Chapter XVII: Act III: , Ventidius’ halt in his career of victory and its reason,

Octavia’s distraction between the claims of husband and brother, the overthrow of Pompey and deposition of Lepidus, the account of the coronation of Cleopatra and her children, Enobarbus’ remonstrance against Cleopatra’s presence in the armament, the allusion to the war being managed by her eunuch and her maids, the comparison of Octavius’ and Antony’s navies, the name Antoniad given to Cleopatra’s admiral, Antony’s challenge to Octavius, the soldier’s appeal to fight on land, many particulars about the battle of Actium, Antony’s dismissal of his friends with treasure, the embassage of Euphronius and Octavius’ reply, Thyreus’ commission, Antony’s renewed challenge, the birthday celebration; in Act IV., Octavius’ answer to the challenge, Antony’s disquieting speech at the banquet, the supposed departure of his divine patron, the defection of Enobarbus, the reference to the treason of Alexas and others, Antony’s successful sally, his return in triumph and embrace of Cleopatra ere he doffs his armour, her gift to the valiant soldier, the death of Enobarbus, the posting of the footmen on the hills before the final catastrophe, the presage of swallows building on Antony’s ship, the fraternization of the fleets, Antony’s rage at Cleopatra, her flight to the tomb, the message of her death, Antony’s revulsion of feeling at the news, Eros’ plighted obligation and his suicide, the mortal wound Antony gives himself, the second message from Cleopatra, his conveyance to the monument, Cleopatra’s refusal to undo the locks and her expedient of drawing him up, several particulars in the last interview, such as the commendation of Proculeius; in Act V., Dercetas’ announcement to Octavius of Antony’s death, Octavius’ reception of the tidings and his reference to their correspondence, his plans for Cleopatra, the interview of Proculeius with Cleopatra at the Monument, his unobserved entrance, the exclamation of the waiting-woman, Cleopatra’s attempted suicide, the visit of Octavius, his threats concerning Cleopatra’s children, her concealment of her treasure, the disclosure of Seleucus, her indignation at him and apology to Octavius, Octavius’ reception of it, Dolabella’s sympathy with the captive queen, the arrival of the countryman with the figs, the dressing in state, the death of Cleopatra and Iras before the soldiers enter, Charmian’s last service in adjusting the diadem, Octavius’ appreciation of Cleopatra’s courage and command for her burial beside Antony.

This enumeration shows how largely Shakespeare is indebted to Plutarch, and also how his obligations are greatest in the later portion of the play. They become conspicuous a little before the middle of the third act, and the proportion is maintained till the close; for though there are not so many in the fifth act, it is considerably shorter than the fourth or than the last eight scenes of the third.

Shakespeare however obtains from Plutarch not merely a large number of his details, but the general programme of the story and the presuppositions of the portraiture, as will appear from a short summary of Plutarch’s narrative, into which, for clearness’ sake, I insert the principal dates.

After Philippi, Antony gave himself up to a life of ostentation and luxury, interrupted by flashes of his nobler mood, first in Greece and subsequently in Asia. Then came his meeting with Cleopatra on the Cydnus, and in his passion for her all that was worthiest in his nature was smothered. Despite pressing public duties he accompanied her on her return to Alexandria, where he wasted his time in “childish sports and idle pastimes.” In the midst of his dalliance the tidings arrive with which the play opens, in 41 B.C., of the contest of his brother Lucius and his wife Fulvia, first with each other and then with Octavius, of their defeat and expulsion from Italy; as well as of the inroad of the Parthians under Labienus as far as Lydia and Ionia.

Then began Antonius with much a doe to rouse him selfe as if
he had been wakened out of a deepe sleepe, and as a man may
say comming out of a great dronkennes.

