[186] In Plutarch Antony treats Lepidus with studied deference.
[187] See Bradley, Shakespearian Tragedy.
[188] I have said nothing of other possible references and loans because they seem to me irrelevant or doubtful. Thus Malone drew attention to the words of Morose in Ben Jonson’s Epicoene: “Nay, I would sit out a play that were nothing but fights at sea, drum, trumpet and target.” He thought that this remark might contain ironical allusion to the battle scenes in Antony and Cleopatra, for instance the stage direction at the head of Act iii., Scene 10: “Canidius marcheth with his land army one way over the stage: and Taurus, the lieutenant of Caesar the other way. After their going in is heard the noise of a sea-fight.” But even were this more certain than it is, it would only prove that Antony and Cleopatra had made so much impression as to give points to the satirist some time after its performance: it would not help us to the date. For Epicoene belongs to 1610, and no one would place Antony and Cleopatra so late.
[189] i.e. Sin’s.
[190] Bradley, Shakespearian Tragedy.
[191] ii. iv. 44.
[192] iii. ii. 154.
[193] Besides the plays discussed in the Introduction as having a possible place in the lineage of Shakespeare’s, others were produced on the Continent, which in that respect are quite negligible but which serve to prove the widespread interest in the subject. Thus in 1560 Hans Sachs in Germany composed, in seven acts, one of his homespun, well-meant dramas that were intended to edify spectator or reader. Thus in 1583 Cinthio in Italy treated the same theme, and it has been conjectured, by Klein, that his Cleopatra was known to Shakespeare. Certainly Shakespeare makes use of Cinthio’s novels, but the particulars signalised by Klein, that are common to the English and to the Italian tragedy, which latter I have not been able to procure, are, to use Klein’s own term, merely “external,” and are to be explained, in so far as they are valid at all, which Moeller (Kleopatra in der Tragödien-Literatur) disputes, by reference to Plutarch. An additional one which Moeller suggests without attaching much weight to it, is even less plausible than he supposes. He points out that Octavius’ emissary, who in Plutarch is called Thyrsus, in Cinthio becomes Tireo, as in Shakespeare he similarly becomes Thyreus; but he notes that this is also the name that Shakespeare would get from North. As a matter of fact, however, in the 1623 folio of Antony and Cleopatra and in subsequent editions till the time of Theobald, this personage, for some reason or other as yet undiscovered, is styled Thidias; so the alleged coincidence is not so much unimportant as fallacious. A third tragedy, Montreuil’s Cléopatre, which like Cinthio’s is inaccessible to me, was published in France in 1595; but to judge from Moeller’s analysis and the list of dramatis personae, it has no contact with Shakespeare’s.
[194] obstructed.
[195] Antony had already been worshipped as that deity.