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- color: black; - font-size:smaller; - padding:0.5em; - margin-bottom:5em; - font-family:sans-serif, serif; } - -.ws2 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 2em;} -.ws3 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em;} -.ws4 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 4em;} -.ws5 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 5em;} -.ws6 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 6em;} -.ws7 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 7em;} -.ws8 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 8em;} -.ws9 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 9em;} -.ws10 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 10em;} -.ws12 {display: inline; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 12em;} - - </style> - </head> -<body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Shakespeare's Roman Plays and Their Background, by Mungo William MacCallum</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Shakespeare's Roman Plays and Their Background</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Mungo William MacCallum</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 3, 2023 [eBook #69937]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE'S ROMAN PLAYS AND THEIR BACKGROUND ***</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<h1>SHAKESPEARE’S ROMAN PLAYS<br />AND THEIR BACKGROUND</h1> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="95" /> -</div> - -<p class="f110">MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span></p> -<p class="f90">LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br />MELBOURNE</p> - -<p class="f110 space-above2">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p> -<p class="f90">NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO<br /> -ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</p> - -<p class="f110 space-above2">THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span></p> -<p class="f90">TORONTO</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<p class="f150"><b>SHAKESPEARE’S<br />ROMAN PLAYS<br /> -AND THEIR BACKGROUND</b></p> - -<p class="f90 space-above2">BY</p> -<p class="f150"><span class="smcap">M. W. MacCallum</span></p> -<p class="f90">M.A., <span class="smcap">Hon. LL.D., Glasgow</span></p> -<p class="f90">PROFESSOR OF MODERN LITERATURE IN<br /> -THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY</p> - -<p class="center space-above2">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br /> -ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON<br />1910</p> - -<p class="f90 space-above2">GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS<br /> -BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<p class="center">TO<br />D. M. M·C.</p> - -<p class="center">“De Leev is Allens op de Welt,<br /> -Un de is blot bi di.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak">PREFACE</h2> -</div> - -<p>Shakespeare’s Roman plays may be regarded as forming a group by -themselves, less because they make use of practically the same -authority and deal with similar subjects, than because they follow the -same method of treatment, and that method is to a great extent peculiar -to themselves. They have points of contact with the English histories, -they have points of contact with the free tragedies, but they are not -quite on a line with either class. It seems, therefore, possible and -desirable to discuss them separately.</p> - -<p>In doing so I have tried to keep myself abreast of the literature -on the subject; which is no easy task when one lives at so great a -distance from European libraries, and can go home only on hurried and -infrequent visits. I hope, however, that there is no serious gap in the -list of authorities I have consulted.</p> - -<p>The particular obligations of which I am conscious I have indicated -in detail. I should like, however, to acknowledge how much I owe -throughout to the late F. A. T. Kreyssig, to my mind one of the sanest -and most suggestive expositors that Shakespeare has ever had. I am -the more pleased to avow my indebtedness, that at present in Germany -Kreyssig is hardly receiving the learned, and in England has never -received the popular, recognition that is his due. It is strange that -while Ulrici’s metaphysical lucubrations and Gervinus’s somewhat -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</span> -ponderous commentaries found their translators and their public, -Kreyssig’s purely humane and literary appreciations were passed over. -I once began to translate them myself, but “habent sua fata libelli,” -the time had gone by. It is almost exactly half a century ago since his -lectures were first published; and now there is so much that he would -wish to omit, alter, or amplify, that it would be unfair to present -them after this lapse of years for the first time to the English -public. All the same he has not lost his value, and precisely in -dealing with the English and the Roman histories he seems to me to be -at his best.</p> - -<p>One is naturally led from a consideration of the plays to a -consideration of their background; their antecedents in the drama, and -their sources, direct and indirect.</p> - -<p>The previous treatment of Roman subjects in Latin, French, and English, -is of some interest, apart from the possible connection of this or -that tragedy with Shakespeare’s masterpieces, as showing by contrast -the originality as well as the splendour of his achievement. For this -chapter of my Introduction I therefore offer no apology.</p> - -<p>On the other hand the sketches of the three “ancestors” of -Shakespeare’s Roman histories, and especially of Plutarch, need perhaps -to be defended against the charge of irrelevancy.</p> - -<p>In examining the plays, one must examine their relations with their -sources, and in examining their relations with their sources, one -cannot stop short at North, who in the main contributes merely the -final form, but must go back to the author who furnished the subject -matter. Perhaps, too, some of the younger students of Shakespeare may -be glad to have a succinct account of the man but for whom the Roman -plays would never have been written. Besides, Plutarch, so far as I -know, has not before been treated exactly from the point of view that -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</span> -is here adopted. My aim has been to portray him mainly in those aspects -that made him such a power in the period of the Renaissance, and gave -him so great a fascination for men like Henry IV., Montaigne, and, -of course, above all, Shakespeare. For the same reason I have made -my quotations exclusively from Philemon Holland’s translation of the -<i>Morals</i> (1st edition, 1603) and North’s translation of the -<i>Lives</i> (Mr. Wyndham’s reprint), as the Elizabethan versions show -how he was taken by that generation.</p> - -<p>The essay on Amyot needs less apology. In view of the fact that he was -the immediate original of North, he has received in England far less -recognition than he deserves. Indeed he has met with injustice. English -writers have sometimes challenged his claim to have translated from the -Greek. To me it has had the zest of a pious duty to repeat and enforce -the arguments of French scholars which show the extreme improbability -of this theory. Unfortunately I have been unable to consult the Latin -version of 1470, except in a few transcripts from the copy in the -British Museum: but while admitting that a detailed comparison of -that with the Greek and the French would be necessary for the formal -completion of the proof, I think it has been made practically certain -that Amyot dealt with all his authors at first hand. At any rate he -is a man, who, by rendering Plutarch into the vernacular and in many -instances furnishing the first draught of Shakespeare’s phrases, merits -attention from the countrymen of Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>Of North, even after Mr. Wyndham’s delightful and admirable study, -something remains to be said in supplement. And he too has hardly had -his rights. The <i>Morall Philosophie</i> and the <i>Lives</i> have -been reprinted, but the <i>Diall of Princes</i> is still to be seen -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</span> -only in the great libraries of Europe. A hurried perusal of it two -years ago convinced me that, apart from its historical significance, -it was worthy of a place among the <i>Tudor Translations</i> and would -help to clear up many obscurities in Elizabethan literature.</p> - -<p>I at first hoped to discuss in a supplementary section the treatment -of the Roman Play in England by Shakespeare’s younger contemporaries -and Caroline successors, and show that while in some specimens -Shakespeare’s reconciling method is still followed though less -successfully, while in some antiquarian accuracy is the chief aim, and -some are only to be regarded as historical romances, it ultimately -tended towards the phase which it assumed in France under the influence -of the next great practitioner, Corneille, who assimilated the -ancient to the modern ideal of Roman life as Shakespeare never did -and, perhaps fortunately, never tried to do. But certain questions, -especially in regard to the sources, are complicated, and, when -contemporary translations, not as yet reprinted, may have been used, -are particularly troublesome to one living so far from Europe. This -part of my project, therefore, if not abandoned, has to be deferred; -for it would mean a long delay, and I am admonished that what there is -to do must be done quickly.</p> - -<p>I have complained of the lack of books in Australia, but before -concluding I should like to acknowledge my obligations to the -book-loving colonists of an earlier generation, to whose irrepressible -zeal for learning their successors owe access to many volumes that -one would hardly expect to see under the Southern Cross. Thus a 1599 -edition of Plutarch in the University Library, embodying the apparatus -of Xylander and Cruserius, has helped me much in the question of -Amyot’s relations to the Greek. Thus, too, I was able to utilise, among -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</span> -other works not easily met with, the first complete translation of -Seneca’s Tragedies (1581), in the collection of the late Mr. David -Scott Mitchell, a “clarum et venerabile nomen” in New South Wales. -May I, as a tribute of gratitude, inform my English readers that this -gentleman, after spending his life in collecting books and manuscripts -of literary and historical interest, which he was ever ready to place -at the disposal of those competent to use them, bequeathed at his death -his splendid library to the State, together with an ample endowment for -its maintenance and extension?</p> - -<p>For much valuable help in the way of information and advice, my thanks -are due to my sometime students and present colleagues, first and -chiefly, Professor E. R. Holme, then Mr. C. J. Brennan, Mr. J. Le -Gay Brereton, Mr. G. G. Nicholson, Dr. F. A. Todd; also to Messrs. -Bladen and Wright of the Sydney Public Library for looking out books -and references that I required; to Mr. M. L. MacCallum for making -transcripts for me from books in the Bodleian Library; to Professor -Jones of Glasgow University for various critical suggestions; above -all to Professor Butler of Sydney University, who has pointed out to -me many facts which I might have overlooked and protected me from -many errors into which I should have fallen, and to Professor Ker of -University College, London, who has most kindly undertaken the irksome -task of reading through my proofs.</p> - -<p class="author fontsize_110"><span class="smcap">M. W. MacCallum</span></p> - -<p><span class="smcap">University of Sydney</span>,<br /> -<span class="ws2"><i>27th April, 1909</i>.</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table class="no-wrap" border="0" cellspacing="2" summary="TOC" cellpadding="2" > - <tbody><tr> - <td class="tdc fontsize_120" colspan="2"><i>INTRODUCTION</i></td> - <td class="tdc"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr fontsize_70">CHAPTER</td> - <td class="tdc"> </td> - <td class="tdr fontsize_70">PAGE</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">I.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Roman Plays in the Sixteenth Century</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1">1.“Appius and Virginia.” The Translation of “Octavia”</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#APPIUS">2</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1">2. The French Senecans</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#SENECANS">19</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1">3. English Followers of the French School.</td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="ws2">“The Wounds of Civil War”</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#ENGLISH">44</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">II.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare’s Treatment of History</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">III.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Ancestry of Shakespeare’s Roman Plays</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1">1. Plutarch</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1">2. Amyot</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#AMYOT">119</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1">3. North</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#NORTH">141</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdc_space-above1 fontsize_120" colspan="2"><i>JULIUS CAESAR</i></td> - <td class="tdc"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">I.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Position of the Play between the Histories and the</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">Tragedies. Attraction of the Subject for Shakespeare</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">and his Generation. Indebtedness to Plutarch</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">II.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare’s Transmutation of his Material</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_187">187</a> - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</span></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">III.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Titular Hero of the Play</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">IV.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Excellences and Illusions of Brutus</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">V.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Disillusionment of Brutus. Portia</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">VI.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Remaining Characters</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdc_space-above1 fontsize_120" colspan="2"><i>ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA</i></td> - <td class="tdc"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">I.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Position of the Play after the Great Tragedies.</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare’s Interest in the Subject</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">II.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, a History, Tragedy, and</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">Love Poem; as shown by its Relations with</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">Plutarch</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_318">318</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">III.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Associates of Antony</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_344">344</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">IV.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Political Leaders</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_368">368</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">V.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Mark Antony</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_391">391</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">VI.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Cleopatra</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_413">413</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">VII.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Antony and Cleopatra</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_439">439</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdc_space-above1 fontsize_120" colspan="2"><i>CORIOLANUS</i></td> - <td class="tdc"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">I.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Position of the Play before the Romances.</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">Its Political and Artistic Aspects</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_454">454</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">II.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Parallels and Contrasts with Plutarch</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_484">484</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">III.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Grand Contrast. Shakespeare’s Conception of</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">the Situation in Rome</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_518">518</a> - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</span></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">IV.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Kinsfolk and Friends of Coriolanus</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_549">549</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">V.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Greatness of Coriolanus. Aufidius</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_571">571</a></td> -</tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">VI.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Disasters of Coriolanus and their Causes</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_598">598</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdc_space-above1 fontsize_120" colspan="2"><i>APPENDICES</i></td> - <td class="tdc"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">A.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Nearest Parallels between Garnier’s</span> <i>Cornélie</i></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">in the French and English Versions and</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><i>Julius Caesar</i></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_628">628</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">B.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Verbal Relations of the Various Versions</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">of Plutarch, illustrated by Means of</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><span class="smcap">Volumnia’s Speech</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_631">631</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">C.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare’s Alleged Indebtedness to Appian in</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"><i>Julius Caesar</i></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_644">644</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">D.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare’s Loans from Appian in</span></td> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr"> </td> - <td class="tdl_ws1"> <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_648">648</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">E.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Cleopatra’s</span> <i>One Word</i></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_653">653</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1">F.</td> - <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The “Inexplicable” Passage in</span> <i>Coriolanus</i></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_657">657</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="3"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdr_ws1"> </td> - <td class="tdl">INDEX</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_660">660</a></td> - </tr> - </tbody> -</table> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRO"><i>INTRODUCTION</i></h2> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER I<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">ROMAN PLAYS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>Plays that dealt with the History of Rome were frequent on the -Elizabethan stage, and all portions of it were laid under contribution. -Subjects were taken from legends of the dawn like the story of -Lucretia, and from rumours of the dusk like the story of Lucina; from -Roman pictures of barbarian allies like Massinissa in the South, or -barbarian antagonists like Caractacus in the North; as well as from the -intimate records of home affairs and the careers of the great magnates -of the Republic or Empire. But these plays belong more distinctively -to the Stuart than to the Tudor section of the period loosely named -after Elizabeth, and few have survived that were composed before the -beginning of the seventeenth century. For long the Historical Drama -treated by preference the traditions and annals of the island realm, -and only by degrees did “the matter of Britain” yield its pride of -place to “the matter of Rome the Grand.” Moreover, the earlier Roman -Histories are of very inferior importance, and none of them reaches -even a moderate standard of merit till the production of Shakespeare’s -<i>Julius Caesar</i> in 1600 or 1601. In this department Shakespeare -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span> -had not the light to guide him that he found for his English Histories -in Marlowe’s <i>Edward II.</i>, or even in such plays as <i>The Famous -Victories of Henry V.</i> The extant pieces that precede his first -experiment, seem only to be groping their way, and it is fair to -suppose that the others which have been lost did no better. Their -interest, in so far as they have any interest at all, lies in the light -they throw on the gradual progress of dramatic art in this domain. -And they illustrate it pretty fully, and show it passing through some -of the main general phases that may be traced in the evolution of the -Elizabethan Tragedy as a whole. At the outset we have one specimen -of the Roman play in which the legitimate drama is just beginning to -disengage itself from the old Morality, and another in which the unique -Senecan exemplar is transformed rather than translated to suit the -primitive art of the time. Then we have several more artistic specimens -deriving directly or indirectly from the French imitators of Seneca, -which were the most dignified and intelligent the sixteenth century had -to show. And lastly we have a specimen of what the Roman play became -when elaborated by the scholar-playwrights for the requirements of the -popular London stage.</p> - -<p>A survey of these will show how far the ground was prepared for -Shakespeare by the traditions of this branch of the drama when he -turned to cultivate it himself.</p> - -<h4 id="APPIUS">1. APPIUS AND VIRGINIA.<br /> THE TRANSLATION OF OCTAVIA</h4> - -<p>The crudest if not the earliest of the series is entitled <i>A new -Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia</i>, by R. B., initials which -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span> -have been supposed with some probability to stand for Richard Bower, -who was master of the Chapel Royal at Windsor in 1559. It was first -printed in 1575, but must have been written some years before. A -phrase it contains, “perhaps a number will die of the sweat,” has been -thought to refer to the prevalence of the plague in 1563, and it may -be identified with a play on the same subject that was acted at that -time by the boys of Westminster. At any rate several expressions show -beyond doubt that it was meant for representation, but only on the -old-fashioned scaffold which was soon to be out-of-date. Its character -and scope belong too, in part, to a bygone age. The prologue proclaims -its ethical intention with the utmost emphasis:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You lordings all that present be, this Tragidie to heare</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Note well what zeale and loue heerein doth well appeare,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And, Ladies, you that linked are in wedlocke bandes for euer</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Do imitate the life you see, whose fame will perish neuer:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But Uirgins you, oh Ladies fair, for honour of your name</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Doo lead the life apparent heere to win immortall fame.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It is written in commendation of chastity and rebuke of vice:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Let not the blinded God of Loue, as poets tearm him so,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor Venus with her venery, nor Lechors, cause of wo,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your Uirgins name to spot or file: deare dames, obserue the life</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That faire Verginia did obserue, who rather wish(ed) the knife</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of fathers hand hir life to ende, then spot her chastety.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As she did waile, waile you her want, you maids, of courtesie.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If any by example heere would shun that great anoy,<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our Authour would rejoyce in hart, and we would leap for joy.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">No Moral Play could be more explicit in its lesson, and -the Moral Play has also suggested a large number of the personages. Conscience, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> -Justice, Rumour, Comfort, Reward, Doctrine, Memory, are introduced, -and some of them not only in scenes by themselves, but in association -with the concrete characters. Occasionally their functions are merely -figurative, and can be separated from the action that is supposed to -be proceeding: and then of course they hardly count for more than the -attributes that help to explain a statue. Thus, when Appius resolves to -pursue his ruthless purpose, he exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">But out, I am wounded: how am I deuided!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Two states of my life from me are now glided:</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and the quaint stage direction in the margin gives -the comment: “Here let him make as thogh he went out, and let Consience -and Justice come out of<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> -him, and let Consience hold in his hande a Lamp burning, and let -Justice haue a sworde and hold it before Apius brest.” Thus, too, -another stage direction runs: “Here let Consience speake within:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">‘Judge Apius, prince, oh stay, refuse: be ruled by thy friende:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What bloudy death with open shame did Torquin gaine in ende?’”</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p>And he answers: “Whence doth this pinching sounde desende?” Here -clearly it is merely the voice of his own feelings objectified: and in -both instances the interference of the Abstractions is almost wholly -decorative; they add nothing to the reflections of Appius, but only -serve to emphasise them. This however is not always the case. They -often comport themselves in every respect like the real men and women. -Comfort stays Virginius from suicide till he shall see the punishment -of the wicked. Justice and Reward (that is, Requital) summoned by the -unjust judge to doom the father, pronounce sentence on himself. In the -end Virginius enters in company with Fame, Doctrina, and Memory. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p> - -<p>Other of the characters, again, if more than general ideas, are less -than definite individuals. There is a sub-plot not at all interwoven -with the main plot, in which the class types, Mansipulus, Mansipula, -and their crony, Subservus, play their parts. With their help some -attempt is made at presenting the humours of vulgar life. They quarrel -with each other, but are presently reconciled in order to divert -themselves together, and put off the business of their master and -mistress, hoping to escape the punishment for their negligence by -trickery and good luck. But we do not even know who their master and -mistress are, and they come into no contact with either the historical -or the allegorical figures.</p> - -<p>The only personage who finds his way into both compartments of the -“Tragicall Comedie” is Haphazard the Vice, who gives the story such -unity as it possesses. His name happily describes the double aspect of -his nature. On the one hand he stands for chance itself; on the other -for dependence on chance, the recklessness that relies on accident, -and trusts that all will end well though guilt has been incurred. In -this way he is both the chief seducer and the chief agent, alike of the -petty rogues and of the grand criminal. To the former he sings:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Then wend ye on and folow me, Mansipulus,<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Mansipula,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let croping cares be cast away; come folow me, come folow me:</div> - <div class="verse indent22">Subseruus is a joly loute</div> - <div class="verse indent8">Brace<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Haphazard, bould blinde bayarde!<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent0">A figge for his uncourtesie that seekes to shun good company!</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">To Appius’ request for advice he replies:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Well, then, this is my counsell, thus standeth the case,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Perhaps such a fetche as may please your grace:</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> - <div class="verse indent0">There is no more wayes but <i>hap</i> or <i>hap not</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Either hap or els hapless, to knit up the knot:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And if you will hazard to venter what falles,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Perhaps that Haphazard will end all your thralles.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His distinctive note is this, that he tempts -men by suggesting that they may offend and escape the consequences. -In the end he falls into the pit that he has digged for others, -and when his hap is to be hanged, like a true Vice he accepts the -<i>contretemps</i> with jest and jape.</p> - -<p>Yet despite the stock-in-trade that it takes over from Morality or -Interlude, <i>Appius and Virginia</i> has specialties of its own -that were better calculated to secure it custom in the period of the -Renaissance. The author bestows most care on the main story, and makes -a genuine attempt to bring out the human interest of the subject and -the persons. In the opening scene he tries, in his well-meaning way, -to give the impression of a home in which affection is the pervading -principle, but in which affection itself is not allowed to run riot, -but is restrained by prudence and obligation. Father, mother, and -daughter sing a ditty in illustration of this sober love or its -reverse, and always return to the refrain:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The trustiest treasure in earth, as we see,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is man, wife, and children in one to agree;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then friendly, and kindly, let measure be mixed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With reason in season, where friendship is fixed.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">There is some inarticulate feeling for effect in -the contrast between the wholesomeness of this orderly family life and -the incontinence of the tyrant who presently seeks to violate it. And -the dramatic bent of the author—for it is no more than a bent—appears -too in the portraiture of the parties concerned. The mingled perplexity -and dread of Virginius, when in his consciousness of right he is -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> -summoned to the court, are justly conceived; and there is magnanimity -in his answer to Appius’ announcement that he must give judgment “as -justice doth require”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">My lord, and reason good it is: your seruaunt doth request</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No parciall hand to aide his cause, no parciall minde or brest.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If ought I haue offended you, your Courte or eke your Crowne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From lofty top of Turret hie persupetat me downe:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If treason none by me be done, or any fault committed,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let my accusers beare the blame, and let me be remitted.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Similarly, the subsequent conflict in his heart -between fondness for his daughter and respect for her and himself is -clearly expressed. And her high-spirited demand for death is tempered -and humanised by her instinctive recoil when he “proffers a blow”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The gods forgeue thee, father deare! farewell: thy blow do bend—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet stay a whyle, O father deare, for fleash to death is fraile.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let first my wimple bind my eyes, and then thy blow assaile,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nowe, father, worke thy will on me, that life I may injoy.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But the most ambitious and perhaps the most -successful delineation is that of Appius. At the outset he is -represented as overwhelmed by his sudden yearning. Apelles, he thinks, -was a “prattling fool” to boast of his statue; Pygmalion was fond -“with raving fits” to run mad for the beauty of his work, for he could -make none like Virginia. Will not the Gods treat him as they treated -Salmacis, when Hermophroditus, bathing in the Carian fountain near the -Lycian Marches, denied her suit?</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Oh Gods aboue, bend downe to heare my crie</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As once ye<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> did to Salmasis, in Pond hard Lyzia by:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Oh that Virginia were in case as somtime Salmasis,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And in Hermofroditus stede my selfe might seeke my blisse!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ah Gods! would I unfold her armes complecting of my necke?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or would I hurt her nimble hand, or yeelde her such a checke?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Would I gainsay hir tender skinne to baath where I do washe?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or els refuse her soft sweete lippes to touch my naked fleshe?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nay! Oh the Gods do know my minde, I rather would requier</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To sue, to serue, to crouch, to kneele, to craue for my desier.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> - <div class="verse indent0">But out, ye Gods, ye bend your browes, and frowne to see me fare;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ye do not force<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> my fickle fate, ye do not way my care.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unrighteous and unequall Gods, unjust and eke unsure,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Woe worth the time ye made me liue, to see this haplesse houre.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This, we may suppose, is intended for a mad -outbreak of voluptuous passion, “the nympholepsy of some fond despair”; -and, as such, it is not very much worse than some that have won the -applause of more critical ages. It may suggest the style of the -Interlude in the <i>Midsummer-Night’s Dream</i>, or more forcibly, the -“<i>King Cambyses’</i> vein” that was then in vogue (for Preston’s play -of that name, published about a couple of years later than the probable -date when this was performed, is in every way the nearest analogue -to <i>Appius and Virginia</i> that the history of our stage has to -offer). But in comparison with the normal flow of the Moralities, the -lines have undoubtedly a certain urgency and glow. And there are other -touches that betray the incipient playwright. Appius is not exhibited -as a mere monster; through all his life his walk has been blameless, -and he is well aware of his “grounded years,” his reputation as judge, -and the value of good report. He is not at ease in the course he now -adopts; there is a division in his nature, and he does not yield to his -temptation without forebodings and remorse.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">Consience he pricketh me contempnèd,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Justice saith, Judgement wold haue me condemned:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Consience saith, crueltye sure will detest me;<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Justice saith, death in thend will molest me:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And both in one sodden, me thinkes they do crie</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That fier eternall my soule shall destroy.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But he always comes back to the supreme fact of -his longing for Virginia:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">By hir I liue, by hir I die, for hir I joy or woe,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For hir my soule doth sinke or swimme, for her, I swere, I goe.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> -And there are the potentialities of a really powerful effect in the -transition from his jubilant outburst when he thinks his waiting is at -an end:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O lucky light! lo, present heere hir father doth appeare,</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">to his misgivings when he sees the old man is unaccompanied:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O, how I joy! Yet bragge thou not. Dame Beuty bides behinde.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And immediately thereafter the severed head is -displayed to his view.</p> - -<p>Nor was R. B., whether or not he was Richard Bower, Master of the -Chapel children, quite without equipment for the treatment of a -classical theme, though in this respect as in others his procedure is -uncertain and fumbling in the highest degree. The typical personages of -the under-plot have no relish of Latinity save in the termination of -the labels that serve them as names, and they swear by God’s Mother, -and talk glibly of church and pews and prayer books, and a “pair of -new cards.” Even in the better accredited Romans of Livy’s story there -are anachronisms and incongruities. Appius, though ordinarily a judge, -speaks of himself as prince, king or kaiser; and references are made -to his crown and realm. Nevertheless the author is not without the -velleities of Humanism. He ushers in his prologue with some atrocious -Latin Elegiacs, which the opening lines of the English are obliging -enough to paraphrase:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Qui cupis aethereas et summas scandere sedes,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Vim simul ac fraudem discute, care, tibi.</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Fraus hic nulla juvat, non fortia facta juvabunt:</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Sola Dei tua te trahet tersa fides.</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Cui placet in terris, intactae paludis<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> instar,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Vivere Virginiam nitere, Virgo, sequi:</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> - <div class="verse indent4">Quos tulit et luctus, discas et gaudia magna,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Vitae dum parcae scindere fila parant.</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Huc ades, O Virgo pariter moritura, sepulchro;</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Sic ait, et facies pallida morte mutat.</div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent3">Who doth desire the trump of fame to sound unto the skies,</div> - <div class="verse indent3">Or els who seekes the holy place where mighty Joue he lies,</div> - <div class="verse indent3">He must not by deceitfull mind, nor yet by puissant strength,</div> - <div class="verse indent3">But by the faith and sacred lyfe he must it win at length;</div> - <div class="verse indent3">And what<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> she be that virgins lyfe on earth wold gladly leade,</div> - <div class="verse indent3">The fluds that Virginia did fall<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> I wish her reade,</div> - <div class="verse indent3">Her doller and hir doleful losse and yet her joyes at death:</div> - <div class="verse indent3">“Come, Virgins pure, to graue with me,” quoth she with latest breath.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In the same way there is throughout a lavish display of -cheap boyish erudition. Thus Virginius, reckoning up his services to Appius, -soliloquises:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">In Mars his games, in marshall feates, thou wast his only aide,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The huge Carrebd his<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> hazards thou for him hast<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> ofte assaied.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Was Sillas force by thee oft shunde or yet Lady Circe’s<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> lande,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pasiphae’s<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> childe, that Minnotaur, did cause thee euer stande?</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p>We are here indeed on the threshold of a very different kind of art, of -which, in its application to Roman history, a sample had been submitted -to the English public two years previously in the <i>Octavia</i> -ascribed to Seneca.</p> - -<p>The Latin Tragedy, merely because it was Latin, and for that reason -within the reach of a far greater number of readers, was much better -known than the Greek at the period of the Renaissance. But apart from -its advantage in accessibility, it attracted men of that age not -only by its many brilliant qualities but by its very defects, its -tendency to heightened yet abstract portraiture, its declamation, its -sententiousness, its violence, its unrestfulness. It had both for good -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span> -and bad a more modern bearing than the masterpieces of Hellenic -antiquity, and in some ways it corresponded more closely with the -culture of the sixteenth century than with our own. It was therefore -bound to have a very decisive influence in shaping the traditions of -the later stage; and the collection of ten plays ascribed to Seneca, -the poor remainder of a numerous tribe that may be traced back to -the third century before Christ, furnished the pattern which critics -prescribed for imitation to all who would achieve the tragic crown. -And if this was true of the series as a whole, it was also true of -the play, which, whatever may be said of the other nine, is certainly -not by Seneca himself, the poorest of them all, with most of the -faults and few of the virtues of the rest, <i>Octavia</i>, the sole -surviving example of the <i>Fabula Praetexta</i>, or the Tragedy that -dealt with native Roman themes. The <i>Octavia</i>, however, was not -less popular and influential than its companions, and has even a claim -to especial attention inasmuch as it may be considered the remote -ancestress of the Modern Historic Play in general and of the Modern -Roman Play in particular. It inspired Mussato about 1300 to write in -Latin his <i>Eccerinis</i>, which deals with an almost contemporary -national subject, the fate of Ezzelino: it inspired the young Muretus -about 1544 to write his <i>Julius Caesar</i>, which in turn showed -his countrymen the way to treat such themes in French. Before eight -years were over they had begun to do so, and many were the Roman plays -composed by the School of Ronsard. Certainly Seneca’s method would suit -the historical dramatist who was not quite at home in his history, for -of local colour and visual detail it made small account, and indeed was -hardly compatible with them. And it would commend itself no less to men -of letters who, without much dramatic sympathy or aptitude, with no -knowledge of stage requirements, and little prospect of getting their -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> -pieces performed, felt called upon <i>honoris causâ</i> to write -dramas, which one of the most distinguished and successful among them -was candid enough to entitle not plays but treatises. It is worth while -to have a clear idea of the <i>Octavia</i> from which in right line -this illustrious and forgotten progeny proceeded.</p> - -<p>The date of the action is supposed to be 62 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> -when Nero, who had for some time wished to wed his mistress, Poppaea Sabina, -and had murdered his mother, partly on account of her opposition, -divorced his virtuous wife, his step-sister Octavia, and exiled her -to Pandataria, where shortly afterwards he had her put to death. The -fact that Seneca is one of the persons in the piece, and that there -are anticipatory references to Nero’s death, which followed Seneca’s -compulsory suicide only after an interval of three years, sufficiently -disposes of the theory that the philosopher himself was the author.</p> - -<p>The text accepted in the sixteenth century suffered much, not only -from the corruption of individual expressions, but from the displacement -of entire passages. Greatly to its advantage it has been rearranged -by later editors, but in the following account, their conjectures, -generally happy and sometimes convincing, have been disregarded, as -they were unknown to Thomas Nuce, who rendered it into English in -1561. In his hands, therefore, it is more loosely connected than it -originally was, or than once more it has become for us; and something -of regularity it forfeits as well, for the dislocated framework led him -to regard it as a drama in only four acts. Despite these flaws in his -work he is a cleverer craftsman than many of his colleagues in Senecan -translation, whose versions of the ten tragedies, most of them already -published separately, were collected in a neat little volume in -1851.<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> -An original “argument” summarises the story with sufficient clearness.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Octauia, daughter to prince Claudius grace,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To Nero espousd, whom Claudius did adopt,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">(Although Syllanus first in husbandes place</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shee had receiu’d, whom she for Nero chopt<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>),</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her parentes both, her Make that should have bene,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her husbandes present Tiranny much more,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her owne estate, her case that she was in,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her brother’s death, (pore wretch), lamenteth sore.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Him Seneca doth persuade, his latter loue,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dame Poppie, Crispyne’s wife that sometime was,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And eake Octauias maide, for to remoue.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For Senecks counsel he doth lightly passe<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent0">But Poppie ioynes to him in marriage rites.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The people wood<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> unto his pallace runne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His golden fourmed shapes<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>; which them sore spytes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They pull to ground: this uprore, now begunne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To quench, he some to griesly death doth send.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But her close cased up in dreadful barge,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With her unto Compania coast to wend</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A band of armed men, he gave in charge.</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This programme the play proceeds to fill in.</p> - -<p>In the first act Octavia, unbosoming herself to her nurse, relieves her -heart of its woe and horror. She recounts the misfortunes of her house, -the atrocities of her lord, his infidelities to her, her detestation -of him. The nurse is full of sympathy, but admonishes her to patience, -consoling her with assurances of the people’s love, and reminding her -of the truancies that the Empress of Heaven had also to excuse in her -own husband and brother:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Now, madam, sith on earth your powre is pight</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And haue on earth Queene Junos princely place,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And sister are and wyfe to Neroes grace,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your wondrous restles dolours great appease.<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> -The chorus closes the act with a variation on the same themes, passing -from praises of Octavia’s purity and regrets for the ancient Roman -intolerance of wrong, to the contrasted picture of Nero’s unchallenged -malignity.</p> - -<p>The second act commences with a monologue by Seneca on the growing -corruption of the age, which is interrupted by the approach of his -master in talk with the Prefect. His words, as he enters, are:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Dispatch with speede that we commaunded haue:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Go, send forthwith some one or other slaue,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That Plautius cropped scalpe, and Sillas eke,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">May bring before our face: goe some man seeke.<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Seneca remonstrates, but his remonstrances are -of no avail; and in a long discussion in which he advocates a policy -of righteousness and goodwill and the sacredness of Octavia’s claims, -he is equally unsuccessful. The act, to which there is no chorus, -concludes with Nero’s determination to flout the wishes of the people -and persist in the promotion of Poppaea:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Why do we not appoynt the morrow next</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When as our mariage pompe may be context?<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></div> - </div></div></div> - -<p>The third act is ushered in with one of those boding apparitions of -which the Senecan Tragedy is so fond. The shade of Agrippina rises, the -bridal torch of Nero and Poppaea in her hand:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Through paunch of riuened earth, from Plutoes raigne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With ghostly steps I am returnd agayne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In writhled wristes, that bloud do most desyre,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forguyding<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> wedlocke vyle with Stygian fire.<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> -She bewails her crimes on her son’s behalf and his parricidal -ingratitude, but vengeance will fall on him at last.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Although that Tyrant proude and scornful wight</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His court with marble stone do strongly dyght,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And princelike garnish it with glistering golde:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Though troupes of soldiours, shielded sure, upholde</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their chieftaynes princely porch: and though yet still</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The world drawne drye with taskes even to his will</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Great heapes of riches yeeld, themselues to saue;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Although his bloudy helpe the Parthians craue,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Kingdomes bring, and goods al that they haue;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The tyme and day shall come, when as he shall,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forlorne, and quite undone, and wanting all,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unto his cursed deedes his life, and more,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unto his foes his bared throate restore.<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">As she disappears, Octavia enters in conversation -with the chorus, whom she dissuades from the expression of sympathy for -her distress lest they should incur the wrath of the tyrant. On this -suggestion they denounce the supineness of the degenerate Romans in the -vindication of right, and exhort each other to an outbreak.</p> - -<p>In the fourth act, Poppaea, terrified by an ominous dream of Nero -stabbing her first husband, and of Agrippina, a firebrand in her grasp, -leading her down through the earth, rushes across the stage, but is -stayed by her nurse, who soothes and encourages her, and bids her -return to her bridal chamber. Yet it seems as though her worst fears -were at once to be realised. The chorus, acknowledging the charms of -the new Empress, is interrupted by the hurried arrival of a messenger. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> -He announces that the people are in uproar, overthrowing the statues of -Poppaea, and demanding the restitution of Octavia. But to what purpose? -The chorus sings that it is vain to oppose the resistless arms of love. -It is at least vain to oppose the arms of Nero’s soldiers. Confident in -their strength he enters, breathing forth threatenings and slaughter, -and expectant of a time when he will exact a full penalty from the citizens:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Then shall their houses fall by force of fire;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What burning both, and buildings fayre decay,<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent0">What beggarly want, and wayling hunger may,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Those villaines shall be sure to have ech day.<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Dreaming of the future conflagration, he is -dissatisfied with the prefect, who tells him that the insurrection has -been easily quelled with the death of one or two, and meanwhile turns -all his wrath against the innocent cause of the riot. The play does -not, however, end with the murder of Octavia. She informs the chorus that -she is to be dispatched in Agrippina’s death-ship to her place of exile,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">But now no helpe of death I feele,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Alas I see my Brothers boate:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This is the same, whose vaulted keele</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His Mother once did set a flote.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And now his piteous Sister I,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Excluded cleane from spousall place</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall be so caried by and by;<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent0">No force hath virtue in this case.<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></div> - </div></div></div> - -<p>And the final song of the chorus, with a touch of dramatic irony, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> -wishes her a prosperous voyage, and congratulates her on her removal -from the cruel city of Rome:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O pippling puffe of western wynde,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which sacrifice didst once withstand,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of Iphigen to death assignde:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And close in Cloude congealed clad</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Did cary hir from smoking aares<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which angry, cruell Virgin had;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This Prince also opprest with cares</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Saue from this paynefull punishment</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To Dian’s temple safely borne:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The barbarous Moores, to rudenesse bent,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> Princes Courtes in Rome forlorne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Haue farre more Cyuile curtesie:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For there doth straungers death appease</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The angry Gods in heauens on hie,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But Romayne bloude our Rome must please.<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></div> - </div></div></div> - -<p>There could be no greater contrast than between <i>Appius and -Virginia</i>, with its exits and entrances, its changefulness and -bustle, its mixture of the pompous and the farcical; and the monotonous -declamation, the dismissal of all action, the meagreness of the -material in the <i>Octavia</i>. And yet they are more akin than they -at first sight appear. Disregard the buffoonery which the mongrel -“tragicall comedie” inherited from the native stock, and you perceive -traits that suggest another filiation. The similarity with the Latin -Play in its English version is, of course, misleading, except in so far -as it shows how the Senecan drama must present itself to an early -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> -Elizabethan in the light of his own crude art. The devices of the -rhetorician were travestied by those who knew no difference between -rhetoric and rant, and whose very rant, whether they tried to invent -or to translate, was clumsy and strained. Hence the “tenne tragedies” -of Seneca and the nearly contemporary Mixed Plays have a strong family -resemblance in style. In all of them save the <i>Octavia</i> the -resemblance extends from diction to verse, for in dialogue and harangue -they employ the trailing fourteen-syllable measure of the popular -play, while in the <i>Octavia</i> this is discarded for the more -artistic heroic couplet. In this and other respects, T. N., as Nuce -signs himself, is undoubtedly more at his ease in the literary element -than others of the group; nevertheless he is often content to fly the -ordinary pitch of R. B. This is most obvious when their performances -are read and compared as a whole, but it is evident enough in single -passages. The Nurse, for example, says of Nero to Octavia:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Eft steppèd into servile Pallace stroke,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To filthy vices lore one easly broke,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of Divelish wicked wit this Princocks proude,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By stepdames wyle prince Claudius Sonne auoude;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whome deadly damme did bloudy match ylight,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And thee, against thy will, for feare did plight.<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">These words might almost suit the mouths of Appius -and his victims.</p> - -<p>But leaving aside the affinities due to the common use of English -by writers on much the same plane of art, the London medley is not -immeasurably different from or inferior to the Roman <i>Praetexta</i>, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> -even when confronted with the latter in its native dress. In both the -characterisation is in the same rudimentary and obvious style, and -shows the same predilection for easily classified types. There is even -less genuine theatrical tact in the Latin than in the English drama. -The chief persons are under careful supervision and are kept rigidly -apart. Nero never meets Octavia or Poppaea, Poppaea and Octavia never -meet each other. No doubt there are some successful touches: the first -entrance of Nero is not ineffective; the equivocal hopefulness of the -last chorus is a thing one remembers: the insertion of Agrippina’s -prophecy and Poppaea’s dream does something to keep in view the future -requital and so to alleviate the thickening gloom. Except for these, -however, and a few other felicities natural to a writer with long -dramatic traditions behind him, the <i>Octavia</i> strikes us as a -series of disquisitions and discussions, well-arranged, well-managed, -often effective, sometimes brilliant, that have been suggested by a -single impressive historical situation.</p> - -<h4 id="SENECANS">2. THE FRENCH SENECANS</h4> - -<p>These salient features are transmitted to the Senecan dramas of France, -except that the characterisation is even vaguer, the declamation -ampler, and the whole treatment less truly dramatic and more obviously -rhetorical; of which there is an indication in the greater relative -prominence of monologue as compared with dialogue, and in the excessive -predilection for general reflections,<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> many of them derived from -Seneca and Horace, but many of them too of modern origin.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> -At the head of the list stands the <i>Julius Caesar</i> of Muretus, a -play which, even if of far less intrinsic worth than can be claimed for -it, would always be interesting for the associations with which it is -surrounded.