He sets out for Parthia, but in obedience to the urgent summons of Fulvia, changes his course for Italy. On the way he falls in with fugitives of his party who tell him that his wife was sole cause of the war and had begun it only to withdraw him from Cleopatra. Soon afterwards Fulvia, who was “going to meete with Antonius” fell sick and died at Sicyon in 40 B.C.—“by good fortune” comments Plutarch, as now the colleagues could be more easily reconciled. The friends of both were indisposed to “unrippe any olde matters” and a composition was come to whereby Antony obtained the East, Octavius the West, and Lepidus Africa. This agreement, since Antony was now a widower and “denied not that he kept Cleopatra, but so did he not confesse that he had her as his wife,” was confirmed by Antony’s marriage, which every one approved, with Octavius’ dearly loved half-sister Octavia, and it was hoped that “she should be a good meane to keepe good love and amitie betwext her brother and him.”

Meanwhile Sextus Pompeius in Sicily had been making himself troublesome with his pirate allies, and as he had showed great courtesy to Antony’s mother, it seemed good to make peace with him. An interview accordingly took place at Misenum in 39 B.C. as a result of which he was granted Sicily and Sardinia on the conditions mentioned in the play.

Antony was now able to resume his plans for punishing the Parthians and sent Ventidius against them while he still remained in Rome. But moved by the predominance of Octavius and the warning of the soothsayer, he resolved to take up his own jurisdiction, and with Octavia and their infant daughter set out for Greece, where he heard the news of Ventidius’ success in 38 B.C.

In 37 B.C., offended at some reports, he returned to Italy with Octavia, who had now a second daughter and was again with child. By her intercession good relations were restored between the brothers-in-law, each lending the other the forces of which he most stood in need. Octavius employed the borrowed ships against Sextus Pompeius, Antony was to employ the borrowed soldiers against the Parthians.

Leaving his wife and children in Octavius’ care, Antony proceeded directly to Asia.

Then beganne this pestilent plague and mischiefe of
Cleopatraes love (which had slept a longe tyme and seemed
to have bene utterlie forgotten and that Antonius had geven
place to better counsell) againe to kindle and to be in
force, so soone as Antonius came neere unto Syria.

He sends for her and to the scandal of the Romans pays her extravagant honours, showers kingdoms upon her, and designates their twin children the Sun and the Moon.

He does not, however, in seeming, neglect his expedition to Parthia, but gathers a huge and well appointed host wherewith to invade it. Nevertheless

this so great and puisant army which made the Indians quake
for feare, dwelling about the contry of the Bactrians and
all Asia also to tremble: served him to no purpose, and all
for the love he bore to Cleopatra. For the earnest great
desire he had to lye all winter with her, made him begin his
warre out of due time, and for hast to put all in hazard,
being so ravished and enchaunted with the sweete poyson of
her love, that he had no other thought but of her, and how
he might quickly returne againe: more then how he might
overcome his enemies.

Not only did Antony choose the wrong season, but in his hurry he left all his heavy engines behind him and thus threw away his chances in advance. The campaign was a series of disasters and ended in an inglorious retreat. The only credit that can be given to him from beginning to end is for efficiency in misfortune and sympathy with his soldiers. Yet even these were impaired by his fatal passion.

The greate haste he made to returne unto Cleopatra, caused
him to put his men to great paines, forcing them to lye in
the field all winter long when it snew unreasonably, that by
the way he lost eight thowsand of his men.

Arrived at the Syrian coast he awaits her coming.

And bicause she taried longer then he would have had her,
he pined away for love and sorrow. So that he was at such
a straight, that he wist not what to doe, and therefore to
weare it out, he gave him selfe to quaffing and feasting.
But he was so drowned with the love of her, that he could
not abide to sit at the table till the feast were ended: but
many times while others banketted, he came to the sea side
to see if she were comming.

Meanwhile, in 36 B.C., during the Parthian expedition, Sextus Pompeius had been defeated, his death, not mentioned by Plutarch, following in the ensuing year, and Lepidus had been deposed by Octavius, who gave no account of the spoils. On the other hand, in 34 B.C., Antony, who had overrun and seized Armenia, celebrated his triumph not in Rome but in Alexandria.

Grievances were thus accumulating on both sides, and Octavia once more seeking to mediate, took ship to join her husband with the approval of Octavius, who foresaw the upshot, and regarded it as likely to put his brother-in-law in the wrong.

