Compare this with the following speech of Troilus to Cressida in the play : "O, that I thought it could be in a woman; Might be affronted with the match and weight How were I then uplifted! But alas, I am as true as Truth's simplicity, And simpler than the infancy of Truth." These passages may not seem very characteristic at first sight, though we think they are so. We will give two, that cannot be mistaken. Patroclus says to Achilles; "Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, Be shook to air." Troilus, addressing the God of Day on the approach of the morning that parts him from Cressida, says with much scorn, "What! proffer'st thou thy light here for to sell? If nobody but Shakespear could have written the former, nobody but Chaucer would have thought of the latter.— Chaucer was the most literal of poets, as Richardson was of prose-writers. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA THIS is a very noble play. Though not in the first class of Shakespear's productions, it stands next to them, and is, we think, the finest of his historical plays, that is, of those in which he made poetry the organ of history, and assumed a certain tone of character and sentiment, in "That stands upon the swell at full of tide, The characters-breathe, move, and live. Shakespear does not stand reasoning on what his characters would do or say, but at once becomes them, and speaks and acts for them. He does not present us with groups of stagepuppets of poetical machines making set speeches on human life, and acting from a calculation of problematical motives, but he brings living men and women on the scene, who speak and act from real feelings, according to the ebbs and flows of passion, without the least tincture of pedantry of logic or rhetoric. Nothing is made out by inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis, but every thing takes place just as it would have done in reality, according to the occasion. The character of Cleopatra is a master-piece. What an extreme contrast it affords to Imogen! One would think it almost impossible for the same person to have drawn both. She is voluptuous, ostentatious, conscious, boastful of her charms, haughty, tyrannical, fickle. The luxurious pomp and gorgeous extravagance of the Egyptian queen are displayed in all their force and lustre, as well as the irregular grandeur of the soul of Mark Antony. Take only the first four lines that they speak as an example of the regal style of lovemaking. Cleopatra. If it be love indeed, tell me how much? Cleopatra. I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd. Antony. Then must thou needs find out new heav'n, new earth.” The rich and poetical description of her person beginning "The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold, The winds were love-sick' seems to prepare the way for, and almost to justify the subsequent infatuation of Antony when in the sea-fight at Actium, he leaves the battle, and "like a doating mallard" follows her flying sails. Few things in Shakespear (and we know of nothing in any other author like them) have more of that local truth of imagination and character than the passage in which Cleopatra is represented conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence-"He's speaking now, or murmuring-Where's my serpent of old Nile?" Or again, when she says to Antony, after the defeat at Actium, and his summoning up resolution to risk another fight-"It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor; but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." Perhaps the finest burst of all is Antony's rage after his final defeat when he comes in, and surprises the messenger of Cæsar kissing her hand "To let a fellow that will take rewards, And say God quit you, be familiar with, It is no wonder that he orders him to be whipped; but his low condition is not the true reason: there is another feeling which lies deeper, though Antony's pride would not let him shew it, except by his rage; he suspects the fellow to be Cæsar's proxy. Cleopatra's whole character is the triumph of the voluptuous, of the love of pleasure and the power of giving it, over every other consideration. Octavia is a dull foil to her, and Fulvia a shrew and shrill-tongued. What a picture do those lines give of her "Age cannot wither her, nor custom steal The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry What a spirit and fire in her conversation with Antony's messenger who brings her the unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia! How all the pride of beauty and of high rank breaks out in her promised reward to him T "There's gold, and here My bluest veins to kiss!". She had great and unpardonable faults, but the grandeur of her death almost redeems them. She learns from the depth of despair the strength of her affections. She keeps her queen-like state in the last disgrace, and her sense of the pleasurable in the last moments of her life. She tastes a luxury in death. After applying the asp, she says with fondness "Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle. It is worth while to observe that Shakespear has contrasted the extreme magnificence of the descriptions in this play with pictures of extreme suffering and physical horror, not less striking-partly perhaps to place the effeminate character of Mark Antony in a more favourable light, and at the same time to preserve a certain balance of feeling in the mind. Cæsar says, hearing of his rival's conduct at the court of Cleopatra, "Antony, Leave thy lascivious wassels. When thou once Did famine follow, whom thou fought'st against, Which beast would cough at. Thy palate then did deign Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, The barks of trees thou browsed'st. On the Alps, It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh, So much as lank'd not." The passage after Antony's defeat by Augustus, where he is made to say "Yes, yes; he at Philippi kept His sword e'en like a dancer; while I struck That the mad Brutus ended " is one of those fine retrospections which shew us the winding and eventful march of human life. The jealous attention which has been paid to the unities both of time and place has taken away the principle of perspective in the drama, and all the interest which objects derive from distance, from contrast, from privation, from change of fortune, from long-cherished passion; and contrasts our view of life from a strange and romantic dream, long, obscure, and infinite, into a smartly contested, three hours' inaugural disputation on its merits by the different candidates for theatrical applause." The latter scenes of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA are full of the changes of accident and passion. Success and defeat follow one another with startling rapidity. Fortune sits upon her wheel more blind and giddy than usual. This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue of Antony with Eros. 66 Antony. Eros, thou yet behold'st me? Antony. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish, A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon't, that nod unto the world And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs, Eros. Ay, my lord. Antony. That which is now a horse, even with a thought As water is in water. |