</p> - -<p>Montaigne, after mentioning among his other tutors “Marc Antoine -Muret,” que le France et l’Italie recognoist pour le meilleur orateur -du temps, goes on to tell us: “J’ay soustenu les premiers personnages -ez tragedies latines de Buchanan, de Guerente et de Muret, qui se -representerent en nostre college de Guienne avecques dignité: en cela, -Andreas Goveanus, nostre principal, comme en toutes aultres parties de -sa charge, feut sans comparaison le plus grand principal de France; et -m’en tenoit on maistre ouvrier.”</p> - -<p>The <i>Julius Caesar</i> written in 1544 belongs to the year before -Montaigne left Bordeaux at the age of thirteen, so he may have taken -one of the chief parts in it, Caesar, or M. Brutus, or Calpurnia. This -would always give us a kind of personal concern in Muret’s short boyish -composition of barely 600 lines, which he wrote at the age of eighteen -and afterwards published only among his <i>Juvenilia</i>. But it has -an importance of its own. Of course it is at the best an academic -experiment, though from Montaigne’s statement that these plays were -presented “avecques dignité,” and from the interest the principal took -in the matter, we may suppose that the performance would be exemplary -in its kind. Of course, too, even as an academic experiment it does -not, to modern taste, seem on the level of the more elaborate tragedies -which George Buchanan, “ce grand poëte ecossois,” as Montaigne -reverently styles his old preceptor, had produced at the comparatively -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> -mature age of from thirty-three to thirty-six, ere leaving Bordeaux -two years before. It is inferior to the <i>Baptistes</i> and far -inferior to the <i>Jephthes</i> in precision of portraiture and pathos -of appeal. But in the sixteenth century, partly, no doubt, because -the subject was of such secular importance and the treatment so -congenial to learned theory, but also, no doubt, because the eloquence -was sometimes so genuinely eloquent, and the Latin, despite a few -licenses in metre and grammar, so racy of the classic soil, it obtained -extraordinary fame and exercised extraordinary influence. For these -reasons, as well as the additional one that it is now less widely known -than it ought to be, a brief account of it may not be out of place.</p> - -<p>The first act is entirely occupied with a soliloquy by Caesar, in which -he represents himself as having attained the summit of earthly glory.</p> - -<p class="blockquot"> Let others at their pleasure count their -triumphs, and name themselves from vanquished provinces. It is more to -be called Caesar: whoso seeks fresh titles elsewhere, takes something -away thereby. Would you have me reckon the regions conquered under my -command? Enumerate all there are.<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">Even Rome has yielded to him, even his great son-in-law -admitted his power,</p> - -<p class="blockquot">and whom he would not have as an equal, he has borne -as a superior.<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">What more is to be done? -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span></p> - -<p class="blockquot">My quest must be heaven, earth is become base -to me.... Now long enough have I lived whether for myself or for my -country.... The destruction of foes, the gift of laws to the people, -the ordering of the year, the restoration of splendour to worship, the -settlement of the world,—than these, greater things can be conceived by -none, nor pettier be performed by me.... When life has played the part -assigned to it, death never comes in haste and sometimes too -late.<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">The chorus sings of the immutability of fortune.</p> - -<p>In the second act Brutus, in a long monologue, upbraids himself with -his delay.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Does the virtue of thy house move thee nought, -and nought the name of Brutus? Nought, the hard lot of thy groaning -country, crushed by the tyrant and calling for thine aid? Nought the -petitions in which the people lament that Brutus comes not to champion -the state? If these things fail to touch thee, thy wife now gives thee -rede enough that thou be a man; who has pledged her faith to thee in -blood, thus avouching herself the offspring of thine -uncle.<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">He raises and meets the objections which his -understanding offers:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Say you he is not king but dictator? If the thing -be the same, what boots a different name? Say you he shuns that name, -and rejects the crowns they proffer him: this is pretence and mockery, -for why then did he remove the tribunes? True, he gave me dignities -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> -and once my life; with me my country outweighs them all. Whoso shows -gratitude to a tyrant against his country’s interest, is ingrate while -he seeks to be stupidly grateful.<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">And his conclusion is</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The sun reawakening to life saw the people -under the yoke, and slaves: at his setting may he see them -free.<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">To him enters Cassius exultant that the day has -arrived, impatient for the decisive moment, scarce able to restrain -his eagerness. Only one scruple remains to him; should Antony be slain -along with his master? Brutus answers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent5">Often already have I said that my purpose is this,</div> -<div class="verse indent5">to destroy tyranny but save the citizens.</div> - -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Cass.</i> Then let it be destroyed from its deepest roots,</div> -<div class="verse indent5">lest if only cut down, it sprout again at some time hereafter.</div> - -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Brut.</i> The whole root lurks under a single trunk.</div> - -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Cass.</i> Think’st thou so? I shall say no more. Thy will</div> -<div class="verse indent5">be done: we all follow thy guidance.<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The chorus sings the glories of those who, like Harmodius with his -“amiculus,” destroy the tyrants, and the risks these tyrants run.</p> - -<p>In the third act Calpurnia, flying in panic to her chamber, is met by -her nurse, to whom she discloses the cause of her distress. She has -dreamed that Caesar lies dead in her arms covered with blood, and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> -stabbed with many wounds. The nurse points out the vanity of dreams and -the unlikelihood of any attempt against one so great and beneficent, -whose clemency has changed even foes to friends. Calpurnia, only half -comforted, rejoins that she will at least beseech him to remain at home -that day, and the chorus prays that misfortune may be averted.</p> - -<p>In the fourth act Calpurnia tries her powers of persuasion. To her -passionate appeal, her husband answers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent7">What? Dost thou ask me to trust thy dreams?</div> - <div class="verse indent3"><i>Cal.</i> No; but to concede something to my fear.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Caes.</i> But that fear of thine rests on dreams alone.</div> - <div class="verse indent3"><i>Cal.</i> Assume it to be vain; grant something to thy wife.<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">She goes on to enumerate the warning portents, and -at length Caesar assents to her prayers since she cannot repress her -terrors. But here Decimus Brutus strikes in:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">High-hearted Caesar, - what word has slipped from thee?<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He bids him remember his glory:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">O most shameful plight if the world is ruled -by Caesar and Caesar by a woman.... What, Caesar, dost thou suppose -the Fathers will think if thou bidst them, summoned at thy command, -to depart now and to return when better dreams present themselves to -Calpurnia. Go rather resolutely and assume a name the Parthians must -dread: or if this please thee not, at least go forth, and thyself -dismiss the Fathers; let them not think they are slighted and had in -derision.<a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p> -<p>Caesar is bent one way by pity for his wife, another by fear of these -taunts; but, at last, leaving Calpurnia to her misgivings, he exclaims:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">But yet, since even to fall, so it be but once, -is better than to be laden with lasting fear; not if three hundred -prophet-voices call me back, not if with his own voice the present -Deity himself warn me of the peril and urge my staying here, shall I -refrain.<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">The chorus cites the predictions of Cassandra to -show that it would sometimes be wise to follow the counsel of women.</p> - -<p>In the fifth act Brutus and Cassius appear in triumph.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="neg-indent"><i>Brut.</i> Breathe, citizens; Caesar -is slain!... In the Senate which he erewhile overbore, he lies -overborne.</p> - -<p class="neg-indent"><i>Cass.</i> Behold, Rome, the sword yet warm -with blood, behold the hand that hath championed thine honour. That -loathsome one who in impious frenzy and blind rage had troubled thee -and thine, sore wounded by this same hand, by this same sword which -thou beholdest, and gashed in every limb, hath spewed forth his life -in a flood of gore.<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">As they leave, Calpurnia enters bewailing the -truth of her dream, and inviting to share in her laments the chorus, -which denounces vengeance on the criminals. Then the voice of Caesar is -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> -heard in rebuke of their tears and in comfort of their distress. Only -his shadow fell, but he himself is joined to the immortals.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Weep no more: it is the wretched that tears -befit. Those who assailed me with frantic mind—a god am I, and true -is my prophecy—shall not escape vengeance for their deed. My sister’s -grandson, heir of my virtue as of my sceptre, will require the penalty -as seems good to him.<a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">Calpurnia recognises the voice, and the chorus -celebrates the bliss of the “somewhat” that is released from the prison -house of the body.</p> - -<p>It is interesting to note that Muretus already employs a number of the -<i>motifs</i> that reappear in Shakespeare. Thus he gives prominence to -the self-conscious magnanimity of Caesar: to the temporary hesitation -of Brutus, with his appeal to his name and the letters that are placed -in his way; to his admiration for the courage and constancy of Portia; -to his final whole-heartedness and disregard of Caesar’s love for him; -to his prohibition of Mark Antony’s death; to Cassius’ vindictive zeal -and eager solicitation of his friend; to Calpurnia’s dream, and the -contest between her and Decimus Brutus and in Caesar’s own mind; to -Caesar’s fatal decision in view of his honour, and his rejection of -the fear of death; to the exultation of Brutus and Cassius as they -enter with their blood-stained swords after the deed is done. And more -noticeable than any of these details, are the divided admiration and -divided sympathy the author bestows both on Brutus and Caesar—which -are obvious even in the wavering utterances of the chorus. We are far -removed from the times when Dante saw Lucifer devouring Brutus and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> -Cassius in two of his mouths with Judas between them; or when Chaucer, -making a composite monster of the pair, tells how “false -Brutus-Cassius,”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“That ever hadde of his hye state envye,”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">“stikede” Julius with “boydekins.” But we are -equally far from the times when Marie-Joseph Chénier was to write his -tragedy of <i>Brutus et Cassius, Les Derniers Romains</i>. At the -renaissance the characteristic feeling was enthusiasm for Caesar and -his assassin alike, though it was Shakespeare alone who knew how to -reconcile the two points of view.<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p> - -<p>Of the admiration which Muret’s little drama excited there is -documentary proof. Prefixed to it are a number of congratulatory -verses, and among the eulogists are not only scholars, like -Buchanan,<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> but literary men, members of the Pléiade—Dorât, Baïf, -and especially Jodelle, who has his complimentary conceits on the -appropriateness of the author’s name, Mark Antony, to the feat he has -accomplished.</p> - -<p>But this last testimony leads us to the less explicit but not less -obvious indications of the influence exercised by Muret’s tragedy which -appear in the subsequent story of literary production. This influence -was both indirect and direct. The example of this modern Latin play -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> -could not but count for something when Jodelle took the further step -of treating another Roman theme in the vernacular. In the vernacular, -too, Grévin was inspired to rehandle the same theme as Muretus, -obtaining from his predecessor most of his material and his apparatus. -These experiments again were not without effect on the later dramas of -Garnier, two of which were to leave a mark on English literature.</p> - -<p>The first regular tragedy as well as the first Roman history in the -French language was the <i>Cléopatre Captive</i> of Jodelle, acted -with great success in 1552 before Henry II. by Jodelle’s friends, who -at the subsequent banquet presented to him, in semi-pagan wise, a goat -decked with flowers and ivy. The prologue<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> to the King describes the -contents.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">“C’est une tragedie</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui d’une voix plaintive et hardie</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Te represente un Romain, Marc Antoine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et Cleopatre, Egyptienne royne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Laquelle après qu’Antoine, son amy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Estant desjà vaincu par l’ennemy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Se fust tué, ja se sentant captive,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et qu’on vouloit la porter toute vive</div> - <div class="verse indent0">En un triomphe avecques ses deux femmes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">S’occit. Icy les desirs et les flammes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">De deux amants: d’Octavian aussi</div> - <div class="verse indent0">L’orgueil, l’audace et le journel soucy</div> - <div class="verse indent0">De son trophée emprains tu sonderas.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But this programme conveys an impression of -greater variety and abundance than is justified by the piece. In -point of fact it begins only after the death of Antony, who does not -intervene save as a ghost in the opening scene, to bewail his offences -and announce that in a dream he has bid Cleopatra join him before the -day is out.<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> -Nor do we hear anything of “desirs et flammes” on his part; rather he -resents her seductions, and has summoned her to share his torments: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Or se faisant compagne en ma peine et tristesse</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui s’est faite longtemps compagne en ma liesse.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The sequel does little more than describe how his command -is carried out. Cleopatra enters into conversation with Eras and Charmium, and -despite their remonstrances resolves to obey. The chorus sings of the -fickleness of fortune: (Act <span class="allsmcap">i.</span>). Octavianus, after a passing -regret for Antony, arranges with Proculeius and Agrippa to make sure of -her presence at his triumph. The chorus sings of the perils of pride: -(Act <span class="smcap">ii.</span>). Octavianus visits the Queen, dismisses her excuses, -but grants mercy to her and her children, and pardons her deceit when -her retention of her jewellery is exposed by Seleucus. But Seleucus is -inconsolable for his offence as well as his castigation, and exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Lors que la royne, et triste et courageuse,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Devant Cesar aux chevaux m’a tiré,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et de son poing mon visage empiré,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">S’elle m’eust fait mort en terre gesir,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Elle eust preveu à mon present desir,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Veu que la mort n’eust point esté tant dure</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Que l’eternelle et mordante pointure</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui jà desjà jusques au fond me blesse</div> - <div class="verse indent0">D’avoir blessé ma royne et ma maistresse.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The chorus oddly enough discovers in her maltreatment of the -tale-bearer a proof of her indomitable spirit, and an indication -that she will never let herself be led to Rome: (Act <span class="smcap">iii.</span>). -Cleopatra now explains that her submission was only feigned to secure -the lives of her children, and that she herself has no thought of -following the conqueror’s car. Eras and Charmium approve, and all -three depart to Antony’s tomb to offer there a last sacrifice, which -the chorus describes in full detail: (Act <span class="smcap">iv.</span>). Proculeius in -consternation announces the sequel: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“J’ay veu (ô rare et miserable chose!)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ma Cleopatre en son royal habit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et sa couronne, au long d’un riche lict</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Peint et doré, blesme et morte couchée,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sans qu’elle fust d’aucun glaive touchée,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Avecq Eras, sa femme, à ses pieds morte,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et Charmium vive, qu’en telle sorte</div> - <div class="verse indent0">J’ay lors blasmée: ‘A a! Charmium, est-ce</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Noblement faict?’ ‘Ouy, ouy, c’est de noblesse</div> - <div class="verse indent0">De tant de rois Egyptiens venuë</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Un tesmoignage.’ Et lors, peu soustenuë</div> - <div class="verse indent0">En chancelant et s’accrochant en vain,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tombe a l’envers, restans un tronc humain.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The chorus celebrates the pitifulness and glory -of her end, and the supremacy of Caesar: (Act <i>V.</i>).</p> - -<p>Thus, despite the promises of the prologue, the play resolves itself to -a single <i>motif</i>, the determination of Cleopatra to follow Antony -in defiance of Octavianus’ efforts to prevent her. Nevertheless, simple -as it is, it fails in real unity. The ghost of Antony, speaking, one -must suppose, the final verdict, pronounces condemnation on her as -well as himself; yet in the rest of the play, even in the undignified -episode with Seleucus, Jodelle bespeaks for her not only our sympathy -but our admiration. It is just another aspect of this that Antony -treats her death as the beginning of her punishment, but to her and her -attendants and the women of Alexandria it is a desirable release. The -recurrent theme of the chorus, varied to suit the complexion of the -different acts, is always the same:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Joye, qui dueil enfante</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Se meurdrist; puis la mort,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Par la joye plaisante,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fait au deuil mesme tort.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Half a dozen years later, in 1558, the <i>Confrères de la Passion</i> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> -were acting a play which Muretus had more immediately prompted, and -which did him greater credit. This was the <i>Cesar</i> of Jacques -Grévin, a young Huguenot gentlemen who, at the age of twenty, recast in -French the even more juvenile effort of the famous scholar, expanding -it to twice the size, introducing new personages, giving the old ones -more to do, and while borrowing largely in language and construction, -shaping it to his own ends and making it much more dramatic. Indeed, -his tragedy strikes one as fitter for the popular stage than almost -any other of its class, and this seems to have been felt at the time, -for besides running through two editions in 1561 and 1562, it was -reproduced by the <i>Confrères</i> with great success in the former -year. Of course its theatrical merit is only relative, and it does not -escape the faults of the Senecan school. Grévin styles his <i>dramatis -personae</i> rather ominously and very correctly “entre-parleurs”; for -they talk rather than act. They talk, moreover, in long, set harangues -even when they are conversing, and Grévin so likes to hear them that he -sometimes lets the story wait. Nor do they possess much individuality -or concrete life. But the young author has passion; he has fire; and he -knows the dramatic secret of contrasting different moods and points of view.</p> - -<p>He follows his exemplar most closely, and often literally, in the -first three acts, though even in them he often goes his own way. Thus, -after Caesar’s opening soliloquy, which is by no means so Olympian -as in Muret, he introduces Mark Antony, who encourages his master -with reminders of his greatness and assurances of his devotion. In -the second act, after Marcus Brutus’ monologue, not only Cassius but -Decimus has something to say, and there is a quicker interchange of -statement and rejoinder than is usual in such a play. In the third act, -the third and fourth of Muretus are combined, and after the conversation -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> -of Calpurnia with the Nurse, there follow her attempts to dissuade -her husband from visiting the senate house, the hesitation of Caesar, -the counter-arguments of Decimus; and in conclusion, when Decimus has -prevailed, the Nurse resumes her endeavours at consolation. The fourth -act is entirely new, and gives an account of the assassination by the -mouth of a Messenger, who is also a new person, to the distracted -Calpurnia and her sympathetic Nurse. In the fifth Grévin begins by -returning to his authority in the jubilant speeches of Brutus and -Cassius, but one by Decimus is added; and rejecting the expedient of -the ghostly intervention, he substitutes, much more effectively, that -of Mark Antony, who addresses the chorus of soldiers, rouses them to -vengeance, and having made sure of them, departs to stir up the people.</p> - -<p>Altogether a creditable performance, and a distinct improvement on the -more famous play that supplied the groundwork. One must not be misled -by the almost literal discipleship of Grévin in particular passages, to -suppose that even in language he is a mere imitator. The discipleship -is of course undeniable. Take Brutus’ outburst:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Rome effroy de ce monde, exemple des provinces,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Laisse la tyrannie entre les mains des Princes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Du Barbare estranger, qui honneur luy fera,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Non pas Rome, pendant que Brute vivera.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And compare:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Reges adorent barbarae gentes suos,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Non Roma mundi terror, et mundi stupor.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Vivente Bruto, Roma reges nesciet.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So, too, after the murder Brutus denounces his victim:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Ce Tyran, ce Cesar, ennemi du Senat....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ce bourreau d’innocens, ruine de nos loix,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">La terreur des Romains, et le poison des droicts.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> -The lines whence this extract is taken merely enlarge Muretus’ conciser -statement:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Ille, ille, Caesar, patriae terror suae,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hostis senatus, innocentium carnifex,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Legum ruina, publici jures lues.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But generally Grévin is more abundant and more -fervid even when he reproduces most obviously, and among the best of -his purple patches are some that are quite his own. He indeed thought -differently. He modestly confesses:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Je ne veux pourtant nier que s’il se trouve -quelque traict digne estre loué, qu’il ne soit de Muret, lequel a esté -mon precepteur quelque temps es lettres humaines, et auquel je donne le -meilleur comme l’ayant appris de luy.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">All the same there is nothing in Muretus like the -passage in which Brutus promises himself an immortality of fame:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Et quand on parlera de Cesar et de Romme,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qu’on se souvienne aussi qu’il a esté un homme,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Un Brute, le vangeur de toute cruauté,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui aura d’un seul coup gaigné la liberté.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quand on dira, Cesar fut maistre de l’empire,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qu’on die quant-et-quant, Brute le sceut occire.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quand on dira, Cesar fut premier Empereur,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qu’on die quant-et-quant, Brute en fut le vangeur.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ainsi puisse a jamais sa gloire estre suyvie</div> - <div class="verse indent0">De celle qui sera sa mortelle ennemie.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Grévin’s tragedy had great vogue, was preferred even to those of -Jodelle, and was praised by Ronsard, though Ronsard afterwards -retracted his praises when Grévin broke with him on religious grounds. -His protestantism, however, would be a recommendation rather than -otherwise in England, and one would like to know whether some of -the lost English pieces on the same subject owed anything to the -French drama. The suggestion has even been made that Shakespeare was -acquainted with it. There are some vague resemblances in particular -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> -thoughts and phrases,<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> -the closest of which occurs in Caesar’s pronouncement on death:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Il vault bien mieux mourir</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Asseuré de tout poinct, qu’incessament perir</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Faulsement par la peur.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This suggests:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Cowards die many times before their deaths:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The valiant never taste of death but once.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 32.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Herr Collischonn also draws attention to a -coincidence in situation that is not derived from Plutarch. When the -conspirators are discussing the chances of Caesar’s attending the -senate meeting, Cassius says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Encore qu’il demeure</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Plus long temps à venir, si fault il bien qu’il meure:</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and Decimus answers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Je m’en vay au devant, sans plus me tormenter,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et trouveray moyen de le faire haster.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is at least curious to find the same sort of addition, -in the same circumstances and with the same speakers in Shakespeare.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cassius.</i><span class="ws6">But it is doubtful yet,</span></div> - <div class="verse indent9">Whether Caesar will come forth to-day, or no....</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Dec. Brut.</i> Never fear that: if he be so resolved,</div> - <div class="verse indent9">I can o’ersway him....</div> - <div class="verse indent9">For I can give his humour the true bent</div> - <div class="verse indent9">And I will bring him to the Capitol.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 194, 202, 210.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Such <i>minutiae</i>, however, are far from conclusive, -especially since, as in the two instances quoted, which are the most significant, -Plutarch, though he did not authorise, may at any rate have suggested -them. The first looks like an expansion of Caesar’s remark when his -friends were discussing which death was the best: “Death unlooked for.” -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> -The second follows as a natural dramatic anticipation of the part that -Decimus actually played in inducing Caesar to keep tryst. They may -very well have occurred independently to both poets; or, if there be -a connection, may have been transmitted from the older to the younger -through the medium of some forgotten English piece. There is more -presumptive evidence that Grévin influenced the <i>Julius Caesar</i> -of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling; but Stirling’s paraphrase -of his authorities is so diffuse that they are not always easy to -trace. His apparent debts to Grévin may really be due to the later -and much more famous French Senecan Garnier, two of whose works have -an undoubted though not very conspicuous place in the history of the -English Drama generally, and especially of the Roman Play in England.</p> - -<p><i>Cornélie</i>, the earlier and less successful of the pair, written -in Garnier’s twenty-eighth year, was performed at the Hôtel de -Bourgogne in 1573, and was published in 1574. The young author was not -altogether unpractised in his art, for already in 1568 he had written -a drama on the subject of Portia, but he has not yet advanced beyond -his predecessors, and like them, or perhaps more obviously than they, -is at the stage of regarding the tragedy “only as an elegy mixed with -rhetorical expositions.” The episode that he selected lent itself to -such treatment.</p> - -<p>Cornelia, the daughter of Metellus Scipio, had after the loss of her -first husband, the younger Cassius, become the wife of Pompey the -Great, of whose murder she was an eye-witness. Meanwhile her father -still made head against Caesar in Africa, and the play deals with her -regrets and suspense at Rome till she learns the issue of this final -struggle. In the first act Cicero soliloquises on the woes of the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> -country, which he traces to her lust of conquest; and the chorus takes -up the burden at the close. In the second Cornelia bewails her own -miseries, which she attributes to her infidelity in marrying again: -Cicero tries to comfort her and she refuses his comfort, both in very -long harangues; and the chorus describes the mutability of mortal -things. In the third act she narrates an ominous dream in which the -shade of Pompey has visited her. Scarcely has she left the stage when -Cicero enters to announce the triumph of Caesar and the death of -Scipio. Cornelia re-enters to receive the urn with Pompey’s ashes, the -sight of which stirs her to new laments for herself and imprecations -against Caesar. The chorus dwells on the capriciousness of fortune. In -the fourth act the resentment against Caesar is emphasised by Cassius -in discourse with Decimus Brutus, and the chorus sings of Harmodios and -Aristogeiton; but after that Caesar and Antony come in and discuss the -means to be taken for Caesar’s safety, Antony advocating severity and -caution, Caesar leniency and confidence. This act is closed by a chorus -of Caesar’s friends, who celebrate his services and virtues. The fifth -act is chiefly occupied with the messenger’s account of Scipio’s last -battle and death, at the end of which Cornelia at some length declares -that when she has paid due funeral rites to husband and father, she -will surrender her own life.</p> - -<p>From this analysis it will be seen that <i>Cornélie</i> as a play -is about as defective as it could be. The subject is essentially -undramatic, for the heroine—and there is no hero—has nothing to do -but spend her time in lamentations and forebodings, in eulogies and -vituperations. Yet the subject is more suitable than the treatment. -There is no trace of conflict, internal or external; for the persons -maintain their own point of view throughout, and the issue is a matter -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> -of course from the first. There is no entanglement or plot; but all -the speakers, as they enter in turn, are affected with a craving to -deliver their minds either in solitude or to some congenial listener: -and their prolations lead to nothing. Even the unity of interest, which -the classicists so prized, and over-prized, is lacking here, despite -the bareness of the theme. Cicero has hardly less to say than Cornelia, -and in two acts she does not so much as appear, while in one of them -attention is diverted from her sorrows to the dangers of Caesar. The -heroine no doubt retains a certain kind of primacy, but save for that, -M. Faguet’s description would be literally correct: “The piece in the -author’s conception might be entitled <i>Thoughts of various persons -concerning Rome at the Date of Thapsus</i>.”<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> -The <i>Cornélie</i> is by no means devoid of merit, but that merit -is almost entirely rhetorical, literary, and poetical. The language -is never undignified, the metres are carefully manipulated; the -descriptions and reflections, many of them taken from Lucan, though -sometimes stilted, are often elevated and picturesque. But the most -dramatic passages are the conversations in the fourth act, where the -<i>inter-locuteurs</i>, as Garnier calls the characters with even more -reason than Grévin calls those of his play <i>entre-parleurs</i>, are -respectively Decimus Brutus and Cassius, Caesar and Mark Antony: and -this is typical for two reasons. In the first place, these scenes -have least to do with the titular subject, and are, as it were, mere -excrescences on the main theme. In the second place, they are borrowed, -so far as their general idea is concerned, from Grévin, as Grévin -in turn had borrowed them from Muretus; and even details have been -transmitted to the cadet in the trinity from each and both of his -predecessors. Thus in the <i>Cornélie</i> Decimus not very suitably -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> -replaces or absorbs Marcus Brutus, but the whole tone and movement of -the interview with Cassius are the same in all the three plays, and -particular expressions reappear in Garnier that are peculiar to one or -other of his elder colleagues or that the later has adapted from the -earlier. For example, Garnier’s Cassius describes Caesar as</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">un homme effeminé</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui le Roy Nicomede a jeune butiné.<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">There is no express reference to this scandal in -Muretus, but it furnishes Grévin’s Decimus with a vigorous couplet -which obviously has inspired the above quotation:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">N’endurons plus sur nous regner un Ganimede</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et la moitié du lict de son Roy Nicomede.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here, on the other hand, is an instance of Garnier -getting a phrase from Muretus that Grévin passed over. Decimus says in -excuse of his former patron:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Encor’ n’est il pas Roy portant le diadême:</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">to which Cassius replies:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Non, il est Dictateur: et n’est-ce pas de mesme?</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In the Latin both objection and answer are put in the lips -of Marcus Brutus, but that does not affect the resemblance.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">At vero non rex iste, sed dictator est.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dum res sit una, quid aliud nomen juvat?</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In other cases the parallelism is threefold. -Thus Garnier’s Cassius exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Les chevaux courageux ne maschent point le mors</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sujets au Chevalier qu’avecque grands efforts;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et les toreaux cornus ne se rendent domtables</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qu’à force, pour paistrir les plaines labourables.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nous hommes, nous Romains, ayant le coeur plus mol,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sous un joug volontaire irons ployer le col.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> -Grévin’s Marcus Brutus said:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Le taureau, le cheval ne prestent le col bas</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A l’appetit d’un joug, si ce n’est pas contraincte:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fauldra il donc que Rome abbaisse sous la craincte</div> - <div class="verse indent0">De ce nouveau tyran le chef de sa grandeur?</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In Muretus the same personage puts it more shortly:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Generosiores frena detrectant equi:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nec nisi coacti perferunt tauri jugum:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Roma patietur, quod recusant belluae.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In the scene between Caesar and Antony the -resemblances are less marked in detail, partly owing to the somewhat -different role assigned to the second speaker, but they are there; and -the general tendency, from the self-conscious monologue of Caesar with -which it opens, to the dialogue in which he gives expression to his -doubts, is practically the same in both plays.</p> - -<p>And these episodes are of some importance in view of their subsequent -as well as their previous history. Though neither entirely original -nor entirely relevant, they seem, perhaps because of their comparative -fitness for the stage, to have made a great impression at the time. -It has been suggested that they were not without their influence on -Shakespeare when he came to write his <i>Julius Caesar</i>: a point the -discussion of which may be reserved. It is certain that they supplied -Alexander, though he may also have used Grévin and even Muretus, with -the chief models and materials for certain scenes in his tragedy on the -same subject. Thus, he too presents Caesar and Antony in consultation, -and the former prefaces this interchange of views with a high-flown -declaration of his greatness. Thus, too, the substance of their talk -is to a great extent adapted from Garnier and diluted in the process. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> -Compare the similar versions of the apology that Caesar makes for his -action. In Alexander he exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The highest in the heaven who knows all hearts,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Do know my thoughts as pure as are their starres,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And that (constrain’d) I came from forraine parts</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To seeme uncivill in the civill warres.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I mov’d that warre which all the world bemoanes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whil’st urged by force to free my selfe from feares;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Still when my hand gave wounds, my heart gave groanes;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No Romans bloud was shed, but I shed teares.<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is very like what Garnier’s Caesar says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">J’atteste Jupiter qui sonne sur la terre,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Que contraint malgré moy j’ay mené ceste guerre:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et que victoire aucune où j’apperçoy gesir</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Le corps d’un citoyen, ne me donne plaisir:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mais de mes ennemis l’envie opiniatre,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et le malheur Romain m’a contraint de combattre.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So, too, when Antony asserts that some are contriving -Caesar’s death, the speakers engage in a dialectical skirmish:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Caesar.</i> The best are bound to me by gifts in store.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Antony.</i> But to their countrey they are bound farre more.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Caesar.</i> Then loathe they me as th’ enemy of the state?</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Antony.</i> Who freedom love, you (as usurper) hate.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Caesar.</i> I by great battells have enlarg’d their bounds.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Antony.</i> By that they think your pow’r too much abounds.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The filiation with Garnier is surely unmistakable, -though it cannot be shown in every line or phrase.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Antoine.</i> Aux ennemis domtez il n’y a point de foy.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cesar.</i> En ceux qui vie et biens de ma bonté reçoivent?</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Antoine.</i> Voire mais beaucoup plus à la Patrie ils doivent.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cesar.</i> Pensent-ils que je sois ennemy du païs?</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Antoine.</i> Mais cruel ravisseur de ses droits envahis.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cesar.</i> J’ay à Rome soumis tant de riches provinces.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Antoine.</i> Rome ne peut souffrir commandement de Princes.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The scene with the conspirators Stirling treats -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> -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 <i>Cornélie</i>.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>Of these we are concerned only with <i>Marc Antoine</i>, 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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i>motifs</i> from Jodelle, or from their common -authority, Plutarch, is able to avoid the monotony of <i>Cléopatre -Captive</i>. 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> -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:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Ait Cesar la victoire, ait mes biens, ait l’honneur</div> - <div class="verse indent0">D’estre sans compagnon de la terre seigneur,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ait mes enfans, ma vie au mal opiniâtre,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ce m’est tout un, pourveu qu’il n’ait ma Cleopatre:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Je ne puis l’oublier, tant j’affole, combien</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Que de n’y penser point servoit non plus grand bien.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He remembers his past glory and past prowess, -and it stings him that he should now be overcome by an inferior foe:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">un homme effeminé de corps et de courage</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui du mestier de Mars n’apprist oncque l’usage.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But he has only himself to blame, for he has debased his life:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">N’ayant soing de vertu, ny d’aucune louange;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ains comme un porc ventru touille dedans la fange,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A coeur saoul me voitray en maints salles plaisirs,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mettant dessous le pied tous honnestes desirs.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Now it only remains for him to die. In the fourth act -Octavianus dwells on the arduousness of his triumphs and the enormity of -Antony’s offences, in order to justify a ruthless policy; and a discussion -follows between him and Agrippa, like the one between Julius and Antony -in the <i>Cornélie</i>, except that here the emperor and his adviser -have their parts reversed. When his resolution seems fixed Dercetas -enters in dismay with tidings that Antony has sought to take his own -life, and that mortally wounded he has been drawn up into the monument -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> -to breathe his last in Cleopatra’s arms. For a moment his conqueror’s -heart is touched. But only for a moment. He speedily gives ear to the -warning of Agrippa, that to secure her treasures and preserve her life, -Cleopatra must be seized. In the fifth act she has all her preparations -made to follow her lord. In vain Euphron tries to stay her by gathering -her children round and predicting their probable fate:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eufron.</i><span class="ws5">Desja me semble voir</span></div> - <div class="verse indent10">Cette petite enfance en servitude cheoir,</div> - <div class="verse indent10">Et portez en trionfe, ...</div> - <div class="verse indent10">Et au doigt les monstrer la tourbe citoyenne.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cleopatre.</i> Hé! plutost mille morts.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But she persists in her resolve and dismisses them. -Her only regret is that she has delayed so long,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Et ja fugitive Ombre avec toy je serois,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Errant sous les cyprès des rives escartees.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">She has waited only to pay the due rites, but now -she is free to breathe her last on her lover’s corpse:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Que de mille baisers, et mille et mille encore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pour office dernier ma bouche vous honore.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et qu’en un tel devoir mon corps affoiblissant</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Defaille dessur vous, mon ame vomissant.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<h4 id="ENGLISH">3. ENGLISH FOLLOWERS OF THE FRENCH SCHOOL.<br /> -“THE WOUNDS OF CIVIL WAR”</h4> - -<p>The <i>Marc Antoine</i> is the best tragedy on a Roman theme, and one -of the best imitations of Seneca that France in the sixteenth century -has to show. It deserved to find admirers on the other side of the -Channel, and it did. Among the courtly and cultured circles in whose -eyes the Latin drama was the ideal and criterion to which all poets -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> -should aspire and by which their achievements should be tested, it was -bound to call forth no little enthusiasm. In England ere this similar -attempts had been made and welcomed, but none had been quite so moving -and interesting, above all none had conformed so strictly to the formal -requirements of the humanist code. In <i>Gorboduc</i>, the first of -these experiments, Sidney, lawgiver of the elect, was pleased to admit -the “honest civility” and “skilful poetry,” but his praises were not -without qualification:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">As it is full of stately speeches and well -sounding Phrases, clyming to the height of Seneca his stile, and as -full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach, and -so obtayne the very end of Poesie: yet in troth it is very defectious -in the circumstaunces: which greeveth mee, because it might not remaine -as an exact model of all Tragedies. For it is faulty both in place, and -time, the two necessary companions of all corporall actions. For where -the stage should alwaies represent but one place, and the uttermost -time presupposed in it, should be, both by Aristotles precept, and -common reason, but one day: there is both many dayes, and many places, -inartificially imagined.<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p> - -<p>Nor in such respects were things much better in the <i>Misfortunes of -Arthur</i>, by Thomas Hughes, which was composed in 1587, the year -after Sidney’s death. But meanwhile France had been blessed with a -play at least the equal of these native products in poetry and pathos, -and much more observant of the unities that scholars were proclaiming. -If the scene was not absolutely unchanged, at least the changes -were confined within the area of a single town. If the time was not -precisely marked, and in Plutarch’s narrative slightly exceeded the -orthodox limits, still Garnier had so managed it that the occurrences -set forth might easily be conceived to take place in a single day. It -seems just the modern play that would have fulfilled the desire of -Sidney’s heart; and since it was composed in a foreign tongue, what -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> -could be more fitting than that Sidney’s sister, the famous Countess -of Pembroke, who shared so largely in Sidney’s literary tastes and -literary gifts, should undertake to give it an English form? It -may have been on her part a pious offering to his <i>manes</i>, -and in 1590, four years after her brother’s death, her version was -complete.<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> -She was well fitted for her task, and she has discharged it well. -Sometimes she may take her liberties, but generally she is wonderfully -faithful, and yet neither in diction nor versification is she stiffer -than many contemporary writers of original English verse. Here, for -instance, is Diomed’s eulogy of Cleopatra’s charm:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Nought liues so faire. Nature by such a worke</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hir selfe, should seeme, in workmanship hath past.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">She is all heau’nlie: neuer any man</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But seing hir, was rauish’d with hir sight.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The Allablaster couering of hir face,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The corall colour hir two lipps engraines,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hir beamie eies, two sunnes of this our world,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of hir faire haire the fine and flaming golde,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hir braue streight stature and her winning partes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Are nothing else but fiers, fetters, dartes.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Yet this is nothing to th’ enchaunting skilles,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of her coelestiall Sp’rite, hir training speache,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hir grace, hir Maiestie, and forcing voice,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whether she it with fingers speache consorte,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or hearing sceptred kings ambassadors</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Answer to eache in his owne language make.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This excellently preserves many details as well as the -pervading tone of the original: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Rien ne vit de si beau, Nature semble avoir</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Par un ouvrage tel surpassé son pouvoir:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Elle est toute celeste, et ne se voit personne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">La voulant contempler, qu’elle ne passionne.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">L’albastre qui blanchist sur son visage saint,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et le vermeil coral qui ses deux lévres peint,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">La clairté de ses yeux, deux soleils de ce monde,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Le fin or rayonnant dessur sa tresse blonde,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sa belle taille droitte, et ses frians attraits,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ne sont que feux ardents, que cordes, et que traits.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Mais encor ce n’est rien aupres des artifices</div> - <div class="verse indent0">De son esprit divin, ses mignardes blandices,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sa maiestie, sa grace, et sa forçante voix,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Soit qu’ell’ la vueille joindre au parler de ses doigts,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ou que des Rois sceptrez recevant les harangues,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Elle vueille respondre à chacun en leurs langues.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The most notable privilege of which the -translation makes use is to soften or refine certain expressions that -may have seemed too vigorous to the high-bred English lady. This, for -example, is her rendering of the lines already quoted in which Antony -denounces his voluptuous life:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Careless of uertue, careless of all praise,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nay, as the fatted swine in filthy mire,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With glutted heart I wallow’d in delights,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All thoughts of honor troden under foote.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Similarly, in Cleopatra’s closing speech, the -original expression, “mon ame vomissant,” yields to a gentler and not -less poetical equivalent:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">A thousand kisses, thousand thousand more</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let you my mouth for honor’s farewell give:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That, in this office, weake my limmes may growe</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fainting on you, and fourth <i>my soule may flowe</i>.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">As the deviations are confined to details, it is not necessary -to repeat the account of the tragedy as a whole. These extracts will show -that Garnier’s <i>Marc Antoine</i> was presented to the English public -in a worthy dress; and the adequacy of the workmanship, the appeal to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> -cultivated taste, the prestige of the great Countess as “Sidney’s -sister, Pembroke’s mother,” her personal reputation among literary men, -procured it immediate welcome and lasting acceptance. Fifteen years -after its first publication it had passed through five editions, and -must have been a familiar book to Elizabethan readers who cared for -such wares. Moreover, it directly evoked an original English play that -followed in part the same pattern and treated in part the same theme.</p> - -<p>In 1594 appeared the <i>Cleopatra</i> of Samuel Daniel, dedicated to -Lady Pembroke with very handsome acknowledgments of the stimulus he -had received from her example and with much modest deprecation of the -supplement he offered. His muse, he asserts, would not have digressed -from the humble task of praising Delia,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">had not thy well graced Antony</div> - <div class="verse indent0">(Who all alone, having remained long)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Requir’d his Cleopatra’s company.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">These words suggest that it was not written at once -after the Countess’s translation: on the other hand there can have been -no very long delay, as it was entered for publication in October, 1593. -The first complete and authorised edition of <i>Delia</i> along with -the <i>Complaint of Rosamond</i>, which Daniel does not mention, -had been given to the world in 1592; and we may assume from his own -words that the <i>Cleopatra</i> was the next venture of the young -author just entering his thirties, and ambitious of a graver kind of -fame than he had won by these amatorious exercises. He had no reason -to be dissatisfied with the result, and perhaps from the outset his -self-disparagement was not very genuine. His play was reprinted seven -times before his death, and these editions show one complete revision -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span> -and one thorough recast of the text. Poets are not wont to spend -such pains on works that they do not value. The truth is that -Daniel’s <i>Cleopatra</i> may take its place beside his subsequent -<i>Philotas</i> among the best original Senecan tragedies that -Elizabethan England produced. Its claims, of course, are almost -exclusively literary and hardly at all theatrical, though some of -the changes in the final version of 1607 seem meant to give a little -mobility to the slow-paced scenes. But from first to last it depends -on the elegiac and rhetorical qualities that characterise the whole -school, and in its undivided attention to them recalls rather Jodelle’s -<i>Cléopatre Captive</i> than Garnier’s <i>Marc Antoine</i>. The -resemblance to the earlier drama is perhaps not accidental. The -situation is precisely the same, for the story begins after the death -of Antony, and concludes with the account of Cleopatra’s suicide. Thus, -despite Daniel’s statement, his play is not in any true sense a sequel -to the one which the Countess had rendered, nor is it the case, as his -words insinuate, that in the <i>Antonius</i> Cleopatra still delayed -to join her beloved: on the contrary we take leave of her as she is -about to expire upon his corpse. So though his patroness’s translation -may very well have suggested to him his heroine, it could not possibly -prescribe to him his argument. And surely after Garnier had shown the -more excellent way of treating the subject so as to include both the -lovers, this truncated section of the history would not spontaneously -occur to any dramatist as the material most proper for his needs. It -seems more than likely that Daniel was acquainted with Jodelle’s play, -and that the precedent it furnished, determined him in his not very -happy selection of the final episode to the exclusion of all that went -before. A careful comparison of the two <i>Cleopatras</i> supports this -view. No doubt in general treatment they differ widely, and most of the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> -coincidences in detail are due to both authors having exploited -Plutarch’s narrative. But this is not true of all. There are some -traits that are not to be accounted for by their common pedigree, but -by direct transmission from the one to the other. Thus, to mention -the most striking, in Jodelle Seleucus is made to express penitence -for exposing the Queen’s misstatement about her treasure. There is -no authority for this: yet in Daniel the new <i>motif</i> reappears. -Of course it is not merely repeated without modification. In Jodelle -it is to the chorus that the culprit unbosoms himself; in Daniel it -is to Rodon, the false governor who has betrayed Caesarion, and who -similarly and no less fictitiously is represented as full of remorse -for his more heinous treason. But imitators frequently try in this -fashion to vary or heighten the effect by duplicating the rôles they -borrow; and Daniel has done so in a second instance, when he happened -to get his suggestion from Garnier. In the <i>Marc Antoine</i>, as -we saw, there is the sententious but quite superfluous figure of the -philosopher Philostratus; Daniel retains him without giving him more -to do, but places by his side the figure of the equally sententious -and superfluous philosopher Arius. In Rodon we have just such another -example of gemination. It is safe to say that the contrite Seleucus -comes straight from the pages of Jodelle; and his presence, if there -were any doubt, serves to establish Daniel’s connection with the first -French Senecan in the vernacular.</p> - -<p>But the Countess’s protégé differs from her not only in reverting to -an elder model: he distinctly improves on her practice by substituting -for her blank verse his own quatrains. The author of the <i>Defence of -Ryme</i> showed a right instinct in this. Blank verse is doubtless the -better dramatic measure, but these pseudo-Senecan pieces were lyric -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span> -rather than dramatic, and it was not the most suitable for them. The -justice of Daniel’s method is proved by its success. He not only -carried the experiment successfully through for himself, which might -have been a <i>tour de force</i> on the part of the “well-languaged” -poet, but he imposed his metre on successors who were less skilled in -managing it, like Sir William Alexander.</p> - -<p>Such, then, is the <i>Cleopatra</i> of Daniel, a play that, compared -even with the contemporary classical dramas of France, belongs to a -bygone phase of the art; a play that is no play at all, but a series -of harangues interspersed with odds and ends of dialogue and the due -choric songs; but that nevertheless, because it fulfils its own ideal -so thoroughly, is admirable in its kind, and still has charms for the -lover of poetry.</p> - -<p>The first act is occupied with a soliloquy of Cleopatra,<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> -in which she laments her past pleasure and glory, and proclaims her -purpose of death.