Antony bade her stop at Athens, promising to come to her, but afterwards, fearing lest Cleopatra should kill herself for grief, he broke tryst, and Octavia returned to Rome where she watched over his interests as best she might. Antony in the meantime accompanied Cleopatra to Egypt and gave the Romans new offence by paying her divine honours and parcelling out the East among her and her children.

Then came the interchange of uncompromising messages in 33 B.C., and Antony bade Octavia leave his house. The appeal to arms was inevitable, and as the taxation to which Octavius was compelled to resort in view of his rival’s great preparation roused general discontent, it was Antony’s cue to invade Italy. But he continued to squander his time in feasts and revels, and in such and other ways further alienated his friends in Rome.

In 32 B.C. Octavius declared war against Cleopatra, and had Antony deprived of his authority. The battle of Actium followed on the 2nd September, 31 B.C. But Antony, after his retirement to Egypt, in some measure recovered from his first despondency at the defeat, and even when he found himself forsaken by allies and troops, continued to live a life of desperate gaiety. After an ignominious attempt at negotiation and a flicker of futile success, the final desertion of his fleet, for which he blamed Cleopatra, put an end to his resistance, and he killed himself in 30 B.C., less, however, in despair at his overthrow than for grief at Cleopatra’s alleged death.

(He) said unto him selfe: “What doest thou looke for
further, Antonius, sith spitefull fortune hath taken from
thee the only joy thou haddest, for whom thou yet reservedst
thy life.”

After mentioning how Antony’s son, Antyllus, and Cleopatra’s son, Caesarion, were betrayed to death by their governors, Plutarch describes how Cleopatra for a while is deterred from suicide chiefly by fears for her other children. Hearing, however, Octavius’ definite plans for her, she obtains leave to offer a last oblation at Antony’s tomb, and thereafter takes her own life. The biography concludes with a notice of Octavia’s care for all Antony’s children, not only Fulvia’s and her own, but those of whom Cleopatra was mother.

It will be seen from this sketch that no incidents of political importance are added, few are altered, and very few omitted by Shakespeare. Of course the dramatic form necessitates a certain concentration, and this of itself, even were there no farther motive, would account for the occasional synchronising of separate episodes. Thus the news of Fulvia’s death and Sextus Pompeius’ aggression is run together with the news of the wars of Fulvia and Lucius and the advance of the Parthians. Thus between the second marriage and the final breach it was convenient to condense matters, and, in doing this, to omit Antony’s flying visit to Italy, blend Octavia’s first and second attempts at mediation, and represent her as taking leave of her husband at Athens. In the same way the months between the battle of Actium and the death of Antony, and the days between the death of Antony and that of Cleopatra might easily be compressed without any hurt to the sentiment of the story. But even of this artistic license Shakespeare avails himself far less systematically than in _Julius Caesar_. There, as we saw, the action is crowded into five days, though with considerable intervals between some of them. There is no such arrangement in _Antony and Cleopatra_. Superficially this play is one of the most invertebrate in structure that Shakespeare ever wrote. It gives one the impression of an anxious desire to avoid tampering with the facts and their relations even when history does not furnish ready-made the material that bests fits the drama.

And in the main this impression is correct. Shakespeare supplies a panorama of some ten eventful years in which he can not only cite his chapter and verse for most of the official _data_, but reproduces, with amazing fidelity, the general contour of the historical landscape, in so far as it was visible from his point of view. And yet his allegiance to the letter has often been exaggerated and is to a great extent illusory. This does not mean merely that his picture fails to approve itself as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, when tested by the investigations of modern scholars. His position and circumstances were not theirs. He took Plutarch’s _Marcus Antonius_ as his chief and almost sole authority, resorting possibly for suggestions of situation and phrase to the Senecan tragedies on the same theme, probably for the descriptions of Egypt to Holland’s translation of Pliny or Cory’s translation of Leo, and almost certainly for many details about Sextus Pompeius[200] to the 1578 version of Appian; but always treating the _Life_ not only as his inexhaustible storehouse, but as sufficient guarantee for any statement that it contained. In short he could give the history of the time, not as it was but as Plutarch represented it, and as Plutarch’s representation explained itself to an Elizabethan. It is hardly to his discredit if he underestimates Cleopatra’s political astuteness, and has no guess of the political projects that recent criticism has ascribed to Antony, for of these things his author has little to say. It is hardly to his credit, if, on Appian’s hint, he realises the importance of Sextus Pompeius’ insular position and naval power, for he lived in the days of Hawkins and Drake.

