In Marses schole who neuer lesson learn’d.
The alleged parallels are thus most apparent when Shakespeare is collated with the French, and of these the chief that do not come from Plutarch have already been quoted in the description of the Marc Antoine. They are neither numerous nor striking. Besides Antony’s disparagement of his rival’s soldiership there are only three that in any way call for remark. In Garnier, Cleopatra’s picture of her shade wandering beneath the cypress trees of the Underworld may suggest, in Shakespeare, her lover’s anticipation of Elysium, “where souls do couch on flowers” (A. and C. iv. xiv. 51); but there is a great difference in the tone of the context. Her dying utterance:
Que de mille baisers, et mille et mille encore
Pour office dernier ma bouche vous honore:
is in the wording not unlike the dying utterance of Antony:
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips;
(A. and C. IV. xv. 20.)
but there is more contrast than agreement in the ideas. Above all, Cleopatra’s horror at the thought of her children being led in triumph through Rome and pointed at by the herd of citizens is close akin to the feeling that inspires similar passages in Shakespeare (A. and C. iv. xv. 23, v. ii. 55, v. ii. 207); but even here the resemblance is a little deceptive, since in Shakespeare she feels this horror for herself.
The correspondences between Shakespeare and Daniel are equally confined to detail, but they are more definite and more significant. It is Daniel who first represents Cleopatra as scorning to be made a spectacle in Rome; and her resentment at Caesar’s supposing