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thinke, Caesar, I that liu’d and raign’d a Queene,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Do scorne to buy my life at such a rate,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That I should underneath my selfe be seene,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Basely induring to suruiue my state:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That Rome should see my scepter-bearing hands</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Behind me bound, and glory in my teares;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That I should passe whereas Octauia stands,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To view my misery, that purchas’d hers.<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">She has hitherto lived only to temporise with Caesar for -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> -the sake of her children, but to her late-born love for Antony her death is due. -She remembers his doting affection, and exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And yet thou cam’st but in my beauties waine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When new appearing wrinckles of declining</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wrought with the hand of yeares, seem’d to detaine</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My graces light, as now but dimly shining ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then, and but thus, thou didst loue most sincerely,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O Antony, that best deseru’d it better,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This autumn of my beauty bought so dearely,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For which in more then death, I stand thy debter.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">In the second act Proculeius gives an account of -Cleopatra’s capture, and describes her apparent submission, to Caesar, -who suspects that it is pretence. In the first scene of the third -act Philostratus and Arius philosophise on their own misfortunes, -the misfortunes of the land, and the probable fate of Cleopatra’s -children. The next scene presents the famous interview between Caesar -and Cleopatra, with the disclosures of Seleucus, to which are added -Dolabella’s avowal of his admiration, and Caesar’s decision to carry -his prisoner to Rome. In the fourth act Seleucus, who has betrayed the -confidence of his mistress, bewails his disloyalty, to Rodon, who has -delivered up Caesarion to death; but they depart to avoid Cleopatra, -whom Dolabella has informed of the victor’s intentions, and who enters, -exclaiming:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">What, hath my face yet powre to win a louer?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Can this torn remnant serue to grace me so,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That it can Caesar’s secret plots discouer,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What he intends with me and mine to do?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Why then, poore beauty, thou hast done thy last</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And best good seruice thou could’st doe unto me:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For now the time of death reueal’d thou hast,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which in my life didst serue but to undoe me.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In the first scene of the fifth act Titius tells -how Cleopatra has sent a message to Caesar, and in the second scene we -learn the significance of this from the Nuntius, who himself has taken -her the asps. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Well, in I went, where brighter then the Sunne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Glittering in all her pompeous rich aray,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Great Cleopatra sate, as if sh’ had wonne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Caesar, and all the world beside, this day:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Euen as she was, when on thy cristall streames,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cleare Cydnos, she did shew what earth could shew:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When Asia all amaz’d in wonder, deemes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Venus from heauen was come on earth below.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Euen as she went at firste to meete her loue,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So goes she now againe to finde him.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But that first, did her greatnes onely proue,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This last her loue, that could not liue behind him.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Her words to the asp are not without a quaint -pathetic tenderness, as she contrasts the “ugly grimness” and “hideous -torments” of other deaths with this that it procures:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Therefore come thou, of wonders wonder chiefe,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That open canst with such an easie key</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The doore of life: come gentle cunning thiefe</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That from our selues so steal’st our selues away.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And her dallying with the accepted and inevitable end is good:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Looke how a mother at her sonnes departing,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For some farre voyage bent to get him fame,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Doth entertaine him with an ydle parting</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And still doth speake, and still speakes but the same:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now bids farewell, and now recalles him backe,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tels what was told, and bids againe farewell,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And yet againe recalles; for still doth lacke</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Something that Loue would faine and cannot tell:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pleased he should goe, yet cannot let him goe.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So she, although she knew there was no way</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But this, yet this she could not handle so</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But she must shew that life desir’d delay.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But this is little more than by-play and make-believe. -She does the deed, and when Caesar’s messengers arrive, it is past prevention. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">For there they found stretcht on a bed of gold,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dead Cleopatra; and that proudly dead,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In all the rich attire procure she could;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And dying Charmion trimming of her head,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Eras at her feete, dead in like case.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">“Charmion, is this well done?” sayd one of them.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">“Yea, well,” sayd she, “and her that from the race</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of so great Kings descends, doth best become.”</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And with that word, yields to her faithfull breath</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To passe th’ assurance of her loue with death.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>One more example of the influence of the French Senecans remains to -be mentioned, and though, as a translation, it is less important than -Daniel’s free reproduction, the name of the translator gives it a -special interest. The stately rhetoric of the <i>Cornélie</i> caught -the fancy of Thomas Kyd, who from the outset had found something -sympathetic in Garnier’s style, and, perhaps in revolt from the -sensationalism of his original work, he wrote an English version which -was published in 1594. When this was so, it need the less surprise us -that the Senecan form should still for years to come be cultivated -by writers who had seen the glories of the Elizabethan stage, above -all for what would seem the peculiarly appropriate themes of classic -history: that Alexander should employ it for his <i>Julius Caesar</i> -and the rest of his <i>Monarchic Tragedies</i> even after Shakespeare’s -<i>Julius Caesar</i> had appeared, and that Ben Jonson himself -should, as it were, cast a wistful, backward glance at it in his -<i>Catiline</i>, which he supplies, not only with a chorus, but with -a very Senecan exposition by Sylla’s ghost. If this style appealed to -the author of <i>The Spanish Tragedy</i>, it might well appeal to the -more fastidious connoisseurs in whom the spirit of the Renaissance was -strong. It was to them Kyd looked for patronage in his new departure, -and he dedicates his <i>Cornelia</i> to the Countess of Suffolk, aunt -of the more memorable lady who had translated the <i>Marc Antoine</i>.</p> - -<p>In execution it hardly equals the companion piece: the language is -less flexible and graphic, and the whole effect more wearisome; which, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span> -however, may be due in part to the inferior merit of the play Kyd had -to render, as well as to the haste with which the rendering was made. -But he aims at preserving the spirit of the French, and does preserve -it in no small degree. The various metres of the chorus are managed -with occasional dexterity; the rhyme that is mingled with the blank -verse of the declamation relieves the tedium of its somewhat monotonous -tramp, and adds point and effectiveness. A fair specimen of his average -procedure may be found in his version of the metaphorical passage in -Cassius’ speech, that, as has been pointed out, can be traced back to -Grévin and Muretus.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The stiff-neckt horses champe not on the bit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor meekely beare the rider but by force:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The sturdie Oxen toyle not at the Plough</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor yeeld unto the yoke, but by constraint.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall we then that are men and Romains borne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Submit us to unurged slauerie?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall Rome, that hath so many ouerthrowne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now make herselfe a subject to her owne?<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Kyd was certainly capable of emphasis, both in the -good and the bad sense, which stands him in good stead when he has to -reproduce the passages adapted from Lucan. These he generally presents -in something of their native pomp, and indeed throughout he shows a -praiseworthy effort to keep on the level of his author. The result is -a grave and decorous performance, which, if necessarily lacking in -distinctive colour, since the original had so little, is almost equally -free from modern incongruities. It can hardly be reckoned as such that -Scipio grasps his “cutlass,” or that in similar cases the equivalent -for a technical Latin term should have a homely sound. Perhaps the most -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> -serious anachronism occurs when Cicero, talking of “this great town” of -Rome, exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Neither could the flaxen-haird high Dutch,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">(A martiall people, madding after Armes),</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor yet the fierce and fiery humord French....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Once dare t’assault it.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Garnier is not responsible: he writes quite correctly:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Ny les blons Germains, peuple enragé de guerre,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ny le Gaulois ardent.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>This, however, is a very innocent slip. It was different when another -scholar of the group to which Kyd belonged treated a Roman theme in a -more popular way.</p> - -<p>But before turning to him it may be well to say a word concerning the -influence which these Senecan pieces are sometimes supposed to have had -on Shakespeare’s Roman plays that dealt with kindred themes.</p> - -<p>And in the first place it may be taken as extremely probable that he -had read them. They were well known to the Elizabethan public, the -least famous of them, Kyd’s <i>Cornelia</i>, reaching a second edition -within a year of its first issue. They were executed by persons who -must have bulked large in Shakespeare’s field of vision. Apart from -her general social and literary reputation, the Countess of Pembroke -was mother of the two young noblemen to whom the first folio of -Shakespeare’s plays was afterwards dedicated on the ground that they -had “prosequutted both them and the author living with so much favour.” -Some of Daniel’s works Shakespeare certainly knew, for there are -convincing parallelisms between the <i>Complaint of Rosamond</i> on the -one hand, and the <i>Rape of Lucrece</i> and <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> -on the other; nor can there be much question about the indebtedness -of Shakespeare’s <i>Sonnets</i> to Daniel’s <i>Delia</i>. Again, with -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span> -Kyd’s acting dramas Shakespeare was undoubtedly acquainted. He quotes -<i>The Spanish Tragedy</i> in the <i>Taming of the Shrew</i>, <i>Much -Ado About Nothing</i>, <i>King Lear</i>; and the same play, as well -as <i>Solyman and Perseda</i>, if that be Kyd’s, in <i>King John</i>: -nor is it to be forgotten that many see Kyd’s hand and few would deny -Kyd’s influence in <i>Titus Andronicus</i>, and that some attribute to -him the lost <i>Hamlet</i>. All these things considered, Shakespeare’s -ignorance of the English Senecans would be much more surprising -than his knowledge of them. Further, though his own method was so -dissimilar, he would be quite inclined to appreciate them, as may be -inferred from the approval he puts in Hamlet’s mouth of <i>Æneas’ tale -to Dido</i>, which reads like a heightened version of the narratives -that occur so plentifully in their pages. So there is nothing -antecedently absurd in the conjecture that they gave him hints when he -turned to their authorities on his own behalf.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless satisfactory proof is lacking. The analogies with -Garnier’s <i>Marc Antoine</i> not accounted for by the obligation of -both dramatists to Plutarch are very vague, and oddly enough seem -vaguer in the translation than in the original. Of this there is a good -example in Antony’s words when he recalls to his shame how his victor</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the brave squares of war.</div> - <div class="verse indent15">(<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="allsmcap">III.</span> x. 39.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">There is similarity of <i>motif</i>, and even the -suggestion of something more, in his outburst in Garnier:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Un homme effeminé de corps et de courage</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui du mestier de Mars n’apprist oncque l’usage.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But only the <i>motif</i> is left in the Countess -of Pembroke’s rendering:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">A man, a woman both in might and minde,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In Marses schole who neuer lesson learn’d.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> -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 <i>Marc -Antoine</i>. 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” (<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="smcap">iv.</span> xiv. 51); but -there is a great difference in the tone of the context. Her dying utterance:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Que de mille baisers, et mille et mille encore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pour office dernier ma bouche vous honore:</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">is in the wording not unlike the dying utterance of Antony:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Of many thousand kisses the poor last</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I lay upon thy lips;</div> - <div class="verse indent12">(<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xv. 20.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">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 (<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="smcap">iv.</span> xv. 23, -<span class="allsmcap">v.</span> ii. 55, <span class="allsmcap">v.</span> ii. 207); -but even here the resemblance is a little deceptive, since in -Shakespeare she feels this horror for herself.</p> - -<p>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</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">That I should underneath my selfe be seene,</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> -might have expressed itself in Shakespeare’s phrase,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be noble to myself.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 191.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Noteworthy, too, in the same passage, is her -reluctance to pass before the injured Octavia, for there is no mention -of this point in Plutarch, but Shakespeare touches on it twice. -Further, her very noticeable references to her waning charms, her -wrinkles, her declining years have their analogies in Shakespeare and -in Shakespeare alone; for Plutarch expressly says that she was “at the -age when a woman’s beawtie is at the prime.” The tenderness in tone of -her address to the asp is common and peculiar to both English poets; -and her adornment in preparation for death suggests to each of them, -but not to Plutarch, her magnificence when she met Antony on the -Cydnus.<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p> - -<p>These coincidences are interesting, but they are not conclusive. They -are none of them such as could not occur independently to two writers -who vividly realised the meaning of Plutarch’s <i>data</i>; for he, as -it were, gives the premises though he does not draw the inference. Thus -he says nothing of Cleopatra’s disdain for the Roman populace, but he -does make the knowledge that she must go to Rome determine her to die. -He says nothing of her recoil from the thought of Octavia seeing her -in her humiliation, but he does tell us of her jealousy of Octavia’s -superior claims. He never hints that Cleopatra was past her bloom, but -his praise of her as at her prime belongs to 41 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, -and the closing incident to 30 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, when she was in -her thirty-ninth year. He does not attribute to her any kindly greeting of the -asp, but he does report that she chose it as providing the easiest and gentlest -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> -means of death. And though in describing her suicide he makes no -reference to the meeting on the Cydnus, he dwells on the glorious array -on both occasions, and the fancy naturally flies from one to the other. -Each of these particulars separately might well suggest itself to more -than one sympathetic reader. The most that can be said is that in their -mass they have a certain cogency. In any case, however, characteristic -and far-reaching as some of them are, they bear only on details of the -conception.</p> - -<p>The possible connection of <i>Julius Caesar</i> with the -<i>Cornélie</i> is of a somewhat different kind. It is restricted -almost entirely to the conversations between Cassius and Decimus Brutus -on the one hand, and between Cassius and Marcus Brutus on the other. -It is thought to show itself partly in particular expressions, partly -in the general situation. So far as the former are concerned, it is -neither precise nor distinctive; and it is rather remarkable that, as -in the case of the <i>Marc Antoine</i>, more is to be said for it when -Shakespeare’s phraseology is compared with that of the original than -when it is compared with that of the translation.<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> -In regard to the latter M. Bernage, the chief advocate of the theory, -writes:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">In the English play (<i>Julius Caesar</i>), as -in our own, Brutus and Cassius have an interview before the arrival -of the Dictator; the subject of their conversation is the same; it -is Cassius too who “strikes so much show of fire” (<i>fait jaillir -l’etincelle</i>) from the soul of Brutus.... These characters are -painted by Garnier in colours quite similar (to Shakespeare’s), and he -is momentarily as vigorous and great. In like manner ... Caesar crosses -the stage after the interview of the two conspirators; he is moreover -accompanied by Antony.<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span> -In the whole tone and direction of the dialogue, too, Shakespeare -resembles Garnier and does not resemble Plutarch. The <i>Life</i> -records one short sentence as Brutus’ part of the colloquy, while -Cassius does nothing more than explain the importance of the anonymous -letters and set forth the expectations that Rome has formed of his -friend. There is no denunciation in Plutarch of Caesar either for his -overgrown power or for his “feeble temper”; there is no lament for the -degeneracy of the Romans; there is no reference to the expulsion of the -kings or appeal to Brutus’ ancestry; all of these matters on which both -the dramatists insist. And at the end the two friends are agreed on -their policy and depart to prosecute their plans, while in Garnier as -in Shakespeare Brutus comes to no final decision.</p> - -<p>It would be curious if this conjecture were correct, and if this famous -scene had influenced Shakespeare as it was to influence Alexander. -There would be few more interesting cases of literary filiation, for, -as we have seen, there is no doubt that here Garnier bases and improves -on Grévin, and that Grévin bases and improves on Muretus; so the -genealogy would run Muretus, Grévin, Garnier, Kyd, Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>Here the matter may rest. The grounds for believing that Shakespeare -was influenced by Garnier’s <i>Marc Antoine</i> are very slight; for -believing that he was influenced by Daniel’s <i>Cleopatra</i> are -somewhat stronger; that he was influenced by Garnier’s <i>Cornélie</i> -are stronger still; but they are even at the best precarious. In all -three instances the evidence brought forward rather suggests the -obligation as possible than establishes it as certain. But it seems -extremely likely that Shakespeare would be acquainted with dramas that -were widely read and were written by persons none of whom can have been -strange to him; and in that case their stateliness and propriety may -have affected him in other ways than we can trace or than he himself knew. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p> - -<p>Meanwhile the popular play had been going its own way, and among other -subjects had selected a few from Roman history. We may be certain -that slowly and surely it was absorbing some of the qualities that -characterised the imitations of the classics; and this process was -accelerated when university men, with Marlowe at their head, took a -leading share in purveying for the London playhouse. The development -is clearly marked in the general history of the drama. Of the Roman -play in this transition phase, as treated by a scholar for the -delectation of the vulgar, we have only one specimen, but it is a -specimen that despite its scanty merit is important no less for the -name of the author than for the mode of the treatment. That author -was Thomas Lodge, so well known for his songs, novels, pamphlets, and -translations. As dramatist he is less conspicuous, and we possess -only two plays from his hand. In one of them, <i>A Looking Glass for -London and England</i>, which gives a description of the corruption -and repentance of Nineveh, and was acted in 1591, he co-operated with -Robert Greene. Of the other,<a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> -<i>The Wounds of Civill War: Lively set forth in the true Tragedies of -Marius and Scilla: As it hath beene publicquely plaide in London, by -the Right Honourable the Lord High Admirall his Servants</i>, he was -sole author, and it is with it that we are concerned. It was printed in -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> -1594, but was probably composed some years earlier.<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> -In any case it comes after the decisive appearance of Marlowe; but -Lodge was far from rivalling that master or profiting fully by his -example, and indeed is inferior to such minor performers as Peele or -Greene. Moreover, in the present case he adds to his general dramatic -disabilities, the incapacity to treat classical history aright. In this -respect, indeed, he improves on the Senecan school by borrowing graphic -minutiae from Plutarch, such as the prefiguration of Marius’ future -glory in his infancy by the seven eagles, the account of the Gaul’s -panic in Minturnae, or the unwilling betrayal of Antonius by the slave. -But on the other hand he astonishes us by his failure to make use of -picturesque incidents which he must have known; like Sulla’s flight for -shelter to his rival’s house, the relief of Marius by the woman whom he -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> -had sentenced, the response of the exile from the ruins of Carthage. -And even when he utilises Plutarch’s touches, Lodge is apt to weaken -or travesty them in his adaptation. The incident of the eagles, though -it furnishes two of the best passages in the play, illustrates the -enfeeblement. Plutarch had said:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">When Marius was but very young and dwelling in the -contry, he gathered up in the lappe of his gowne the ayrie of an Eagle, -in the which were seven young Eagles; whereat his father and mother -much wondering, asked the Sooth-sayers, what that ment? They answered, -that their sonne one day should be one of the greatest men in the -world, and that out of doubt he should obtain seven times in his life -the chiefest office of dignity in his contry.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Plutarch is not quite sure about the -trustworthiness of this story, for the characteristic reason that “the -eagle never getteth but two younge ones,” and his hesitation may have -led Lodge to modify the vivid and improbable detail. Favorinus the -Minturnian tells the story thus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">Yonder Marius in his infancy</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Was born to greater fortunes than we deem:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For, being scarce from out his cradle crept,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And sporting prettily with his compeers,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On sudden seven young eagles soar’d amain,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And kindly perch’d upon his tender lap.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His parents wondering at this strange event,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Took counsel of the soothsayers in this:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who told them that these seven-fold eagles’ flight</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forefigurèd his seven times consulship.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And this version, with only another slight -variation, is repeated rather happily in the invented narrative of the -presage of Marius’ death:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Bright was the day, and on the spreading trees</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The frolic citizens of forest sung</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their lays and merry notes on perching boughs;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When suddenly appeared in the east</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Seven mighty eagles with their talons fierce,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who, waving oft above our consul’s head,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At last with hideous cry did soar away:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When suddenly old Marius aghast,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With reverend smile, determin’d with a sigh</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The doubtful silence of the standers-by.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">“Romans,” he said, “old Marius must die:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">These seven fair eagles, birds of mighty Jove,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That at my birthday on my cradle sat,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now at my last day warn me to my death.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> -But the other two passages Lodge modernises beyond recognition and -beyond decency.</p> - -<p>Of the attempt on Marius’ life at Minturnae, Plutarch narrates very -impressively:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Now when they were agreed upon it, they could not -finde a man in the citie that durst take upon him to kill him; but a -man of armes of the Gaules, or one of the Cimbres (for we finde both -the one or the other in wryting) that went thither with his sword -drawen in his hande. Now that place of the chamber where Marius lay was -very darke, and, as it is reported, the man of armes thought he sawe -two burninge flames come out of Marius eyen, and heard a voyce out of -that darke corner, saying unto him: “O, fellowe, thou, darest thou come -to kill Caius Marius?” The barbarous Gaule, hearing these words, ranne -out of the chamber presently, castinge his sworde in the middest of the -flower,<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> -and crying out these wordes onely: “I can not kill Caius Marius.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Here is Lodge’s burlesque with the Gaul nominated -Pedro, whose name is as unsuitable to his language as is his language -to his supposed nationality.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Pedro.</i> Marius tu es mort. Speak dy preres in dy sleepe, for -me sal cut off your head from your epaules, before you wake. Qui es -stia?<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> -What kinde of a man be dis?</p> - -<p><i>Favorinus.</i> Why, what delays are these? Why gaze ye thus?</p> - -<p><i>Pedro.</i> Notre dame! Jésu! Estiene! O my siniors, der be a -great diable in ce eyes, qui dart de flame, and with de voice d’un -bear cries out, “Villain, dare you kill Marius?” Je tremble; aida me, -siniors, autrement I shall be murdered.</p> - -<p><i>Pausanins.</i> What sudden madness daunts this stranger thus?</p> - -<p><i>Pedro.</i> O, me no can kill Marius; me no dare kill Marius! -adieu, messieurs, me be dead, si je touche Marius. Marius est un -diable. Jesu Maria, sava moy!</p> - -<p class="author"><i>exit fugiens.</i></p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> -Things are scarcely better in the episode of Antonius’ betrayal. -Plutarch has told very simply how the poor man with whom the orator -took refuge, wishing to treat him hospitably, sent a slave for wine, -and how the slave, by requiring the best quality for the distinguished -guest, provoked the questions of the drawer. In Lodge the unsuspecting -serving man becomes a bibulous clown who blabs the secret in a drunken -catch that he sings as he passes the soldiers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">O most surpassing wine,</div> - <div class="verse indent10">The marrow of the vine!</div> - <div class="verse indent10">More welcome unto me</div> - <div class="verse indent10">Than whips to scholars be.</div> - <div class="verse indent10">Thou art, and ever was,</div> - <div class="verse indent10">A means to mend an ass;</div> - <div class="verse indent10">Thou makest some to sleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent10">And many mo to weep,</div> - <div class="verse indent10">And some be glad and merry.</div> - <div class="verse indent10">With heigh down derry, derry.</div> - <div class="verse indent10">Thou makest some to stumble</div> - <div class="verse indent10">A many mo to fumble</div> - <div class="verse indent10">And me have pinky neyne.<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent10">More brave and jolly wine!</div> - <div class="verse indent10">What need I praise thee mo,</div> - <div class="verse indent10">For thou art good, with heigh-ho!...</div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">(<i>To the Soldiers</i>):</div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent3">You would know where Lord Antony is? I perceive you.</div> - <div class="verse indent3">Shall I say he is in yond farm-house? I deceive you.</div> - <div class="verse indent3">Shall I tell you this wine is for him? The gods forfend.</div> - <div class="verse indent3">And so I end.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Lodge is not more fortunate with his additions. -Thus, after Sylla’s final resignation, two burghers with the very Roman -names of Curtall and Poppy are represented as tackling the quondam dictator. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Curtall.</i> And are you no more master-dixcator, nor generality -of the soldiers?</p> - -<p><i>Sylla.</i> My powers do cease, my titles are resign’d.</p> - -<p><i>Curtall.</i> Have you signed your titles? O base mind, that being -in the Paul’s steeple of honour, hast cast thyself into the sink of -simplicity. Fie, beast!</p> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">Were I a king, I would day by day</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Suck up white bread and milk,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">And go a-jetting in a jacket of silk;</div> - <div class="verse indent6">My meat should be the curds,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">My drink should be the whey,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And I would have a mincing lass to love me every day.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Poppy.</i> Nay, goodman Curtall, your discretions are very -simple; let me cramp him with a reason. Sirrah, whether is better good -ale or small-beer? Alas! see his simplicity that cannot answer me; why, -I say ale.</p> - -<p><i>Curtall.</i> And so say I, neighbour.</p> - -<p><i>Poppy.</i> Thou hast reason; ergo, say I, ’tis better be a king -than a clown. Faith, Master Sylla, I hope a man may now call ye knave -by authority.</p> -</div> - -<p>Even more impertinent, because they violate the truth of character and -misrepresent an historical person, are some of the liberties Lodge -takes with Marius. Such is the device with the echo, which he transfers -from the love scenes of poetical Arcady, where it is quite appropriate, -to the mountains of Numidia, where it would hardly be in place even if -we disregarded the temperament and circumstances of the exile.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Marius.</i> Thus Marius lives disdain’d of all the gods,</div> -<div class="verse indent30"><i>Echo.</i> Gods!</div> -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Marius.</i> With deep despair late overtaken wholly.</div> -<div class="verse indent30"><i>Echo.</i> O, lie!</div> -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Marius.</i> And will the heavens be never well appeased?</div> -<div class="verse indent30"><i>Echo.</i> Appeased.</div> -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Marius.</i> What mean have they left me to cure my smart?</div> -<div class="verse indent30"><i>Echo.</i> Art.</div> -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Marius.</i> Nought better fits old Marius’ mind then war.</div> -<div class="verse indent30"><i>Echo.</i> Then, war!</div> -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Marius.</i> Then full of hope, say, Echo, shall I go?</div> -<div class="verse indent30"><i>Echo.</i> Go!</div> -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Marius.</i> Is any better fortune then at hand?</div> -<div class="verse indent30"><i>Echo.</i> At hand.</div> -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Marius.</i> Then farewell, Echo, gentle nymph, farewell.</div> -<div class="verse indent30"><i>Echo.</i> Fare well.</div> -<div class="verse indent0"><i>Marius.</i> (soliloquises). O pleasing folly to a pensive man!</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> -Yet Lodge was a competent scholar who was by and by to translate -<i>The Famous and Memourable Workes of Josephus, a Man of Much Honour -and Learning among the Jewes</i>, and the <i>Works both Moral and -Natural of Lucius Annaeus Seneca</i>. And already in this play he -makes Sylla’s genius, invisible to all, summon him in Latin Elegiacs -audible only to him. If then the popular scenes in Shakespeare’s Roman -plays do not make a very Roman impression, it should be remembered -that he is punctilious in comparison with the University gentleman who -preceded him. Nor did the fashion of popularising antique themes with -vulgar frippery from the present die out when Shakespeare showed a -more excellent way. There is something of very much the same kind in -Heywood’s <i>Rape of Lucrece</i> which was published in 1608.</p> - -<p>But these superficial laches are not the most objectionable things in -the play. There is nothing organic in it. Of course its neglect of the -unities of time and place is natural and right, but it is careless -of unity in structure or even in portraiture. The canvas is crowded -with subordinate figures who perplex the action without producing a -vivid impression of their own characters. A few are made distinct by -insistence on particular traits, like Octavius with his unbending civic -virtue, or Antonius with his ‘honey-dropping’ and rather ineffectual -eloquence, or Lepidus with his braggard temporising. The only one -of them who has real individuality is the younger Marius, insolent, -fierce, and cruel, but full of energy and filial affection, and too -proud to survive his fortunes. He perhaps is the most consistent and -sympathetic person in the piece; which of itself is a criticism, for he -occupies a much less important place than the two principals, expressly -announced as the heroes in the title-page. It is difficult even to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span> -guess the intention of the author in this delineation of them, and in -any case the result is not pleasing. Marius, despite a certain amount -of tough fortitude—which for the rest is not so indomitable as in -Plutarch—and a rude magnanimity displayed in the imaginary scene with -Sylla’s daughter and wife, is far from attractive; and it comes as -a surprise that after all his violence and vindictiveness he should -meet his death “with a reverend smile” in placid resignation. But with -Sylla matters are worse. He would be altogether repulsive but for -his courage, and Lodge seems to explain him and his career only by -appealing to his own adopted epithet of Felix or Fortunate. His last -words are:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Fortune, now I bless thee</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That both in life and death would’st not oppress me.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And when, “to conclude his happiness,” his sumptuous funeral -is arranged, Pompey expresses the same idea in the lines that close the play:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Come, bear we hence this trophy of renown</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose life, whose death was far from Fortune’s frown.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The problem of his strange story is not so much stated as implied, -and far less is there any attempt at a solution. After all his -blood-guiltiness, he too, like Marius, passes away in peace, but with -him the peacefulness rises to the serenity of a saint or sage. To his -friend he exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">My Flaccus, worldly joys and pleasures fade;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Inconstant time, like to the fleeting tide</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With endless course man’s hopes doth overbear:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now nought remains that Sylla fain would have</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But lasting fame when body lies in grave.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">To his wife, who soon after asks:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">How fares my lord? How doth my gentle Sylla?</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">he replies still more devoutly:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Free from the world, allied unto the heavens;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not curious of incertain chances now.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> -There is thus no meaning in the story. The rival leaders are equally -responsible for the Wounds of Civil War, but end as happily as though -they had been benefactors of society. And this is by no means presented -as an example of tragic irony, in which case something might be said -for it, but as the natural, fitting, and satisfactory conclusion. Yet -Plutarch tells of Marius’ sleeplessness, drunkenness, and perturbation, -and of Sylla‘s debaucheries and disease. These were hints, one might -have thought, that would have suited the temper of an Elizabethan -dramatist; but Lodge passes them over.</p> - -<p>It is the same with the public story. If Rome is left in quiet it is -only because Sylla’s ruthlessness has been ‘fortunate’; it is not -represented as the rational outcome of what went before, nor is there -any suggestion of what was to follow after.</p> - -<p>The merit of the play, such as it is, lies in its succession of -stirring scenes—but not the most stirring that might have been -selected—from the career of two famous personalities in the history of -a famous State. It is almost incredible that in barely more than half -a dozen years after its publication London playgoers were listening -to <i>Julius Caesar</i> with its suggestive episodes, its noble -characterisation, and full realisation of what the story meant.</p> - -<p>Yet Lodge’s play is probably as good as any of those based on Roman -History till Shakespeare turned his attention to such subjects. The -titles of a number of others have come down to us. Some of these are -of early date and may have approximated to the type of <i>Apius and -Virginia</i>. Others would attempt the style of Seneca, either after -the crude fashion of <i>Gorboduc</i> or subsequently under the better -guidance of the French practitioners; and among these later Senecans -were distinguished men like Lord Brooke, who destroyed a tragedy on -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span> -<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> in 1601, and Brandon, whose <i>Vertuous -Octavia</i>, written in 1598, still survives.<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> -In others again there may have been an anticipation or imitation of -the more popular manner of Lodge. But the fact that they were never -published, or have been lost, or, in one or two cases where isolated -copies are extant, have not been thought worth reprinting, affords a -presumption that their claims are inferior, and that in them no very -characteristic note is struck. It is pretty safe to suppose that they -did not contain much instruction for Shakespeare, and that none of -them would bridge the gap between Lodge’s medley and Shakespeare’s -masterpiece.</p> - -<p>The progress made since the middle of the century was, of course, -considerable. A pioneer performance, like <i>Apius and Virginia</i>, -had the merit of pushing beyond the landmarks of the old Morality, -and of bringing Roman story within the ken of English playgoers, -but it did nothing more. It treated this precisely as it might have -treated any other subject, and looked merely to the lesson, though, -no doubt, it sought to make the lesson palatable with such dramatic -condiments as the art of the day supplied. The Senecans, inspired by -the <i>Octavia</i>, make a disinterested effort to detach and set -forth the conception of old Roman greatness, as it was given that age -to understand it, and these productions show no impropriety and much -literary skill, but the outlines and colours are too vague to admit of -reality or life. Lodge is realistic enough in his way, but it is by -sacrificing what is significant and characteristic, and submerging the -majesty of ancient Rome in the banalities and trivialities of his own -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span> -time. No dramatist had been able at once to rise to the grandeur of -the theme and keep a foothold on solid earth, to reconcile the claims -of the ideal and the real, the past and the present. That was left for -Shakespeare to do.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">SHAKESPEARE’S TREATMENT OF HISTORY</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>The turn of the centuries roughly bisects the dramatic career of -Shakespeare. In the first half he had written many comedies and a few -tragedies; in the second he was to write many tragedies with a few -plays which, on account of the happy ending and other traits, may -be assigned to the opposite class. But beyond these recognised and -legitimate subdivisions of the Romantic Drama, he had also before 1600 -busied himself with that characteristic product of the Elizabethan -Age, the Historical Play dealing with the national annals. In this -kind, indeed, he had been hardly less abundant than in comedy, the -proportions being nine of the one to eleven of the other. Then suddenly -he leaves it aside, and returns to it only at the close in <i>Henry -VIII.</i>, which moreover is but partially his handiwork.</p> - -<p>Thus, while the tragic note is not inaudible in the earlier period of -his activity nor the comic note in the later, the third, that sounded -so loud in the sixteenth century, utterly or all but utterly dies away -in the seventeenth.</p> - -<p>Why this should be so it is impossible to say. It may be that the -patriotic self-consciousness stirred by the defeat of the Armada and -the triumph of England waned with the growing sense of internal -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> -grievances and the loss of external prestige, and that the national -story no longer inspired such curiosity and delight. It may be that -Shakespeare had exhausted the episodes which had a special attraction -for contemporaries and himself. It may be that he found in the records -of other lands themes that gave his genius freer scope and more fully -satisfied the requirements of his art. Or all these considerations may -have co-operated.</p> - -<p>For the last of them there is at any rate this much to say, that, -though the play on native history virtually disappears, the Historical -Play as such survives and wins new triumphs. The Roman group resembles -the English group in many ways, and, where they differ, it has -excellences of its own.</p> - -<p>What are the main points in which respectively they diverge -or coincide?</p> - -<p>(1) There is no doubt that it was patriotic enthusiasm that called into -existence the Chronicle Histories so numerous in Elizabeth’s reign, of -which the best in Shakespeare’s series are only the consummate flower. -The pride in the present and confidence in the future of England found -vent, too, in occupation with England’s past, and since the general -appetite could not be satisfied by the histories of every sort and -size that issued from the press, the vigorous young drama seized the -opportunity of extending its operations, and stepped in to supply the -demand. Probably with a more definite theory of its aims, methods, -and sphere there might have been less readiness to undertake the new -department. But in the popular conception the play was little else -than a narrative presented in scenes. The only requirement was that -it should interest the spectators, and few troubled themselves about -classic rule and precedent, or even about connected structure and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> -arrangement. And when by and by the Elizabethan Tragedy and Comedy -became more organic and vertebrate, the Historic Play had secured -recognition, and was able to persist in what was dramatically a -more rudimentary phase and develop without regard to more exacting -standards. Shakespeare’s later Histories, precisely the superlative -specimens of the whole species, illustrate this with conspicuous force. -The subject of <i>Henry IV.</i>, if presented in summary, must seem -comparatively commonplace; the ‘argument’ of both parts, if analysed, -is loose and straggling; the second part to a great extent repeats -at a lower pitch the <i>motifs</i> of the first; yet it is hardly -if at all less excellent than its predecessor, and together they -represent Shakespeare’s grand achievement in this kind. In <i>Henry -V.</i>, which has merits that make it at least one of the most popular -pieces that Shakespeare ever wrote, the distinctively narrative wins -the day against the distinctively dramatic. Not only are some of the -essential links supplied only in the story of the chorus, but there -is no dramatic collision of ideas, no conflict in the soul of the -hero, except in the scenes preliminary to Agincourt, not even much of -the excitement of suspense. It is a plain straightforward history, -admirably conveyed in scene and speech, all the episodes significant -and picturesque, all the persons vividly characterised, bound to stir -and inspire by its sane and healthy patriotism; but in the notes that -are considered to make up the <i>differentia</i> of a drama, whether -ancient or modern, it is undoubtedly defective.</p> - -<p>In proportion then as Shakespeare realised the requirements of the -Chronicle History, and succeeded in producing his masterpieces in this -domain, he deviated from the course that he pursued in his other plays. -And this necessarily followed from the end he had in view. He wished to -give, and his audience wished to get, passages from the history of their -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> -country set forth on the stage as pregnantly and attractively as -possible; but the history was the first and chief thing, and in it -the whole species had its <i>raison d’être</i>. History delivered the -material and prescribed the treatment, and even the selection of the -episodes treated was determined less perhaps by their natural fitness -for dramatic form, than by the influence of certain contemporary -historic interests. For the points which the average Elizabethan had -most at heart were—(1) The unity of the country under the strong -and orderly government of securely succeeding sovereigns, who should -preserve it from the long remembered evils of Civil War; (2) Its -rejection of Papal domination, with which there might be, but more -frequently among the play-going classes, there was not associated the -desire for a more radical reconstruction of the Church; (3) The power, -safety and prestige of England, which Englishmen believed to be the -inevitable consequence of her unity and independence. So whatever in -bygone times bore on these matters and could be made to illustrate -them, whether by parallel or contrast, was sure of a sympathetic -hearing. And in this as in other points Shakespeare seems to have -felt with his fellow-men and shared their presuppositions. At least -all the ten plays on English history in which he is known to have had -a hand deal with rivalry for the throne, the struggle with Rome, the -success or failure in France accordingly as the prescribed postulates -are fulfilled or violated. It may have been his engrossment in these -concerns that sometimes led him to choose subjects which the mere -artist would have rejected as of small dramatic promise.</p> - -<p>When he turned to the records of antiquity, the conditions were very -different. Doubtless to a man of the Renaissance classical history in -its appeal came only second, if even second, to the history of his own -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> -land; doubtless also to the man who was not a technical scholar, the -history of Rome had far more familiar charm than the history of Greece. -When, therefore, Shakespeare went outside his own England in search -for historical themes, he was still addressing the general heart, and -showed himself in closer accord with popular taste than, <i>e.g.</i> -Chapman, whose French plays are perhaps next to his own among the best -Elizabethan examples of the historical drama. But we may be sure that -Ambois and Biron and Chabot were much less interesting persons to the -ordinary Londoner than Caesar and Antony and Coriolanus. Not merely -in treatment, but in selection of the material—which cannot fail to -influence the treatment—Shakespeare was in touch with common feeling -and popular taste.</p> - -<p>All the same a great deal more was now required than in the case of -the English series. In that the story of a reign or the section of -a reign, the chronicle of a flimsy conspiracy or a foreign campaign -might furnish the framework for a production that would delight the -audience. It was otherwise when dramatist and spectators alike knew the -history only in its mass, and were impressed only by the outstanding -features. Just as with individuals so with nations, many things become -significant and important in those of our familiar circle that would -seem trivial in mere strangers and acquaintances. If the Roman plays -were to be popular as the English ones had been, Shakespeare was bound -to select episodes of more salient interest and more catholic appeal -than such as had hitherto sometimes served his turn. In the best of -the English plays we constantly wonder that Shakespeare could get such -results from stories that we should have thought in advance to be quite -unfit for the stage. But the fall of Caesar and the fate of those who -sought to strangle the infant empire, the shock of opposing forces in -Augustus and Antony and the loss of the world for Cleopatra’s love, the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> -triumph and destruction of the glorious renegade from whose wrath the -young republic escaped as by fire—that there are tragic possibilities -in themes like these is patent to a casual glance. It is significant -that, while of the subjects handled in the English histories only the -episode of Joan of Arc and the story of Richard III. have attracted -the attention of foreign dramatists, all the Roman plays have European -congeners. One of the reasons may be, that though the events described -in the national series are dramatic enough for national purposes, they -do not like the others satisfy the severer international test.</p> - -<p>And to a difference in the character of the material corresponds a -difference in the character of the treatment. The best of the English -plays, as we have seen, are precisely those that it would be hardest -to describe in terms of the ordinary drama. The juvenile <i>Richard -III.</i> is the only one that could nowadays without objection be -included in a list of Shakespeare’s tragedies. But with the Roman plays -it is quite the reverse. In the main lines of construction they are -of tragic build; there is invariably a tragic problem in the hero’s -career; and it reaches a tragic solution in his self-caused ruin. So -they are always ranked with the Tragedies, and though here and there -they may show a variation from Shakespeare’s usual tragic technique, -it would occur to no one to alter the arrangement.</p> - -<p>(2) Yet these little variations may remind us that after all they -were not produced under quite the same presuppositions as plays -like <i>Hamlet</i> and <i>Othello</i>, or even <i>King Lear</i> and -<i>Macbeth</i>. In a sense they remain <i>Histories</i>, as truly -histories as any of their English analogues. The political vicissitudes -and public catastrophes do not indeed contribute the chief elements of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span> -interest. Here as everywhere Shakespeare is above all occupied with the -career of individuals, with the interaction of persons and persons, -and of persons and circumstances. Nevertheless in these plays the -characters are always exhibited in relation to the great mutations in -the State. Not merely the background but the environment and atmosphere -are supplied by the large life of affairs. It is not so in <i>Lear</i>, -where the legend offered no tangible history on which the imagination -could take hold; it is only partially so in <i>Macbeth</i>, where -Shakespeare knew practically nothing of the actual local conditions; -nor, had it been otherwise, was there anything in these traditions of -prerogative importance for later times. But in the Roman plays the -main facts were accredited and known, and of infinite significance for -the history of the world. They could not be overlooked, they had to be -taken into account.</p> - -<p>For the same reason they must no more be tampered with than the -accepted facts of English History. The two historical series are again -alike in this, that they treat their sources with much more reverence -than either the Comedies or the other Tragedies show for theirs. -Even in <i>Lear</i> the dramatist has no scruple about altering the -traditional close; even in <i>Macbeth</i> he has no scruple about -blending the stories of two reigns. But in dealing with the professedly -authentic records whether of England or Rome, Shakespeare felt that he -had to do with the actual, with what definitely had been; and he did -not conceive himself free to give invention the rein, as when with a -light heart he reshaped the caprices of a novel or the perversions of -a legend. As historical dramatist he was subordinated to his subject -much in the same way as the portrait painter. He could choose his point -of view, and manage the lights and shades, and determine the pose. -He could emphasize details, or slur them over, or even leave them out. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> -He could interpret and reveal, so far as in him lay, the meaning and -spirit of history. But he had his marching orders and could no more -depart from them to take a more attractive way of his own, than the -portrait painter can correct the defects of his sitter to make him -an Apollo. It cannot always have been easy to keep true to this -self-denying ordinance. Despite the suitability of the subject in -general suggestion and even in many particular incidents there must -have been a recalcitrance to treatment here and there; and traces -of this may be detected, if the Roman plays are compared with the -tragedies in which the genius of Shakespeare had quite unimpeded sway. -To some of the chief of these traces Mr. Bradley has called attention. -Thus there is in the middle of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, owing to -the undramatic nature of the historic material, an excessive number -of brief scenes “in which the <i>dramatis personae</i> are frequently -changed, as though a novelist were to tell his story in a succession of -short chapters, in which he flitted from one group of his characters -to another.” In <i>Coriolanus</i>, “if Shakespeare had made the hero -persist and we had seen him amid the flaming ruins of Rome, awaking -suddenly to the enormity of his deed and taking vengeance on himself -... that would merely have been an ending more strictly tragic<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> -than the close of Shakespeare’s play.” In <i>Julius Caesar</i> the “famous -and wonderful” quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius is “an episode -the removal of which would not affect the actual sequence of events -(unless we may hold that but for the emotion caused by the quarrel and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span> -reconciliation Cassius would not have allowed Brutus to overcome his -objection to the fatal policy of offering battle at Philippi).” Mr. -Bradley discusses this in another connection, and here, as we shall -see, Shakespeare only partially adheres to his authority. In the same -play, however, we have the episode of the poet Cinna’s murder which, -however useful in illustrating the temper of the mob and suggestive -in other respects, is nevertheless a somewhat crude intrusion of -history, for it leads to nothing and in no way helps on the action. But -Shakespeare will put up with an occasional awkwardness in the mechanism -rather than fail to give what he considers a faithful picture. As in -the best English Histories he omits, he compresses, he even regroups; -but he never consciously alters the sense, and to bring out the sense -he utilises material that puts a little strain on his art.</p> - -<p>Yet of course this does not mean that in the Roman any more than -in the English plays he attempts an accurate reconstruction of the -past. It may even be doubted whether such an attempt would have been -intelligible to him or to any save one or two of his contemporaries. -To the average Elizabethan (and in this respect Shakespeare was an -average Elizabethan, with infinitely clearer vision certainly, but -with the same outlook and horizon) the past differed from the present -chiefly by its distance and dimness; and distinctive contrasts in -manners and customs were but scantily recognised. A generation later -French audiences could view the perruques and patches of Corneille’s -Romans without any sense of incongruity, and the assimilation of the -ancient to the modern was in some respects much more thorough-going -in Shakespeare’s England. In all his classical pieces the impression -of historic actuality and the genuine antique <i>cachet</i> is only -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span> -produced when there is a kind of inner kinship between the -circumstances to be represented and the English life that he knew. -There was a good deal of such correspondence between Elizabethan life -and Roman life, so the Roman Tragedies have a breath of historic -verisimilitude and even a faint suggestion of local colour. There was -much less between Elizabethan life and Greek life, so <i>Timon</i> -and <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, though true as human documents, have -almost nothing Hellenic about them. But even in the Roman plays, so -soon as there is anything that involves a distinctive difference -between Rome and London Shakespeare is sure to miss it. Anachronisms -in detail are of course abundantly unimportant, though a formidable -list of them could be computed. In <i>Julius Caesar</i> there are -clocks that strike, and the crowd throw up their sweaty nightcaps. The -arrangements of the Elizabethan stage furnish Cleopatra and Comminius -with similes. Menenius is familiar with funeral knells and batteries -and Galen’s prescriptions.