[200] See Appendix D.

But he is not slavishly literal even in his adherence to Plutarch. He adopts his essential and many of his subsidiary facts: he follows his lead in the broad course of events; he does not alter the main lines of the story. But it is surprising to find how persistently he rearranges and regroups the minor details, and how by this means he gives them a new significance. The portions of the play where he has made the narrative more compact are also, roughly speaking, those in which he has taken most liberties in dislocating the sequence, and the result is not merely greater conciseness but an original interpretation. Yet on the other hand we must not either misconstrue the meaning or overstate the importance of this procedure. In the first place it affects not so much the history of events as the portraiture of the persons. In the second place, even in the characterisation it generally adds vividness and depth to the presentation rather than alters the fundamental traits. Thus in Plutarch the soothsayer’s warning to Antony follows, in Shakespeare it precedes, the composition with Pompey. From the chronicler’s point of view this transposition is abundantly unimportant, but it does make a difference in our estimate of Antony: his consequent decision shows more levity and rashness in the play than in the biography. Yet in both his whole behaviour at this juncture is distinctly fickle and indiscreet; so the net result of the displacement is to sharpen the lines that Plutarch has already drawn. And this is true in a greater or less degree of most of the cases in which Shakespeare reshuffles Plutarch’s notes. On the whole, despite dramatic parallax and changed perspective, _Antony and Cleopatra_ is astonishingly faithful to the facts as they were supposed to be. Shakespeare could hardly have done more in getting to the heart of Plutarch’s account, and in reconstructing it with all its vital and essential characteristics disentangled and combined afresh in their rational connection. And since after all Plutarch “meant right” this implies that Shakespeare is not only true to Plutarch, but virtually true to what is still considered the spirit of his subject.[201]

[201] This may be said even if we accept Professor Ferrero’s arguments that Antony’s infatuation for Cleopatra was invented or exaggerated by opponents, and that their relation was to a great extent invented or prescribed by their ambitions. Antony would still be the profligate man of genius, captivated by Asiatic ideals and careless of the interests of Rome. His policy at the close would still, by Professor Ferrero’s own admission, be traceable to the ascendancy which Cleopatra had established over him. And the picture of contemporary conditions would still retain a large measure of truth.

Indeed his most far-reaching modifications concern in the main the manner in which the persons appeal to our sympathies, and in which he wishes us to envisage their story; and these perhaps in a preliminary view can better be indicated by what he has suppressed than by what he has added or recast. There is one conspicuous omission that shows how he deals with character; there are several minor ones that in their sum show how he prescribes the outlook.

To begin with the former, it is impossible not to be struck by the complete deletion of the Parthian fiasco, which in Plutarch occupies nearly a fifth of the whole _Life_, or a fourth of the part with which Shakespeare deals in this play. It thus bulks large in Antony’s career, and though in the main it may be unsuitable for dramatic purposes, it is nevertheless connected in its beginning, conduct and close, with the story of his love for Cleopatra. Yet we have only one far off and euphemistic reference to it in the words of Eros, when Antony bids him strike.

The gods withhold me!
Shall I do that which all the Parthian darts,
Though enemy, lost aim, and could not?
(IV. xiv. 69.)

