of her children, to expiate it in death. Then, entering the monument she despatches Diomedes with her excuses to Antony. To him we return in the third act, which is central in interest as in position, and we hear him disburden his soul to his friend Lucilius. His fluctuations of feeling, shame at his undoing, passion for the fair undoer, jealousy lest his conqueror should supplant him in love as in empire, are delineated with sympathetic power:
Ait Cesar la victoire, ait mes biens, ait l’honneur
D’estre sans compagnon de la terre seigneur,