</p> - -<p>These are <i>minutiae</i> on which students like Bacon or Ben Jonson -might set store, but in regard to which Shakespeare was quite -untroubled and careless. Perhaps they deserve notice only because they -add one little item to the mass of proof that the plays were written -by a man of merely ordinary information, not by a trained scholar. -But for themselves they may be disregarded. It is not such trifles -that interfere with fidelity to antiquity. But in weightier matters, -too, Shakespeare shows an inevitable limitation in reproducing a -civilisation that was in some aspects very different from his own, -and for which he had no parallel in his own experience. He shows a -precisely analogous limitation when he deals with themes from English -History that were partly alien to the spirit of the time. Of this -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span> -<i>King John</i> furnishes the grand example. We all know why that -troublesome reign is memorable now, not merely to the constitutional -historian, but to the man in the street and the child on the school -bench. Yet Shakespeare makes no mention of Runnymede or the Great -Charter; and we may assume that he, like most Elizabethans, if -interested in such matters at all, would have been unsympathetic -to a movement that extorted liberties by civil strife. To him the -significant points are the disputed succession, the struggle with -the Pope, the initial invasion of France by England when the Kingdom -is of one accord, and the subsequent invasion of England by France, -when it is divided against itself. So <i>King John</i>, though very -true to human nature and even to certain aspects of the period, pays -no heed to the aspect which other generations have considered the -most important of all, and one which on any estimate is not to be -overlooked. But if Shakespeare thus misses a conspicuous feature in a -set of occurrences that took place among his own people less than four -hundred years before, we need not wonder if he failed to detect the -peculiar features of ancient Rome as it existed at a further distance -of twelve or sixteen centuries. His approximation to the actual or -alleged conditions varies indeed in the different plays. It is closest -in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. In that there is hardly a personage or -circumstance for which he had not some sort of a clue. He knew about -soldiers of fortune like Enobarbus and pirate-adventurers like Menas; a -ruler like Henry VII. had in him a touch of Octavius, there were not a -few notabilities in Europe who carried a suggestion of Mark Antony, the -orgies of Cleopatra’s court in Egypt were analogous to those of many -an Italian or French court at the Renaissance. It is all native ground -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span> -to Shakespeare and he would feel himself at home. On the other hand, -he is least capable of seeing eye to eye the primitive republican life -which on Plutarch’s evidence he has to depict in <i>Coriolanus</i>. The -shrewd, resolute, law-abiding Commons, whom some of the traditions that -Plutarch worked up seem meant to exalt; the plebs that might secede to -the Holy Mount, but would not rise in armed revolt; that secured the -tribunate as its constitutional lever with which it was by and by to -shift the political centre of gravity, this was like nothing that he -knew or that anybody else knew about till half a century had elapsed. -He could only represent it in terms of a contemporary city mob; and -the consequence is that though he has given a splendid picture that -satisfies the imagination and even realises some of Plutarch’s hints, -it is not true to the whole situation as envisaged by -Plutarch.<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> -<i>Julius Caesar</i> occupies a kind of intermediate position, and for -that reason illustrates his method most completely. He could understand -a good deal of the political crisis in Rome on which that story turns, -from the existing conditions or recent memories of his own country. -In both a period of civil turmoil had ended in the establishment of -a strong government. In both there were nobles who from principle -or interest were opposed to the change, so he could enter into the -feelings of the conspirators. In both the centralisation of authority -was the urgent need, so he could appreciate the indispensableness of -the Empire, the ‘spirit of Caesar.’ But of zeal for the republican -theory as such he knows nothing, and therefore his Brutus is only in -part the Brutus of Plutarch.</p> - -<p>Thus Shakespeare in his picture of Rome and Romans, does not give the -notes that mark off Roman from every other civilisation, but rather -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> -those that it possessed in common with the rest, and especially with -his own. He even puts into it, without any consciousness of the -discrepancy, qualities that are characteristic of Elizabethan rather -than of Roman life. And the whole result, the quickening of the antique -material with modern feeling in so far as that is also antique, and -occasionally when it is not quite antique, is due to the thorough -realisation of the subject in Shakespeare’s own mind from his own -point of view, with all the powers not only of his reason, but of his -imagination, emotion, passion, and experience. Hence his delineations -are in point of fact more truly antique than those of many much more -scholarly poets, who can reproduce the minute peculiarities, but not, -what is more central and essential, the living energy and principle of -it all. This was felt by contemporaries. We have the express testimony -of the erudite Leonard Digges, who after graduating as Bachelor in -Oxford, continued his studies for many years in several foreign -universities, and consequently was promoted on his return to the -honorary degree of Master, a man who, with his academic training and -academic status, would not be apt to undervalue literal accuracy. But -he writes:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So have I seen when Caesar would appear,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And on the stage at half-sword parley were</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Brutus and Cassius: oh! how the audience</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were ravish’d, with what wonder went they thence;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When some new day they would not brook a line</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of tedious though well-labour’d <i>Catiline</i>,—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sejanus too was irksome.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Ben Jonson in <i>Sejanus</i> and <i>Catiline</i> -tried to restore antiquity in its exclusive and exceptional traits. -Shakespeare approached it on its more catholic and human side, -interpreted it by those qualities in modern life that face towards -the classical ideal, and even went the length of using at unawares -some that were more <span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> -typical of his new world. And Jonson’s Roman plays were felt to be -well-laboured and irksome, while his filled the spectators with -ravishment and wonder.</p> - -<p>In both series then, English and Roman alike, Shakespeare on the one -hand loyally accepted his authorities and never deviated from them on -their main route, but on the other he treated them unquestioningly -from his own point of view, and probably never even suspected that -their own might be different. This is the double characteristic of his -attitude to his documents, and it combines pious regard for the assumed -facts of History with complete indifference to critical research. He -is as far as possible from submitting to the dead hand of the past, -but he is also as far as possible from allowing himself a free hand -in its manipulation. His method, in short, implies and includes two -principles, which, if separated, may easily become antagonistic, and -which, in point of fact, have led later schools of the historic drama -in quite opposite directions. A short examination of these contrasted -tendencies may perhaps help to throw a clearer light on Shakespeare’s -own position.</p> - -<p>The one that lays stress on the artist’s right to take counsel with -his own ideas has been explained by Lessing in a famous passage of the -<i>Hamburg Dramaturgy</i>, which is all the more interesting for the -present purpose, that throughout it tacitly or expressly appeals to -the practice of Shakespeare. Lessing starts with Aristotle’s doctrine -that poetry is more pregnant than history, and asks why, when this is -so, the poet does not keep within the kingdom of his imagination, why -more especially the dramatist descends to the lower artistic level -of the historian to trespass on the domain of prosaic fact. And he -answers that it is merely a matter of convenience. There is advantage -to be gained from illustrious position and impressive associations; and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> -moreover the playwright finds it helpful that the audience should -already have some idea of the story to be told, that they should, as -it were, meet him half way, and bring to the understanding of his -piece some general knowledge of the persons. He gains his purpose if -he employs famous names which appear in a nimbus of associations, and -saves time in describing their characters and circumstances; and thus -they attune our minds for what is to come and serve as so many labels -by means of which, when we see a new play, we may inform ourselves -what it is all about. The initial familiarity and the prestige it -implies are fulcra for moving the interest of the beholders. The -historical dramatist, therefore, must be careful not to alter the -current conceptions of character; but, with that proviso, he has almost -unlimited powers, and may omit or recast or invent incidents, or forge -an entirely new story, just as he pleases, so long, that is, as he -leaves the character intact and does not interfere with our idea of the -hero. In that case the historic label would be more of a hindrance than -a help to our enjoyment.</p> - -<p>Lessing’s view of the Historic Drama (and there is no doubt that he -thought he was describing the method of Shakespeare) is therefore -that it is a free work of fiction woven around characters that are -fairly well known. He was certainly wrong about Shakespeare, and his -theory strikes us nowadays as strangely inadequate, but it had very -important results. It directly influenced the dramatic art of Germany, -and it would be hard to overestimate the share it had in determining -Schiller’s methods of composition. It was in the air at the time of the -Romantic Movement in France, and is really the principle on which Hugo -constructs his more important plays in this kind. Schiller’s treatment -of history is very free; he invents scenes that have no shadow of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span> -foundation in fact, and yet are of crucial importance in his idealised -narrative; he invents subordinate persons who are hardly less -conspicuous than the authentic principals, and who vitally affect the -plot and action. All his plays contain these licenses. Such episodes as -the interview between Mary and Elizabeth, of Jeanne Darc’s indulgence -of her pity illustrate the first, such figures as Mortimer or Max and -Thekla illustrate the second; but what would <i>Mary Stuart</i> or -the <i>Maid of Orleans</i> or <i>Wallenstein</i> be without them? And -with Victor Hugo this emancipation from authority is pushed to even -greater lengths. Plays like <i>Le Roi s’amuse</i> or <i>Marion de -Lorme</i> might recall the vagaries of early Elizabethan experiments -like Greene’s <i>James IV.</i>, were it not that they are works of -incomparably higher genius. Hugo has accepted the traditional view of -a French king and a French court, but all the rest is sheer romance on -which just here and there we detect the trail of an old <i>mémoire</i>.</p> - -<p>Now, some of the extreme examples suggest a two-fold objection to -Lessing’s account as a quite satisfactory explanation of the species.</p> - -<p>In the first place, when the poet carries his privilege of independence -so far, why should he not go a step further and invent his entire -drama, names and all? As it is, we either know something of the real -history or we do not. If we do not, what is the advantage of appealing -to it? If we do, will not such lordly disregard of facts stir up the -same recalcitrance as disregard of traditional character, and shall -we not be rather perplexed than aided by the conflict between our -reminiscences and the statements of the play?</p> - -<p>And, in the second place, is the portrayer of human nature to take his -historical persons as once for all given and fixed, so that he must -leave the accepted estimate of them intact without attempting to modify -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> -it? Surely that would be to deprive the dramatist of his greater -privilege and the drama of its greatest opportunity. For then we -should only see a well-known character illustrated or described -anew, displaying its various traits in this or that set of novel -surroundings. But there would be little room for the sort of work that -the historic drama is specially fitted to do, viz. the exposition -of ambiguous or problematic natures, which will give us a different -conception of them from the one we have hitherto had.</p> - -<p>Hence there arose in Germany a view directly opposed to that of -Lessing, and Lotze does not hesitate to recommend the most painstaking -investigation and observance of the real facts. The poet, he thinks, -will find scope enough in giving a new interpretation of the career -and individuality of the hero, after he has used all the means in his -power to bring home to his imagination the actual circumstances from -which they emerged. Probably little was known in England of this theory -of Lotze’s, though utterances to the same effect occur in Carlyle, -especially in his remarks on Shakespeare’s English Histories; yet -it seems to give a correct account of the way in which most English -historical dramas were constructed in the nineteenth century. Sir Henry -Taylor, while calling <i>Philip van Artevelde</i> “a dramatic romance,” -is careful to state that “historic truth is preserved in it, as far as -the material events are concerned.” Mr. Swinburne, in his trilogy on -Mary Stuart, versifies whole pages of contemporary writers (<i>e.g.</i> -in the interview of Mary and Knox taken almost verbatim from Knox’s -<i>History of the Reformation</i>), and in his prose essay seems -specially to value himself on his exact delineation of her career, and -his solution of the problem of her strange nature. But the prerogative -instance is furnished by Tennyson. In his dedication of <i>Harold</i>, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span> -he writes to Lord Lytton: “After old-world records like the Bayeux -Tapestry and the Roman de Rou, Edward Freeman’s <i>History of the -Norman Conquest</i> and your father’s historical romance treating of -the same theme have been mainly helpful to me in writing this drama.” -He puts his antiquarian researches first, his use of the best modern -critical authorities second, and only in the third place an historical -romance, to which for the rest Freeman has said that he owes something -himself. Nor would it be difficult to show that in <i>Queen Mary</i> -and <i>Becket</i> he has followed the same lines. And on such lines it -is clear that the historical dramatist’s only aim must be to present -in accurate though artistic form a selection of the incidents and -circumstances of the hero’s life and times, and place them in such -mutual relation that they throw new light on the nature and destiny of -the man.</p> - -<p>But from this point of view the functions of the poet and the historian -will tend to coalesce, and it is just this that at first sight rouses -suspicion. After all can we so reproduce the past as to give it real -immediate truth? It is hardly possible by antiquarian knowledge -quickened by ever so much poetic power to galvanise into life a state -of things that once for all is dead and gone. And meanwhile the mere -effort to do so is apt to make the drama a little frigid, as Tennyson’s -dramas are. We are seldom carried away on a spontaneous stream of -passion; for after all the methods of the historian and the poet are -radically different, and the painful mosaic work of the one is almost -directly opposed to the complete vision, the creation in one jet, which -may be rightly expected of the other.</p> - -<p>But it is noteworthy that though the two schools which we have just -discussed, make appeal to Shakespeare, his own procedure does not -precisely agree with that of one or other. He is too much of the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span> -heaven-born poet for the latter; he has too genuine a delight in facts -for the former. He has points of contact with both, but in a way he is -more <i>naïf</i> and simple-minded than either. He at the same time -accepts the current conception of character with Lessing, and respects -the allegations of history with Carlyle. But though he begins with the -ordinary impression produced by his hero, he does not stop there. Such -an impression is bound to be incoherent and vague. Shakespeare probes -and defines it; he tests it in relation to the assumed facts on which -it is based; he discovers the latent difficulties, faces them, and -solves them, and, starting with a conventional type, leaves us with an -individual man. In doing this he treats the facts as a means, not as an -end, but he does not sophisticate them. We hardly ever find fictitious -persons and scenes in Schiller’s style, and when we do the exception -proves the rule, for they have not the same function as in Schiller’s -theatre. Falstaff plays his part aside, as it were, from the official -history, he belongs to the private life of Prince Hal, and is impotent -to affect the march of public events. People like Lucius in <i>Julius -Caesar</i>, or Nicanor in <i>Coriolanus</i>, or Silius in <i>Antony -and Cleopatra</i> do not interfere in the political story; they are -present to make or to hear comments, or at most to assist the inward -interpretation. No unhistorical person has historical work to do, and -no unhistorical episode affects the historical action.<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> -Yet he quite escapes from the chill and closeness of the book-room. He engages -in no critical investigations to sift out the genuine facts. He does not -study old tapestry or early texts. Unhampered by the learned apparatus -of the scholar, undistracted by the need of pausing to verify or -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span> -correct, he speeds along on the flood-tide of his own inspiration, -which takes the same course with the interests of the nation. For it is -the reward of the intimate sympathy which exists between him and his -countrymen, that he goes to work, his personal genius fortified and -enlarged by the popular enthusiasms, patriotic or cosmopolitan. And -nothing can withstand the speed and volume of the current. There is a -great contrast between the broad free sweep of his Histories, English -or Roman, that lift us from our feet and carry us away, and the little -artificial channels of the antiquarian dramas, on the margin of which -we stand at ease to criticise the purity of the distilled water. Yet -none the less he is in a sense more obedient to his authorities than -any writer of the antiquarian school. Just because, while desiring to -give the truth as he knows it, he is careless to examine the accuracy -or estimate the value of the documents he consults; and just because, -while determined to give a faithful narrative, he spares himself all -labour of comparison and research and takes a statement of Holinshed -or Plutarch as guaranteeing itself, he is far more in the hands of -the guide he follows than a later dramatist would be. He takes the -text of his author, and often he has not more than one: he accepts it -implicitly and will not willingly distort it: he reads it in the light -of his own insight and the spirit of the age, and tries to recreate the -agents and the story from the more or less adequate hints that he finds.</p> - -<p>Now, proceeding in this way it is clear that while in every case -Shakespeare’s indebtedness to his historical sources must be great, -it will vary greatly in quality and degree according to the material -delivered to him. The situations may be more or less dramatic, the -narrative more or less firmly conceived. And among his sources Plutarch -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span> -occupies quite an exceptional place. From no one else has he ‘conveyed’ -so much, and no one else has he altered so little. And the reason -is, that save Chaucer and Homer, on whom he drew for <i>Troilus and -Cressida</i>, but from whom he could assimilate little that suited -his own different ideas, no other writer contained so much that was -of final and permanent excellence. To put it shortly, in Plutarch’s -<i>Lives</i> Shakespeare for the first and almost the only time was -rehandling the masterpieces of a genius who stood at the summit of -his art. It was not so in the English Histories. One does not like to -say a word in disparagement of the Elizabethan chronicles, especially -Holinshed’s, on which the maturer plays are based. They are good -reading and deserve to be read independently of the dramatist’s use of -them. But they are not works of phenomenal ability, and they betray the -infancy of historical writing, not only in scientific method, which -in the present connection would hardly matter, but in narrative art -as well. Cowley in <i>his</i> Chronicle, <i>i.e.</i> the imaginary -record of his love affairs, breaks off with a simile and jest at their -expense. If, he says, I were to give the details,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I more voluminous should grow—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(Chiefly if I like them should tell</div> - <div class="verse indent2">All change of weathers that befell)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than Holinshed and Stowe.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Their intention is good, and they often realise it so as to interest -and impress, but the introduction of such-like trifles as Cowley -mentions, without much relevance or significance, may give us the -measure of their technical skill. Again, though in the second and third -part of <i>Henry VI.</i> Shakespeare was dealing with the work of -Marlowe, we have to remember, first, that his originals were composite -pieces not by Marlowe alone, and, further, that even Marlowe could not -altogether escape the disabilities of a pioneer. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span></p> - -<p>In Plutarch, however, Shakespeare levied toll on no petty vassal like -the compilers of the Chronicles, or innovating conqueror like the -author of <i>Tamburlaine</i>, but on the king by right divine of a -long-established realm. And the result is that he appropriates more, -and that more of greater value, than from any other tributary.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER III<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">ANCESTRY OF SHAKESPEARE’S ROMAN PLAYS</span></h3> -</div> - -<h4>1. PLUTARCH<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></h4> - -<p>Plutarch, born at Chaeronea in Boeotia, about 45 or 50 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, -flourished in the last quarter of the first and the earliest quarter -of the second century. He came of good stock, which he is not -reluctant to talk about. Indeed, his habit of introducing or quoting -his father, his grandfather, and even his great grandfather, gives us -glimpses of a home in which the prescribed pieties of family life were -warmly cherished; and some of the references imply an atmosphere of -simplicity, urbanity, and culture.</p> - -<p>The lad was sent to Athens to complete his education under Ammonius, -an eminent philosopher of that generation, though in Carlyle’s phrase, -‘now dim to us,’ who also took part in what little administrative -work was still intrusted to provincials, and more than once held the -distinguished position of strategos. Thus, as in childhood Plutarch was -trained in the best domestic traditions of elder Greece, so now he had -before his eyes an example of such active citizenship as survived in -the changed condition of things. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p> - -<p>The same spirit of reverence for the past presided over his routine of -study. His works afterwards show a wide familiarity with the earlier -literature and philosophy of his country, and the foundations of this -must have been laid in his student days. It was still in accordance -with accepted precedents and his own reminiscent tastes, that when he -set out on his travels, he should first, as so many of his predecessors -were reported to have done, betake himself to the storied land of -Egypt. We know that this must have been after 66 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, for in -that year, when Nero made his progress through Greece, Plutarch tells -us that he was still the pupil of Ammonius. We know, further, that he -must have visited Alexandria, for he mentions that in his grandfather’s -opinion his father gave too large a banquet to celebrate their -homecoming from that city. But he does not inform us how much of Egypt -he saw, or how long was his stay, or in what way he employed himself. -It is only a probable conjecture at most that his treatise on <i>Isis -and Osiris</i> may be one of the fruits of this expedition.</p> - -<p>Of another and later journey that took him to Italy, there is more to -be said. Plutarch at an early age, whether before or after the Egyptian -tour, had already been employed in public affairs. He tells us:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">I remember my selfe, that when I was but of yoong -yeres I was sent with another in embassage to the Proconsul: and in -that my companion staid about I wot not what behind, I went alone and -did that which we had in commission to do together. After my returne -when I was to give an account unto the State, and to report the effect -of my charge and message back again, my father arose, and taking me -apart, willed me in no wise to speak in the singular number and say, -<i>I departed or went</i>, but, <i>We departed</i>; item not <i>I -said</i> (or <i>quoth I</i>) but <i>We said</i>; and in the whole -narration of the rest to joine alwaies my companion as if he had been -associated and at one hand with me in that which I did -alone.<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span> -Such courtesy conciliates good will, and he was subsequently sent ‘on -public business’ to Rome. This must have been before 90 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, -when Rusticus, whom Plutarch mentions that he met, was condemned to -death, and when the philosophers were expelled from the city; and was -probably some time after 74 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, the date of their -previous expulsion, when, moreover, Plutarch was too young to be charged with -matters so weighty as to need settlement in the capital. But it is not -certain whether this was his only visit to Italy, and whether he made -it in the reign of Vespasian or of Domitian. His story of a performing -dog that took part in an exhibition in presence of Vespasian, has -been thought to have the verisimilitude of a witnessed scene, and has -been used to support the former supposition: his description of the -sumptuousness of Domitian’s buildings makes a similar impression, and -has been used to support the latter. All this must remain doubtful, -but some things are certain: that his business was so engrossing, and -those who came to him for instruction were so numerous, that he had -little time for the study of the Latin language; that he delivered -lectures, some of which were the first drafts of essays subsequently -included in the <i>Moralia</i>; that he had as his acquaintances or -auditors several of the most distinguished men in Rome, among them -Mestrius Florus, a table companion of Vespasian, Sosius Senecio, the -correspondent of Pliny, and that Arulenus Rusticus afterwards put to -death by Domitian, who on one occasion would not interrupt a lecture of -Plutarch’s to read a letter from the Emperor; that he traversed Italy -as far north as Ravenna, where he saw the bust of Marius, and even as -Bedriacum, where he inspected the battlefields of 69 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span></p> - -<p>But though Plutarch loved travel and sight-seeing, and though he was -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span> -fully alive to the advantages of a great city, with its instructive -society and its collections of books, his heart was in his native -place, and he returned to settle there. “I my selfe,” he says, “dwelle -in a poore little towne, and yet doe remayne there willingly, least it -should become lesse.”<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> -And in point of fact he seems henceforth only to have left it for short -excursions to various parts of Greece. One of these exhibits him in a -characteristic and amiable light. Apparently soon after his marriage a -dispute had broken out between the parents of the newly wedded pair, -and Plutarch in his conciliatory way took his wife, as we should say, -‘on a pilgrimage,’ to the shrine at Thespiae on Mount Helicon to offer -a sacrifice to Love.<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> -This is in keeping with all the express utterances and all the -unconscious revelations he makes of his feeling for the sacredness -of the family tie. He was one of those whose soul rings true to the -claims of kith and kin. He thanks Fortune as a chief favour for -the comradeship of his brother Timon, and delights to show off the -idiosyncrasies of his brother Lamprias. We do not know when his -marriage took place, but if Plutarch acted on his avowed principles, -it must have been when he was still a young man, and it was a very -happy one. As we should expect; for of all the affections it is wedded -love that he dwells on most fully, and few have spoken more nobly and -sincerely of it than he. Again and again he gives the point of view, -which is often said to have been attained by the Modern World only by -the combined assistance of Germanic character and Christian religion. -Thus he says of a virtuous attachment:</p> - -<p class="blockquot"> But looke what person soever love setleth upon in -mariage, so as he be inspired once therewith, at the very first, like -as it is in Platoes Common-wealth, he will not have these words in his -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span> -mouth, <i>Mine</i> and <i>Thine</i>; for simply all goods are not -common among all friends, but only those who being severed apart -in body, conjoine and colliquate as it were perforce their soules -together, neither willing nor believing that they should be twaine -but one: and afterward by true pudicitie and reverence one unto the -other, whereof wedlock hath most need.... In true love there is so much -continency, modesty, loyalty and faithfulnesse, that though otherwhile -it touche a wanton and lascivious minde, yet it diverteth it from other -lovers, and by cutting off all malapert boldnesse, by taking downe and -debasing insolent pride and untaught stubornesse, it placeth in lieu -thereof modest bashfulnesse, silence, and taciturnity; it adorneth it -with decent gesture and seemly countenance, making it for ever after -obedient to one lover onely.... For like as at Rome, when there was a -Lord Dictatour once chosen, all other officers of state and magistrates -valed bonnet, were presently deposed, and laied downe their ensignes -of authority; even so those over whom love hath gotten the mastery and -rule, incontinently are quit freed and delivered from all other lords -and rulers, no otherwise than such as are devoted to the service of -some religious place.<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a></p> - -<p>His wife bore him at least five children, of whom three died in -childhood, the eldest son, “the lovely Chaeron,” and then their little -daughter, born after her four brothers, and called by her mother’s -name, Timoxena. The letter of comfort which Plutarch, who was absent -at Tanagra, sent home after the death took place, is good to read. -There is perhaps here and there a touch that suggests the professional -moralist and rhetorician: as when he recounts a fable of Aesop’s -to enforce his advice; or bids his wife not to dwell on her griefs -rather than her blessings, like “those Criticks who collect and gather -together all the lame and defective verses of Homer, which are but few -in number; and in the meane time passe over an infinite sort of others -which were by him most excellently made”; or warns her to look to her -health because, if “the bodie be evill entreated and not regarded with -good diet and choice keeping, it becometh dry, rough and hard, in such -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span> -sort as from it there breathe no sweet and comfortable exhalations -unto the soule, but all smoakie and bitter vapors of dolour griefe -and sadnesse annoy her.” These were the toll Plutarch paid to his age -and to his training. But the tender feeling for his wife’s grief, and -the confidence in her dignified endurance of it are very beautiful -and human. And his descriptions of the child’s sweet nature, which -he does not leave general, but after his wont lights up with special -reminiscences, and which, he insists, they must not lose from mind or -turn to bitterness but cherish as an abiding joy, strike the note that -is still perhaps most comforting to mourners. After telling over her -other winsome and gracious ways, he recalls:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>She was of a wonderfull kinde and gentle nature; loving she was -againe to those that loved her, and marvellous desirous to gratifie -and pleasure others: in which regards she both delighted me and also -yielded no small testimonie of rare debonairetie that nature had endued -her withall; for she would make pretie means<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> -to her nourse, and seeme (as it were) to intreat her to give the brest -or pap, not only to other infants but also to little babies<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> and puppets and -such-like gauds as little ones take joy in and wherewith they use to -play; as if upon a singular courtesie and humanitie shee could finde in -her heart to communicate and distribute from her owne table even the -best things that shee had, among them that did her any pleasure. But I -see no reason (sweet wife) why these lovely qualities and such like, -wherein we took contentment and joy in her life time, should disquiet -and trouble us now after her death, when we either think or make -relation of them: and I feare againe, lest by our dolour and griefe, -we abandon and put cleane away all the remembrance thereof; like as -Clymene desired to do when she said</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“I hate the bow so light of cornel tree:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All exercise abroad, farewell for me,”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">as avoiding alwaies and trembling at the -commemoration of her sonne which should do no other good but renew her -griefe and dolour; for naturally we seeke to flee all that troubleth -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span> -and offendeth us. We oughte therefore so to demeane ourselves, that, as -whiles she lived, we had nothing in the world more sweet to embrace, -more pleasant to see or delectable to heare than our daughter; so the -cogitation of her may still abide and live with us all our life time, -having by many degrees our joy multiplied more than our heavinesse -augmented.<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p> -</div> - -<p>And then there is the confident expectation of immortality to mitigate -the present pang of severance.</p> - -<p>But Plutarch and his wife had other consolations as well. Two sons, -Aristobulus and a younger Plutarch, lived to be men, and to them he -dedicated a treatise on the <i>Timaeus</i>. We know that one of them -at least married and had a son in his father’s lifetime. Beyond his -domestic circle Plutarch had a large number of friends in Chaeronea -and elsewhere, including such distinguished names as Favorinus the -philosopher and Serapion the poet; and being, in Dr. Johnson’s -phrase, an eminently “clubbable man,” he was often host and guest -at banquets, fragments of the talk at which he has preserved in his -<i>Symposiacs</i>. Almost the only rigorous line in his portrait is -contributed by Aulus Gellius, his later contemporary, and the friend of -their common friend Favorinus. Gellius<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> -represents the philosopher Taurus as telling about “Plutarchus -noster”—a phrase that shows the attachment men felt for him—a story -of which Dryden gives the following free and amplified but very racy -translation:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Plutarch had a certain slave, a saucy stubborn -kind of fellow; in a word one of these pragmatical servants who never -make a fault but they give a reason for it. His justifications one time -would not serve his turn, but his master commanded that he should be -stripped and that the law should be laid on his back. He no sooner felt -the smart but he muttered that he was unjustly punished, and that he -had done nothing to deserve the scourge. At last he began to bawl out -louder; and leaving off his groaning, his sighs, and his lamentations, -to argue the matter with more show of reason: and, as under such a -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span> -master he must needs have gained a smattering of learning, he cried out -that Plutarch was not the philosopher he pretended himself to be; that -he had heard him waging war against all the passions, and maintaining -that anger was unbecoming a wise man; nay, that he had written a -particular treatise in commendation of clemency; that therefore he -contradicted his precepts by his practices, since, abandoning himself -over to his choler, he exercised such inhuman cruelty on the body of -his fellow-creature. “How is this, Mr. Varlet?” (answered Plutarch). -“By what signs and tokens can you prove that I am in passion? Is it by -my countenance, my voice, the colour of my face, by my words or by my -gestures that you have discovered this my fury? I am not of opinion -that my eyes sparkle, that I foam at the mouth, that I gnash my teeth, -or that my voice is more vehement, or that my colour is either more -pale or more red than at other times; that I either shake or stamp with -madness; that I say or do anything unbecoming a philosopher. These, if -you know them not, are the symptoms of a man in rage. In the meantime,” -(turning to the officer who scourged him) “while he and I dispute this -matter, mind your business on his back.”</p> - -<p>This story, as we have seen, comes from one who was in a position to -get authentic information about Plutarch, and it may very well be -true; but it should be corrected, or at least supplemented, by his own -utterances in regard to his servants. “Sometimes,” he says, “I use to -get angry with my slaves, but at last I saw that it was better to spoil -them by indulgence, than to injure myself by rage in the effort to -amend them.” And more emphatically:</p> - -<p class="blockquot"> As for me I coulde never finde in my hart to -sell my drawght Oxe that hadde plowed my lande a longe time, because -he coulde plowe no longer for age; and much lesse my slave to sell -him for a litle money, out of the contrie where he had dwelt a long -time, to plucke him from his olde trade of life wherewith he was best -acquainted, and then specially, when he shalbe as unprofitable for the -buyer as also for the seller.<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a></p> - -<p>Plutarch was thus fully alive to the social and domestic amenities of -life, and to his responsibilities as householder, but he did not for -them overlook other claims. He became priest of Apollo in Delphi, and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span> -for many years fulfilled the priestly functions, taking part in the -sacrifices, processions and dances even as an old man; for philosopher -as he was, his very philosophy supplied him with various contrivances -for conformity with the ancient cult, and he probably had no more -difficulty about it than a modern Hegelian has with the Thirty-nine -Articles. His deeper religious needs would be satisfied by the -Mysteries, in which he and his wife were initiated.</p> - -<p>He was equally assiduous in public duties, which he did not despise -for the pettiness to which under the Roman domination they had shrunk. -In his view even the remnants of self-government are to be jealously -guarded and loyally employed, though they may concern merely parochial -and municipal affairs, and for them vigilant training and discipline -are required.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Surely impossible it is that they should ever -have their part of any great roial and magnificall joy, such as indeed -causeth magnanimitie and hautinesse of courage, bringeth glorious -honour abroad or tranquillitie of spirit at home, who have made choice -of a close and private life within doors, never showing themselves in -the world nor medling with publicke affaires of common weale; a life, -I say, sequestered from all offices of humanitie, far removed from any -instinct of honour or desire to gratifie others, thereby to deserve -thankes or winne favour: for the soul, I may tell you, is no base and -small thing; it is not vile and illiberal, extending her desires onely -to that which is good to be eaten, as doe these poulpes<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> -or pour cuttle fishes which stretch their cleies as far as to their -meat and no farther: for such appetites as these are most quickly -cut off with satietie and filled in a moment. But when the motives -and desires of the minde tending to vertue and honestie, to honour -and contentment of conscience are once growen to their vigour and -perfection, they have not for their limit, the length and tearme onely -of one man’s life; but surely the desire of honour and the affection -to profit the societie of men, comprehending all aeternitie, striveth -still to goe forward in such actions and beneficiall deedes as yield -infinite pleasures that cannot be expressed.<a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> -He was true to his principles. He not only officiated as Archon of -Chaeronea, but, “gracing the lowliest act in doing it,” was willing to -discharge the functions of a more subordinate post, which some thought -beneath his dignity.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Mine answer is to such as reprove me, when they -find me in proper person present, at the measuring and counting of -bricks and tiles, or to see the stones, sand and lime laid downe, which -is brought into the citie: “It is not for myselfe that I builde, but -for the citie and commonwealth.”<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p> - -<p>He was thus faithful over a few things; tradition made him ruler over -many things. It is related that Trajan granted him consular rank and -directed the governor of Achaia to avail himself of his advice. This -was embellished by the report that he had been Trajan’s preceptor; and -in the Middle Ages a letter very magisterial in tone was fabricated -from him to his imperial pupil. It was even said that in his old age -Hadrian had made him governor of Greece.</p> - -<p>There is a poetic justification for such legends. The government of -Trajan and Hadrian was felt to be such that the precepts of philosophy -might very fittingly have inspired it, and that the philosopher might -very well have been the administrator of their policy. And indeed it -is perhaps no fable that Plutarch had something to do with the better -<i>régime</i> that was commencing; for his nephew Sextus of Chaeronea, -who may have inherited something of his uncle’s spirit, was an honoured -teacher of Marcus Aurelius, and influenced his pupil by his example -no less than by his teaching. The social renovation which was then in -progress should be remembered in estimating Plutarch’s career. Gibbon -says: “If a man were called to fix the period in the History of the -World, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and -prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span> -the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” Probably this -statement would need to be, if not greatly qualified, at least greatly -amplified, before it commanded universal assent, but, as it stands, -there is a truth in it which anyone can perceive. There was peace -throughout a great portion of the world; there was good government -within the Empire; there was a rejuvenescence of antique culture, -literature, and conduct. Indeed, the upward tendency begins with -the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, and even the thwarting influence -of Domitian’s principate would be felt in Rome rather than in the -provinces. It was in this time of “reaction against corruption” that -Plutarch flourished, and his later life especially fell well within -that Indian summer of classical civilisation that Gibbon celebrates. -The tradition that he survived till the accession of Antonine may be -incorrect, but he certainly enjoyed eight years of Trajan’s government, -and, by Eusebius’ statement, was still alive in the third year of -Hadrian’s reign. It is to his latter days that his <i>Lives</i> as -a whole are assigned, partly on account of the casual reference to -contemporary events that some of them contain.</p> - -<p>Plutarch’s character, circumstances, and career in a world which was -reaching its close, well fitted him for the work that he did. This -Greek citizen of the Roman Empire had cultivated his mind by study and -travel, and had assimilated the wisdom of wide experience and pregnant -memories which Antiquity had amassed in earlier times and to which this -interval of revival was heir. Benevolent and dutiful, temperate and -devout, with a deep sense of his public obligations and the ethos of -his race, he sympathised with the best principles that had moulded the -life of olden days, and that were emerging to direct the life of the -present. And he combined his amplitude of traditional lore and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> -enthusiasm for traditional virtue in a way that made him more than -an antiquary or a moralist. The explorer and practitioner of antique -ideas, in a sense he was their artist as well.</p> - -<p>His treatment and style already suggest the manifold influences that -went to form his mind. One of his charms lies in his quotations, which -he culls, or rather which spring up of their own accord, from his -reading of the most various authors of the most different times. He is -at home in Greek literature, and likes to clinch his argument with a -saying from the poets, for he seems to find that their words put his -thought better than he could himself. But this affects his original -expression. Dryden writes:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Being conversant in so great a variety of authors, -and collecting from all of them what he thought most excellent, out -of the confusion or rather mixture of their styles he formed his own, -which partaking of each was yet none of them, but a compound of them -all:—like the Corinthian metal which had in it gold and brass and -silver, and yet was a species in itself.</p> - -<p>There may be a suggestion of the curious mosaic-worker in his -procedure, something of artifice, or at least of conscious art; and -indeed his treatises are not free from a rhetorical and sometimes -declamatory strain.<a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> -That in so far is what Courier means when he says that Plutarch writes -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span> -in the style of a <i>sophistes</i>; but it was inseparable from his -composite culture and academic training, and it does not interfere with -his sincerity and directness.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> -His philosophy makes a similar impression. He is an eclectic or -syncretist, and has learned from many of the mighty teachers of -bygone times. Plato is his chief authority, but Plato’s doctrines are -consciously modified in an Aristotelian sense, while nevertheless those -aspects of them are made prominent which were afterwards elaborated -by Neo-Platonism strictly so-called. But Plutarch, though he has the -good word of Neo-Platonic thinkers, is not himself to be reckoned -of their company. He is comparatively untouched by their mysticism, -borrowed freely from the Theosophy of the East, and he stands in closer -lineal relation to the antique Greek spirit than some, like Philo, who -precede him in time. He was so indifferent to the Semitic habit of -mind that, despite his almost omnivorous curiosity, he never thought -it worth while to instruct himself in the exact nature of Judaism or -its difference from the Syrian cult, far less to spend on Christianity -so much as a passing glance. He approaches Neo-Platonism most nearly -in certain religious imaginings which, as he himself recognised, have -affinity with beliefs which prevailed in Persia and Egypt; but even -so, he hardly ceases to be national, for these were the two countries -with which in days of yore Greece had the most important historic -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span> -connections. And moreover, his interest in such surmises is not, in -the first place, a speculative one, but springs from the hope of his -finding some explanation of and comfort for the trials and difficulties -of actual life. For on the whole he differs from Plato chiefly in -his subordination of theory to practice. This compels him to accept -loans from the very schools that he most criticises, the Stoics, the -Sceptics, the Epicureans themselves. It is his preoccupation with -conduct, rather than eclectic debility, that makes him averse to -any one-sided scheme, and inclined to supplement it with manifold -additions. But as in his style, so in his thought, he blends the -heterogeneous elements to his own purpose, and fixes on them the stamp -of his own mind. It is not without reason that his various treatises -are included under the common title of <i>Moralia</i>. He may dilate on -the worship of <i>Isis and Osiris</i>, or <i>The Face appearing within -the Roundle of the Moone</i>; he may discuss <i>Whether creatures -be more wise, they of the land or those of the water</i>; <i>What -signifieth this word Ei engraven over the Dore of Appolloes Temple in -the City of Delphi</i>, and various other recondite matters; but the -prevailing impression is ethical, and he is at his best when he is -discoursing expressly on some moral theme, on <i>Unseemly and Naughty -Bashfulnesse</i>, or <i>Brotherly Love</i>, or <i>Tranquillitie and -Contentment of Mind</i>, or the <i>Pluralitie of Friends</i>, or the -question <i>Whether this common Mot be well said ‘Live Hidden.’</i> -There is the background of serious study and philosophic knowledge, -but against it is detached the figure of the sagacious and practical -teacher, who wishes to make his readers better men and better women, -but never forgets his urbanity and culture in his admonitions, and -drives them home with pointed anecdote and apt quotation. And the -substance of his teaching, though so sane and experimental that it is -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> -sometimes described as obvious and trite, has a generous, ideal, and -even chivalrous strain, when he touches on such subjects as love, -or devotion, or the claims of virtue; and his sympathy goes out -spontaneously to noble words or deeds or minds.</p> - -<p>It is an easy step from the famous <i>Moralia</i> to the still more -famous <i>Parallel Lives</i>. “All history,” says Dryden, in reference -to the latter, “is only the precepts of moral philosophy reduced -into examples.” This, at least, is no bad description of Plutarch’s -point of view; and his methods do not greatly differ in the series of -essays and in the series of biographies. In the essays he did not let -himself be unduly hampered by the etiquette of the Moral Treatise, but -expatiated at will among Collections and Recollections, and embroidered -his abstract argument with the stories that he delights to tell. -As historian, on the other hand, he is not tied down to historical -narration and exposition, but indulges his moralising bent to the full. -He is on the lookout for edification, and is seldom at a loss for a peg -to hang a lecture on. And these discourses of his, though the material -is sometimes the sober drab of the decent <i>bourgeois</i>, are always -fine in texture, and relieved by the quaintness of the cut and the -ingenuity of the garnishing: nor are they the less interesting that -they do not belong to the regulation historical outfit. Such improving -digressions, indeed, are among Plutarch’s charms. “I am always -pleased,” says Dryden, “when I see him and his imitator Montaigne when -they strike a little out of the common road; for we are sure to be the -better for their wandering. The best quarry does not always lie on the -open field, and who would not be content to follow a good huntsman over -hedges and ditches, when he knows the game will reward his -pains.”<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span> -Proceeding in this way it is not to be expected that Plutarch should -compose his <i>Lives</i> with much care for dexterous design. Just as -in his philosophy he has no rigidly consequent system of doctrine, -so in his biographies he has no orderly or well-digested plan. The -excellences that arise from a definite and vigorous conception of the -whole are not those at which he aims. He would proceed very much at -haphazard, were it not for the chronological clue; which, for the rest, -he is very willing to abandon if a tempting by-path presents itself, -or if he thinks of something for which he must retrace his steps. Yet, -no more than in his metaphysics is he without an instinctive method of -his own. The house is finished, and with all its irregularities it is -good to dwell in; the journey is ended, and there has been no monotony -on the devious track. There is this advantage indeed in his procedure -over that of more systematic biographers, that it offers hospitality to -all the suggestions that crowd for admission. None is rejected because -it is out of place and insignificant. Gossip and allotria of every kind -that do not make out their claims at first sight, and that the more -ambitious historian would exclude as trivial, find an entry if they can -show a far-off connection with the subject. And, lo and behold, they -often turn out to be the most instructive of all.</p> - -<p>But Plutarch welcomes them without scrutinising them very austerely. He -submits their credentials to no stringent test. He is no severe critic -of their authenticity. He takes them where he finds them, just as he -picks up philosophic ideas from all quarters, even from the detested -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> -Epicureans, without condemning them on account of their suspicious -source: it is enough for him if they adapt themselves to his use. -Nor does he educe from them all that they involve. He does not even -confront them with each other, to examine whether opposite hints about -his heroes may not lead to fuller and subtler conceptions of them. This -is the point of the charge brought against him by St. Évremond, that -he might have carried his analysis further and penetrated more deeply -into human nature. St. Évremond notes how different a man is from -himself, the same person being just and unjust, merciful and cruel; -“which qualities,” proceeds the critic, “seeming to belie each other -in him, [Plutarch] attributes these inconsistencies to foreign causes. -He could never ... reconcile contrarieties in the same subject.” He -never tried to do so. He collects a number of vivid traits, which, -like a number of minute lines, set forth the likeness to his own mind, -but he is ordinarily as far from interrogating and combining his -impressions as he is from subjecting them to any punctilious test. He -exhibits characters in the particular aspects and manifestations which -history or hearsay has presented, and is content with the general -sense of verisimilitude that these successive indications, credited -or accredited, have left behind. But he stops there, and does not -study his manifold data to construct from them a consistent complex -individuality in its oneness and difference. And if this is true of him -as biographer, it is still truer of him as historian. He touches on all -sorts of historical subjects—war, policy, administration, government; -and he has abundance of acute and just remarks on them all. But it is -not in these that his chief interest lies, and it is not over them that -he holds his torch. This does not mean that he fails to perceive the -main drift of things or to appreciate the importance of statecraft. Mr. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span> -Wyndham, defending him against those who have “denied him any political -insight,” very justly shows that, despite “the paucity of his political -pronouncements,” he has a “political bent.” His choice of heroes, in -the final arrangement to which they lent themselves, proves that he -has an eye for the general course of Greek and Roman history, for the -impotence into which the city state is sunk by rivalry with neighbours -in the one case, for its transmutation into an Empire on the other: -“The tragedy of Athens, the drama of Rome,” says Mr. Wyndham, “these -are the historic poles of the <i>Parallel Lives</i>.” And Plutarch has -a political ideal: the “need of authority and the obligation of the -few to maintain it—by a ‘natural grace’ springing on the one hand -from courage combined with forbearance, and leading, on the other, to -harmony between the rulers and the ruled—is the text, which, given -out in the <i>Lycurgus</i>, is illustrated throughout the <i>Parallel -Lives</i>.” So much indeed we had a right to expect from the thoughtful -patriot and experienced magistrate of Chaeronea. The salient outlines -of the story of Greece and Rome could hardly remain hidden from a -clear-sighted man with Plutarch’s knowledge of the past: the relations -of governor and governed had not only engaged him practically, but had -suggested to him one of his most pithy essays, <i>Praecepta gerendae -Reipublicae</i>, a title which Philemon Holland paraphrases in stricter -accordance with the contents, <i>Instructions for them that manage -Affaires of State</i>. But this does not carry us very far. Shakespeare -in his English Histories shows at least as much political discernment -and political instinct. He brings out the general lesson of the wars of -Lancaster and York, and in <i>Henry V.</i> gives his conception of the -ideal ruler. But no one would say that this series shows a conspicuous -genius for political research or political history. The same thing is -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span> -true, and in a greater degree, of Plutarch. He is public-spirited, -but he is not a publicist. He has not much concern or understanding -for particular measures and movements and problems, however critical -they may be. It is impossible to challenge the justice of Archbishop -Trench’s verdict, either in its general scope or in its particular -instances, when he says:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">One who already knows the times of Marius and -Sulla will obtain a vast amount of instruction from his several -<i>Lives</i> of these, will clothe with flesh and blood what would -else, in some parts, have been the mere skeleton of a story; but I -am bold to say no one would understand those times from him. The -suppression of the Catilinarian Conspiracy was the most notable event -in the life of Cicero; but one rises from Plutarch’s <i>Life</i> -with only the faintest impression of what that conspiracy, a sort of -anticipation of the French Commune, and having objects social rather -than political, meant. Or take his <i>Lives</i> of the Gracchi. -Admirable in many respects as these are, greatly as we are debtors to -him here for important facts, whereof otherwise we should have been -totally ignorant, few, I think, would affirm that he at all plants them -in a position for understanding that vast revolution effected, with the -still vaster revolution attempted by them, and for ever connected with -their names. </p> - -<p>In Plutarch the historian, as well as the biographer, is subordinate to -the ethical teacher who wishes to enforce lessons that may be useful to -men in the management of their lives. He gathers his material for its -“fine moral effects,” not for “purposes of research.”<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span> -Plutarch, then, had already composed many disquisitions to commend his -humane and righteous ideas, and it was partly in the same didactic -spirit that he seems to have written his <i>Parallel Lives</i>. At the -beginning of the <i>Life of Pericles</i> he says:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Vertue is of this power, that she allureth a mans -minde presently to use her, and maketh him very desirous in his harte -to followe her: and doth not frame his manners that beholdeth her by -any imitation but by the only understanding and knowledge of vertuous -deedes, which sodainely bringeth unto him a resolute desire to doe the -like. <i>And this is the reason why methought I should continew -still to write on the lives of noble men.</i></p> - -<p>And similar statements occur again and again. They clearly show the -aim that he consciously had in view. The new generation was to be -admonished and renovated by the examples of the leading spirits who -had flourished in former times. And since he was addressing the whole -civilised world, he took his examples both from Roman and from Grecian -History, and arranged his persons in pairs, each pair supplying the -matter for one book. Thus he couples Theseus and Romulus, Alcibiades -and Coriolanus, Alexander and Caesar, Dion and Brutus, Demetrius and -Antony. Such parallelism is a little far-fetched, and though some of -the detailed comparisons with which it is justified, are not from -Plutarch’s hand, and belong to a later time, it of itself betrays -a certain fondness for symmetry and antithesis, a leaning towards -artifice and rhetoric which, as we have seen, the author owed to his -environment. He wishes in an eloquent way to inculcate his lessons, -and is perhaps, for the same reason, somewhat prone to exaggerate the -greatness of the past, and show it in an idealised light. But this is -by no means the pose of the histrionic revivalist. It corresponds to -an authentic sentiment in his own nature, which loved to linger amid -the glooms and glories of tradition, and pay vows at the shrine of the -Great Departed. “The cradle of war and statecraft,” says Mr. Wyndham, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> -“was become a memory dear to him, and ever evolved by his personal -contact with the triumphs of Rome. From this contrast flowed his -inspiration for the <i>Parallel Lives</i>—his desire as a man to draw -the noble Grecians, long since dead, a little nearer to the noon-day of -the living; his delight as an artist in setting the noble Romans, whose -names were in every mouth, a little further into the twilight of more -ancient Romance.”</p> - -<p>But this transfiguration of the recent and resurrection of the remoter -past, in which Mr. Wyndham rightly sees something “romantic,” does -not lay Plutarch open to the charge of vagueness or unreality. He was -saved from such vices by his interest in human nature and suggestive -<i>ana</i> and picturesque incidents on the one hand, and by his -deference for political history and civil society on the other.