Why this reticence in regard to one of the most ambitious enterprises with which the name of Antony was associated? The truth is that the whole management of the campaign detracts grievously from the glamour of “absolute soldiership” with which the dramatist surrounds his hero and through which he wishes us to view him. His silence in regard to it is thus a hint of one far-reaching and momentous change Shakespeare has made in the impression the story conveys, and that is in the character of Antony himself. In the biography he is by no means so grandiose a figure, so opulent and magnificent a nature, as he appears in the play. Gervinus sums up the salient features of Plutarch’s Antony in the following sentence:

A man who had grown up in the wild companionship of a Curio
and a Clodius, who had gone through the high school of
debauchery in Greece and Asia, who had shocked everybody in
Rome during Caesar’s dictatorship by his vulgar excesses,
who had made himself popular among the soldiers by drinking
with them and encouraging their low amours, a man upon
whom the odium of the proscriptions under the rule of the
triumvirate especially fell, who displayed a cannibal
pleasure over Cicero’s bloody head and hand, who afterwards
renewed in the East the wanton life of his youth, and robbed
in grand style to maintain the vilest gang of parasites and
jugglers, such a man depicted finally as the prey of an
elderly and artful courtesan, could not possibly have been
made the object of dramatic interest. It is wonderful how
Shakespeare on the one hand preserved the historic features
of Antony’s character, so as not to make him unrecognisable,
and yet how he contrived on the other to render him an
attractive personage.

The array of charges Gervinus compiles from Plutarch is not exaggerated. Indeed it could be enlarged and emphasised. Dishonesty in money matters, jealousy of his subordinates, an occasional lack of generalship that almost becomes inefficiency, might be added to the list. But Plutarch’s picture contains other traits that he does not seek to reconcile with those that repel us, but drops in casually and by the way: and in Shakespeare these are brought to the front. Valour, endurance, generosity, versatility, resourcefulness, self-knowledge, frankness, simplicity after a fashion, width of outlook, power of self-recovery, are all attributed to Antony even by his first biographer, though these qualities are overweighted by the mass of his delinquencies. Shakespeare shows them in relief; while the more offensive characteristics, like his youthful licentiousness, are relegated to his bygone past, or, like his jealousy and vindictiveness, are merely suggested by subordinate strokes, such as the break in Ventidius’ triumphant campaign, or the merciless scourging of Thyreus. It is sometimes said that Shakespeare’s Brutus is historically correct and that his Mark Antony is a new creation. The opposite statement would be nearer the truth. We feel that both the biographer and the dramatist have given a portrait of Cleopatra’s lover, and that both portraits are like; but the one painter has been content with a collection of vivid traits which in their general effect are ignoble and repulsive: the other in a sense has idealised his model, but it is by reading the soul of greatness through the sordid details, and explaining them by the conception of Antony, not perhaps at his best but at his grandest. He is still, though fallen, the Antony who at Caesar’s death could alter the course of history; a dissolute intriguer no doubt, but a man of genius, a man of enthusiasms, one who is equal or all but equal to the highest occasion the world can present, and who, if he fails owing to the lack of steadfast principle and virile will that results from voluptuous indulgence and unscrupulous practisings, yet remains fascinating and magnificent even in his ruin. And by means of this transfiguration, Shakespeare is able to lend absorbing interest to his delineation of this gifted, complex, and faulty soul, and to rouse the deepest sympathy for his fate. Despite his loyalty to the historical record he lifts his argument above the level of the Chronicle History, and makes it a true tragedy. In its deference for facts, _Antony and Cleopatra_ is to be ranked with such pieces as _Richard II._ and _Henry VIII._, but in its real essence it claims another position. “The highest praise, or rather the highest form of praise, of this play,” says Coleridge, “is the doubt which the perusal always occasions in me, whether _Antony and Cleopatra_ is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its strength and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of _Macbeth_, _Lear_, _Hamlet_, and _Othello_.”

In another aspect the more obvious of the minor omissions are in their general tendency not less typical of the way in which Shakespeare deals with his subject. For what are those that strike us at first sight? To begin with, many instances of Octavia’s devotion, constancy and principle are passed over, and she is placed very much in the shade. Then there is no reference to the children that sprang from her union with Antony, indeed their existence is by implication denied, and she seems to be introduced as another Iseult of the White Hands. Antony cries to Cleopatra,

Have I my pillow left unpress’d in Rome,
Forborne the getting of a lawful race,
And by a gem of women, to be abused
By one that looks on feeders?
(III. xiii. 106.)