</p> - -<p>He loved marked individualities: no two of his heroes are alike, and -each, though in a varying degree, has an unmistakable physiognomy of -his own. There is no sameness in his gallery of biographies, and even -the legends of demigods yield figures of firm outline that resist the -touch. This is largely due to his joy in details, and the imperious -demand his imagination makes for them. In his <i>Life of Alexander</i> -he uses words which very truly describe his own method, words which -Boswell<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> -was afterwards to quote in justification of his own similar procedure.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The noblest deedes doe not alwayes shew men’s -vertues and vices, but often times a light occasion, a word, or some -sporte, makes men’s natural dispositions and manners appear more -plaine, then the famous battells wonne wherein are slaine tenne -thousande men, or the great armies, or cities wonne by siege or -assault. For like as painters or drawers of pictures, which make no -accompt of other parts of the bodie, do take the resemblaunces of -the face and favor of the countenance, in the which consisteth the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> -judgement of their maners and disposition; even so they must give us -leave to seeke out the signes and tokens of the minde only, and thereby -shewe the life of either of them, referring you unto others to wryte -the warres, battells and other great thinges they -did.<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a></p> - -<p>So he likes to give the familiar traits and emphasise the suggestive -nothings that best discover character. But his purpose is almost -always to discover character, and, so far as his principal persons -are concerned, to discover great character. Though so assiduous in -sharking up their mannerisms, foibles, and oddities, their tricks of -gait or speech or costume, he is not like the Man with the Muck Rake, -and is not piling together the rubbish of tittle-tattle just because -he has a soul for nothing higher. Still less does he take the valet’s -view of the hero, and hold that he is no hero at all because he can -be seen in undress or in relations that show his common human nature. -Reverence for greatness is the point from which he starts, reverence -for greatness is the star that guides his course, and his reverence is -so entire, that on the one hand he welcomes all that will help him to -restore the great one in his speech and habit as he lived, and on the -other, he assumes that the greatness must pervade the whole life, and -that flashes of glory will be refracted from the daily talk and walk. -Like Carlyle, though in a more <i>naïf</i> and simple way, he is a -hero-worshipper; like Carlyle he believes that the hero will not lose -but gain by the record of his minutest traits, and that these will only -throw new light on his essential heroism. In the object he proposed -to himself he has succeeded well. “Plutarch,” says Rousseau, almost -reproducing the biographer’s own words, “has inimitable dexterity -in painting great men in little things, and he is so happy in his -selection, that often a phrase, a simile, a gesture suffices him to set -forth a hero. That is the true art of portraiture. The physiognomy does -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> -not display itself in the main lines, nor the characters in great -actions; it is in trifles that the temperament discloses itself.” -An interesting testimony; for Rousseau, when he sets up as -character-painter, belongs to a very different school.</p> - -<p>It is not otherwise with his narratives of actions or his descriptions -of scenes, if action or scene really interest him; and there is little -of intrinsic value, comic or tragic, vivacious or stately, familiar or -weird, that does not interest him. Under his quick successive strokes, -some of them so light that at first they evade notice, some of them -so simple that at first they seem commonplace, the situation becomes -visible and luminous. He knows how to choose the accessories and what -to do with them. When our attention is awakened, we ask ourselves how -he has produced the effect by means apparently so insignificant; and we -cannot answer. Here he may have selected a hint from his authorities, -there he may derive another from the mental vision he himself has -evoked, but in either case the result is equally wonderful. Whether -from his tact in reporting or his energy in imagining, he contrives to -make us view the occurrence as a fact, and a fact that is like itself -and like nothing else.</p> - -<p>But again Plutarch was saved from wanton and empty phantasms by his -political bias. He was not a politician or a statesman or an historian -of politics or institutions, but he was a citizen with a citizen’s -respect for the State. “For himself,” to quote Mr. Wyndham once more, -“he was painting individual character, and he sought it among men -bearing a personal stamp. But he never sought it in a private person, -or a comedian, nor even in a poet or a master of the Fine Arts.” He -confines himself to public men, as we should call them, and never fails -to recollect that they played their part on the public stage. And this -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> -not only gave a robustness of touch and breadth of stroke to his -delineations; the connection with well-known and certified events -preserved him from the worst licenses to which the romantic and -rhetorical temper is liable. Courier, indeed, says of him that he was -“capable of making Pompey win the battle of Pharsalia, if it would have -rounded his sentence ever so little.” But though he may be credulous -of details and manipulate his copy, and with a light heart make one -statement at one time and a different one at another, the sort of -liberty Courier attributes to him is precisely the one he does not -take. Facts are stubborn things, and the great outstanding facts he is -careful to observe: they bring a good deal else in their train.</p> - -<h4 id="AMYOT">2. AMYOT<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a></h4> - -<p>A book like the <i>Parallel Lives</i> was bound to achieve a great -popularity at the Renaissance. That it was full of instruction and -served for warning and example commended it to a generation that was -but too inclined to prize the didactic in literature. Its long list of -worthies included not a few of the names that were being held up as the -greatest in human history, and these celebrities were exhibited not -aloft on their official pedestals, but, however impressive and imposing -the <i>mise-en-scène</i> might be, as men among men in the private and -personal passages of their lives. And yet they were not private persons -but historical magnates, the founders or leaders of world-renowned -states: and as such they were particularly congenial to an age in which -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span> -many of the best minds—More and Buchanan, L’Hôpital and La Boëtie, -Brand and Hutten—were awakening to the antique idea of civic and -political manhood, and finding few unalloyed examples of it in the -feudalised West. It was not enough that Plutarch was made more -accessible in the Latin form. He deserved a vernacular dress, and after -various tentative experiments this was first satisfactorily, in truth, -admirably, supplied by Bishop Amyot in France.</p> - -<p>Jacques Amyot was born in October, 1513, in Melun, the little town on -the Seine, some thirty miles to the south-east of Paris. His parents -were very poor, but at any rate from his earliest years he was within -the sweep of the dialect of the Île de France, and had no <i>patois</i> -to unlearn when he afterwards appeared as a literary man. Perhaps -to this is due some of the purity and correctness which the most -fastidious were afterwards to celebrate in his style. These influences -would be confirmed when as a lad he proceeded to Paris to pursue his -studies. His instructors in Greek were—first, Evagrius, in the college -of Cardinal Lemoine, and afterwards, Thusan and Danès, who, at the -instance of Budaeus, had just been appointed <i>lecteurs royaux</i> in -Ancient Philosophy and Literature. Stories are told of the privations -that he endured in the pursuit of scholarship, how his mother sent him -every week a loaf by the watermen of the Seine, how he read his books -by the light of the fire, and the like; but similar circumstances are -related of others, and, to quote Sainte Beuve, are in some sort “the -legend of the heroic age of erudition.” It is better authenticated -that he supported himself by becoming the domestic attendant of richer -students till he graduated as Master of Arts at the age of nineteen. -Then his position began to improve. He became tutor in important -households, to the nephews of the Royal Reader, and to the children of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span> -the Royal Secretary. Through such patrons his ability and knowledge -were made known to the King’s sister, Marguérite de Valois, the -beneficent patroness of literature and learning. He had proceeded to -Bourges, it is said, to study law, but by her influence was appointed -to discharge the more congenial functions of Reader in the Greek and -Latin Languages, and was soon promoted to the full professorship. The -University of Bourges was at the time the youngest in France save that -of Bordeaux, having been founded less than three-quarters of a century -before in 1463, when the Renaissance was advancing from conquest to -conquest in Italy, and when Medievalism was moribund even in France. -The new institution would have few traditions to oppose to the new -spirit, and there was scope for a missionary of the New Learning. For -some ten or twelve years Amyot remained in his post, lecturing two -hours daily, in the morning on Latin, in the afternoon on Greek. No -doubt such instruction would be elementary in a way; but even so, it -was a laborious life, for in those days the classical teacher had few -of the facilities that his modern colleague enjoys. It was, however, -a good preparation for Amyot’s peculiar mission, and he even found -time to make his first experiments in the sphere that was to be his -own. By 1546 he had completed a translation of the <i>Aethiopica</i> -of Heliodorus, the famous Greek romance that deals with the loves -and adventures of Theagenes and Chariclea. Amyot afterwards, on -the authority of a manuscript which he discovered in the Vatican, -identified the author with a Bishop of Tricca who lived in the end of -the fourth century, and of whom a late tradition asserted that when -commanded by the provincial synod either to burn his youthful effusion -or resign his bishopric, he chose the latter alternative. “Heliodorus,” -says Montaigne, when discussing parental love, “ayma mieulx perdre la -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> -dignité, le proufit, la devotion d’une prelature si venerable, que -de perdre sa fille, fille qui dure encores bien gentille, mais à -l’aventure pourtant un peu curieusement et mollement goderonnee pour -fille ecclesiastique et sacerdotale, et de trop amoureuse -façon.”<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> -In the case of the young French professor it had happier and opposite -consequences, for it procured him from the king the Abbey of Bellozane. -This gift, one of the last that Francis bestowed for the encouragement -of letters, was partly earned, too, by a version of some of Plutarch’s -<i>Lives</i>, which Amyot presented to his royal patron and had -executed at his command.</p> - -<p>With an income secured Amyot was now in a position to free himself from -the drudgery of class work, and follow his natural bent. In those days -not all the printed editions of the classics were very satisfactory, -and some works of the authors in whom he was most interested still -existed only in manuscript or were known only by name. He set out -for Italy in the hope of discovering the missing <i>Lives</i> of -Plutarch and of obtaining better texts than had hitherto been within -his reach, and seems to have remained abroad for some years. For a -moment he becomes a conspicuous figure in an uncongenial scene. In -May, 1551, the Council of Trent had been reopened, but Charles delayed -the transaction of business till the following September. The Italian -prelates, impatient and indignant, were hoping for French help against -the emperor, but instead of the French Bishops there came only a letter -from the “French King addressed to ‘the Convention’ which he would -not dignify with the name of a council. The King said he had not been -consulted about their meeting. He regarded them as a private synod got -up for their own purposes by the Pope and the Emperor and he would have -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span> -nothing to do with them.”<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> -It was Amyot who was commissioned with the delivery and communication -of the ungracious message. Probably the selection of the simple -Abbé was intended less as an honour to him than as an insult to the -assemblage. At any rate it was no very important part that he had to -play, but it was one which made him very uncomfortable. He writes: “Je -filois le plus doux que je pouvois, me sentant si mal et assez pour me -faire mettre en prison, si j’eusse un peu trop avant parle.” He was -not even named in the letter, and had not so much as seen it before -he was called to read it aloud, so that he complains he never saw a -matter so badly managed, “si mal cousu,” but he delivered the contents -with emphasis and elocution. “Je croy qu’il n’y eust personne en toute -la compagnie qui en perdist un seul mot, s’il n’estoit bien sourd, de -sorte que si ma commission ne gisoit qu’a présenter les lettres du -roy, et à faire lecture de la proposition, je pense y avoir amplement -satisfait.”</p> - -<p>But his real interests lay elsewhere, and he brought back from Italy -what would indemnify him for his troubles as envoy and please him more -than the honour of such a charge. In his researches he had made some -veritable finds, among them a new manuscript of Heliodorus, and Books -<span class="allsmcap">XI.</span> to <span class="allsmcap">XVII.</span> -of Diodorus Siculus’ <i>Bibliotheca Historica</i>, only the two last of -which had hitherto been known at all. His treatment of this discovery is -characteristic,<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> both of his -classical enthusiasm and his limitations as a classical scholar. He did -not, as the specialist of that and perhaps of any age would have done, -edit and publish the original text, but contented himself with giving -to the world a French translation. But the <i>Historic Library</i> has -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> -neither the allurement of a Greek romance nor the edification of -Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i>; and in this version, which for the rest is -said to be poor, Amyot for once appealed to the popular interest in vain.</p> - -<p>The Diodorus Siculus appeared in 1554, and in the same year Henry -II. appointed Amyot preceptor to his two sons, the Dukes of Orleans -and Anjou, who afterwards became respectively Charles IX. and Henry -III. As his pupils were very young their tuition cannot have occupied -a great deal of his time, and he was able to pursue his activity as -translator. In 1559, besides a revised edition of <i>Theagenes and -Chariclea</i>, there appeared anonymously a rendering, probably made -at an earlier date, of the <i>Daphnis and Chloe</i>, a romance even -more “curieusement et mollement goderonnee pour fille ecclesiastique -et sacerdotale” than its companion. But it is with his own name and a -dedication to the King that Amyot published almost at the same date -his greatest work, the complete translation of Plutarch’s <i>Parallel -Lives</i>. If his Heliodorus gave him his first step on the ladder -of church preferment, his Plutarch was a stronger claim to higher -promotion. Henry II., indeed, died before the end of the year, but the -accession of Amyot’s elder pupil in 1560, after the short intercalary -reign of Francis II., was propitious to his fortunes, for the new king, -besides bestowing on him other substantial favours, almost immediately -named him Grand Almoner of France.</p> - -<p>Amyot was an indefatigable but deliberate worker. Fifteen years had -elapsed between his first appearance as translator and the issue of his -masterpiece. Thirteen more were to elapse before he had new material -ready for the press. The interval in both cases was filled up with -preparation, with learned labour, with the leisurely prosecution of his -plan. A revised edition of the <i>Lives</i> appeared in 1565 and a third -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span> -in 1567, and all the time he was pushing on a version of Plutarch’s -<i>Moralia</i>. Meanwhile in 1570 Charles gave him the bishopric -of Auxerre; and without being required to disown the two literary -daughters of his vivacious prime, “somewhat curiously and voluptuously -frounced and of too amorous fashion” though they might be, he had -yet to devote himself rather more seriously to his profession than -he hitherto seems to have done. He set about it in his usual steady -circumspect way. He composed sermons, first, it is said, writing them -in Latin and then turning them into French; he attended faithfully to -the administration of his diocese; he applied himself to the study of -theological doctrine, and is said to have learned the <i>Summa</i> of -St. Thomas Aquinas by heart.<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> -These occupations have left their trace on his next work, which was -ready by 1572. Not only are Plutarch’s moral treatises perfectly -consonant in tone with Amyot’s episcopal office, but the preface is -touched with a breath of religious unction, of which his previous -performances show no trace. Perhaps the flavour is a little too -pronounced when in his grateful dedication to his royal master he -declares: “The Lord has lodged in you singular goodness of nature.” The -substantive needs all the help that can be wrung from the adjective, -when used of Charles IX. in the year of St. Bartholomew. But Amyot, -though the exhibiter of “Plutarch’s men,” was essentially a private -student, and was besides bound by ties of intimacy and obligation to -his former pupil, who had certainly done well by him. Nor was the -younger brother behindhand in his acknowledgments. Charles died before -two years were out (for Amyot had a way of dedicating books to kings -who deceased soon after), and was lamented by Amyot in a simple and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> -heartfelt Latin elegy. But his regrets were quite disinterested, -for when Henry III. succeeded in 1574, he showed himself as kind a -master, and in 1578 decreed that the Grand Almoner should also be -Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost without being required to give -proofs of nobility.</p> - -<p>Invested with ample revenues and manifold dignities, Amyot for the -next eleven years lived a busy and simple life, varying the routine -of his administrative duties with music, of which he was a lover and -a practitioner; with translations, never published and now lost, from -the Greek tragedians, who had attracted him as professor, and from -St. Athanasius, who appealed to him as bishop; above all, with the -revision of his Plutarch, for which he never ceased to collect new -readings. Then came disasters, largely owing to his reputation for -partiality and complaisance. When the Duke and the Cardinal of Guise -were assassinated in 1589, he was accused by the Leaguers of having -approved the crime and of having granted absolution to the King. This -he denied; but his Chapter and diocesans rose against him, the populace -sacked his residence, and he had to fly from Auxerre. Nor were his -woes merely personal. On August 3rd the House of Valois, to which he -was so much beholden, became extinct with the murder of Henry III.; -and however worthless the victim may have been, Amyot cannot have been -unaffected by old associations of familiarity and gratitude. Six days -later he writes that he is “the most afflicted, desolate and destitute -poor priest I suppose, in France.” His private distress was not of long -duration. He made peace with the Leaguers, denounced the “politicians” -for supporting Henry IV., returned to his see, resumed his episcopal -duties, though he was divested of his Grand Almonership, and was able -to leave the large fortune of two hundred thousand crowns. But he did -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span> -not survive to see the establishment of the new dynasty or the triumph -of Catholicism, for he died almost eighty years old in February, 1593, -and only in the following June was Henry IV. reconciled to the Church. -Perhaps had he foreseen this consummation Amyot would have found some -comfort in the thought that a third pupil, a truer and greater one than -those who were no more, would reign in their stead, and repair the -damage their vice and folly had caused. “Glory to God!” writes Henry of -Navarre to his wife, “you could have sent me no more pleasant message -than the news of the zest for reading which has taken you. Plutarch -always attracts me with a fresh novelty. To love him is to love me, for -he was for long the instructor of my early years. My good mother, to -whom I owe everything, and who had so great a desire to watch over my -right attitude and was wont to say that she did not wish to see in her -son a distinguished dunce, put this book in my hands when I was all but -an infant at the breast. It has been, as it were, my conscience, and -has prescribed in my ear many fair virtues and excellent maxims for my -behaviour and for the management of my affairs.”<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a></p> - -<p>Amyot has exerted a far-reaching influence on the literature of his own -country and of Europe. Though as a translator he might seem to have no -more than a secondary claim, French historians of letters have dwelt on -his work at a length and with a care that are usually conceded only to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span> -the achievements of creative imagination or intellectual discovery. And -the reason is that his aptitude for his task amounts to real genius, -which he has improved by assiduous research, so that in his treatment, -the ancillary craft, as it is usually considered, rises to the rank -of a free liberal art. He has the insight to divine what stimulus and -information the age requires; the knowledge to command the sources that -will supply them; the skill to manipulate his native idiom for the new -demands, and suit his expression, so far as may be, both to his subject -and to his audience. Among the great masters of translation he occupies -a foremost place.</p> - -<p>Of spontaneous and initiative power he had but little. He cannot stand -alone. For Henry II. he wrote a <i>Projet de l’Eloquence Royal</i>, -but it was not printed till long after his death; and of this and -his other original prose his biographer, Roulliard, avows that the -style is strangely cumbersome and laggard (<i>estrangement pesant et -traisnassier</i>). Even in his prefaces to Plutarch he is only good -when he catches fire from his enthusiasm for his author. Just as his -misgivings at the Council of Trent, his commendations of his royal -patrons, his concessions to his enemies of the League, suggest a defect -in independent force of character, so the writings in which he must -rely on himself show a defect in independent force of intellect.</p> - -<p>Nor is he a specialist in scholarship. Already in 1635, when he had -been less than a century in his grave, Bachet de Méziriac, expert in -all departments of learning, exposed his shortcomings in a Discourse -on Translation, which was delivered before the Academy. His critic -describes him as “a promising pupil in rhetoric with a mediocre -knowledge of Greek, and some slight tincture of Polite Letters”; and -asserts that there are more than two thousand passages in which he has -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span> -perverted the sense of his author. Even in 1580-81, during Amyot’s -lifetime, Montaigne was forced to admit in discussion with certain -learned men at Rome that he was less accurate than his admirers -had imagined. He was certainly as far as possible from being a -<i>Zunftgelehrter</i>. His peculiar attitude is exactly indicated by -his treatment of the missing books of Diodorus which it was his good -fortune to light upon. He is not specially interested in his discovery, -and has no thought of giving the original documents to the world. At -the same time he has such a reverence for antiquity that he must do -something about them. So with an eye to his chosen constituency, his -own countrymen, he executes his vernacular version.</p> - -<p>For of his own countrymen he always thought first. They are his -audience, and he has their needs in his mind. And that is why he made -Plutarch the study of his life. His romances are mere experiments for -his pastime and equipment:<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> -his Diodorus is a task prescribed by accident and vocation: but his -Plutarch is a labour of love and of patriotism. It was knowledge -of antiquity for which the age clamoured and of which it stood in -need; and who else could give such a summary and encyclopaedia -of Classical Life as the polyhistor of Chaeronea, who interested -himself in everything, from details of household management to the -government of states, from ancestral superstitions to the speculations -of philosophers, from after-dinner conversation to the direction of -campaigns; but brought them all into vital relation with human nature -and human conduct? Plutarch appealed to the popular instinct of the -time and to the popular instinct in Amyot’s own breast. It is his large -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span> -applicability “distill’d through all the needful uses of our lives” -and “fit for any conference one can use” that, for example, arouses -the enthusiasm of Montaigne. After mentioning that when he writes he -willingly dispenses with the companionship or recollection of books, -he adds:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">But it is with more difficulty that I can get -rid of Plutarch: he is so universal and so full that on all occasions -and whatever out-of-the-way subject you have taken up, he thrusts -himself into your business, and holds out to you a hand lavish and -inexhaustible in treasures and ornaments. I am vexed at his being so -much exposed to the plunder of those who resort to him. I can’t have -the slightest dealings with him myself, but I snatch a leg or a -wing.<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">And again:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">I am above all grateful to [Amyot] for having had -the insight to pick out and choose a book so worthy and so seasonable, -to make a present of it to his country. We dunces should have been -lost, if this book had not raised us out of the mire. Thanks to it -we now dare to speak and write. With it the ladies can lecture the -school-masters. It is our breviary.<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">“In all kinds Plutarch is my man,” he says elsewhere. And -indeed it is obvious, even though he had not told us, that Plutarch with Seneca -supplies his favourite reading, to which he perpetually recurs. “I -have not,” he writes, “systematically acquainted myself with any solid -books except Plutarch and Seneca, from whom I draw like the Danaides, -filling and pouring out continually.”<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> -To the latter he could go for himself; for the Greek he had to depend on -Amyot. For combined profit and pleasure, he says, “the books that serve me are -Plutarch, <i>since he is French</i>, and Seneca.”<a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> -But it is to the former that he seems to give the palm.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Seneca is full of smart and witty sayings, -Plutarch of things: the former kindles you more and excites you, the -latter satisfies you more and requites you better; he guides us while -the other drives us.<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p> - -<p>It is indeed impossible to imagine Montaigne without Plutarch, to whom -he has a striking resemblance both in his free-and-easy homilies and in -his pregnant touches. It is these things on which he dwells.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">There are in Plutarch many dissertations at full -length well worth knowing, for in my opinion he is the master-craftsman -in that trade; but there are a thousand that he has merely indicated; -he only points out the track we are to take if we like, and confines -himself sometimes to touching the quick of a subject. We must drag -(the expositions) thence and put them in the market place.... It is a -dissertation in itself to see him select a trivial act in the life of a -man, or a word that does not seem to have such import.<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a></p> - -<p>But Montaigne did not stand alone in his admiration. He himself, as we -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span> -have seen, bears witness to the widespread popularity of Amyot’s -Plutarch and the general practice of rifling its treasures. Indeed, -Plutarch was seen to be so congenial to the age, that frequent -attempts had been made before Amyot to place him within the reach -of a larger circle than the little band of Greek scholars. In 1470, -<i>e.g.</i> a number of Italians had co-operated in a Latin version of -the <i>Lives</i>, published at Rome by Campani, and this was followed -by several partial translations in French.<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> -But the latter were immediately superseded, and even the former had its -authority shaken, by Amyot’s achievement.</p> - -<p>This was due partly to its greater intelligence and faithfulness, -partly to its excellent style.</p> - -<p>In regard to the first, it should be remembered that the criticism of -Amyot’s learning must be very carefully qualified. Scholarship is a -progressive science, and it is always easy for the successor to point -out errors in the precursor, as Méziriac did in Amyot. Of course, -however, the popular expositor was not a Budaeus or Scaliger, and the -savants whom Montaigne met in Rome were doubtless justified in their -strictures. Still the zeal that he showed and the trouble that he took -in searching for good texts, in conferring them with the printed books -and in consulting learned men about his conjectural emendations,<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> -would suggest that he had the root of the matter in him, and there is -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> -evidence that expert opinion in his own days was favourable to his -claims.<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a></p> - -<p>At the time when he was translating the <i>Lives</i> into French -two scholars of high reputation were, independently of each other, -translating them into Latin. Xylander’s versions appeared in 1560, -those of Cruserius were ready in the same year, but were not published -till 1564. They still hold their place and enjoy consideration. Now, -they both make their compliments to Amyot. Xylander, indeed, has only -a second-hand acquaintance with his publication, but even that he has -found valuable:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">After I had already finished the greater part of -the work, the <i>Lives of Plutarch</i> written by Amyot in the French -language made their appearance. And since I heard from those who are -skilled in that tongue, a privilege which I do not possess, that he -had devoted remarkable pains to the book and used many good MSS., -assisted by the courtesy of friends, I corrected several passages -about which I was in doubt, and in not a few my conjecture was -established by the concurrence of that translator.<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p> - -<p>Cruserius, again, in his prefatory <i>Epistle to the Reader</i>, warmly -commends the merits of Xylander and Amyot, but refers with scarcely -veiled disparagement to the older Latin rendering, which nevertheless -enjoyed general acceptance as the number of editions proves, and was -considered the standard authority. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span></p> - -<p class="blockquot">If indeed (he writes) I must not here say that -I by myself have both more faithfully and more elegantly interpreted -<i>Plutarch’s Lives</i>, the translation of which into Latin a great -number of Italians formerly undertook without much success; this at -least I may say positively and justly that I think I have done -this.<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a></p> - -<p>On the other hand “Amiotus” has been a help to him. When he had -already polished and corrected his own version, he came across this -very tasteful rendering in Brussels six months after it had appeared. -“This man’s scholarship and industry gave me some light on several -passages.”<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> -It is well then to bear in mind, when Amyot’s competency is -questioned, that by their own statement he cleared up things for -specialists like Xylander and Cruserius. And this is all the more -striking, that Cruserius, whom his preface shows to be very generous -in his acknowledgments, has no word of recognition for his Italian -predecessors even though Filelfo was among their number.<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> -But his Epistle proceeds: “To whom (<i>i.e.</i> to Amyot) I will give -this testimony that nowadays it is impossible that anyone should render -Plutarch so elegantly in the Latin tongue, as he renders him in his -own.”<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> -And this praise of Amyot’s style leads us to the next point.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span> -If Amyot claims the thanks of Western Europe for giving it with -adequate faithfulness a typical miscellany of ancient life and thought, -his services to his country in developing the native language are -hardly less important. Before him Rabelais and Calvin were the only -writers of first-rate ability in modern French. But Rabelais’ prose -was too exuberant, heterogeneous and eccentric to supply a model; -and Calvin, besides being suspect on account of his theology, was of -necessity as a theologian abstract and restricted in his range. The new -candidate had something of the wealth and universal appeal of the one, -something of the correctness and purity of the other.</p> - -<p>Since Plutarch deals with almost all departments of life, Amyot had -need of the amplest vocabulary, and a supply of the most diverse -locutions. Indeed, sometimes the copious resources of his vernacular, -with which he had doubtless begun to familiarise himself among the -simple folk of Melun, leave him in the lurch, and he has to make loans -from Latin or Greek. But he does this sparingly, and only when no other -course is open to him. Generally his thorough mastery of the dialect of -the Île de France, the standard language of the kingdom, helps him out.</p> - -<p>Yet he is far from adopting the popular speech without consciously -manipulating it. He expressly states that he selects the fittest, -sweetest, and most euphonious words, and such as are in the mouths -of those who are accustomed to speak well. The ingenuousness of his -utterance, which is in great measure due to his position of pioneer -in a new period, should not mislead us into thinking him a careless -writer. His habit of first composing his sermons in Latin and then -translating them into French tells its own story. He evidently realised -the superiority in precision and orderly arrangement of the speech of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> -Rome, and felt it a benefit to submit to such discipline the artless -<i>bonhomie</i> of his mother tongue. But since he is the born -interpreter, whose very business it was to mediate between the exotic -and the indigenous, and assimilate the former to the latter, he never -forgets the claims of his fellow Frenchmen and his native French. He -does not force his idiom to imitate a foreign model, but only learns -to develop its own possibilities of greater clearness, exactitude, and -regularity.</p> - -<p>It is for these excellencies among others, “pour la naifeté et purété -du language en quoi il surpasse touts aultres,”<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> -that Montaigne gives him the palm, and this purity served him in good -stead during the classical period of French literature, which was so -unjust to most writers of the sixteenth century, and found fault with -Montaigne himself for his “Gasconisms.” Racine thought that Amyot’s -“old style” had a grace which could not be equalled in our modern -language. Fénelon regretfully looks back to him for beauties that are -fallen into disuse. Nor was it only men of delicate and poetic genius -who appreciated his merits. Vaugelas, the somewhat illiberal grammarian -and purist, is the most enthusiastic of the worshippers.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">What obligation (he exclaims) does our language -not owe to him, there never having been anyone who knew its genius and -character better than he, or who used words and phrases so genuinely -French without admixture of the provincial expressions which daily -corrupt the purity of the true French tongue. All stores and treasures -are in the works of this great man. And even to-day we have hardly any -noble and splendid modes of speech that he has not left us; and though -we have cut out a half of his words and phrases, we do not fail to find -in the other half almost all the riches of which we boast.</p> - -<p>It will be seen, however, that in such tributes from the seventeenth -century (and the same thing is true of others left unquoted), it is -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> -implied that Amyot is already somewhat antiquated and out of fashion. -He is honoured as ancestor in the right line of classical French, but -he is its ancestor and not a living representative. Vaugelas admits -that half his vocabulary is obsolete, Fénelon regrets his charms just -because their date is past, Racine wonders that such grace should have -been attained in what is not the modern language.</p> - -<p>And this may remind us of the very important fact, that Amyot could not -on account of his position deliver a facsimile of the Greek. Plutarch -lived at the close of an epoch, he at the beginning. The one employed -a language full of reminiscences and past its prime; the other, a -language that was just reaching self-consciousness and that had the -future before it. Both in a way were artists, but Plutarch shows his -art in setting his stones already cut, while Amyot provides moulds for -the liquid metal. At their worst Plutarch’s style becomes mannered and -Amyot’s infantile. By no sleight of hand would it have been possible to -give in the French of the sixteenth century an exact reproduction of -the Greek of the second. Grey-haired antiquity had to learn the accents -of stammering childhood.</p> - -<p>Sometimes Amyot hardly makes an attempt at literal fidelity. The style -of his original he describes as “plein, serré et philosophistorique.” -With him it retains the fulness, but the condensation, or rather what -a modern scholar describes as “the crowding of the sentence,”<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> -often gives place to periphrasis, and of the “philosophistorique” small trace -remains. Montaigne praises him because he has contrived “to expound so -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> -thorny and crabbed<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> -an author with such fidelity.” What is most crabbed and thorny in -Plutarch he passes over or replaces with a loose equivalent; single -words he expands to phrases; difficulties he explains with a gloss or -illustration that he does not hesitate to insert in the text; and he -is anxious to bring out the sense by adding more emphatic and often -familiar touches.</p> - -<p>The result of it all undoubtedly is to lend Plutarch a more popular -and less academic bearing than he really has. Some of Amyot’s most -attractive effects either do not exist or are inconspicuous in his -original. The tendency to artifice and rhetoric in the pupil of -Ammonius disappears, and he is apt to get the credit for an innocence -and freshness that are more characteristic of his translator. M. Faguet -justly points out that Amyot in his version makes Plutarch “a simple -writer, while he was elegant, fastidious, and even affected in his -style.” ... He “emerges from Amyot’s hands as <i>le bon Plutarque</i> -of the French people, whereas he was certainly not that.” Thus it -is beyond dispute that the impression produced is in some respects -misleading.</p> - -<p>But there is another side to this. Plutarch in his tastes and ideals -did belong to an older, less sophisticated age, though he was born -out of due time and had to adapt his speech to his hyper-civilised -environment. Ampère has called attention to the picture, suggested -by the facts at our disposal, of Plutarch living in his little -Boeotian town, obtaining his initiation into the mysteries, punctually -fulfilling the functions of priest, making antiquities and traditions -his hobby. “There was this man under the rhetorician,” he adds, “and we -must not forget it. For if the rhetorician wrote, it was the other -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> -Plutarch who often dictated.” Of course in a way the antithesis is -an unreal one. Plutarch was after all, as every one must be, the -child of his own generation, and his aspirations were not confined to -himself. The <i>Sophistes</i> is, on the one hand, what the man who -makes antiquity and traditions his hobby, is on the other. Still it -remains certain that his love was set on things which pertained to an -earlier and less elaborate phase of society, to “the good old days” -when they found spontaneous acceptance and expression. On him the ends -of the world are come, and he seeks by all the resources of his art and -learning to revive what he regards as its glorious prime. His heart is -with the men “of heart, head, hand,” but when he seeks to reveal them, -he must do so in the chequered light of a vari-coloured culture.</p> - -<p>Hence there was a kind of discrepancy between his spirit and his -utterance; and Amyot, removing the discrepancy, brings them into a -natural harmony. There is truth in the paradox that the form which -the good bishop supplies is the one that was meant for the matter. -“Amyot,” says Demogeot, summing up his discussion of this aspect of the -question, “has in some sort created Plutarch, and made him truer and -more complete than nature made him.”</p> - -<p>But though Plutarch’s ideas seem from one point of view to enter -into their predestined habitation, this does not alter the fact that -they lose something of their distinctive character in accommodating -themselves to their new surroundings. It is easy to exaggerate their -affinity with the vernacular words, as it is easy to exaggerate the -correspondence between author and translator. Thus Ampère, half in -jest, pleases himself with drawing on behalf of the two men a parallel -such as is appended to each particular brace of <i>Lives</i>. Both of -them lovers of virtue, he points out, for example, that both had a -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span> -veneration for the past, of which the one strove to preserve the -memories even then beginning to fade, and the other to rediscover and -gather up the shattered fragments. Both experienced sad and troublous -times without having their tranquillity disturbed, the one by the -crimes of Domitian or the other by the furies of St. Bartholomew’s. -Both belonged to the hierarchy, the one as priest of Apollo, the other -as Bishop of Auxerre.</p> - -<p>But it is not hard to turn such parallels into so many contrasts. The -past with which Plutarch was busy was in a manner the familiar past -of his native country or at least of his own civilisation; but Amyot -loved the past of that remote and alien world in which for ages men had -neglected their heritage and taken small concern. The sequestered life -of the provincial under the Roman Empire, a privacy whence he emerges -to whatever civil offices were within his reach, is very different -from the dislike and refusal of public activity that characterises -the Frenchman in his own land at a time when learning was recognised -as passport to high position in the State. The priest of a heathen -cult which he could accept only when explained away by a rationalistic -idealism, and which was by no means incompatible with his family -instincts, was very different from the celibate churchman who ended by -submitting to the terms imposed by the intolerance of the Holy League. -The analogies are there, and imply perhaps a strain of intellectual -kinship, but the contrasts are not less obvious, and refute the idea of -a perfect unison.</p> - -<p>Now, it is much the same if we turn from the writers to their writings. -All translation is a compromise between the foreign material and the -native intelligence, but in Amyot the latter factor counts most. -Classical life is very completely assimilated to the contemporary life -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> -that he knew, but such contemporary life was in some ways quite -unlike that which he was reproducing. There is an illusory sameness -in the effects produced as there is an illusion of coincidence in -the characters and careers of the men who produce them, and this may -have its cause in real contact at certain points. But the gaps that -separate them are also real, though at the time they were seldom -detected. “Both by the details and the general tone of his version,” -says M. Lanson, “[Amyot] modernises the Graeco-Roman world, and by this -involuntary travesty he tends to check the awakening of the sense for -the differences, that is, the historic sense. As he invites Shakespeare -to recognise the English <i>Mob</i> in the <i>Plebs Romana</i>, so -he authorises Corneille and Racine and even Mademoiselle Scudéry to -portray under ancient names the human nature they saw in France.”</p> - -<p>And this tendency was carried further in Amyot’s English translator.</p> - -<h4 id="NORTH">3. NORTH</h4> - -<p>Of Sir Thomas North, the most recent and direct of the authorities -who transmitted to Shakespeare his classical material, much less is -known than of either of his predecessors. Plutarch, partly because -as original author he has the opportunity of expressing his own -personality, partly because he uses this opportunity to the full in -frank advocacy of his views and gossip about himself, may be pictured -with fair vividness and in some detail. Such information fails in -regard to Amyot, since he was above all the mouthpiece for other men; -but his high dignities placed him in the gaze of contemporaries, and -his reputation as pioneer in classical translation and nursing-father -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> -of modern French ensured a certain interest in his career. But North, -like him a translator, had not equal prominence either from his -position or from his achievement. Such honours and appointments as he -obtained were not of the kind to attract regard. He was a mere unit in -the Elizabethan crowd of literary importers, and belonged to the lower -class who never steered their course “to the classic coast.” He had no -such share as Amyot in shaping the traditions of the language, but was -one writer in an age that produced many others, some of them greater -masters than he. Yet to us, as the immediate interpreter of Plutarch to -Shakespeare, he is the most important of the three, the most famous and -the most alive. Sainte Beuve, talking of Amyot, quotes a phrase from -Leopardi in reference to the Italians who have associated themselves -forever with the Classics they unveiled: “Oh, how fair a fate! to be -exempt from death except in company with an Immortal!” This fair fate -is North’s in double portion. He is linked with a great Immortal by -descent, and with a greater by ancestry.</p> - -<p>Thomas North, second son of the first Baron North of Kirtling, was -born about 1535, to live his life, as it would seem, in straitened -circumstances and unassuming work. Yet we might have anticipated for -him a prosperous and eminent career. He had high connections and -powerful patrons; his father made provision for him, his brother helped -him once and again, a royal favourite interested himself on his behalf. -His ability and industry are evident from his works; his honesty and -courage are vouched for by those in a position to know; the efficiency -of his public services received recognition from his fellow-citizens -and his sovereign. But with all these advantages and qualifications he -was even in middle age hampered by lack of means, and he never had much -share in the pelf and pomp of life. Perhaps his occupation with larger -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span> -concerns than personal aggrandisement may have interfered with his -material success. At any rate, in his narrower sphere he showed himself -a man of public interest and public spirit, and the authors with whom -he busies himself are all such as commend ideal rather than tangible -possessions as the real objects of desire. And we know besides that he -was an unaggressive man, inclined to claim less than his due; for in -one of his books he professes to get the material only from a French -translation, when it is proved that he must have had recourse to the -Spanish original as well.</p> - -<p>This was his maiden effort, <i>The Diall of Princes</i>, published in -1557, when North was barely of age and had just been entered a student -of Lincoln’s Inn; and with this year the vague and scanty data for -his history really begin. He dedicates his book to Queen Mary, who -had shown favour to his father, pardoning him for his support of Lady -Jane Grey, raising him to the peerage, and distinguishing him in other -ways. But on the death of Mary, Lord North retained the goodwill of -Elizabeth, who twice kept her court at his mansion, and appointed him -Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. The family had -thus considerable local influence, and it was not diminished when, on -the old man’s death in 1564, Roger, the first son, succeeded to the -title. Before long the new Lord North was made successively an alderman -of Cambridge, Lord Lieutenant of the County, and High Steward; while -Thomas, who had benefited under his father’s will, was presented to the -freedom of the town. All through, the career of the junior appears as a -sort of humble pendant to that of the senior, and he picks up his dole -of the largesses that Fortune showers on the head of the house. What he -had been doing in the intervening years we do not know, but he cannot -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span> -have abandoned his literary pursuits, for in 1568, when he received -this civic courtesy, he issued a new edition of the <i>Diall</i>, -corrected and enlarged; and he followed it up in 1570 with a version of -Doni’s <i>Morale Filosofia</i>.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the elder brother was advancing on his brilliant course. He -had been sent to Vienna to invest the Emperor Maximilian with the Order -of the Garter; he had been commissioned to present the Queen on his -return with the portrait of her suitor, the Archduke Charles; he had -held various offices at home, and in 1574 he was appointed Ambassador -Extraordinary to congratulate Henry III. of France on his accession, -and to procure if possible toleration for the Huguenots and a renewal -of the Treaty of Blois. On this important legation he was accompanied -by Thomas, who would thus have an opportunity of seeing or hearing -something of Amyot, the great Bishop and Grand Almoner who was soon to -be recipient of new honours from his royal pupil and patron, and who -had recently been drawing new attention on himself by his third edition -of the <i>Lives</i> and his first edition of the <i>Morals</i>.<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> -It may well be that this visit suggested to Thomas North his own -masterpiece, which he seems to have set about soon after he came home -in the end of November. At least it was to appear in January, 1579, -before another lustre was out; and a translation even from French -of the entire <i>Lives</i>, not only unabridged but augmented (for -biographies of Hannibal and Scipio are added from the versions of -Charles de l’Escluse),<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> is a task of years rather than of months.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span> -The embassage, despite many difficulties to be overcome, had been a -success, and Lord North returned to receive the thanks and favours -he deserved. He stood high in the Queen’s regard, and in 1578 she -honoured him with a visit for a night. He was lavish in his welcome, -building, we are told, new kitchens for the occasion; filling them with -provisions of all kinds, the oysters alone amounting to one cart load -and two horse loads; rifling the cellars of their stores, seventy-four -hogsheads of beer being reinforced with corresponding supplies of -ale, claret, white wine, sack, and hippocras; presenting her at her -departure with a jewel worth £120 in the money of the time. In such -magnificent doings he was by no means unmindful of his brother, to whom -shortly before he had made over the lease of a house and household -stuff. Yet precisely at this date, when Thomas North was completing or -had completed his first edition of the <i>Lives</i>, his circumstances -seem to have been specially embarrassed. Soon after the book appeared -Leicester writes on his behalf to Burleigh, stating that he “is a very -honest gentleman and hath many good parts in him which are drowned only -by poverty.” There is perhaps a certain incongruity between these words -and the accounts of the profusion at Kirtling in the preceding year.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Lord North, to his reputation as diplomatist and courtier -sought to add that of a soldier. In the Low Countries he greatly -distinguished himself by his capacity and courage; but he was called -home to look after the defences of the eastern coast in view of the -expected Spanish invasion, and this was not the only time that the -Government resorted to him for military advice.</p> - -<p>No such important charge was entrusted to Thomas, but he too was ready -to do his duty by his country in her hour of need, and in 1588 had -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span> -command of three hundred men of Ely. In the interval between this and -the distressful time of 1579 his position must have improved; for -in 1591, in reward it may be for his patriotic activity, the Queen -conferred on him the honour of knighthood, which in those days implied -as necessary qualification the possession of land to the minimum value -of £40 a year. This was followed by other acknowledgments and dignities -of moderate worth. In 1592 and again in 1597 he sat on the Commission -of Peace for Cambridgeshire. In 1598 he received a grant of £20 from -the town of Cambridge, and in 1601 a pension of £40 a year from the -Queen. These amounts are not munificent, even if we take them at the -outside figure suggested as the equivalent in modern money.<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> -They give the impression that North was not very well off, that in his -circumstances some assistance was desirable, and a little assistance -would go a long way. At the same time they show that his conduct -deserved and obtained appreciation. Indeed, the pension from the Queen -is granted expressly “in consideration of the good and faithful service -done unto us.”</p> - -<p>He also benefited by a substantial bequest from Lord North, who had -died in 1600, but he was now an old man of at least sixty-six, and -probably he did not live long to enjoy his new resources. Of the -brother Lloyd records: “There was none better to represent our State -than my Lord North, who had been two years in Walsingham’s house, -four in Leicester’s service, had seen six courts, twenty battles, -nine treaties, and four solemn jousts, whereof he was no mean part.” -In regard to the younger son, even the year of whose death we do not -know, the parallel summary would run: “He served a few months in an -ambassador’s suite; he commanded a local force, he was a knight, and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span> -sat on the Commission of Peace; he made three translations, one of -which rendered possible Shakespeare’s Roman Plays.”<a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a></p> - -<p>This is his “good and faithful service” unto us, not that he fulfilled -duties in which he might have been rivalled by any country justice or -militia captain. And, “a good and faithful servant,” he had qualified -himself for his grand performance by a long apprenticeship in the -craft. Like Amyot, he devotes himself to translation from first to -last, but unlike Amyot he knows from the outset the kind of book that -it is given him to interpret. He is not drawn by the fervour of youth -to “vain and amatorious romance,” nor by conventional considerations to -the bric-a-brac of antiquarianism. From the time that he has attained -the years of discretion and comes within our knowledge, he applies his -heart to study and supply works of solid instruction.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>It is characteristic, too, both of his equipment and his style, that -though he may have known a little Greek and certainly knew some Latin, -as is shown by a few trifling instances in which he gives Amyot’s -expressions a more learned turn, he never used an ancient writer -as his main authority, but confined himself to the adaptations and -translations that were current in modern vernaculars.</p> - -<p>Thus his earliest work is the rendering, mainly from the French, of the -notable and curious forgery of the Spanish Bishop, Antonio de Guevara, -alleged by its author to have been derived from an ancient manuscript -which he had discovered in Florence. It was originally entitled -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> -<i>El Libro Aureo de Marco Aurelio, Emperador y eloquentissimo Orator</i>, -but afterwards, when issued in an expanded form, was rechristened, -<i>Marco Aurelio con el Relox de Principes</i>. It has however little -to do with the real Marcus Aurelius, and the famous <i>Meditations</i> -furnish only a small ingredient to the work. It is in some ways an -imitation of Xenophon’s <i>Cyropaedia</i>, that is, it is a didactic -romance which aims at giving in narrative form true principles of -education, morals, and politics. But the narrative is very slight, and -most of the book is made up of discussions, discourses, and epistles, -the substance of which is in many cases taken with a difference from -Plutarch’s <i>Moralia</i>. These give the author scope to endite “in -high style”; and in his balanced and erudite way of writing, which -with all its tastelessness and excess has a far-off resemblance to -Plutarch’s more rhetorical effects, as well as in his craze for -allusions and similes, he anticipates the mannerisms of the later -Euphuists. But despite the moralisings and affectations (or rather, -perhaps, on account of them, for the first fell in with the ethical -needs of the time, and the second with its attempts to organise its -prose), the book was a great favourite for over a hundred years, and -Casaubon says that except the Bible, hardly any other has been so -frequently translated or printed. Lord Berners had already made his -countrymen acquainted with it in shorter form, but North renders the -<i>Diall of Princes</i> in full, and even adds another treatise of -Guevara’s, <i>The Favored Courtier</i>, as fourth book to his second -edition.</p> - -<p>It is both the contents and the form that attract him. In the title -page he describes it as “right necessarie and pleasaunt to all -gentylmen and others which are louers of vertue”; and in his preface he -says that it is “so full of high doctrine, so adourned with auncient -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span> -histories, so authorised with grave sentences, and so beautified with -apte similitudes, that I knowe not whose eies in reding it can be -weried, nor whose eares in hearing it not satisfied.”</p> - -<p>That North’s contemporaries agreed with him in liking such fare is -shown by the publication of the new edition eleven years after the -first, and even more strikingly by the publication of John Lily’s -imitation eleven years after the second. For Dr. Landmann has proved -beyond dispute that the paedagogic romance of <i>Euphues</i>, in -purpose, in plan, in its letters and disquisitions, its episodes and -persons, is largely based on the <i>Diall</i>. He has not been quite -so successful in tracing the distinctive tricks of the Euphuistic -style through North to Guevara. It has to be remembered that North’s -main authority was not the Spanish <i>Relox de Principes</i>, but -the French <i>Orloge des princes</i>; and at the double remove a -good many of the peculiarities of Guevarism were bound to become -obliterated: as in point of fact has occurred. It would be a mistake to -call North a Euphuistic writer, though in the <i>Diall</i>, and even -in the <i>Lives</i>, there are Euphuistic passages. Still, Guevara -did no doubt affect him, for Guevara’s was the only elaborate and -architectural prose with which he was on intimate terms. He had not the -advantage of Amyot’s daily commerce with the Classics, and constant -practice in the equating of Latin and French. In the circumstances a -dash of diluted Guevarism was not a bad thing for him, and at any rate -was the only substitute at his disposal. To the end he sometimes uses -it when he has to write in a more complex or heightened style.</p> - -<p>But if the Spanish Bishop were not in all respects a salutary model, -North was soon to correct this influence by working under the guidance -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> -of a very different man, the graceless Italian miscellanist, Antonio -Francesco Doni. That copious and audacious conversationalist could -write as he talked, on all sorts of themes, including even those in -which there was no offence, and seldom failed to be entertaining. He is -never more so than in his <i>Morale Filosofia</i>, a delightful book -to which and to himself North did honour by his delightful rendering. -The descriptive title runs: “The Morall Philosophie of Doni: drawne out -of the auncient writers. A worke first compiled in the Indian tongue, -and afterwards reduced into diuers other languages: and now lastly -Englished out of Italian by Thomas North.” This formidable announcement -is a little misleading, for the book proves to be a collection of the -so-called Fables of Bidpai, and though the lessons are not lacking, -the main value as well as the main charm lies in the vigour and -picturesqueness of the little stories.<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></p> - -<p>Thus in both his prentice works North betrays the same general bias. -They are both concerned with the practical and applied philosophy of -life, and both convey it through the medium of fiction: in so far they -are alike. But they are unlike, in so far as the relative interest of -the two factors is reversed, and the accent is shifted from the one to -the other. In the <i>Diall</i> the narrative is almost in abeyance, -and the pages are filled with long-drawn arguments and admonitions. -In the <i>Fables</i> the sententious purpose is rather implied than -obtruded, and in no way interferes with the piquant adventures; which -are recounted in a very easy and lively style.