Further, the tragic stories of Antony’s son Antyllus and of Cleopatra’s son Caesarion are left unused, Antyllus not being mentioned at all, Caesarion only by the way; though Daniel does not scruple to include both accessories within the narrower limits of a Senecan tragedy. More noticeable still, however, is the indifference with which the children of Antony and Cleopatra are dismissed. They are barely alluded to, though the Queen’s anxiety for their preservation, which supplies acceptable matter not only to Daniel but to Jodelle and Garnier, is avouched by Plutarch’s statement and driven home by North’s vigorous phrase. Plutarch describes her distress of body and mind after Antony’s death and her own capture.

She fell into a fever withal: whereof she was very glad,
hoping thereby to have good colour to absteine from
meate, and that so she might have dyed easely without any
trouble.... But Caesar mistrusted the matter, by many
conjectures he had, and therefore did put her in feare, and
threatned her to put her children to shameful death. With
these threats Cleopatra for feare yelded straight, _as she
would have yelded unto strokes_; and afterwards suffred
her selfe to be cured and dieted as they listed.

Shakespeare makes no use of this save in the warning of Octavius:

If you seek
To lay on me a cruelty, by taking
Antony’s course, you shall bereave yourself
Of my good purposes, and put your children
To that destruction which I’ll guard them from,
If thereon you rely.
(V. ii. 128.)

But here the threat is significant of Octavius’ character, not of Cleopatra’s, who makes no reply to it, and remains absolutely unaffected by it. Indeed she shows more sense of motherhood in her dying reference to the asp as “her baby at her breast,” than in all the previous play.

It cannot be doubted that the effect of all these omissions is to concentrate the attention on the purely personal relations of the lovers. And the prominence assigned to them also appears if we compare the _Life_ and the drama as a whole.

It will be noted that in direct quotation, in incident and allusion, in general structure, Shakespeare owes far more to his authority in the last half of the play than in the first: for the closer observance of, and the larger loans from, the biography begin with the central scenes of the third act. But it is at this stage of the narrative that Cleopatra, for a while in the background, once more becomes the paramount person; and few are the allusions to her from the period of Actium that Shakespeare suffers to escape him. Moreover such independent additions as there are in the latter portion of the play, have mostly to do with her; and in six of the invented scenes in the earlier acts she has the chief or at least a leading role. Clearly, when she is in evidence, Shakespeare feels least need to supplement, and when she is absent he has to fill in the gap. And this is significant of his whole conception. Gervinus tries to express the contrast between the Antony of Plutarch and the Antony of Shakespeare by means of a comparison. “We are inclined,” he writes, “to designate the ennobling transformation which the poet undertook by one word: he refined the crude features of Mark Antony into the character of an Alcibiades.” In a way that is not ill said, so far as it goes; but it omits perhaps the most essential point. The great thing about Shakespeare’s Antony is his capacity for a grand passion. We cannot talk of Alcibiades as a typical lover in the literature of the world, but Antony has a good right to his place in the “Seintes Legende of Cupyde.” When three-quarters of a century after Shakespeare Dryden ventured to rehandle the theme in the noble play that almost justifies the audacity of his attempt, he called his version, _All for Love or the World well lost_. We have something of the same feeling in reading Shakespeare, and we do not have it in reading Plutarch. Plutarch has no eyes for the glory of Antony’s madness. He gives the facts or traditions that Shakespeare reproduced, but he regards the whole affair as a pitiable dotage, or, at best, as a calamitous visitation—regards it in short much as the Anti-Shakesperians do now. After describing the dangerous tendencies in Antony’s mixed nature, he introduces his account of the meeting at the Cydnus, with the deliberate statement which the rest of his story merely works out in detail:

Antonius being thus inclined, the last and extreamest
mischiefe of all other (to wit, the love of Cleopatra)
lighted on him, who did waken and stirre up many vices
yet hidden in him, and were never seene to any; and if
any sparke of goodnesse or hope of rising were left him,
Cleopatra quenched it straight and made it worse than before.