</p> - -<p>North was thus a practised writer and translator, with a good knowledge -of the modern tongues, when he accompanied his brother to France in -1574. In his two previous attempts he had shown his bent towards -improving story and the manly wisdom of the elder world; and in the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span> -second, had advanced in appreciation of the concrete example and the -racy presentment. If he now came across Amyot’s Plutarch, we can see -how well qualified he was for the task of giving it an English shape, -and how congenial the task would be. Of the <i>Moral Treatises</i> -he already knew something, if only in the adulterated concoctions of -Guevara, but the <i>Lives</i> would be quite new to him, and would -exactly tally with his tastes in their blend of ethical reflection and -impressive narrative. There is a hint of this double attraction in the -opening phrase of the title page: “The Lives of the Noble Grecians -and Romans compared by that grave learned <i>Philosopher</i> and -<i>Historiographer</i>, Plutarch of Chaeronea.” The philosophy and the -history are alike signalised as forming the equipment of the author, -and certainly the admixture was such as would appeal to the public as -well as to the translator.</p> - -<p>The first edition of 1579, imprinted by Thomas Vautrouillier and John -Wight, was followed by a second in 1595, imprinted by Richard Field -for Bonham Norton. Field, who was a native of Stratford-on-Avon, and -had been apprenticed to Vautrouillier before setting up for himself, -had dealings with Shakespeare, and issued his <i>Venus and Adonis</i> -and <i>Rape of Lucrece</i>. But whether or no his fellow townsman put -him in the way of it, it is certain that Shakespeare was not long in -discovering the new treasure. It seems to leave traces in so early a -work as the <i>Midsummer-Night’s Dream</i>, which probably borrowed -from the life of <i>Theseus</i>, as well as in the <i>Merchant of -Venice</i>, with its reference to “Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia”; -though it did not inspire a complete play till <i>Julius Caesar</i>. In -1603 appeared the third edition of North’s Plutarch, enlarged with new -Lives which had been incorporated in Amyot’s collection in 1583: and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span> -this some think to have been the particular authority for <i>Antony -and Cleopatra</i> and <i>Coriolanus</i>.<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> -And again a fourth edition, with a separate supplement bearing the -date of 1610, was published in 1612; and of this the famous copy in -the Greenock Library has been claimed as the dramatist’s own book. If -by any chance this should be the case, then Shakespeare must have got -it for his private delectation, for by this time he had finished his -plays on ancient history and almost ceased to write for the stage. But -apart from that improbable and crowning honour, there is no doubt about -the value of North’s version to Shakespeare as dramatist, and the four -editions in Shakespeare’s lifetime sufficiently attest its popularity -with the general reader.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span> -This popularity is well deserved. Its permanent excellences were -sure of wide appreciation, and the less essential qualities that -fitted Plutarch to meet the needs of the hour in France, were not -less opportune in England. North’s prefatory “Address to the Reader” -describes not only his own attitude but that of his countrymen in general.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">There is no prophane studye better than Plutarke. -All other learning is private, fitter for Universities then cities, -fuller of contemplacion than experience, more commendable in the -students them selves, than profitable unto others. Whereas stories, -(<i>i.e.</i> histories) are fit for every place, reache to all persons, -serve for all tymes, teache the living, revive the dead, so farre -excelling all other bookes as it is better to see learning in noble -mens lives than to reade it in Philosophers writings. Nowe, for the -Author, I will not denye but love may deceive me, for I must needes -love him with whome I have taken so much payne, but I bileve I might -be bold to affirme that he hath written the profitablest story of -all Authors. For all other were fayne to take their matter, as the -fortune of the contries where they wrote fell out; But this man, being -excellent in wit, in learning, and experience, hath chosen the speciall -actes, of the best persons, of the famosest nations of the world.... -And so I wishe you all the profit of the booke.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This passage really sums up one half the secret -of Plutarch’s fascination for the Renaissance world. The aim is -profit, and profit not merely of a private kind. The profit is better -secured by history than by precept, just as the living example is more -effectual than the philosophic treatise. And there is more profit -in Plutarch than in any other historian, not only on account of his -personal qualifications, his wit, learning, and experience, but on -account of his subject-matter, because he had the opportunity and -insight to choose the prerogative instances in the annals of mankind. -Only it should be noted that the profit is conceived in the most -liberal and ideal sense. It is the profit that comes from contact with -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> -great souls in great surroundings, not the profit of the trite and -unmistakable moral. This Amyot had already clearly perceived and set -forth in a fine passage of which North gives a fine translation. The -dignity of the historian’s office is very high:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Forasmuch as his chiefe drift ought to be to serve -the common weale, and that he is but as a register to set downe the -judgements and definitive sentences of God’s Court, whereof some are -geven according to the ordinarie course and capacitie of our weake -naturall reason, and other some goe according to God’s infinite power -and incomprehensible wisedom, above and against all discourse of man’s -understanding.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">In other words history is not profitable as -always illustrating a simple retributive justice. It may do that, but -it may also do otherwise. Some of its awards are mysterious or even -inscrutable. The profit it yields is disinterested and spiritual, -and does not lie in the encouragement of optimistic virtue. And this -indicates how it may be turned to account. The stuff it contains is the -true stuff for Tragedy.</p> - -<p>The remaining half of Plutarch’s secret depends on the treatment, which -loses nothing in the hands of those who now must manage it; of whom the -one, in Montaigne’s phrase, showed “the constancy of so long a labour,” -and the other, in his own phrase, “took so much pain,” to adapt it -aright. But just as the charm of style, though undiminished, is changed -when it passes from Plutarch to Amyot, so too this takes place to -some degree when it passes from Amyot to North. North was translating -from a modern language, without the fear of the ancients before his -eyes. Amyot had translated from Greek, and was familiar with classical -models. Not merely does this affect the comparative fidelity of their -versions, as it was bound to do, for North, with two intervals between, -and without the instincts of an accurate scholar, could not keep so -close as even Amyot had done to the first original. Indeed he sometimes, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> -though not often, violates the meaning of the French, occasionally -misinterpreting a word, as when he translates Coriolanus’ final words -to his mother: “Je m’en revois (i.e. <i>revais</i>, <i>retourne</i>) -vaincu par toy seule,” by “I <i>see</i> myself vanquished by you -alone”; more frequently misconstruing an idiom, as when he goes wrong -with the negative in passages like the following: “Ces paroles feirent -incontinent penser à Eurybides et craindre que les Atheniens ne s’en -voulussent aller et les abandonner”; which he renders: “These wordes -made Eurybides presently thinke and feare that the Athenians would -<i>not</i> goe, and that they would forsake them.”<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a></p> - -<p>But the same circumstance affects North’s mode of utterance as well. -It is far from attaining to Amyot’s habitual clearness, coherence, and -correctness. His words are often clumsily placed, his constructions are -sometimes broken and more frequently charged with repetitions, he does -not always find his way out of a complicated sentence with his grammar -unscathed or his meaning unobscured. One of the few Frenchmen who take -exception to Amyot’s prose says that “it trails like the ivy creeping -at random, instead of flying like the arrow to its mark.” This is -unfair in regard to Amyot; it would be fairer, though still unfair, in -regard to North. Compare the French and English versions of the passage -that deals with Mark Antony’s “piscatory eclogue.” Nothing could be -more lucid or elegant than the French.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Il se meit quelquefois à pescher à la ligne, et -voyant qu’il ne pouvoit rien prendre, si en estoit fort despit et -marry à cause que Cléopatra estoit présente. Si commanda secrettement -à quelques pescheurs, quand il auroit jeté sa ligne, qu’ilz se -plongeassent soudain en l’eau, et qu’ilz allassent accrocher à son -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span> -hameçon quelques poissons de ceulx qu’ilz auroyent eu peschés -auparavent; et puis retira aussi deux or trois fois sa ligne avec -prise. Cleopatra s’en aperceut incontinent, toutes fois elle feit -semblant de n’en rien sçavoir, et de s’esmerveiller comme il peschoit -si bien; mais apart, elle compta le tout à ses familiers, et leur dit -que le lendemain ilz se trouvassent sur l’eau pour voir l’esbatement. -Ilz y vindrent sur le port en grand nombre, et se meirent dedans des -bateaux de pescheurs, et Antonius aussi lascha sa ligne, et lors -Cleopatra commanda à lun de ses serviteurs qu’il se hastast de plonger -devant ceulx d’Antonius, et qu’il allast attacher a l’hameçon de sa -ligne quelque vieux poisson sallé comme ceulx que lon apporte du païs -de Pont. Cela fait, Antonius qui cuida qu’il y eust un poisson pris, -tira incontinent sa ligne, et adonc comme lon peult penser, tous les -assistans se prirent bien fort à rire, et Cleopatra, en riant, lui dit: -“Laisse-nous, seigneur, à nous autres Ægyptiens, habitans<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> -de Pharus et de Canobus, laisse-nous la ligne; ce n’est pas ton mestier. -Ta chasse est de prendre et conquerer villes et citez, païs et royaumes.” </p> - -<p>The flow of the English is not so easy and transparent.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">On a time he went to angle for fish, and when he -could take none, he was as angrie as could be, bicause Cleopatra stoode -by. Wherefore he secretly commaunded the fisher men, that when he cast -in his line, they should straight dive under the water, and put a -fishe on his hooke which they had taken before: and so snatched up his -angling rodde and brought up a fish twise or thrise. Cleopatra found it -straight, yet she seemed not to see it, but wondred at his excellent -fishing: but when she was alone by her self among her owne people, she -told them howe it was, and bad them the next morning to be on the water -to see the fishing. A number of people came to the haven, and got into -the fisher boates to see this fishing. Antonius then threw in his line, -and Cleopatra straight commaunded one of her men to dive under water -before Antonius men and to put some old salte fish upon his baite, like -unto those that are brought out of the contrie of Pont. When he had -hong the fish on his hooke, Antonius, thinking he had taken a fishe in -deede, snatched up his line presently. Then they all fell a-laughing. -Cleopatra laughing also, said unto him: “Leave us, (my lord), Ægyptians -(which dwell in the contry of Pharus and Canobus) your angling rodde: -this is not thy profession; thou must hunt after conquering realmes and -contries.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span> -This specimen is in so far a favourable one for North, that in -simple narrative he is little exposed to his besetting faults, but -even here the superior deftness of the Frenchman is obvious. We -leave out of account little mistranslations, like <i>on a time</i> -for <i>quelquefois</i>,<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> -or <i>the fishermen</i> for <i>quelques pescheurs</i>,<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> -or <i>alone by herself</i> for <i>apart</i>. We even pass over the lack -of connectedness when <i>they</i> (<i>i.e.</i> the persons informed) -<i>in great number</i><a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> -becomes the quite indefinite <i>a number of people</i>, and -the omission of the friendly nudge, so to speak, <i>as you can -imagine</i>, <i>comme lon peult penser</i>. But to miss the point of -the phrase <i>pour voir l’esbatement</i>, <i>to see the sport</i>, -and translate it <i>see the fishing</i>, and then clumsily insert -the same phrase immediately afterwards where it is not wanted and -does not occur; to change the order of the <i>fishe</i> and the -<i>hooke</i> and entangle the connection where it was quite clear, to -change <i>s’esmerveiller</i> to <i>wondred</i>, the infinitive to the -indicative past, and thus cloud the sense; to substitute the ambiguous -and prolix <i>When he had hong the fish on his hooke</i>, for the -concise and sufficient <i>cela fait</i>—to do all this and much more -of the same kind elsewhere was possible only because North was far -inferior to Amyot in literary tact. In the English version we have -often to interpret the words by the sense and not the sense by the -words; and this is a demand which is seldom made by the French.</p> - -<p>But there are compensations. All modern languages have in their -analytic methods and common stock of ideas a certain family -resemblance, in which those of antiquity do not share; and in particular -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span> -French is far closer akin to English than Greek to French. Since North -had specialised in the continental literature of his day and was -now dispensing the bounty of France, his allegiance to the national -idiom was virtually undisturbed, even when he made least change in -his original. He may be more licentious than Amyot in his treatment -of grammar, and less perspicuous in the ordering of his clauses, but -he is equal to him or superior in word music, after the English mode; -and he is even richer in full-blooded words and in phrases racy of the -soil. Not that he ever rejects the guidance of his master, but it leads -him to the high places and the secret places of his own language. So -while he is quick to detect the rhythm of the French and makes it his -pattern, he sometimes goes beyond it; though he can catch and reproduce -the cadences of the music-loving Amyot, it is sometimes on a sweeter -or a graver key. Take, for instance, that scene, the favourite with -Chateaubriand, where Philip, the freedman of Pompey, stands watching -by the headless body of his murdered master till the Egyptians are -sated with gazing on it, till they have “seen it their bellies full” in -North’s words. Amyot proceeds:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Puis l’ayant layé de l’eau de la mer, et enveloppé -d’une sienne pauvre chemise, pour ce qu’il n’avoit autre chose, il -chercha au long de la greve ou il trouva quelque demourant d’un vieil -bateau de pescheur, dont les pieces estoyent bien vieilles, mais -suffisantes pour brusler un pauvre corps nud, et encore non tout -entier. Ainsi comme il les amassoit et assembloit, il survint un Romain -homme d’aage, qui en ses jeunes ans avoit esté à la guerre soubs -Pompeius: si luy demanda: “Qui est tu, mon amy, qui fais cest apprest -pour les funerailles du grand Pompeius?” Philippus luy respondit qu’il -estoit un sien affranchy. “Ha,” dit le Romain, “tu n’auras pas tout -seul cest honneur, et te prie vueille moy recevoir pour compagnon -en une si saincte et si devote rencontre, à fin que je n’aye point -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> -occasion de me plaindre en tout et partout de m’estre habitué en païs -estranger, ayant en recompense de plusieurs maulx que j’y ay endurez, -rencontré au moins ceste bonne adventure de pouvoir toucher avec mes -mains, et aider a ensepvelir le plus grand Capitaine des Romains.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This is very beautiful, but to English ears, at -least, there is something in North’s version, copy though it be, that -is at once more stately and more moving.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Then having washed his body with salt water, and -wrapped it up in an old shirt of his, because he had no other shift to -lay it in,<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" -class="fnanchor">[128]</a> he sought upon the sands and found at the -length a peece of an old fishers bote, enough to serve to burne his -naked bodie with, but not all fully out.<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> -As he was busie gathering the broken peeces of this bote together, -thither came unto him an old Romane, who in his youth had served under -Pompey, and sayd unto him: “O friend, what art thou that preparest the -funeralls of Pompey the Great.” Philip answered that he was a bondman -of his infranchised. “Well,” said he, “thou shalt not have all this -honor alone, I pray thee yet let me accompany thee in so devout a -deede, that I may not altogether repent me to have dwelt so long in a -straunge contrie where I have abidden such miserie and trouble; but -that to recompence me withall, I may have this good happe, with mine -owne hands to touche Pompey’s bodie, and to helpe to bury the only and -most famous Captaine of the Romanes.”<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a></p> - -<p>On the other hand, while anything but a purist in the diction he -employs, North’s foreign loans lose their foreign look, and become -merely the fitting ornament for his native homespun. It is chiefly on -the extraordinary wealth of his vocabulary, his inexhaustible supply -of expressions, vulgar and dignified, picturesque and penetrating, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> -colloquial and literary, but all of them, as he uses them, of -indisputable Anglicity—it is chiefly on this that his excellence as -stylist is based, an excellence that makes his version of Plutarch by -far the most attractive that we possess. It is above all through these -resources and the use he makes of them that his book distinguishes -itself from the French; for North treats Amyot very much as Amyot -treats Plutarch; heightening and amplifying; inserting here an emphatic -epithet and there a homely proverb; now substituting a vivid for a -colourless term, now pursuing the idea into pleasant side tracks. Thus -Amyot describes the distress of the animals that were left behind when -the Athenians set out for Salamis, with his average faithfulness.</p> - -<p class="blockquot"> Et si y avoit ne sçay quoi de pitoyable qui -attendrissoit les cueurs, quand on voyoit les bestes domestiques et -privées, qui couroient ça et là avec hurlemens et signifiance de regret -après leurs maistres et ceulx qui les avoient nourries, ainsi comme -ilz s’embarquoient: entre lesquelles bestes on compte du chien de -Xantippus, père de Pericles, que ne pouvant supporter le regret d’estre -laissé de son maistre, il se jeta dedans la mer après luy, et nageant -au long de la galère où il estoit, passa jusques en l’isle de Salamine, -là où si tost qu’il fust arrivé, l’aleine luy faillit, et mourut -soudainement.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">But this account stirs North’s sympathy, and he -puts in little touches that show his interest and compassion.</p> - -<p class="blockquot"> There was besides, a certain pittie that made -mens harts to yerne, when they saw the <i>poore doggs, beasts and -cattell</i> ronne up and doune, <i>bleating, mowing, and -howling out aloude</i> after their masters in token of sorowe, whan -they did imbarke. Amongst them there goeth a <i>straunge</i> tale of -Xanthippus dogge, who was Pericles father; which, for sorowe his master -had left him behind him, dyd caste him self after into the sea, and -swimming still by the galley’s side wherein his master was, he held on -to the Ile of Salamina, where so sone as <i>this poor curre</i> -landed, his breath fayled him, and dyed instantly.<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> -Similarly, when he recounts the story how the Gauls entered Rome, North -cannot restrain his reverence for Papirius or his delight in his blow, -or his indignation at its requital. Amyot had told of the Gaul:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">qui prit la hardiesse de s’approcher de Marcus -Papyrius, et luy passa tout doulcement<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> -la main par dessus sa barbe qui estoit longue. Papyrius luy donna de -son baston si grand coup sur la teste, qu’il la luy blecea; dequoy le -barbare estant irrité, desguaina son espée, et l’occit.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">North is not content with such reserve.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">One of them went boldely unto M. Papyrius and -layed his hand fayer and softely upon his long beard. But Papyrius gave -him such a <i>rappe on his pate</i> with his staffe, that the <i>bloude -ran about his eares</i>. This <i>barbarous beaste</i> was in <i>such a -rage with the blowe</i> that he drue out his sworde and slewe -him.<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">Or sometimes the picture suggested is so pleasant -to North that he partly recomposes it and adds some gracious touch to -enhance its charm. Thus he found this vignette of the peaceful period -that followed Numa:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Les peuples hantoient et trafiquoient les uns -avec les autres sans crainte ni danger, et s’entrevisitoient en toute -cordiale hospitalité, comme si la sapience de Numa eut été une vive -source de toutes bonnes et honnestes choses, de laquelle plusieurs -fleuves se fussent derivés pour arroser toute l’Italie.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This is how North recasts and embellishes the last -sentence:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The people did trafficke and frequent together, -without feare or daunger, and visited one another, making great cheere: -<i>as if out of the springing fountain of Numa’s wisdom many -pretie brookes and streames of good and honest life had ronne -over all Italie and had watered it</i>.<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">But illustrations might be multiplied through pages. - Enough have been -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> -given to show North’s debts to the French and their limits. With -a few unimportant errors, his rendering is in general wonderfully -faithful and close, so that he copies even the sequence of thought -and modulation of rhythm. He sometimes falls short of his authority -in simplicity, neatness, and precision of structure. On the other -hand he sometimes excels it in animation and force, in volume and -inwardness. But, and this is the last word on his style, even when he -follows Amyot’s French most scrupulously, he always contrives to write -in his own and his native idiom. And hence it came that he once for -all naturalised Plutarch among us. His was the epoch-making deed. His -successors, who were never his supersessors, merely entered into his -labours and adapted Plutarch to the requirements of the Restoration, or -of the eighteenth or of the nineteenth century. But they were adapting -an author whom North had made a national classic.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Plutarch was a Greek, to be sure, and a Greek -no doubt he is still. But as when we think of a Devereux ... we call -him an Englishman and not a Norman, so who among the reading public -troubles himself to reflect that Plutarch wrote Attic prose of such -and such a quality? Scholars know all about it to be sure, as they -know that the turkeys of our farm-yards come originally from Mexico. -Plutarch however is not a scholar’s author, but is popular everywhere -as if he were a native.<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a></p> - -<p>But one aspect of this is that North carries further the process which -Amyot had begun of accommodating antiquity to current conceptions. -The atmosphere of North’s diction is so genuinely national that -objects discerned through it take on its hue. Under his strenuous -welcome the noble Grecian and Roman immigrants from France are forced -to make themselves at home, but in learning the ways of the English -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span> -market-place they forget something of the Agora and the Forum. Perhaps -this was inevitable, since they were come to stay.</p> - -<p>And the consequence of North’s method is that he meets Shakespeare -half way. His copy may blur some of the lines in the original picture, -but they are lines that Shakespeare would not have perceived. He may -present Antiquity in disguise, but it was in this disguise alone -that Shakespeare was able to recognise it. He has in short supplied -Shakespeare with the only Plutarch that Shakespeare could understand. -The highest compliment we can pay his style is, that it had a special -relish for Shakespeare, who retained many of North’s expressions with -little or no alteration. The highest compliment we can pay the contents -is, that, only a little more modernised, they furnished Shakespeare -with his whole conception of antique history.</p> - -<p>The influence of North’s Plutarch on Shakespeare is thus of a two-fold -kind. There is the influence of the diction, there is the influence of -the subject-matter; and in the first instance it is more specifically -the influence of North, while in the second it is more specifically the -influence of Plutarch.</p> - -<p>It would be as absurd as unfair to deny Shakespeare’s indebtedness -to North not only in individual turns and phrases, but in continuous -discourse. Often the borrower does little more than change the prose to -poetry. But at the lowest he always does that; and there is perhaps in -some quarters a tendency to minimise the marvel of the feat, and so, if -not to exaggerate the obligation, at least to set it in a false light. -He has nowhere followed North so closely through so many lines as in -Volumnia’s great speech to her son before Rome; and, next to that, in -Coriolanus’ great speech to Aufidius in Antium. In these passages the -ideas, the arrangement of the ideas, the presentation of the ideas are -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> -practically the same in the translator and in the dramatist: yet, -with a few almost imperceptible touches, a few changes in the order -of construction, a few substitutions in the wording, the language -of North, without losing any directness or force, gains a majestic -volume and vibration that are only possible in the cadences of the -most perfect verse. These are the cases in which Shakespeare shows -most verbal dependence on his author, but his originality asserts -itself even in them. North’s admirable appeal is not Shakespeare’s, -Shakespeare’s more admirable appeal is not North’s.<a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a></p> - -<p>Similarly there has been a tendency to overestimate the loans of the -Roman Plays from Plutarch. From this danger even Archbishop Trench has -not altogether escaped in an eloquent and well-known passage which in -many ways comes very near to the truth. After dwelling on the freedom -with which Shakespeare generally treats his sources, for instance the -novels of Bandello or Cinthio, deriving from them at most a hint or -two, cutting and carving, rejecting or expanding their statements at -will, he concludes:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">But his relations with Plutarch are very -different—different enough to justify or almost to justify the words of -Jean Paul when in his <i>Titan</i> he calls Plutarch “der biographische -Shakespeare der Weltgeschichte.” What a testimony we have here to the -true artistic sense and skill which, with all his occasional childish -simplicity<a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> -the old biographer possesses, in the fact that the mightiest and -completest artist of all times, should be content to resign himself -into his hands and simply to follow where the other leads.</p> - -<p>To this it might be answered in the first place that Shakespeare -shows the same sort of fidelity in kind, though not in degree, to the -comparatively inartistic chronicles of his mother country. That is, it -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span> -is in part, as we have seen, his tribute not to the historical author -but to the historical subject. Granting, however, the superior claims -of Plutarch, it is yet an overstatement to say that Shakespeare is -content to resign himself into his hands, and simply to follow where -the other leads. Delius, after an elaborate comparison of biography and -drama, sums up his results in the protest that “Shakespeare has much -less to thank Plutarch for than one is generally inclined to suppose.”</p> - -<p>Indeed, however much Plutarch would appeal to Shakespeare in virtue -both of his subjects and his methods, it is easy to see that even as -a “grave learned philosopher and historiographer” he is on the hither -side of perfection. He interrupts the story with moral disquisitions, -and is a little apt to preach, and often, through such intrusions and -irrelevancies, or the adherence of the commonplace, his most impressive -touches fail of their utmost possible effect: at least he does not -always seem aware of the full value of his details, of their depth -and suggestiveness when they are set aright. Yet he is more excellent -in details than in the whole: he has little arrangement or artistic -construction; he is not free from contradictions and discrepancies; he -gives the bricks and mortar but not the building, and occasionally some -of the bricks are flawed or the mortar is forgotten. And his stories -have this inorganic character, because he is seldom concerned to pierce -to the meaning that would give them unity and coherence. He moralises, -and only too sententiously, whenever an opportunity offers; but of the -principles that underlie the conflicts and catastrophes which in his -free-and-easy way he describes, he has at best but fragmentary glimpses.</p> - -<p>And in all this the difference between the genial moralist and the -inspired tragedian is a vast one—so vast that when once we perceive -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> -it, it is hard to retain a fitting sense of the points of contact. In -Shakespeare, Plutarch’s weaknesses disappear, or rather are replaced -by excellences of precisely the opposite kind. He rejects all that -is otiose or discordant in speech or situation, and adds from other -passages in his author or from his own imagination, the circumstances -that are needed to bring out its full poetic significance. He always -looks to the whole, removes discrepancies, establishes the inner -connection; and at his touch the loose parts take their places as -members of one living organism. And in a sense, “he knows what it is -all about.” In a sense he is more of a philosophic historian than -his teacher. At any rate, while Plutarch takes his responsibilities -lightly in regard both to facts and conclusions, Shakespeare, in so -far as that was possible for an Elizabethan, has a sort of intuition -of the principles that Plutarch’s narrative involves; and while adding -some pigment from his own thought and feeling to give them colour and -visible shape, accepts them as his presuppositions which interpret the -story and which it interprets.</p> - -<p>Thus the influences of North’s Plutarch, whether of North’s style or -of Plutarch’s matter, though no doubt very great, are in the last -resort more in the way of suggestion than of control. But they do not -invariably act with equal potency or in the same proportion. Thus -<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> adheres most closely to the narrative of -the biographer, which is altered mainly by the omission of details -unsuitable for the purpose of the dramatist; but the words, phrases, -constructions, are for the most part conspicuously Shakespeare’s -own. Here there is a maximum of Plutarch and a minimum of North. In -<i>Coriolanus</i>, on the other hand, apart from the unconscious -modifications that we have noticed, Shakespeare allows himself more -liberty than elsewhere in chopping and changing the substance; but -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span> -lengthy passages and some of the most impressive ones are incorporated -in the drama without further alteration than is implied in the -transfiguration of prose to verse. Here there is the maximum of North -with the minimum of Plutarch. <i>Julius Caesar</i>, as in the matter -of the inevitable and unintentional misunderstandings, so again -here, occupies a middle place. Many phrases, and not a few decisive -suggestions for the most important speeches, have passed from the -<i>Lives</i> into the play: one sentence at least it is hard to -interpret without reference to the context; but here as a rule, even -when he borrows most, Shakespeare treats his loans very independently. -So, too, though he seldom wittingly departs from Plutarch, he -elaborates the new material throughout, amplifying and abridging, -selecting and rejecting, taking to pieces and recombining, not from one -Life but from three. Here we have the mean influence both of Plutarch -and of North.</p> - -<p>In so far therefore <i>Julius Caesar</i> gives the norm of -Shakespeare’s procedure; and with it, for this as well as on -chronological grounds, we begin.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>JULIUS CAESAR</i></h2> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER I</h3> -<p class="neg-indent">POSITION OF THE PLAY BETWEEN THE HISTORIES AND -THE TRAGEDIES. ATTRACTION OF THE SUBJECT FOR SHAKESPEARE AND HIS -GENERATION. INDEBTEDNESS TO PLUTARCH</p> -</div> - -<p>Although <i>Julius Caesar</i> was first published in the Folio of 1623, -seven years after Shakespeare’s death, there is not much doubt about -its approximate date of composition, which is now placed by almost all -scholars near the beginning of the seventeenth century. Some of the -evidence for this is partly external in character.</p> - -<p>(1) In a miscellany of poems on the death of Elizabeth, printed in -1603, and entitled <i>Sorrowes Joy</i>, the lines occur:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">They say a <i>comet</i> woonteth to appeare</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When <i>Princes</i> baleful destinie is neare:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So <i>Julius</i> starre was seene with fiery crest,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Before his fall to <i>blaze</i> among the rest.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It looks as though the suggestion for the idea and -many of the words had come from Calpurnia’s remonstrance,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When beggars die there are no <i>comets seen</i>:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The heavens themselves <i>blaze</i> forth the death - of <i>princes</i>.<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent35">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 30.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span> -Another apparent loan belongs to the same year. In 1603 Drayton rewrote -his poem of <i>Mortimeriados</i> under the title of <i>The Barons’ -Wars</i>, altering and adding many passages. One of the insertions runs:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Such one he was, of him we boldely say,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In whose riche soule all soueraigne powres did sute,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In <i>whome in peace th(e) elements all lay</i></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>So mixt</i> as none could soueraignty impute;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As all did gouerne, yet all did obey.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">His liuely temper was so absolute,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That ’t seemde when heauen his modell first began,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In him it <i>shewd perfection in a man</i>.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Compare Antony’s verdict on Brutus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">His life was gentle, and <i>the elements</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>So mix’d</i> in him, that Nature might stand up</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And say to all the world, “This <i>was a man</i>.”</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> v. 73.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Some critics have endeavoured to minimise this -coincidence on the ground that it was a common idea that man was -compounded of the four elements. But that would not account for such -close identity of phrase. There must be some connection; and that -Drayton, not Shakespeare, was the copyist, is rendered probable by the -circumstance that Drayton, in 1619, <i>i.e.</i> after Shakespeare’s -death, makes a still closer approach to Shakespeare’s language.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He was a man, then, boldly dare to say,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In whose rich soul the virtues well did suit;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In whom, <i>so mix’d the elements all lay</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That none to one could sovereignty impute;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As all did govern, yet all did obey:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He of a temper was so absolute</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As that it seem’d, when Nature him began,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">She meant to show <i>all that might be in man</i>.<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>(2) Apart, however, from these apparent adaptations in 1603, there -is reason to conjecture that the play had been performed by May in the -previous year. At that date, as we know from Henslowe’s <i>Diary</i>, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span> -Drayton, Webster and others were engaged on a tragedy on the same -subject called <i>Caesar’s Fall</i>. Now it is a well ascertained fact -that when a drama was a success at one theatre, something on a similar -theme commonly followed at another. The entry therefore, that in the -early summer of 1602 Henslowe had several playwrights working at this -material, apparently in a hurry, since so many are sharing in the -task, is in so far presumptive evidence that Shakespeare’s <i>Julius -Caesar</i> had been produced in the same year or shortly before.</p> - -<p>(3) But these things are chiefly important as confirming the -probability of another allusion, which would throw the date a little -further back still. In Weever’s <i>Mirror of Martyrs</i> there is the -quatrain:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The many headed multitude were drawne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By Brutus speech, that Caesar was ambitious,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When eloquent Mark Antony had showne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious.<a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Now this has a much more specific reference to the famous scene in -the Play than to anything in Plutarch, who, for instance, even in the -<i>Life of Brutus</i>, which gives the fullest account of Brutus’ -dealings with the citizens, does not mention the substance of his -argument and still less any insistence on Caesar’s ambition, but only -says that he “made an oration unto them to winne the favor of the -people, and to justifie what they had done”; and this passage, which -contains the fullest notice of Brutus’ speeches, like the corresponding -one in the <i>Life of Caesar</i>, attributes only moderate success -to his appeal in the market place, while it goes on to describe the -popular disapproval as exploding before the intervention of Antony. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span><a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> -Thus it seems fairly certain that a knowledge of Shakespeare’s play is -presupposed by the <i>Mirror of Martyrs</i>, which was printed in 1601.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, it cannot have been much earlier. The absence of -such a typical “tragedy” from Meres’ list in 1598 is nearly proof -positive that it was not then in existence.</p> - -<p>After that the <i>data</i> are less definite. <i>A Warning for Fair -Women</i>, printed in 1599, contains the lines:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">I have given him fifteen wounds,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which will be fifteen <i>mouths</i> that do accuse me:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In every mouth there is a bloody <i>tongue</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which will <i>speak</i>, although he holds his peace.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is difficult not to bring these into connection -with Antony’s words:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Over thy wounds now do I prophesy——</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which like dumb <i>mouths</i> do ope their ruby lips</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To beg the voice and utterance of my <i>tongue</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 259.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And again:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I tell you that which you yourselves do know,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Show you sweet Caesar’s wounds, poor, poor dumb <i>mouths</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And bid them <i>speak</i> for me: but were I Brutus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Would ruffle up your spirits and put a <i>tongue</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">In every <i>wound</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent38">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 228.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But in this Shakespeare may have been the debtor -not the creditor: and other coincidences like the “Et tu, Brute,” in -<i>Acolastus his Afterwit</i><a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> -(1600) may be due to the use of common or current -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span> -authorities. One little detail has been used as an argument that the -play was later than 1600. Cassius says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">There was a Brutus once that would have brook’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As easily as a king.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 159·)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here obviously the word we should have expected is -<i>infernal</i> not <i>eternal</i>. It has been conjectured<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> -that the milder expression was substituted in deference to the -increasing disapproval of profane language on the stage; and since -three plays published in 1600 use <i>infernal</i>, the inference is -that <i>Julius Caesar</i> is subsequent to them. One fails to see, -however, why Shakespeare should admit the substantive and be squeamish -about the adjective: in point of fact, much uglier words than either -find free entry into his later plays. And one has likewise to remember -that the <i>Julius Caesar</i> we possess was published only in 1623, -and that such a change might very well have been made in any of the -intervening years, even though it were written before 1600. The most -then that can be established by this set of inferences, is that it was -produced after Meres’ <i>Palladis Tamia</i> in 1598 and before Weever’s -<i>Mirror of Martyrs</i> in 1601.</p> - -<p>The narrowness of the range is fairly satisfactory, and it may be -further reduced. It has been surmised that perhaps Essex’ treason -turned Shakespeare’s thoughts to the story of another conspiracy by -another high-minded man, and that Caesar’s reproach, “Et tu, Brute,” -derived not from the Parallel Lives but from floating literary -tradition, would suggest to an audience of those days the feeling of -Elizabeth in regard to one whom Shakespeare had but recently celebrated -as “the general of our gracious Empress.” At any rate the time seems -suitable. Among Shakespeare’s serious plays <i>Julius Caesar</i> most -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span> -resembles in style <i>Henry V.</i>, written between March and September -1599, as the above allusion to Essex’ expedition shows,<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> -and <i>Hamlet</i>, entered at Stationers’ Hall in 1602, as “latelie acted.” -But the connection is a good deal closer with the latter than with -the former, and extends to the parallelism and contrast between the -chief persons, both of them philosophic students called upon to make a -decision for which their temperament and powers do not fit them, and -therefore the one of them deciding wrong and the other hardly deciding -at all. Both pieces contain references to the story of Caesar, but -those in <i>Hamlet</i> accord better with the tone of the tragedy. Thus -the chorus says of Henry’s triumph:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The mayor and all his brethren in best sort,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like to the senators of the antique Rome,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With the plebeians swarming at their heels,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Go forth to fetch their conquering Caesar in.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> prologue 25.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Would this passage have been penned if Shakespeare -had already described how the acclamations of the plebs were -interrupted by the tribunes, and how among the senators there were some -eager to make away with the Victor?</p> - -<p>But the two chief references in <i>Hamlet</i> merely abridge what is -told more at large in the Play. Polonius says: “I did enact Julius -Caesar: I was killed i’ the Capitol. Brutus killed me” (III. ii. 108), -which is only a bald summary of the central situation. Hamlet says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">In the most high and palmy state of Rome,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Disasters in the sun; and the moist star</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 113.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span> -This reads like a condensed anthology from the descriptions of Casca, -Cassius and Calpurnia, eked out with a few hints from another passage -in Plutarch that had not hitherto been utilised.<a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a></p> - -<p>Even the quatrain:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O, that that earth which kept the world in awe,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 236.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">is in some sort the ironical development of -Antony’s thought:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shrunk to this little measure?</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 148.)</div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">But yesterday the word of Caesar might</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have stood against the world: now lies he there,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And none so poor to do him reverence.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 123.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Owing to Weever’s reference we cannot put <i>Julius Caesar</i> after -<i>Hamlet</i>, but it seems to have closer relations with <i>Hamlet</i> -than with <i>Henry V.</i> It is not rash to place it between the two, -in 1600 or 1601. This does not however mean that we necessarily have it -quite in its original form. On the contrary, there are indications that -it may have been revised some time after the date of composition.</p> - -<p>Thus Ben Jonson in his <i>Discoveries</i> writes of Shakespeare: “His -wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had been so too! Many -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span> -times he fell into those things could not escape laughter, as when he -said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, ‘Caesar, thou dost -me wrong,’ he replied, ‘Caesar did never wrong but with just cause,’ -and such like; which were ridiculous.” Most people would see in this -a very ordinary example of the figure called Paradox, and some would -explain <i>wrong</i> in such a way that even the paradox disappears: -but the alleged <i>bêtise</i> tickled Ben’s fancy, for he recurs to it -to make a point in the Introduction to the <i>Staple of News</i>. One -of the persons says: “I can do that too, if I have cause”; to which the -reply is made: “Cry you mercy; you never did wrong but with just cause.”</p> - -<p>Now in the present play there is no such expression. The nearest -analogue occurs in the conclusion of the speech, in which Caesar -refuses the petition for Publius Cimber’s recall,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will he be satisfied.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 47.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It has been suggested<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> -that Jonson simply misquoted the passage. But it is not likely that -Ben would consciously or unconsciously pervert the authentic text by -introducing an absurdity, still less by introducing an absurdity that -few people find absurd. In his criticisms on Shakespeare he does not -manufacture the things to which he objects, but regards them from an -unsympathetic point of view. It seems probable, therefore, that he has -preserved an original reading, that was altered out of deference for -strictures like his: and this in so far supports the theory that the -play was corrected after its first appearance.</p> - -<p>So, too, with the versification. The consideration of certain -technicalities, such as the weak ending, would place <i>Julius -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span> -Caesar</i> comparatively early, but there are others that yield a more -ambiguous result. It may have been revived and revised about 1607 when -the subject was again popular.</p> - -<p>And perhaps it has survived only in an acting edition. It is -unusually short: and, that Shakespeare’s plays were probably abridged -for the stage, we know from comparison of the Quarto with the -Folio <i>Hamlets</i>. The same argument has been used in regard to -<i>Macbeth</i>.</p> - -<p>Still granting the plausibility up to a certain point of this -conjecture, its importance must not be exaggerated. It does not -affect the fact that <i>Julius Caesar</i> belongs essentially to the -very beginning of the century, and that it is an organic whole as it -stands. If abridged, it is still full, compact and unattenuated. If -revised, its style, metre and treatment are still all characteristic -of Shakespeare’s early prime. The easy flow of the verse, the luminous -and pregnant diction, the skilful presentation of the story in a few -suggestive incidents, all point to a time when Shakespeare had attained -complete mastery of his methods and material, and before he was driven -by his daemon to tasks insuperable by another and almost insuperable by him,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Reaching that heaven might so replenish him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Above and through his art.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>It is perhaps another aspect of the perfect and harmonious beauty, -which fulfils the whole play and every part of it, that while there is -none of the speeches “that is in the bad sense declamatory, none that -does not gain by its context nor can be spared from it without some -loss to the dramatic situation,” there are many “which are eminently -adapted for declamation”;<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> -that is, for delivery by themselves. In the later plays, on the other hand, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span> -it is far more difficult to extract any particular jewel from its setting.</p> - -<p>It is pretty certain then that <i>Julius Caesar</i> is the first -not only of the Roman Plays, but of the great series of Tragedies. -The flame-tipped welter of <i>Titus Andronicus</i>, the poignant -radiance of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> belong to Shakespeare’s pupilage -and youth. Their place is apart from each other and the rest in the -vestibule and forecourt of his art. The nearest approach to real -Tragedy he had otherwise made was in the English History of <i>Richard -III.</i> And now when that period of his career begins in which he is -chiefly occupied with the treatment of tragic themes, it is again to -historical material that he has recourse, and he chooses from it the -episode which was probably of supreme interest to the Europe of his -day. Since Muretus first showed the way, the fate of Caesar had again -and again been dramatised in Latin and in the vernacular, in French -and in English. It was a subject that to a genius of the second rank -might have seemed hackneyed, but a genius of the highest rank knows -that the common is not hackneyed but catholic, and contains richer -possibilities than the recondite. Shakespeare had already been drawn to -it himself. The frequent references in his earlier dramas show how he -too was fascinated by the glamour of Caesar. In the plays adapted by -him, he inserts or retains tributes to Caesar’s greatness, to the irony -or injustice of his fate. Bedford in his enthusiasm for the spirit of -Henry V., as ordained to prosper the realm and thwart adverse planets, -can prefer him to only one rival,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">A far more glorious star thy soul will make</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than Julius Caesar.</div> - <div class="verse indent15">(<i>H. VI.</i> A. <span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 155.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Suffolk, in his self-conceit and self-pity, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> -seeks for examples of other celebrities who have perished by ignoble -hands, and compared with his victim, even Brutus seems on the level of -the meanest and most unscrupulous.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">A Roman sworder and banditto slave</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Murder’d sweet Tully: Brutus’ bastard hand</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Stabb’d Julius Caesar: savage islanders</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pompey the Great: and Suffolk dies by pirates.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<i>H. VI.</i> B. <span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> i. 134.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Margaret, when her boy is slaughtered at -Tewkesbury, thinks of Caesar’s murder as the one deed which can be -placed beside it, and which it even transcends in horror.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">They that stabb’d Caesar shed no blood at all,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If this foul deed were by to equal it.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<i>H. VI.</i> C. <span class="allsmcap">V.</span> v. 53.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is the same if we turn to Shakespeare’s -indisputably spontaneous utterances. He sees Caesar’s double merit with -pen and sword. Says the little Prince Edward:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">That Julius Caesar was a famous man:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With what his valour did enrich his wit,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His wit set down to make his valour live.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Death makes no conquest of this conquerer:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For now he lives in fame, though not in life.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<i>R. III.</i> <span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 84.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Rosalind laughs at the self-consciousness of -his prowess as she laughs at the extravagance of love in Troilus and -Leander, but evidently Shakespeare, just as he was impressed by their -stories in Chaucer and Marlowe, was impressed in Plutarch with what -she calls the “thrasonical brag of ‘I came, saw, and overcame.’” Don -Armado is made to quote it in his role of invincible gallant (L.L.L. -<span class="smcap">iv.</span> i. 68); and Falstaff parodies it by -applying to himself the boast of “the hooked-nosed fellow of Rome” when -Sir John Coleville surrenders (H. IV. B. <span class="smcap">iv.</span> -iii. 45). For to Shakespeare there are no victories like -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span> -Caesar’s. The false announcement of Hotspur’s success appeals -to them for precedent:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">O, such a day</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So fought, so follow’d and so fairly won,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Came not till now to dignify the times</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Since Caesar’s fortunes.</div> - <div class="verse indent16">(<i>H. IV.</i> B. <span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 20.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">We have already noticed the references to his -triumphs, his fate, the ironical contrast between the <i>was</i> and -the <i>is</i> in <i>Henry V.</i> and <i>Hamlet</i>, the History and the -Tragedy that respectively precede and succeed the play of which he is -titular hero. But Shakespeare keeps recurring to the theme almost to -the end. When in <i>Measure for Measure</i> the disreputable Pompey is -conveyed to prison, it suggests a ridiculous parallel with that final -triumph of Caesar’s when the tribunes saw far other</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">tributaries follow him to Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">“How now, noble Pompey,” says Lucio as -the go-between passes by behind Elbow and the officers, “what, -at the wheels of Caesar? art thou led in triumph?” (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> ii. 46). -In <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, of course the incumbent presence of -“broad-fronted Caesar” is always felt. But in Cymbeline, too, it haunts -us. Now his difficulties in the island, since there were difficulties -even for him, are used as by Posthumus, to exalt the prowess of the Britons,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent26">When Julius Caesar</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Smiled at their lack of skill, but found their courage</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Worthy his frowning at:</div> - <div class="verse indent35">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iv. 21.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">or by the Queen:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">A kind of conquest</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Caesar made here; but made not here his brag</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of “came” and “saw” and “overcame.”</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 22.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But the dominant note is rather of admiration for</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Julius Caesar, whose remembrance yet</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lives in men’s eyes, and will to ears and tongues</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be theme and hearing ever.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 2.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span> -Or if the fault that Brutus enforced is brought to view, the very fault -becomes a grandiose and superhuman thing:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent26">Caesar’s ambition,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which swell’d so much, that it did almost stretch</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The sides o’ the world.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 49.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>The subject then was one of widespread interest and had an abiding -fascination for Shakespeare himself. After leaving national history -in <i>Henry V.</i> he seems to have turned to the history of Rome for -the first Tragedy of his prime in a spirit much like that in which he -had gone to the English Chronicles. And he goes to it much in the same -way. It has been said that in most of the earlier series “Holinshed -is hardly ever out of the poet’s hands.”<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> -Substituting Plutarch for Holinshed the expression is true in this case -too. An occasional phrase like the <i>Et tu, Brute</i>, he obtained -elsewhere, most probably from familiar literary usage, but conceivably -from the lost Latin play of Dr. Eedes or Geddes. Stray hints he may -have derived from other authorities; for instance, though this is not -certain, a suggestion or two from Appian’s <i>Civil Wars</i> for Mark -Antony’s Oration.<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> -It is even possible that he may have been directed to the conception -and treatment of a few longer passages by his general reading: thus, -as we have seen, it has been maintained not without plausibility that -the first conversation between Brutus and Cassius can be traced to the -corresponding scene in the <i>Cornélie</i>.