Similarly his final verdict in the _Comparison of Demetrius and Marcus Antonius_ is unrelenting:

Cleopatra oftentimes unarmed Antonius, and intised him to
her, making him lose matters of importaunce, and verie
needeful jorneys, to come and be dandled with her about
the rivers of Canobus and Taphosiris. In the ende as Paris
fledde from battell and went to hide him selfe in Helens
armes; even so did he in Cleopatras armes, or to speak
more properlie, Paris hidde him selfe in Helens closet,
but Antonius to followe Cleopatra, fledde and lost the
victorie.... He slue him selfe (to confesse a troth)
cowardly and miserably.

Shakespeare by no means neglects this aspect of the case, as Dryden tends to do, and he could never have taken Dryden’s title for his play. Nevertheless, while agreeing with Plutarch, he agrees with Dryden too. To him Antony’s devotion to Cleopatra is the grand fact in his career, which bears witness to his greatness as well as to his littleness, and is at once his perdition and his apotheosis. And so in the third place this is a love tragedy, and has its relations with _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Troilus and Cressida_, the only other attempts that Shakespeare made in this kind: as is indicated even in their designations. For these are the only plays that are named after two persons, and the reason is that in a true love story both the lovers have equal rights. The symbol for it is an ellipse with two foci not a circle with a single centre.[202]

[202] Even in _Othello_ the conspicuous place is reserved for the Moor, and in him it is jealousy as much as love that is depicted.

It has sometimes been pointed out that what is generally considered the chief tragic theme and what was an almost indispensable ingredient in the classic drama of France, is very seldom the _Leit-motif_ of a Greek or a Shakespearian masterpiece. In this triad however Shakespeare has made use of it, and it is interesting to note the differences of treatment in the various members of the group. In _Romeo and Juliet_ he idealises youthful love with its raptures, its wonders, its overthrow in collision with the harsh facts of life. _Troilus and Cressida_ shows the inward dissolution of such love when it is unworthily bestowed, and suffers from want of reverence and loftiness. In _Antony and Cleopatra_ love is not a revelation as in the first, nor an illusion as in the second, but an infatuation. There is nothing youthful about it, whether as adoration or inexperience. It is the love that seizes the elderly man of the world, the trained mistress of arts, and does this, as it would seem, to cajole and destroy them both. It is in one aspect the love that Bacon describes in his essay with that title.

He that preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and
Pallas. For whosoever esteemeth too much of Amorous
Affection quitteth both Riches and Wisedom. This Passion
hath his Flouds in the very times of Weaknesse, which are
great Prosperitie and great Adversitie, though this latter
hath beene lesse observed. Both which times kindle Love, and
make it more fervent, and therefore shew it to be the Childe
of Folly. They doe best, who, if they cannot but admit Love,
yet make it keepe Quarter, And sever it wholly from their
serious Affaires and Actions of life; For if it checke once
with Businesse, it troubleth Men’s Fortunes, and maketh
Men that they can no wayes be true to their owne Ends....
In Life it doth much mischiefe, Sometimes like a Syren,
Sometimes like a Fury. You may observe that amongst all the
great and worthy Persons (whereof the memory remaineth,
either Ancient or Recent), there is not One that hath beene
transported to the mad degree of Love; which shewes that
great Spirits and great Businesse doe keepe out this weake
Passion. You must except, never the lesse, Marcus Antonius
the halfe partner of the Empire of Rome.

Part Siren, part Fury, that in truth is precisely how Plutarch would personify the love of Antony: and yet it is just this love that makes him memorable. Seductive and destructive in its obvious manifestations, nevertheless for the great reason that it was so engrossing and sincere, it reveals and unfolds a nobility and depth in his character, of which we should otherwise never have believed him capable.

These three aspects of this strange play, as a chronicle history, as a personal tragedy and as a love poem, merge and pass into each other, but in a certain way they successively become prominent in the following discussion.