<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a> -But in Plutarch he found practically all the stuff and substance for -his play, except what was contributed by his own genius; and any other -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span> -ingredients are nearly imperceptible and altogether negligible. -Plutarch, however, has given much. All the persons except Lucius come -from him, and Shakespeare owes to him a number of their characteristics -down to the minutest traits. Cassius’ leanness and Antony’s sleekness, -Brutus’ fondness for his books and cultivation of an artificial style, -Caesar’s liability to the falling sickness and vein of arrogance in his -later years, are all touches that are taken over from the Biographer. -So too with the events and circumstances, and in the main, the sequence -in which they are presented. Plutarch tells of the disapproval with -which the triumph over Pompey’s sons was regarded; of the prophecy -of danger on the Ides of March; of the offer of the crown on the -Lupercal; of the punishment of the Tribunes; of Cassius’ conference -with Brutus; of the anonymous solicitations that are sent to the -latter; of the respect in which he was held; of his relations with his -wife, and her demand to share his confidence; of the enthusiasm of the -conspirators, their contempt for an oath, their rejection of Cicero as -confederate, their exemption of Antony at Brutus’ request; of Ligarius’ -disregard of his illness; of the prodigies and portents that preceded -Caesar’s death; of Calpurnia’s dream, her efforts to stay her husband -at home and the counter arguments of Decius Brutus; of Artemidorus’ -intervention, the second meeting with the soothsayer; of Portia’s -paroxysm of anxiety; of all the details of the assassination scene; -of the speeches to the people by Brutus and Antony; of the effects of -Caesar’s funeral; of the murder of the poet Cinna; of the proscription -of the Triumvirate; of the disagreement of Brutus and Cassius on other -matters and with reference to Pella, and the interruption of the -intruder; of the apparition of the spirit, and the death of Portia; -of Brutus’ discussion with Cassius on suicide; of his imprudence at -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span> -Philippi; of the double issue and repetition of the battle; of the -death of Cassius and Brutus on their own swords; of the surrender of -Lucilius; of Antony’s eulogy of Brutus. There is thus hardly a link in -the action that was not forged on Plutarch’s anvil.</p> - -<p>And even the words of North have in many cases been almost literally -transcribed. Says Lucilius when brought before Antony:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">I dare assure thee, that no enemie hath taken, nor -shall take Marcus Brutus alive; and I beseech God keepe him from that -fortune. For wheresoever he be found, alive or dead; he will be found -like him selfe.</p> -<p class="author">(<i>Brutus.</i>)</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Compare:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I dare assure thee that no enemy</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall ever take alive the noble Brutus:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The gods defend him from so great a shame!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When you do find him, or alive or dead,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He will be found like Brutus, like himself.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iv. 21.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Or take the passage—considering its length, the -exactest reproduction of all—in which Portia claims full share in her -husband’s secrets. The sentiment is what we are accustomed to regard -as modern; but Plutarch, who himself viewed marriage as a relation in -which there was no Mine nor Thine,<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> -has painted the situation with heartfelt sympathy. After describing the -wound she gives herself to make trial of her firmness, he proceeds:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Then perceiving her husband was marvelously out of -quiet, and that he coulde take no rest: even in her greatest payne of -all, she spake in this sorte unto him: “I being, O Brutus (sayed she), -the daughter of Cato, was maried unto thee, not to be thy bedde fellowe -and companion at bedde and at borde onelie, like a harlot; but to be -partaker also with thee, of thy good and evill fortune. Nowe for thy -selfe, I can finde no cause of faulte in thee as touchinge our matche: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span> -but for my parte, howe may I showe my duetie towardes thee, and howe -muche I woulde doe for thy sake, if I cannot constantlie beare a secret -mischaunce or griefe with thee, which requireth secrecy and fidelity? -I confesse, that a woman’s wit commonly is too weake to keepe a secret -safely: but yet, Brutus, good educacion, and the companie of vertuous -men, have some power to reforme the defect of nature. And for my selfe, -I have this benefit moreover: that I am the daughter of Cato, and wife -of Brutus. This notwithstanding, I did not trust to any of these things -before; untill that now I have found by experience, that no paine nor -griefe whatsoever can overcome me.’ With those wordes she shewed him -her wounde on her thigh, and told him what she had done to prove her -selfe. Brutus was amazed to heare what she sayd unto him, and lifting -up his handes to heaven, he besought the goddes to give him grace he -might bring his enterprise to so good passe, that he might be founde a -husband, worthie of so noble a wife as Porcia.”</p> -<p class="author">(<i>Marcus Brutus.</i>)</p> - -<p>It is hardly necessary to point out how closely Shakespeare follows up -the trail.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Portia.</i> Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is it excepted I should know no secrets</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That appertain to you? Am I yourself</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But, as it were, in sort or limitation;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs</div> - <div class="verse indent0">of your good pleasure? If it be no more,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> You are my true and honourable wife,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As dear to me as are the ruddy drops</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That visit my sad heart.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Portia.</i> If this were true, then should I know this secret.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I grant I am a woman; but withal,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I grant I am a woman; but, withal,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A woman well-reputed, Cato’s daughter.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Think you I am no stronger than my sex,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Being so father’d and so husbanded?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose ’em:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have made strong proof of my constancy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Giving myself a voluntary wound,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Here, in the thigh: can I bear that with patience,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And not my husband’s secrets?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i><span class="ws7">O ye gods,</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Render me worthy of this noble wife.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i, 280.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span> -Here we have “the marriage of true souls”; and though the prelude to -this nuptial hymn, a prelude that heralds and enhances its sweetness, -is veriest Shakespeare, when the main theme begins and the climax is -reached, he is content to resign himself to the ancient melody, and -re-echo, even while he varies, the notes.</p> - -<p>North’s actual slips or blunders are received into the play. Thus the -account of the assassination runs: “Caesar was driven ... against -the base whereupon Pompey’s image stood, which ranne all of a goare -blood.” The last clause, probably by accident, adds picturesqueness to -Amyot’s simple description, “qui en fust toute ensanglantee,” and is -immortalised in Antony’s bravura:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Even at the base of Pompey’s statua</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which all the while ran blood.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 192.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">More noticeable is the instance of Brutus’ reply to -Cassius’ question, what he will do if he lose the battle at Philippi. -Amyot’s translation is straightforward enough.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Brutus luy respondit: “Estant encore jeune et non -assez experimenté es affaires de ce monde, je feis ne sçay comment un -discours de philosophie, par lequel je reprenois et blasmois fort Caton -d’estre desfait soymesme” etc.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">That is:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Brutus answered him: “When I was yet young and not -much experienced in the affairs of this world, I composed, somehow or -other, a philosophic discourse in which I greatly rebuked and censured -Cato for having made away with himself!”</p> - -<p>North did not notice where the quotation began; connected -<i>feis</i> with <i>fier</i> in place of <i>faire</i>, probably -taking it as present not as past; and interpreted <i>discours</i> as -<i>principle</i>, which it never meant and never can mean, instead of -<i>dissertation</i>. So he translates:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Brutus answered him, <i>being yet but a young man, and not -over-greatly experienced in the world</i>: I <i>trust</i> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> -(I know not how) a certaine rule of Philosophie, by the which I did -greatly blame and reprove Cato for killing of him selfe; as being -no godly or lawful acte, touching the goddes; nor concerning men, -valliant; not to give place and yeld to divine providence, and not -constantly and paciently to take whatsoever it pleaseth him to send -us, but to drawe backe, and flie: but being nowe in the middest of the -daunger, I am of a contrary mind. For if it be not the will of God, -that this battell fall out fortunate for us: I will looke no more for -hope, neither seeke to make any new supply for warre againe, but will -rid me of this miserable world, and content me with my fortune. For, I -gave up my life for my country in the Ides of Marche, for the which I -shall live in another more glorious worlde.</p> - -<p class="author">(<i>Marcus Brutus.</i>)</p> -</div> - -<p>It is possible that North used <i>trust</i> in the first sentence as -a preterite equal to <i>trusted</i>, just as he uses <i>lift</i> for -<i>lifted</i>. But Shakespeare at least took it for a present: so he -was struck by the contradiction which the passage seems to contain. -He got over it, and produced a new effect and one very true to human -nature, by making Brutus’ latter sentiment the sudden response of his -heart, in defiance of his philosophy, to Cassius’ anticipation of what -they must expect if defeated.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> Even by the rule of that philosophy</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By which I did blame Cato for the death</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which he did give himself, I know not how,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But I do find it cowardly and vile,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For fear of what might fall, so to prevent</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The time of life: arming myself with patience</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To stay the providence of some higher powers</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That govern us below.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cassius.</i><span class="ws4">Then if we lose this battle.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">You are contented to be led in triumph</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thorough the streets of Rome?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> No, Cassius, no: think not, thou noble Roman,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He bears too great a mind. But this same day</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Must end that work the ides of March begun;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And whether we shall meet again I know not.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Therefore our everlasting farewell take.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 101.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This last illustration may show us, however, that -Shakespeare, even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span> -when he seems to copy most literally, always introduces something that -comes from himself. Despite his wholesale appropriation of territory -that does not in the first instance belong to him, the produce is -emphatically his own. It is like the white man’s occupation of America -and Australasia, and can be justified only on similar grounds. The -lands remain the same under their new as under their old masters, but -they yield undreamed-of wealth to satisfy the needs of man. Never did -any one borrow more, yet borrow less, than Shakespeare. He finds the -clay ready to his hand, but he shapes it and breathes into it the -breath of life, and it becomes a living soul.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">SHAKESPEARE’S TRANSMUTATION OF HIS MATERIAL</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>The examples given in the previous chapter may serve to show that -from one point of view it is impossible to exaggerate Shakespeare’s -dependence on Plutarch. But this is not the only or the most important -aspect of the case. He alters and adds quite as much as he gets. No -slight modification of the story is implied by its mere reduction -to dramatic shape, at least when the dramatiser is so consummate a -playwright as Shakespeare. And it is very interesting to observe the -instinctive skill with which he throws narrated episodes, like that of -the death of Cassius, into the form of dialogues and scenes. But the -dramatisation involves a great deal more than this. Shakespeare has to -fix on what he regards as the critical points in the continuous story, -to rearrange round them what else he considers of grand importance, and -to bridge in some way the gaps between. These were prime essentials -in all his English historical pieces. The pregnant moments have to be -selected; and become so many ganglia, in which a number of filaments -chronologically distinct are gathered up; yet they have to be exhibited -not in isolation, but as connected with each other, and all belonging -to one system. And in <i>Julius Caesar</i> this is the more noticeable, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span> -as it makes use of more sources than one. The main authority is the -<i>Life of Brutus</i>, but the <i>Life of Caesar</i> also is employed -very freely, and the <i>Life of Antony</i> to some extent. The scope -and need for insight in this portion of the task are therefore -proportionately great.</p> - -<p>Thus the opening scene refers to Caesar’s defeat of the sons of -Pompey in Spain, for which he celebrated his triumph in October, -45 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> But Shakespeare dates it on the 15th February, 44 -<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, at the Lupercalian Festival.<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> -Then, in the account of Caesar’s chagrin at his reception, he mixes up, -as Plutarch himself to some extent does, two quite distinct episodes, -one of which does not belong to the Lupercalia at all.<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> -Lastly, it was only later that the Tribunes were silenced and deprived -of their offices for stripping the images, not of Caesar’s “trophies,” -but of “diadems,”<a id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> -or, more specifically, of the “laurel crown”<a id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> -Antony had offered him.</p> - -<p>The next group of events is clustered round the assassination, and -they begin on the eve of the Ides, the 14th March. But at first we are -not allowed to feel that a month has passed. By various artifices the -flight of time is kept from obtruding itself. The position of the scene -with the storm, which ushers in this part of the story, as the last of -the first act instead of the first of the second, of itself associates -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span> -it in our minds with what has gone before. Then there are several -little hints that we involuntarily expand in the same sense. Thus -Cassius has just said:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">I will this night,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In several hands, in at his windows throw,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As if they came from several citizens,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Writings all tending to the great opinion</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Caesar’s ambition shall be glanced at.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 319.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And now we hear him say:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Good Cinna, take this paper,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And look you lay it in the praetor’s chair,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where Brutus may but find it: and throw this</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In at his window; set this up with wax</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon old Brutus’ statue.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 142.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">We seem to see him carrying out the programme that -he has announced for the night of the Lupercalia. Yet there are other -hints,—the frequency with which Brutus has received these instigations -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> i. 49), his protracted uncertainty -since Cassius first sounded him (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> i. 61), -the fact that he himself has had time to approach Ligarius,—which -presently make us realise that the opening scenes of the drama are left -a long way behind.</p> - -<p>And in this section, too, Shakespeare has crowded his incidents. The -decisive arrangements of the conspirators, with their rejection of the -oath, are dated the night before the assassination; Plutarch puts them -earlier. Then, according to Plutarch, there was a senate meeting the -morning after Caesar’s murder; and Antony, having escaped in slave’s -apparel, proposed an amnesty for the perpetrators, offered his son as -hostage, and persuaded them to leave the Capitol. On the following day -dignities were distributed among the ringleaders and a public funeral -was decreed to Caesar. Only then did the reading of the will, the -speech of Antony, and the <i>émeute</i> of the people follow, and the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span> -reading of the will preceded the speech. After a while Octavius comes -from Apollonia to see about his inheritance.</p> - -<p>In the play, on the other hand, Antony’s seeming agreement with -the assassins is patched up a few minutes after the assassination. -Octavius, summoned by the dead Caesar, is already within seven leagues -of Rome. Antony at once proceeds with the corpse to the market place. -He has hardly made his speech and then read the will, when, as the -citizens rush off in fury, he learns that Octavius has arrived.</p> - -<p>A lengthy interval elapses between the end of Act <span class="smcap">iii.</span> -and the beginning of Act <span class="smcap">iv.</span>, occupied, so -far as Rome and Italy were concerned, with the rivalry and intrigues -of Antony and Octavius, and the discomfiture of the former (partly -through Cicero’s exertions), till he wins the army of Lepidus and -Octavius finds it expedient to join forces with him and establish the -Triumvirate. But of all this not a word in Shakespeare. He dismisses it -as irrelevant, and creates an illusion of speed and continuity, where -there is none. The servant who announces the arrival of Octavius, tells -Antony:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He and Lepidus are at Caesar’s house.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xi. 269.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">“Bring me to Octavius,” says Antony. And the -fourth act opens “at a house in Rome,” “Antony, Octavius and Lepidus -seated at a table,” just finishing the lists of the proscription. The -impression produced is that their conference is direct sequel to the -popular outbreak and the conspirators’ flight. Yet it is November, -43 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, and nineteen or twenty months have -gone by since the Ides of March. And the progress of time is indicated -as well as concealed. Antony announces as a new and alarming piece of -news</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">And now, Octavius,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Listen great things:—Brutus and Cassius</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Are levying powers.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> i. 40.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span> -This too covers a gap in the history and hurries on the connection. -The suggestion is that they are beginning operations at last, and that -hitherto they have been inactive. Their various intermediate adventures -and wanderings are passed over. We are carried forward to their grand -effort, and are reintroduced to them only when they meet again at -Sardis in the beginning of 42 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, just before -the final movement to Philippi, where the battle was fought in October of -the same year.</p> - -<p>And this scene also is “compounded of many simples.” The dispute which -the poet<a id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> -interrupts, the difference of opinion about Pella, the appearance of -the Spirit, are all located at Sardis by Plutarch, but he separates -them from each other; the news of Portia’s death is undated, the -quarrel about money matters took place at Smyrna, and other traits are -derived from various quarters. Here they are all made</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">To join like likes, and kiss like native things.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Then at Philippi itself, not only are some of the speeches transferred -from the eve to the day of the engagement; but a whole series of -operations, and two pitched battles, twenty days apart, after the first -of which Cassius, and after the second of which Brutus, committed -suicide, are pressed into a few hours.</p> - -<p>It will thus be seen that though the action is spread over a period -of three years, from the triumphal entry of Caesar in October, 45 -<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, till the victory of his avengers in October, -<span class="smcap">42 b.c.</span>, Shakespeare concentrates it into the story -of five eventful days, which however do not correspond to the five separate acts, but -by “overlapping” and other contrivances produce the effect of close -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span> -sequence, while in point of fact, historically, they are not -consecutive at all.</p> - -<p>In the first day there is the exposition, enforcing the predominance -of Caesar and the revulsion against it (Act <span class="allsmcap">i.</span> -i. and ii.); assigned to the 15th February, 44 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span></p> - -<p>In the second day there is the assassination with its immediate -preliminaries and sequels (Act <span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii., Act -<span class="smcap">ii.</span>, Act <span class="smcap">iii.</span>) -all compressed within the twenty-four hours allowed to a French -tragedy, viz. within the interval between the night before the Ides of -March and the next afternoon or evening.<a id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a></p> - -<p>In the third day there is the account of the Proscription in November, -43 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> (Act <span class="smcap">iv.</span> i.). In the fourth day the meeting -of Brutus and Cassius, which took place early in 42 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, and -the apparition of the boding spirit, are described (Act <span class="smcap">iv.</span> -ii. and iii.). Both these days are included in one act.</p> - -<p>The fifth day is devoted to the final battle and its accessories, and -must be placed in October, 42 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> -(Act <span class="allsmcap">v.</span>).</p> - -<p>But the selection, assortment and filiation of the <i>data</i> are not -more conspicuous in the construction of the plot than in the execution -of the details. There will be frequent occasion to touch incidentally -on these and similar processes in the discussion of other matters, but -here it may be well to illustrate them separately, so far as that is -possible when nearly every particular instance shows the influence of -more than one of them.</p> - -<p>Thus while Shakespeare’s picture of the very perfect union of Brutus -and Portia is taken almost in its entirety from Plutarch, who was -himself so keenly alive to the beauty of such a wedlock, the charm of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span> -the traits he adopts is heightened by the absence of those he rejects. -Probably indeed he did not know, for Plutarch does not mention it, that -Brutus had been married before, and had got rid of his first wife by -the simple and regular expedient of sending her home to her father. -But he did know that Portia, too, had a first husband, Bibulus, “by -whom she had also a young sonne.” The ideal beauty of their relation is -unbrushed by any hint of their previous alliances.</p> - -<p>So, too, he attributes the coolness between Brutus and Cassius at the -beginning of the story merely to Brutus’ inward conflicts, and to -Cassius’ misconstruction of his preoccupation. In point of fact, it -had a more definite and less creditable cause. According to Plutarch, -they had both been strenuous rivals for the position of City Praetor, -Brutus recommended by his “vertue and good name,” Cassius by his “many -noble exploytes” against the Parthians. Caesar, saying “Cassius cause -is juster, but Brutus must be first preferred,” had given Brutus the -chief dignity and Cassius the second: therefore “they grew straunge -together for the sute they had for the praetorshippe.” But it would -not answer Shakespeare’s purpose to show Brutus as moved by personal -ambitions, or either of them as aspiring for honours that Caesar could -grant.</p> - -<p>There are few better examples of the way in which Shakespeare -rearranges his material than the employment he makes of Plutarch’s -enumeration of the portents that preceded the assassination. It is -given as immediate preface to the catastrophe of the Ides.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Certainly, destenie may easier be foreseene then -avoyded; considering the straunge and wonderfull signes that were -sayd to be seene before Caesars death. For touching the fires in the -element, and spirites running up and downe in the night, and also these -solitarie birdes to be seene at noone dayes sittinge in the great -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span> -market place: are not all these signes perhappes worth the noting in -such a wonderfull chaunce as happened? But Strabo the Philosopher -wryteth, that divers men were seene going up and downe in fire: and -furthermore, that there was a slave of the souldiers, that did cast a -marvelous burning flame out of his hande, insomuch as they that saw -it, thought he had been burnt, but when the fire was out, it was found -he had no hurt. Caesar selfe also doing sacrifice unto the Goddes, -found that one of the beastes which was sacrificed had no hart: and -that was a straunge thing in nature, how a beast could live without -a hart. Furthermore, there was a certain soothsayer that had geven -Caesar warning long time affore, to take heede of the day of the Ides -of Marche (which is the fifteenth of the moneth), for on that day he -should be in great daunger. That day being come, Caesar going into the -Senate house, and speaking merily to the Soothsayer, tolde him, ‘The -Ides of Marche be come’: ‘So be they’, softly aunswered the Soothsayer, -‘but yet are they not past.’ And the very day before, Caesar supping -with Marcus Lepidus, sealed certaine letters as he was wont to do at -the bord: so talke falling out amongest them, reasoning what death was -best: he preventing their opinions, cried out alowde, ‘Death unlooked -for.’ Then going to bedde the same night as his manner was, and lying -with his wife Calpurnia, all the windowes and dores of his chamber -flying open, the noyse awooke him, and made him affrayed when he saw -such light: but more when he heard his wife Calpurnia, being fast a -sleepe weepe and sigh, and put forth many fumbling and lamentable -speaches. For she dreamed that Caesar was slaine, and that she had -him in her armes.<a id="FNanchor_158" href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a></p> - -<p>It is interesting to note how Shakespeare takes this passage to pieces -and assigns those of them for which he has a place to their fitting -and effective position. Plutarch’s reflections on destiny and Caesar’s -opinions on death he leaves aside. The first warning of the soothsayer -he refers back to the Lupercalia, and the second he shifts forward to -its natural place. Calpurnia’s outcries in her sleep and her prophetic -dream, the apparition of the ghosts mentioned by her among the other -prodigies, the lack of the heart in the sacrificial beast, are reserved -for the scene of her expostulation with Caesar, and are dramatically -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span> -distributed between the various speakers, Caesar, the servant, -Calpurnia herself. Shakespeare relies on the fiery heavens and the -fire-girt shapes, the flaming hand and the boding bird for his grand -effect, and puts them in a setting where they gain unspeakably in -supernatural awe. Of course Shakespeare individualises Plutarch’s hints -and adds new touches. But the main terror is due to something else. We -are made to view these portents in the reflex light of Casca’s panic. -He has just witnessed them, or believes that he has done so, and now -breathless, staring, his naked sword in his hand, the storm raging -around, he gasps out his amazement at Cicero’s composure:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To be exalted with the threatening clouds:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But never till to-night, never till now,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Either there is a civil strife in heaven,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Incenses them to send destruction.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cicero.</i> Why, saw you anything more wonderful?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Casca.</i> A common slave—you know him well by sight—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like twenty torches join’d, and yet his hand,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not sensible of fire, remain’d unscorch’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Besides,—I ha’ not since put up my sword—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Against the Capitol I met a lion,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who glared upon me, and went surly by,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Without annoying me: and there were drawn</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And yesterday the bird of night did sit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Even at noon-day upon the market place</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">‘These are their reasons: they are natural’:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For, I believe, they are portentous things</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unto the climate that they point upon.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 3.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span> -Here the superstitious thrill rises to a paroxysm of dread; but the -effect of dispersing the subsidiary presages through so many scenes is -to steep the whole play in an atmosphere of weird presentiment, till -Caesar passes up to the very doors of the Capitol.</p> - -<p>But besides selecting and rearranging the separate details, Shakespeare -establishes an inner connection between them even when in Plutarch they -are quite isolated from each other. This is well exemplified by the -manner in which the biography and the drama treat the circumstance that -the conspirators were not sworn to secrecy. Plutarch says:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>The onlie name and great calling of Brutus did bring on the most of -them to geve consent to this conspiracie. Who having never taken othes -together, nor taken or geven any caution or assurance, nor binding them -selves one to an other by any religious othes, they all kept the matter -so secret to them selves, and could so cunninglie handle it, that -notwithstanding the goddes did reveal it by manifeste signes and tokens -from above, and by predictions of sacrifices, yet all this would not be -believed.</p> - -<p class="author">(<i>Marcus Brutus.</i>)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">The drama puts it thus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> Give me your hands all over, one by one.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cassius.</i> And let us swear our resolution.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> No, not an oath: if not the face of men</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The suffrance of our souls, the time’s abuse,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If these be motives weak, break off betimes:</div> - <div class="verse indent33">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 112.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">and so on through the rest of his magnificent -speech that breathes the pure spirit of virtue and conviction. The -nobility of Brutus that is reverenced by all, the conspiracy of Romans -that is safe-guarded by no vows, move Plutarch’s admiration, but he -does not associate them. Shakespeare traces the one to the other and -views them as cause and effect.</p> - -<p>Shakespeare thus greatly alters the character of Plutarch’s narrative -by his ceaseless activity in sifting it, ordering it afresh, and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span> -reading into it an internal nexus that was often lacking in his -authority. But this last proceeding implies that he also makes -additions, and these are not only numerous and manifold, but frequently -quite explicit and very far-reaching. It is important to note that -Plutarch has furnished nothing more than stray hints, and often -not even so much, for all the longer passages that have impressed -themselves on the popular imagination. Cassius’ description of the -swimming match and of Caesar’s fever, Brutus’ soliloquy, his speech -on the oath, his oration and that of Mark Antony, even, when regarded -closely, his dispute with Cassius, are all virtually the inventions -of Shakespeare. The only exception is the conversation with Portia, -and even in it, though the climax, as we have seen, closely reproduces -both Plutarch’s matter and North’s expression, the fine introduction is -altogether Shakespearian.</p> - -<p>But it is not the purple patches alone of which this is true. The more -carefully one examines the finished fabric, the more clearly one sees -that the dramatist has not merely woven and fashioned and embroidered -it, but has provided most of the stuff.</p> - -<p>Sometimes the new matter is a possible or plausible inference from the -premises he found in his author.</p> - -<p>Thus Plutarch represents the populace as on the whole favourable to -Caesar, but the tribunes as antagonistic. He also records, concerning -the celebration of Caesar’s victory over Pompey’s sons in Spain:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>The triumph he made into Rome for the same did as much offend the -Romanes, and more, then anything he had ever done before; bicause he -had not overcome Captaines that were straungers, nor barbarous kinges, -but had destroyed the sonnes of the noblest man in Rome, whom fortune -had overthrowen. And bicause he had plucked up his race by the rootes -men did not thinke it meete for him to triumphe so for the calamaties -of his contrie.</p> - -<p class="author">(<i>Julius Caesar.</i>)</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span> -This is all, but it is enough to give the foundation for the opening -scene, which otherwise, both in dialogue and declamation, is an -entirely free creation.</p> - -<p>Sometimes again Shakespeare has realised the situation so vividly -that he puts in some trait from the occurrences as in spirit he has -witnessed them, something of the kind that may very well have happened, -though there is no trace of it in the records. Thus he well knows -what an unreasonable monster a street mob can be, how cruel in its -gambols, how savage in its fun. So in the account of the poet Cinna’s -end, though the gist of the incident, the mistake in identity, the -disregard of the explanation, are all given in Plutarch, Shakespeare’s -rioters wrest their victim’s innocent avowal of celibacy to a flout at -marriage, and meet his unanswerable defence, “I am Cinna the poet,” -with the equally unanswerable retort, “Tear him for his bad verses.” -(<span class="smcap">iii.</span> iii. 23.)</p> - -<p>Some of these new touches do more than lend reality to the scene. -Though not incompatible with Plutarch’s account, they give it a turn -that he might disclaim and certainly does not warrant, but that -belongs to Shakespeare’s conception of the case. Thus after describing -the “holy course” of the Lupercal, and the superstition connected -with it, Plutarch mentions that Caesar sat in state to witness the -sport, and that Antony was one of the runners. There is nothing more; -and Calpurnia is not even named. Shakespeare’s introduction of her -is therefore very curious. Whatever else it means, it shows that -he imagined Caesar as desirous, certainly, of having an heir, and, -inferentially, of founding a dynasty.<a id="FNanchor_159" href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a></p> - -<p>Occasionally, however, the dramatist’s insertions directly contradict -the text of the <i>Lives</i>, if a more striking or more significant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span> -effect is to be attained, and if no essential fact is falsified. Thus -Plutarch tells of Ligarius:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>[Brutus] went to see him being sicke in his -bedde, and sayed unto him: “O Ligarius, in what a time art thou sicke!” -Ligarius risinge uppe in his bedde and taking him by the right hande, -sayed unto him: “Brutus,” sayed he, “if thou hast any great enterprise -in hande worthie of thy selfe, I am whole.”</p> - -<p class="author">(<i>Marcus Brutus.</i>)</p> -</div> - -<p>Shakespeare, keeping the phrases quoted almost literally, emphasises -the effort that Ligarius makes, emphasises too the magnetic influence -of Brutus, by representing the sick man as coming to his friend’s -house, as well as by amplifying his words:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Lucius.</i> Here is a sick man that would speak with you....</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To wear a kerchief! Would you were not sick!</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Ligarius.</i> I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Any exploit worthy the name of honour....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By all the gods that Romans bow before</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I here discard my sickness! Soul of Rome!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Brave son, derived from honourable loins!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My mortified spirit. Now bid me run,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And I will strive with things impossible;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yea, get the better of them....</div> - <div class="verse indent1">... With a heart new-fired I follow you,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To do I know not what: but it sufficeth</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That Brutus leads me on.</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 310.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>So too Plutarch describes the collapse of Portia in her suspense as -more complete than does the play, and makes Brutus hear of it just -after the critical moment when the conspirators fear that Lena has -discovered their plot:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Nowe in the meane time, there came one of Brutus -men post hast unto him, and tolde him his wife was a dying.... When -Brutus heard these newes, it grieved him, as is to be presupposed: yet -he left not of the care of his contrie and common wealth, neither went -home to his house for any newes he heard.</p> - -<p>In Shakespeare not only is this very effective dramatic touch omitted, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span> -but Portia sends Brutus an encouraging message. As her weakness -increases upon her, she collects herself for a final effort and manages -to give the command:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Run, Lucius, and commend me to my lord:</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Say, I am merry</i>: come to me again</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And bring me word what he doth say to thee.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iv. 44.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Shakespeare may perhaps have been unwilling to introduce anything into -the assassination scene that might distract attention from the decisive -business on hand, but the alteration is chiefly due to another cause. -These, the last words we hear Portia utter, were no doubt intended to -bring out her forgetfulness of herself and her thought of Brutus even -in the climax of her physical distress.</p> - -<p>This, of course, does not affect our general estimate of Portia; but -Shakespeare has no scruple about creating an entirely new character -for a minor personage, and, in the process, disregarding the hints -that he found and asserting quite the reverse. Thus Plutarch has not -much to say about Casca, so Shakespeare feels free to sketch him after -his own fancy as rude, blunt, uncultured, with so little education -that, when Cicero speaks Greek, it is Greek to him. This is a libel on -his up-bringing. Plutarch in one of the few details he spares to him, -mentions that, when he stabbed Caesar, “they both cried out, Caesar in -Latin, ‘O vile traitor, Casca, what doest thou?’ and Casca in Greek to -his brother: ‘Brother, helpe me.’”</p> - -<p>But some of Shakespeare’s interpolations are, probably unawares to -himself, of a vital and radical kind, and affect the conception of the -chief characters and the whole idea of the story. Take, for example, -Brutus’ soliloquy, as he rids himself of his hesitations and scruples. -This, from beginning to end, is the handiwork of Shakespeare: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">It must be by his death: and, for my part</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I know no personal cause to spurn at him,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But for the general. He would be crown’d:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How that might change his nature, that’s the question.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And that craves wary walking. Crown him?—that:—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That at his will he may do danger with.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Remorse from power: and, to speak truth of Caesar,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have not known when his affections sway’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">More than his reason. But ’tis a common proof</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whereto the climber upward turns his face:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But when he once attains the topmost round,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He then unto the ladder turns his back,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By which he did ascend. So Caesar may;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will bear no colour for the thing he is,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Would run to these and these extremities:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which, hatch’d, would as his kind, grow mischievous,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And kill him in the shell.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 10.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>These words are so unlike, or, rather, so opposite to all that we -should have expected, that Coleridge cannot repress his amazement. He -comments:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>This speech is singular:—at least, I do not -at present see into Shakespeare’s motive, his <i>rationale</i>, or in -what point of view he meant Brutus’ character to appear. For surely ... -nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions -of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic -tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him—to him, the stern -Roman republican; namely,—that he would have no objection to a king, or -to Caesar, a monarch in Rome, would Caesar but be as good a monarch as -he now seems disposed to be.</p> - -<p class="author">(<i>Lectures and Notes of 1818.</i>)</p> -</div> - -<p>And this in a way is the crucial statement of Brutus’ case. Here he has -tried to get rid of the assumptions that move himself and the rest, -and seeks to find something that will satisfy his reason. It is thus -a more intimate revelation of his deliberate principles, though not -necessarily of his subconscious instincts or his untested opinions, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span> -than other utterances in which he lets feeling or circumstance have -sway. Of these there are two that do not quite coincide with it. One of -them is not very important, and in any case would not bring him nearer -to the antique conception. In his plea for a pure administration of -affairs, he asks Cassius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">What, shall one of us,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That struck the foremost man of all this world</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But for supporting robbers, shall we now</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Contaminate our fingers with base bribes?</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 21.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But this, one feels, is merely an <i>argumentum ad -hominem</i>, brought forward very much in afterthought for a particular -purpose. At the time, neither in Brutus’ speeches to himself or others, -nor in the discussions of the conspirators, is Caesar accused of -countenancing peculation, or is this made a handle against him. And if -it were, it would not be incompatible with acquiescence in a royal -government.<a id="FNanchor_160" href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span> -The other is the exclamation with which he “pieces out” the anonymous -letter that Cassius had left unfinished:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What, Rome?</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 52.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This certainly has somewhat of the republican ring. It breathes the -same spirit as Cassius’ own avowal:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I had as lief not be, as live to be</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In awe of such a thing as I myself;</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 95.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">except that Cassius feels Caesar’s predominance -to be a personal affront, while Brutus characteristically extends his -view to the whole community. But here Brutus is speaking under the -excitement of Cassius’ “instigation,” and making himself Cassius’ -mouthpiece to fill in the blanks. Assuredly the declaration is not on -that account the less personal to himself; nevertheless in it Brutus, -no longer attempting to square his action with his theory, falls -back on the blind impulses of blood that he shares with the other -aristocrats of Rome. And in this, the most republican and the only -republican sentiment that falls from his lips, which for the rest is -so little republican that it might be echoed by the loyal subject of a -limited monarchy, it is only the negative aspect of the matter and the -public <i>amour propre</i> that are considered. Of the positive essence -of republicanism, of enthusiasm for a state in which all the lawful -authority is derived from the whole body of fully qualified citizens, -there is, despite Brutus’ talk of freemen and slaves and Caesar’s -ambition, no trace whatever in any of his utterances from first to -last. It has been said that Plutarch’s Brutus could live nowhere but in -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span> -a self-governing commonwealth; Shakespeare’s Brutus would be quite -at home under a constitutional king and need not have found life -intolerable even in Tudor England. This indeed is an exaggeration. -True, in his soliloquy he bases his whole case on the deterioration -of Caesar’s nature that kingship might bring about; and if it were -proved, as it easily could be from instances like that of Numa, which -Shakespeare and therefore Shakespeare’s Brutus knew, that no such -result need follow, his entire sorites would seem to snap. But though -the form of his reflection is hypothetical and the hypothesis will -not hold, the substance is categorical enough. Brutus has such inbred -detestation of the royal power that practically he assumes it must -beyond question be mischievous in its moral effects. This, however, -is no reasoned conviction, though it is the starting point for what -he means to be a dispassionate argument, but a dogma of traditional -passion. And even were it granted it would not make Brutus a true -representative of classic republicanism. Shakespeare has so little -comprehension of the antique point of view that to him a thoughtful -and public-spirited citizen can find a rational apology for violent -measures only by looking at Caesar’s future and not at all by looking -at Caesar’s past. This Elizabethan Brutus sees nothing to blame in -Caesar’s previous career. He has not known “when his affections -(<i>i.e.</i> passions) sway’d more than his reason,” and implies that -he has not hitherto disjoined “remorse (<i>i.e.</i> scrupulousness) -from power.” Yet as Coleridge pertinently asks, was there nothing “in -Caesar’s past conduct as a man” to call for Brutus’ censure? “Had he -not passed the Rubicon,” and the like? But such incidents receive no -attention. Perhaps Shakespeare thought no more of Caesar’s crossing the -Rubicon to suppress Pompey and put an end to the disorders of Rome, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span> -than of Richmond’s crossing the Channel to suppress Richard III., and -put end to the Wars of the Roses. At any rate he makes no mention of -these and similar grounds of offence, though all or most of them were -set down in his authority.<a id="FNanchor_161" href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a></p> - -<p>Shakespeare’s position may be thus described. He read in Plutarch that -Brutus, the virtuous Roman, killed Caesar, the master-spirit of his own -and perhaps of any age, from a disinterested sense of duty. That was -easy to understand, for Shakespeare would know, and if he did not know -it from his own experience his well-conned translation of Montaigne -would teach him, that the best of men are determined in their feeling -of right by the preconceptions of race, class, education and the like. -But he also read that Brutus was a philosophic student who would not -accept or obey the current code without scrutinising it and fitting it -into his theory. Of the political theory, however, which such an one -would have, Shakespeare had no knowledge or appreciation. So whenever -Brutus tries to harmonise his purpose with his idealist doctrine, he -has to be furnished with new reasons instead of the old and obvious -ones. And these are neither very clear nor very antique. They make one -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span> -inclined to quote concerning him the words of Caesar spoken to Cicero -in regard to the historical Brutus:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>I knowe not what this young man woulde, but what he woulde he -willeth it vehemently.</p> - -<p class="author">(<i>Marcus Brutus.</i>)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">For what is it that he would? The one argument -with which he can excuse to his own heart the projected murder, is -that the aspirant to royal power, though hitherto irreproachable, may -or must become corrupted and misuse his high position. This is as -different from the attitude of the ancient Roman as it well could be. -It would never have occurred to the genuine republican of olden time -that any justification was needed for despatching a man who sought to -usurp the sovereign place; and if it had, this is certainly the last -justification that would have entered his head.</p> - -<p>But the introspection, the self-examination, the craving for an inward -moral sanction that will satisfy the conscience, and the choice of the -particular sanction that does so, are as typical of the modern as they -are alien to the classical mind. It is clear that an addition of this -kind is not merely mechanical or superficial. It affects the elements -already given, and produces, as it were, a new chemical combination. -And this particular instance shows how Shakespeare transforms the -whole story. He reanimates Brutus by infusing into his veins a strain -of present feeling that in some ways transmutes his character; and, -transmuting the character in which the chief interest centres, he -cannot leave the other <i>data</i> as they were. He can resuscitate -the past in its persons, its conflicts, its palpitating vitality just -because he endows it with his own life. It was an ancient belief that -the shades of the departed were inarticulate or dumb till they had -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span> -lapped a libation of warm blood; then they would speak forth their -secrets. In like manner it is the life-blood of Shakespeare’s own -passion and thought that throbs in the pulses of these unsubstantial -dead and gives them human utterance once more. This, however, has two -aspects. It is the dead who speak; but they speak through the life -that Shakespeare has lent them. The past is resuscitated; but it is -a resuscitation, not the literal existence it had before. Nor in any -other way can the phantoms of history win bodily shape and perceptible -motion for the world of breathing men.</p> - -<p>This may be illustrated by comparing Shakespeare’s <i>Julius Caesar</i> -with the <i>Julius Caesar</i> of Sir William Alexander, afterwards -Earl of Stirling, which seems to have been written a few years later -than its more illustrious namesake. Alexander was an able man and a -considerable poet, from whom Shakespeare himself did not disdain to -borrow hints for Prospero’s famous reflections on the transitoriness -of things. He used virtually the same sources as Shakespeare, like -him making Plutarch his chief authority, and to supplement Plutarch, -betaking himself, as Shakespeare may also have done, to the tradition -set in France by Muretus, Grévin, and Garnier. So they build on much -the same sites and with much the same timber. But their methods are -as different as can well be imagined. Alexander is by far the more -scrupulous in his reproduction of the old-world record. He adopts the -Senecan type of tragedy, exaggerating its indifference to movement and -fondness for lengthy harangues; and this enables him to preserve much -of the narrative in its original form without thorough reduction to the -category of action. This also in large measure exempts him from the -need of reorganising his material: practically a single situation is -given, and whatever else of the story is required, has to be conveyed -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span> -in the words of the persons, who can repeat things just as they have -been reported. And proceeding in this way Alexander can include as much -as he pleases of Plutarch’s abundance, a privilege of which he avails -himself to the utmost. Few are the details that he must absolutely -reject, for they can always be put in somebody’s mouth; he is slow to -tamper with Plutarch’s location of them; and he never connects them -more closely than Plutarch has authorised. He does not extract from -his document inferences that have not already been drawn, nor falsify -it with picturesque touches that have not been already supplied, and -he would not dream of contradicting it in small things or great. Even -Brutus’ republicanism is sacred to the author of this “Monarchic -Tragedy,” though he was to be Secretary of State to Charles I. and -noted for his advocacy of Divine Right. He has a convenient theory to -justify Brutus as much as is necessary from his point of view. He makes -him explain:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If Caesar had been born or chused our prince</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then those, who durst attempt to take his life,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The world of treason justly might convince.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let still the states, which flourish for the time,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By subjects be inviolable thought:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And those (no doubt) commit a monstrous crime,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who lawfull soveraignty prophane in ought:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And we must think (though now thus brought to bow)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The senate, king; a subject Caesar is:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The soveraignty whom violating now</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The world must damne, as having done amisse.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Brutus’ motives, which Shakespeare sophisticates, -can thus be left him. But does this bit of reasoning, which reads like -a passage from the <i>Leviathan</i>, and explains why King James called -Alexander “My philosophical poet,” really come nearer the historic -truth than the heart-searching of Shakespeare’s Brutus? And does -Alexander, taking Brutus’ convictions at second hand and manufacturing -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span> -an apology for them, do much more to revive the real Brutus, than -Shakespeare, whose fervid imagination drives him to realise Brutus’ -inmost heart, and who just for that reason</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">seeks into him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For that which is not in him?</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Here and generally Alexander gives the exacter, if not the more -faithful transcript, but the main truth, the truth of life, escapes -him; and therefore, too, despite all his painstaking fidelity, he is -apt to miss even the vital touches that Plutarch gives. We have seen -with what reverent accuracy Shakespeare reproduces the conversation -between Brutus and Portia. In a certain way Alexander is more accurate -still. Portia pleads:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I was not (Brutus) match’d with thee to be</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A partner onely of thy boord and bed;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Each servile whore in those might equall me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who but for pleasure or for wealth did wed.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No, Portia spoused thee minding to remaine</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy fortunes partner, whether good or ill: ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If thus thou seek thy sorrows to conceale</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through a distrust, or a mistrust of me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then to the world what way can I reveale,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How great a matter I would do for thee?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And though our sexe too talkative be deem’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As those whose tongues import our greatest pow’rs,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For secrets still bad treasurers esteem’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of others greedy, prodigall of ours:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">“Good education may reforme defects,”</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And this may leade me to a vertuous life,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">(Whil’st such rare patterns generous worth respects)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I Cato’s daughter am, and Brutus wife.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet would I not repose my trust in ought,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Still thinking that thy crosse was great to beare,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Till I my courage to a tryall brought,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which suffering for thy cause can nothing feare:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For first to try how that I could comport</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With sterne afflictions sprit-enfeebling blows,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ere I would seek to vex thee in this sort,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">(To whom my soule a dutious reverence owes);</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Loe, here a wound which makes me not to smart,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No, I rejoyce that thus my strength is knowne;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Since thy distresse strikes deeper in my heart,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy griefe (lifes joy!) makes me neglect mine owne.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span> -And Brutus answers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou must (deare love!) that which thou sought’st, receive;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy heart so high a saile in stormes still beares,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That thy great courage does deserve to have</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our enterprise entrusted to thine eares.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Here, with the rhetorical amplification which was the chief and almost -sole liberty that Alexander allowed himself, Plutarch’s train of -thought is more closely followed than by Shakespeare himself. King -James’s “philosophical poet” does not even suppress the tribute to -education, but rather calls attention to the edifying “sentence” by -the expedient less common west of the Channel than among his French -masters, of placing it within inverted commas. But, besides lowering -the temperature of the whole, he characteristically omits the most -important passage, at least in so far as Brutus is concerned, his -prayer that “he might be founde a husband, worthie of so noble a wife -as Porcia.”</p> - -<p>Suppose that a conscientious draughtsman and a painter of genius were -moved to reproduce the impression that a group of antique statuary had -made on them, using the level surface which alone is at their disposal. -The one might choose his station, and set down with all possible -precision in his black and white as much as was given him to see. The -other taking into account the different conditions of the pictorial and -the plastic art, might visualise what seemed to him the inmost meaning -to his own mind in his own way, and represent it, the same yet not the -same, in all the glory of colour. The former would deliver a version -more useful to the historian of sculpture were the original to be lost, -but one in which we should miss many beauties of detail, and from -which the indwelling spirit would have fled. The latter would not give -much help to an antiquarian knowledge of the archetype, but he might -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span> -transmit its inspiration, and rouse kindred feelings in an even greater -degree just because they were mingled with others that came from his -own heart.</p> - -<p>The analogy is, of course, an imperfect one, for the problem of -rendering the solid on the flat is not on all fours with the problem -of converting Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i> to modern plays. But it applies -to this extent, that in both cases the task is to interpret a subject, -that has received one kind of treatment, by a treatment that is quite -dissimilar. And the difference between William Alexander and William -Shakespeare is very much the difference between the conscientious -draughtsman and the inspired artist.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER III<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE TITULAR HERO OF THE PLAY</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>The modification of Brutus’ character typifies and involves the -modification of the whole story, because the tragic interest is -focussed in his career. This must be remembered, if we would avoid -misconception. It has sometimes been said that the play suffers from -lack of unity, that the titular hero is disposed of when it is half -through, and that thereafter attention is diverted to the murderer. -But this criticism is beside the point. Really, from beginning to -end, Brutus is the prominent figure, and if the prominent figure -should supply the name, then, as Voltaire pointed out, the drama ought -properly to be called <i>Marcus Brutus</i>. If we look at it in this -way, there is no lack of unity, though possibly there is a misnomer. -Throughout the piece it is the personality of Brutus that attracts our -chief sympathy and concern. If he is dismissed to a subordinate place, -the result is as absurd as it would be were Hamlet thus treated in the -companion tragedy; while, his position, once recognised, everything -becomes coherent and clear.</p> - -<p>But when this is the case, why should Shakespeare not say so? Why, -above all, should he use a false designation to mix the trail?</p> - -<p>It has been answered that he was wholly indifferent to labels and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span> -nomenclature, that he gives his plays somewhat irrelevant titles, such -as <i>Twelfth Night</i>, or lets people christen them at their fancy, -<i>What You Will</i>, or <i>As You Like It</i>. Just in the same way, -as a shrewd theatrical manager with his eye on the audience, he may -have turned to account the prevalent curiosity about Caesar, without -inquiring too curiously whether placard and performance tallied in -every respect.</p> - -<p>And doubtless such considerations were not unknown to him. Shakespeare, -as is shown by the topical allusions in which his works abound, by -no means disdained the maxim that the playwright must appeal to the -current interests of his public, even to those that are adventitious -and superficial. At the same time, it is only his comedies, in which -his whole method is less severe, that have insignificant or arbitrary -titles. There is no instance of a tragedy being misnamed. On the -contrary, the chief person or persons are always indicated, and in -this way Shakespeare has protested in advance against the mistake of -viewing <i>King Lear</i> as a whole with reference to Cordelia, or -<i>Macbeth</i> as a whole with reference to Lady Macbeth.</p> - -<p>But in the second place, <i>Julius Caesar</i>, both in its -chronological position and in its essential character, comes as near -to the Histories as to the Tragedies; and the Histories are all named -after the sovereign in whose reign most of the events occurred. He -may not have the chief role, which, for example, belongs in <i>King -John</i> to the Bastard, and in <i>Henry IV.</i> to Prince Hal. He may -even drop out in the course of the story, which, for example, in the -latter play is continued for an entire act after the King’s death: but -he serves, as it were, for a landmark, to date and localise the action. -It is not improbable that this was the light in which Shakespeare -regarded Caesar. In those days people did not make fine distinctions. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span> -He was generally viewed as first in the regular succession of Emperors, -and in so far could be considered to have held the same sort of -position in Rome, as any of those who had sat on the throne of England.</p> - -<p>But this is not all. Though it is manifest that Brutus is the principal -character, the <i>protagonist</i>, the chief representative of the -action, the central figure among the living agents, the interest of his -career lies in its mistaken and futile opposition to Julius, to the -idea of Caesarism, to what again and again, in the course of the play, -is called “the spirit of Caesar.” The expression is often repeated. -Brutus declares the purpose of the conspirators:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And in the spirit of men there is no blood:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O, that we then could come by Caesar’s spirit,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And not dismember Caesar.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 167.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Antony, above the corpse, sees in prophetic -anticipation,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Caesar’s spirit ranging for revenge.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 273.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The ghost of Caesar proclaims what he is,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy evil spirit, Brutus.</div> - <div class="verse indent12">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 282.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And at the close Brutus apostrophises his dead victim:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In our own proper entrails.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<i>V.</i> iii. 95.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is really Caesar’s presence, his genius, -his conception that dominates the story. Brutus is first among the -struggling mortals who obey even while resisting their fate, but -the fate itself is the imperialist inspiration which makes up the -significance of Caesar, and the play therefore is fitly named after -him.<a id="FNanchor_162" href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a></p> - -<p>This is brought home to us in a variety of ways.</p> - -<p>In the first place, Shakespeare makes it abundantly clear that the -rule of the single master-mind is the only admissible solution for the -problem of the time. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span></p> - -<p>Caesar, with his transcendent gifts, was chosen by Providence to -preserve the Roman State from shipwreck, and steer it on its triumphant -course; and even if the helmsman perished, the course was set. -Shakespeare was guided to this view by Plutarch. The celebrant of the -life of ancient Greece was indeed very far from idealising the man who -consolidated the supremacy of Rome. He records impartially and with -appreciation, some of his noble traits, and without extenuation many -that were not admirable. But he “honours his memory” very much “on this -side idolatry,” reserves his chief enthusiasm for Brutus, and never -seems to take a full view of Caesar’s unique greatness in the mass. -None the less, he is now and again forced to admit that he was the man, -and his were the methods that the emergency required. Thus talking of -the bribery and violence that then prevailed in Rome he remarks:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Men of deepe judgement and discression seeing -such furie and madnes of the people, thought them selves happy if the -common wealth were no worse troubled, then with the absolut state of a -Monarchy and soveraine Lord to governe them. Furthermore, there were -many that were not affraid to speake it openly, that there was no other -help to remedy the troubles of the common wealth, but by the authority -of one man only that should commaund them all.<a id="FNanchor_163" href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a></p> - -<p>Again, commenting on the accident by which Brutus did not learn of the -victory that might have averted his final defeat, he has the weighty -reflection;</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Howbeit the state of Rome (in my opinion) being -now brought to that passe, that it could no more abide to be governed -by many Lordes, but required one only absolute Governor: God, to -prevent Brutus that it shoulde not come to his government, kept this -victorie from his knowledge.<a id="FNanchor_164" href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a></p> - -<p>And in one of those comparisons that Montaigne loved, he is more -emphatic still: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span></p> - -<p class="blockquot">Howbeit Caesars power and government when it came -to be established, did in deede much hurte at his first entrie and -beginning unto those that did resist him: but afterwardes unto them -that being overcome had received his government, it seemed he had -rather the name and opinion<a id="FNanchor_165" href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> -onely of a tyranne, then otherwise that he was so in deed. For there -never followed any tyrannicall nor cruell act, but contrarilie, it -seemed that he was a mercifull Phisition, whom God had ordeyned of -speciall grace to be Governor of the Empire of Rome, and to set all -thinges againe at quiet stay, the which required the counsell and -authoritie of an absolute Prince.... But the fame of Julius Caesar did -set up his friends againe after his death, and was of such force, that -it raised a young stripling, Octavius Caesar, (that had no meanes nor -power of him selfe) to be one of the greatest men of Rome.<a id="FNanchor_166" href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a></p> - -<p>On these isolated hints Shakespeare seizes. He amplifies them and works -them out in his conception of the situation.</p> - -<p>The vast territory that is subject to Rome, of which we have glimpses -as it stretches north and west to Gaul and Spain, of which we visit the -Macedonian and Asiatic provinces in the east and south, has need of -wise and steady government. But is that to be got from the Romans? The -plebeians are represented as fickle and violent, greedy and irrational, -the dupes of dead tradition, parasites in the living present. They have -shouted for Pompey, they strew flowers for Caesar: they can be tickled -with talk of their ancient liberties, they can be cajoled by the tricks -of shifty rhetoric: they cheer when their favourite refuses the crown, -they wish to crown his “better parts” in his murderer: they will not -hear a word against Brutus, they rush off to fire his house: they tear -a man to pieces on account of his name, and hold Caesar beyond parallel -on account of his bequest.</p> - -<p>Nor are things better with the aristocrats. Cassius, the moving -spirit of the opposition, is, at his noblest, actuated by jealousy of -greatness. And he is not always at his noblest. He confesses that had he -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span> -been in Caesar’s good graces, he would have been on Caesar’s side. -This strain of servility is more apparent in the flatteries and -officiousness of Decius and Casca. And what is its motive? Cassius -seeks to win Antony by promising him an equal voice in disposing of the -dignities: and he presently uses his position for extortion and the -patronage of corruption. Envy, ambition, cupidity are the governing -principles of the governing classes: and their enthusiasm for freedom -means nothing more than an enthusiasm for prestige and influence, -for the privilege of parcelling out the authority and dividing the -spoils. What case have these against the Man of Destiny, whose genius -has given compass, peace, and security to the Roman world? But their -plea of liberty misleads the unpractical student, the worshipper of -dreams, memories, and ideals, behind whose virtue they shelter their -selfish aims, and whose countenance alone can make their conspiracy -respectable. With his help they achieve a momentary triumph. But of -course it leads not to a renovation of the republic, but to domestic -confusion and to a multiplication of oppressors. So far as the populace -is concerned, the removal of the master means submission to the -unprincipled orator, who, with his fellow triumvirs, cheats it of its -inheritance and sets about a wholesale proscription. So far as the -Empire is concerned, the civil war is renewed, and the provincials are -pillaged by the champions of freedom. Brutus sees too late that it -is vain to strive against the “spirit of Caesar,” which is bound to -prevail, and which, though it may be impeded, cannot be defeated. He is -ruined with the cause he espoused, and confesses fairly vanquished:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet.<a id="FNanchor_167" href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">v.</span> iii. 94.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span> -Again, though it may seem paradoxical to say so, the all-compelling -power of Caesar’s ideal is indicated in the presentation of his own -character. This at first sight is something of a riddle and a surprise. -Shakespeare, as is shown by his many tributes elsewhere, had ample -perception and appreciation of Caesar’s greatness. Yet in the play -called after him it almost seems as though he had a sharper eye for any -of the weaknesses and foibles that Plutarch records of him, and even -went about to exaggerate them and add to them.</p> - -<p>Thus great stress is laid on his physical disabilities. When the crown -is offered him, he swoons, as Casca narrates, for, as Brutus remarks, -he is subject to the falling sickness. There is authority for these -statements. But Cassius describes how his strength failed him in the -Tiber and how he shook with fever in Spain, and both these touches are -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span> -added by Shakespeare. Nor is it the malcontents alone who signalise -such defects. Caesar himself admits that he is deaf, though of his -deafness history knows nothing.</p> - -<p>And not only does Shakespeare accentuate these bodily infirmities; he -introduces them in such a way and in such a connection that they convey -an ironical suggestion and almost make the Emperor ridiculous. At the -great moment when he is putting by the coronet tendered him by Antony -that he may take with the more security and dignity the crown which -the Senate will vote him, precisely then he falls down in a fit. This -indeed is quasi-historical, but the other and more striking instances -are forged in Shakespeare’s smithy. It is just after his overweening -challenge to the swimming-match that he must cry for aid: “Help me, -Cassius, or I sink” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 3). In his -fever, as Cassius maliciously notes,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">That tongue of his that bade the Romans</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mark him and write his speeches in their books,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Alas, it cried ‘Give me some drink, Titinius,’</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As a sick girl.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 125.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">A pretty saying to chronicle. He says superbly to -Mark Antony, “Always I am Caesar”; and in the very next line follows -the anticlimax:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 213.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>But if his physical defects, which after all have little to do with the -real greatness of the man save in the eyes of spiteful detractors, are -thus brought into satirical relief, much more is this the case with his -mental and moral failings, which of course concern the heart of his -character.</p> - -<p>Already on his first appearance, we see this lord of the world the -credulous believer in magic rites. At the Lupercal he enjoins Calpurnia -to “stand directly in Antonius’ way” and Antony to touch her in his -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span> -“holy chase” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 3 and 8), and he impresses on Antony the -observance of all the ritual: “Leave no ceremony out” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. -11). It was not ever thus. The time has been when he held these things -at their true value, and it is only recently, as watchful eyes take -note, that his attitude has changed.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He is superstitious grown of late,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quite from the main opinion he held once</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of fantasy, of dreams and ceremonies.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 195.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And this is no mere invention of the enemy. -He does have recourse to sacrifice, he does inquire of the priests -“their opinions of success” (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> ii. 5); -though afterwards, on the news of the portent, he tries to put his own -interpretation on it:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The gods do this in shame of cowardice:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Caesar should be a beast without a heart,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If he should stay at home to-day for fear.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 41.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He is really impressed by his wife’s cries in her -sleep, as appears from his words to himself, when he has not to keep -up appearances before others, but enters, perturbed, in his nightgown, -and seems urged by his anxiety to consult the oracles. He affects to -dismiss the signs and omens:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent26">These predictions</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Are to the world in general as to Caesar;</div> - <div class="verse indent33">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 28.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But it is clear that he attaches importance -to them, for, when Decius gives Calpurnia’s dream an auspicious -interpretation, he accepts it, and once again changing his mind, -presently resolves to set out:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">How foolish do your fears seem now, Calpurnia!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I am ashamed I did yield to them.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Give me my robe, for I will go.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 105.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Thus we see a touch of self-deception as well as of superstition in -Caesar, and this self-deception reappears in other more important -matters. He affects an absolute fearlessness:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It seems to me most strange that men should fear.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 33.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span> -His courage, of course, is beyond question; but is there not a hint of -the theatrical in this overstrained amazement, in this statement that -fear is the most unaccountable thing in all his experience? One recalls -the story of the young soldier who said that he knew not what it was to -be afraid, and received his commander’s answer: “Then you have never -snuffed a candle with your fingers.” That was the reproof of bravado -by bravery in the mouth of a man so fearless that he could afford -to acknowledge his acquaintance with fear. And surely Caesar could -have afforded to do so too. We see and know that he is the bravest of -the brave, but if anything could make us suspicious, it would be his -constant harping on his flawless valour. So, too, he says of Cassius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">I fear him not:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet if my name were liable to fear,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I do not know the man I should avoid</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So soon as that spare Cassius ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I rather tell thee what is to be fear’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than what I fear; for always I am Caesar.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 198, 211.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Why should he labour the point? If he has not -fears, he has at least misgivings in regard to Cassius, that come very -much to the same thing. His anxiety is obvious, as he calls Antony to -his side to catechise him on his opinions of the danger.</p> - -<p>In the same way he prides himself on his inaccessibility to adulation -and blandishments.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">These couchings and these lowly courtesies</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Might fire the blood of ordinary men,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And turn pre-ordinance and first decree</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Into the law of children. Be not fond</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That will be thaw’d from the true quality</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With that which melteth fools; I mean, sweet words,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Low crooked court’sies and base spaniel fawning.</div> - <div class="verse indent33">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 36.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>We may believe that he does indeed stand secure against the grosser<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span> -kinds of parasites and their more obvious devices; but that does not -mean that he cannot be hood-winked by meaner men who know how to play on -his self-love. Decius says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I can o’ersway him: for he loves to hear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That unicorns may be betray’d with trees,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lions with toils, and men with flatterers;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But when I tell him he hates flatterers,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He says he does, being then most flattered.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let me work.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 203.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And Decius makes his words good.</p> - -<p>In like manner he fancies that he possesses an insight that reads -men’s souls at a glance. When he hears the cry: “Beware the Ides of -March,” he gives the command, “Set him before me; let me see his face.” -A moment’s inspection is enough: “He is a dreamer: let us leave him: -pass” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 24). Yet he fails to read -the treachery of the conspirators, though they are daily about him, -consults with Decius whom he “loves,” and bids Trebonius be near him.</p> - -<p>And then he elects to pose as no less immovable in resolution than -infallible in judgment. When we have been witnesses of all his -vacillation and shilly-shally about attending the senate meeting—now -he would, now he would not, and again he would—it is hard to suppress -the jeer at the high-sounding words:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I could be well moved, if I were as you:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But I am constant as the northern star,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality</div> - <div class="verse indent0">There is no fellow in the firmament.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They are all fire, and every one doth shine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But there’s but one in all doth hold his place:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So in the world: ’tis furnish’d well with men,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet in the number I do know but one</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That unassailable holds on his rank,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unshaked of motion: and that I am he,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let me a little show it, even in this.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 58.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span> -Now, all these things are wholly or mainly the fabrications of -Shakespeare. In Plutarch Caesar does not direct Calpurnia to put -herself in Antony’s way, nor is there any indication that he attached -importance to the rite. It is in the wife and not in the husband that -Plutarch notes an unexpected strain of credulity, remarking with -reference to her dream: “Capurnia untill that time was never geven to -any feare or supersticion.”<a id="FNanchor_168" href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a> -Plutarch cites noble sayings of Caesar’s in regard to fear, for -instance that “it was better to dye once, than alwayes to be affrayed of -death:”<a id="FNanchor_169" href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> -but he never attributes to him any pretence of immunity from human -frailty, and makes him explicitly avow the feeling in the very passage -where in Shakespeare he disclaims it. “‘As for those fatte men, with -smooth comed heades,’ quoth he, ‘I never reckon of them: but these pale -visaged and carian leane people, I feare them most.’” The dismissal of -the soothsayer after a contemptuous glance is unwarranted by Plutarch. -There is no authority for his defencelessness among flatterers, or -for his illusion that he is superior to their arts. Yielding in quite -a natural way and without any hesitation to the solicitations of -Calpurnia and the reports of the bad omens, Caesar in Plutarch resolves -to stay at home, but afterwards is induced to change his mind by -Decius’ very plausible arguments. There is no hint of unsteadiness in -his conduct, as there described; nor in the final scene is there any of -the ostentation but only the reality of firmness in his rejection of -Metellus Cimber’s petition.</p> - -<p>Considering all this it is not difficult to understand the indignation -of the critics who complain that Shakespeare has here given a libel -rather than a portrait of Caesar, and has substituted impertinent cavil -for sympathetic interpretation. And some of Shakespeare’s apologists -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span> -have accepted this statement of the case, but have sought to defend -the supposed travesty on the ground that it is prescribed by the -subject and the treatment. Thus Dr. Hudson suggests<a id="FNanchor_170" href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a> -that “the policy of the drama may have been to represent Caesar, not as -he was indeed, but as he must have appeared to the conspirators; to make -us see him as they saw him; in order that they might have fair and -equal justice at our hands.” With a slight variation this is also the -opinion of Gervinus:<a id="FNanchor_171" href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> -“The poet, if he intended to make the attempt of the conspirators his -main theme, could not have ventured to create too great an interest -in Caesar: it was necessary to keep him in the background, and to -present that view of him which gave reason for the conspiracy.” And -alleging, what would be hard to prove, that in Plutarch, Caesar’s -character “altered much for the worse, shortly before his death,” he -continues, in reference to his arrogance: “It is intended with few -words to show him at that point when his behaviour would excite those -free spirits against him.” But this explanation will hardly bear -scrutiny. In the first place: if Shakespeare’s object had been to -provide a relative justification for the assassins, he could have done -so much more naturally and effectively by adhering to the <i>data</i> -of the <i>Life</i>. Among them he could have found graver causes of -resentment against Caesar than any of those he invents, which at the -worst are peccadillos and affectations rather than real delinquencies. -And Plutarch does not slur them over: on the contrary the shadows in -his picture are strongly marked, and he lays a long list of offences to -Caesar’s score; culminating in what he calls the “shamefullest part” -that he played, to wit, his support of Clodius. Here was matter enough -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span> -for the dramatic <i>Advocatus Diaboli</i>. It would have been as -easy to weave some of these damaging stories into the reminiscences -of Cassius, as to concoct harmless fictions about Caesar’s having -a temperature and being thirsty, or his failing to swim a river in -flood. All these bygone scandals, whether domestic or political, would -have immensely strengthened the conspirators’ case, especially with a -precisian like Brutus. But Shakespeare is silent concerning them, and -Brutus, as we have seen, gives Caesar in regard to his antecedents a -clean bill of health. Of course almost all Caesar’s previous history -is taken for granted and left to the imagination, but the dubious -passages are far more persistently kept out of sight than such as tend -to his glory. And that is the bewildering thing, if Shakespeare’s -delineation was meant to explain the attitude of the faction. It is -surely an odd way of winning our good will for a man’s murderers -to keep back notorious charges against him of cruelty, treason and -unscrupulousness, to certify that he has never abused his powers or let -his passion overmaster his reason, and then to trump up stories that he -gives himself airs and is deaf in one ear. It reminds one of Swift’s -description of Arbuthnot: “Our doctor has every quality and virtue that -can make a man amiable or useful; but, alas, he hath a sort of slouch -in his walk.” Swift, however, was not explaining how people might come -to think that Dr. Arbuthnot should be got rid of.</p> - -<p>Again his tendency to parade by no means alters the fact, that he does -possess in an extraordinary degree the intellectual and moral virtues -that he would exaggerate in his own eyes and the eyes of others. -Independence, resolution, courage, insight must have been his in -amplest store or he would never have been able to</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Get the start of the majestic world</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And bear the palm alone;</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 130.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span> -and there is evidence of them in the play. He is not moved by the -deferential prayers of the senators: he does persist in the banishment -of Publius Cimber; he has in very truth read the heart and taken the -measure of Cassius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Such men as he be never at heart’s ease,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whiles they behold a greater than themselves;</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 208.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">he neither shrinks nor complains when the fatal -moment comes. The impression he makes on the unsophisticated mind, on -average audiences and the elder school of critics, is undoubtedly an -heroic one. It is only minute analysis that discovers his defects, and -though the defects are certainly present and should be noted, they are -far from sufficing to make the general effect absurd or contemptible. -If they do so, we give them undue importance. It was not so that -Shakespeare meant them to be taken. For he has invented for his Caesar -not only these trivial blemishes, but several conspicuous exhibitions -of nobility, which Plutarch nowhere suggests; and this should give -pause to such as find in Shakespeare’s portrait merely a wilful or -wanton caricature. Thus in regard to the interposition of Artemidorus, -Shakespeare read in North:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">He marking howe Caesar received all the -supplications that were offered him, and that he gave them straight to -his men that were about him, pressed neerer to him and sayed: “Caesar, -reade this memoriall to your selfe, and that quickely, for they be -matters of great waight and touch you neerely.” Caesar tooke it of him, -<i>but coulde never reade it, though he many times attempted it</i>, -for the multitude of people that did salute him: but holding it -still in his hande, keeping it to him selfe, went on withall into the -Senate house.<a id="FNanchor_172" href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">Compare this with the scene in the play:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Artemidorus.</i> Hail, Caesar! read this schedule.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Decius.</i> Trebonius doth desire you to o’er-read,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At your best leisure, this his humble suit.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Artemidorus.</i> O Caesar, read mine first, for mine’s a suit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That touches Caesar nearer: read it, great Caesar.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Caesar.</i> What touches us ourself shall be last served.</div> - <div class="verse indent36">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 3.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Can one say that Shakespeare has defrauded -Caesar of his magnanimity?</p> - -<p>Or again observe, in the imaginary conclusion to the unrecorded -remonstrances of Calpurnia, how loftily he refuses to avail himself -of the little white untruths that after all pass current as quite -excusable in society. They are beneath his dignity. He turns to Decius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Caesar.</i> You are come in very happy time,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To bear my greeting to the senators</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And tell them that I will not come to-day;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cannot, is false, and that I dare not falser:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I will not come to-day: tell them so, Decius.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Calpurnia.</i> Say he is sick.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Caesar.</i> Shall Caesar send a lie?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have I in conquest stretch’d mine arm so far,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To be afeard to tell graybeards the truth?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Decius, go tell them Caesar will not come ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The cause is in my will: I will not come.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 60.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>But this last instance is not merely an example of Shakespeare’s homage -to Caesar’s grandeur and his eagerness to enhance it with accessories -of his own contrivance. It gives us a clue to the secret of his -additions both favourable and the reverse, and points the way to his -conception of the man. For observe that this refusal of Caesar’s to -make use of a falsehood is an afterthought. A minute before he has, -also in words that Shakespeare puts in his mouth, fully consented to -the proposal that he should feign illness. He pacifies Calpurnia:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Mark Antony shall say I am not well;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And, for thy humour, I will stay at home.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 55.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This compliance he makes to his wife, but in -presence of Decius Brutus he recovers himself and adopts the stricter -standard. What does this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg -228]</span> imply? Does it not mean that in a certain sense he is -playing a part and aping the Immortal to be seen of men?</p> - -<p>Let us consider the situation. Caesar, a man with the human frailties, -mental and physical, which are incident to men, is nevertheless endowed -by the Higher Powers with genius that has raised him far above his -fellows. By his genius he has conceived and grasped and done much to -realise the sublime idea of the Roman Empire. By his genius he has -raised himself to the headship of that great Empire which his own -thought was creating. Private ambitions may have urged and doubtful -shifts may have helped his career. He himself feels that within his -drapery of grand exploits there is something that will not bear -scrutiny; and hence his mistrust of Cassius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He is a great observer and he looks</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quite through the deeds of men.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 201.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>But these things are behind him and a luminous veil is drawn over -them, beyond which we discern him only as “the foremost man of all -this world,” “the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times,” -devoted to the cause of Rome, fighting and conquering for her; filling -her public treasuries, her general coffers, with gold; sympathising -with her poor to whom it will be found only after his death that he has -left his wealth. The only hints of unrighteous dealing on his part are -given in Artemidorus’ statement to himself: “Thou hast wronged Caius -Ligarius,” and in Brutus’ statement about him that he was slain “but -for supporting robbers.” But it is never suggested that he himself was -guilty of robbery: and the wrong to Ligarius, who was accused “for -taking parte with Pompey,” and “thanked not Caesar so muche for his -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span> -discharge, as he was offended with him for that he was brought in -daunger by his tyrannicall power,”<a id="FNanchor_173" href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> -hardly deserves the name, at least in the common acceptation. Besides -Shakespeare has a large tolerance for the practical statesman when -dowered with patriotism, insight, and resolution; and will not lightly -condemn him because he must use sorry tools, and takes some soil from -the world, and is not unmoved by personal interests. Provided that -his more selfish aims coincide with the good of the whole, and that -he has veracity of intellect to understand, with steadiness of will -to satisfy the needs of the time, Shakespeare will vindicate for him -his share of prosperity, honour, and desert. And this seems to be, -in glorified version, his view of Caesar. The only serious charge he -brings against him in the play, the only charge to which he recurs -elsewhere, is that he was ambitious. But ambition is not wholly of sin, -and brings forth good as well as evil fruit. Indeed when a man’s desire -for the first place merges in the desire for the fullest opportunity, -and that again in the desire for the task he feels he can do best, it -is distinguishable from a virtue, if at all, only by the demand that -he shall be the agent. So is it, to compare celebrities of local and -of universal history, with the ambitious strain in the character of -Henry IV.; it is not incompatible with sterling worth that commands -solid success; it spurs him to worthy deeds that redeem the offences -it exacts; and these offences themselves in some sort “tend the profit -of the state.” No doubt with both men their ambition brings its own -Nemesis, the ceaseless care of the one, the premature death of the -other. But that need not prevent recognition of their high qualities, -or their just claims, or their providential mandate. Such men are -ministers of the Divine Purposes, as Plutarch said in regard to Caesar; -and in setting forth the essential meaning of his career, Shakespeare -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span> -can scorn the base degrees by which he did ascend. Partly his less -creditable doings were necessary if he was to mount at all; partly -they may have seemed venial to the subject of the Tudor monarchy; at -worst, when compared with the splendour of his achievement, they were -spots in the sun. In any case they were not worth consideration. With -them Shakespeare is not concerned, but with the plenary inspiration of -Caesar’s life, the inspiration that made him an instrument of Heaven -and that was to bring peace and order to the world. So he passes over -the years of effort and preparation, showing their glories but slightly -and their trespasses not at all. He confines himself to the time when -the summit is reached and the dream is fulfilled. Then to his mind -begins the tragedy and the transfiguration.</p> - -<p>He represents Caesar, like every truly great man, as carried away by -his own conception and made a slave to it. What a thing was this idea -of Empire, this “spirit of Caesar,” of which he as one of earth’s -mortal millions was but the vehicle and the organ! He himself as a -human person cannot withhold homage from himself as the incarnate -<i>Imperium</i>. Observe how he speaks of himself habitually in the -third person. Not “I do this,” but “Caesar does this,” “Caesar does -that,” alike when talking to the soothsayer, to his wife and to the -senate.<a id="FNanchor_174" href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> -It is almost as though he anticipated its later use as a common noun -equivalent to Emperor: for in all these passages he describes, as it -were, what the Emperor’s action and attitude should be. And that is the -secret of the strange impression that he makes. It is a case, an exaggerated -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span> -case, of <i>noblesse oblige</i>. The Caesar, the first of those -Caesars who were to receive their apotheosis and be hailed as <i>Divi -Augusti</i>, must in literal truth answer Hobbes’ description of -the State, and be a mortal god. He must be fearless, omniscient, -infallible, without changeableness or shadow of turning: does he not -represent the empire? He has to live up to an impossible standard, and -so he must affect to be what he is not. He is the martyr of the idea -that has made his fortune. He must not listen to his instincts or his -misgivings; there is no room in the Caesar for timidity or mistake or -fickleness. But, alas! he is only a man, and as a man he constantly -gives the lie to the majesty which the spirit of Caesar enjoins. We -feel all the more strongly, since we are forced to the comparison, -the contrast between the shortcomings of the individual and the -splendour of the ideal role he undertakes. And not only that. In this -assumption of the Divine, involving as it does a touch of unreality -and falsehood, he has lost his old surety of vision and efficiency in -act. He tries to rise above himself, and pays the penalty by falling -below himself, and rushing on the ruin which a little vulgar shrewdness -would have avoided. But his mistake is due to his very greatness, and -his greatness encompasses him to the last, when with no futile and -undignified struggle, he wraps his face in his mantle and accepts the -end. Antony does not exaggerate when he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then I, and you, and all of us fell down;</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 194.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">for it was the Empire that fell. But to rise -again! For the idea of Caesarism, rid of the defects and limitations -of its originator, becomes only the more invincible, and the spirit of -Caesar begins its free untrammelled course.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span> -The greatness of his genius cannot be fully realised unless the story -is carried on to the final triumph at Philippi, instead of breaking -off immediately after his bodily death. It is in part Shakespeare’s -perception of this and not merely his general superiority of power, -that makes his Caesar so much more impressive than the Caesar of -contemporary dramatists that seem to keep closer to their theme.</p> - -<p>Not only then is <i>Julius Caesar</i> the right name for the play, in -so far as his imperialist idea dominates the whole, but a very subtle -interpretation of his character is given when, as this implies, he -is viewed as the exponent of Imperialism. None the less Brutus is -the leading personage, if we grant precedence in accordance with the -interest aroused.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IV<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE EXCELLENCES AND ILLUSIONS OF BRUTUS</span></h3> - -<p>Thus Shakespeare has his Act of Oblivion for all that might give an -unfavourable impression of Caesar’s past, and presents him very much as -the incarnate principle of Empire, with the splendours but also with -the disabilities that must attend the individual man who feels himself -the vehicle for such an inspiration.</p> - -<p>He somewhat similarly screens from view whatever in the career of -Brutus might prejudice his claims to affection and respect: and -carries much further a process of idealization that Plutarch had -already begun. For to Plutarch Brutus is, so to speak, the model -republican, the paragon of private and civic virtue. The promise to -the soldiers before the second battle at Philippi of two cities to -sack, calls forth the comment: “In all Brutus’ life there is but this -only fault to be found”: and even this, as the marginal note remarks, -is “wisely excused”; on the plea, namely, that after Cassius’ death -the difficulties were very great and the best had to be made of a bad -state of things. But no other misconduct is laid to his charge: his -extortionate usury and his abrupt divorce are passed over in silence. -All his doings receive indulgent construction, and the narrative is -often pointed with a formal <i>éloge</i>. In the <i>Comparison</i>, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span> -where of course such estimates are expected, attention is drawn to -his rectitude, “only referring his frendschippe and enmitie unto the -consideracion of justice and equitie”; to “the marvelous noble minde of -him, that for fear never fainted nor let falle any part of his corage”; -to his influence over his associates so that “by his choyce of them he -made them good men”; to the honour in which he was held by his “verie -enemies.” But already the keynote is struck in the opening page:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">This Marcus Brutus ... whose life we presently -wryte, having framed his manners of life by the rules of vertue and -studie of philosophie, and having employed his wit, which was gentle -and constant, in attempting of great things: me thinkes he was rightly -made and framed unto vertue.</p> - -<p>And the story often deviates from its course into little backwaters -of commendation, as when after some censure of Cassius, we are told:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Brutus in contrary manner, for his vertue and -valliantnes, was well-beloved of the people and his owne, esteemed of -noble men, and hated of no man, not so much as of his enemies: bicause -he was a marvelous lowly and gentle person, noble minded, and would -never be in any rage, nor caried away with pleasure and covetousness, -but had ever an upright mind with him, and would never yeeld to any -wronge or injustice, the which was the chiefest cause of his fame, of -his rising, and of the good will that every man bare him: for they were -all perswaded that his intent was good.</p> - -<p>This conception Shakespeare adopts and purifies. He leaves out the -shadow of that one fault that Plutarch wisely excused: he leaves out -too the unpleasant circumstance, which Plutarch apparently thought -needed no excuse, that Brutus was applicant for and recipient of -offices at the disposal of the all-powerful dictator. There must be -nothing to mar the graciousness and dignity of the picture. Shakespeare -wishes to portray a patriotic gentleman of the best Roman or the best -English type, such “a gentleman or noble person” as it was the aim of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span> -Spenser’s <i>Faerie Queene</i> “to fashion in vertuous and gentle -discipline,” such a gentleman or noble person as Shakespeare’s -generation had seen in Spenser’s friend, Sir Philip Sidney. So -Plutarch’s summaries are expanded and filled in partly with touches -that his narrative supplies, partly with others that the summaries -themselves suggest.</p> - -<p>To the latter class belongs the winning courtesy with which Brutus at -his first appearance excuses himself to Cassius for his preoccupation. -His inward trouble might well have stirred him to irritability and -abruptness; but he only feels that it has made him remiss, and that an -explanation is due from him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent25">Vexed I am</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of late with passions of some difference,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Conceptions only proper to myself,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which give some soil perhaps to my behaviours:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But let not therefore my good friends be grieved—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Among which number, Cassius, be you one—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor construe any further my neglect,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than that poor Brutus, with himself at war,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forgets the shows of love to other men.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 39.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So with his friends. Shakespeare invents the -character of Lucius to show how attentive and considerate Brutus is as -master. He apologises for having blamed his servant without cause.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 255.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>He notes compassionately that the lad is drowsy and overwatched -(<span class="smcap">iv.</span> iii. 241). At one time he dispenses with his services -because he is sleeping sound (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> i. 229). At another he asks -a song from him not as a right but as a favour (<span class="smcap">iv.</span> iii. 256). -And immediately thereafter the master waits, as it were, on the nodding -slave, and removes his harp lest it should be broken.</p> - -<p>But it is to his wife that he shows the full wealth of his affectionate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span> -nature. He would fain keep from her the anxieties that are distracting -his own mind: but when she claims to share them as the privilege and -pledge of wifehood, with his quick sympathy he sees it at once:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You are my true and honourable wife,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As dear to me as are the ruddy drops</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That visit my sad heart.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 288.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And yielding to her claim as a right, he -recognises that it is a claim that comes from an ideally noble -and loving soul, and prays to be made worthy of her. What insight -Shakespeare shows even in his omissions! This is the prayer of -Plutarch’s Brutus too, but he lifts up his hands and beseeches the gods -that he may “bring his enterprise to so goode passe that he mighte be -founde a husband worthie of so noble a wife as Porcia.” Shakespeare’s -Brutus does not view his worthiness as connected with any material success.</p> - -<p>And these words are also an evidence of his humble-mindedness. However -aggressive and overbearing he may appear in certain relations, we -never fail to see his essential modesty. If he interferes, as often -enough he does, to bow others to his will, it is not because he is -self-conceited, but because he is convinced that a particular course -is right; and where right is concerned, a man must come forward to -enforce it. But for himself he has no idea of the high estimation in -which his character and parts are held. When Cassius insinuates that -everyone thinks him the man for the emergency, if he would only realise -it, his reply is a disclaimer: he has never supposed, and shrinks from -imagining, that he is fit for such a role. Yet such is his personality -that, as all of the faction feel, his help is absolutely necessary if -the conspiracy is to have a chance of approval. Cinna exhorts Cassius -to win him to the party, Casca bears witness to his popular credit and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span> -to the value of his sanction in recommending the enterprise, Ligarius -is willing to follow any course if Brutus leads, the cynical Cassius -admits his worth and their great need of him.</p> - -<p>For his amiable and attractive virtues are saved from all taint of -weakness by an heroic strain, both high-spirited and public-spirited, -both stoical and chivalrous. Challenged by the solicitations of Cassius -he for once breaks through his reticence, and discloses his inward -temper. We may be sure that even then he speaks less than he feels.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If it be aught toward the general good,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Set honour in one eye, and death i’ the other,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And I will look on both indifferently:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For let the gods so speed me, as I love</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The name of honour more than I fear death.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 85.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This elevated way of thinking has been fostered -and confirmed by study, just as in the case of Sidney, and by study of -much the same kind. Plutarch says:</p> - -<p class="blockquot"> Now touching the Greecian Philosophers, there was -no sect nor Philosopher of them, but he heard and liked it: but above -all the rest, he loved Platoes sect best, and did not much give himself -to the new or meane Academy as they call it, but altogether to the old -Academy. </p> - -<p>He has striven to direct his life by right reason, and has pondered its -problems under the guidance of his chosen masters. His utterance, which -Plutarch quotes, on suicide, shows how he has sought Plato’s aid for a -standard by which to judge others and himself.<a id="FNanchor_175" href="#Footnote_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> His utterance, which -Shakespeare invents, on the death of Portia, shows how he has schooled -himself to fortitude, and suggests the influence of a different school.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">We must die, Messala:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With meditating that she must die once,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have the patience to endure it now.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 190.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span> -He is essentially a thinker, a reader, a student. Plutarch had told -how on the eve of Pharsalia, when his companions were resting, or -forecasting the morrow, Brutus “fell to his booke and wrote all day long -till night, wryting a breviarie of Polybius.” And in his last campaign:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">His heade ever busily occupied to thinke of his -affayres, ... after he had slumbered a little after supper, he spent -all the rest of the night in dispatching of his waightiest causes, and -after he had taken order for them, if he had any leysure left him, -he would read some booke till the third watch of the night, at what -tyme the Captaines, pety Captaines and Colonells, did use to come unto -him.</p> - -<p>Shakespeare only visualises this description when he makes him find the -book, that in his troubles and griefs he has been “seeking for so,” -in the pocket of his gown, with the leaf turned down where he stopped -reading.</p> - -<p>Does then Shakespeare take over Plutarch’s favourite, merely removing -the single stain and accenting all the attractions, to confront him as -the embodiment of republican virtue, with Caesar, against whom too no -evil is remembered, as the embodiment of imperial majesty? Will he show -the inevitable collision between two political principles each worthily -represented in its respective champion?</p> - -<p>This has been said, and there are not wanting arguments to support it. -It is clear that the contrast is not perplexed by side issues. Brutus -has no quarrel with Caesar as a man, and no justification is given for -the conspiracy in what Caesar has done. On the contrary, his murderer -stands sponsor for his character, acknowledges his supreme greatness, -and loves him as a dear friend. But neither on the other hand is -anything introduced that might divert our sympathies from Brutus by -representing him as bound by other than the voluntary ties of affection -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span> -and respect. And this is the more remarkable that in Plutarch there -are two particulars full of personal pathos which Shakespeare cannot -have failed to note, and which lend themselves to dramatic purposes, as -other dramatists have proved. One of them, employed by Voltaire, would -darken the assassination to parricide. In explanation of the indulgence -with which Caesar treated Brutus, Plutarch says:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">When he was a young man, he had been acquainted -with Servilia, who was extreamelie in love with him. And bicause Brutus -was borne in that time when their love was hottest, he perswaded him -selfe that he begat him.<a id="FNanchor_176" href="#Footnote_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">And then follows what can be alleged in proof. -“What of anguish,” says Mr. Wyndham, “does this not add to the sweep -of the gesture wherewith the hero covered his face from the pedant’s -sword!”</p> - -<p>This is a mere casual hint; but the other point finds repeated mention -in the <i>Life</i>, and is dwelt upon though explained away in the -<i>Comparison</i>. It is the circumstance that Brutus had fought on -Pompey’s side, and that thereafter Caesar had spared him, amnestied his -friends, and loaded him with favours.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The greatest reproache they could make against -Brutus was: that Julius Caesar having saved his life, and pardoned all -the prisoners also taken in battell, as many as he made request for, -taking him for his frende, and honoring him above all his other frends, -Brutus notwithstanding had imbrued his hands in his -blood.<a id="FNanchor_177" href="#Footnote_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">Plutarch indeed instances this as the grand proof -of Brutus’ superiority to personal considerations; but it looks bad, -and certainly introduces a new element into the moral problem. At all -events, though it involves in a specially acute form that conflict of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span> -duties which the drama loves, and was so used by Shakespeare’s -contemporaries, as early as Muretus and as late as Alexander, -Shakespeare dismisses it.</p> - -<p>Attention is concentrated on the single fact that Brutus felt it his -duty to take the life of Caesar, and no obligations of kinship or -gratitude are allowed to complicate the one simple case of conscience.</p> - -<p>The victim and the sacrificer are thus set before us, each with an -unstained record, and in only those personal relations that arise from -warm and reverent friendship.</p> - -<p>Of their mutual attachment we are left in no doubt, nor are we ever -suffered to forget it. Cassius in talk to himself, bears witness that -Caesar “loves Brutus” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 317). Antony, in his speech to -the people, appeals to this as a notorious fact:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Judge, O you Gods, how dearly Caesar loved him.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 185.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But the strongest testimony is Caesar’s own cry, -the cry of astonishment and consternation, whether from the betrayed -when the beloved is the traitor, or from the condemned when the beloved -is the judge:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Et tu Brute! Then fall, Caesar!</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 77.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Nor is less stress laid on Brutus’ feeling. He -avows it in the Forum, as before he had assured Antony that “he did -love Caesar when he struck him” (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> i. -182). Cassius tells him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 106.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But here again the most pathetic evidence is to -be found in the assassination scene itself. When Brutus stoops in the -guise of petitioner, we cannot suppose it is merely with treacherous -adroitness:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 52.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Knowing the man, do we not feel that this is the -last tender farewell?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span> -But though all this is true it cannot be maintained, in view of the -soliloquy before the conspirators’ meeting, that Shakespeare makes -Brutus the mouthpiece of republicanism, as he makes Caesar the -mouthpiece of imperialism. The opposition of principles is present, -but it is of principles on a different plane.</p> - -<p>Caesar, the spirit of Caesar, is indeed the spirit of Empire, -the spirit of practical greatness in the domains of war, policy, -organisation: of this he is the exponent, to this he is the martyr. -Brutus’ spirit is rather the spirit of loyalty to duty, which finds in -him its exponent and martyr too.</p> - -<p>He is lavishly endowed by nature with all the inward qualities that -go to make the virtuous man, and these he has improved and disciplined -by every means in his power. His standard is high, but he is so -strenuous and sincere in living up to it, that he is recognised as no -less pre-eminent in the sphere of ethics, than Caesar in the sphere -of politics. Indeed their different ideals dominate and impel both -men in an almost equal degree. And in each case this leads to a kind -of pose. It appears even in their speech. The balanced precision of -the one tells its own tale as clearly as the overstrained loftiness -of the other, and is as closely matched with the part that he needs -must play. Obviously Brutus does not like to confess that he has been -in the wrong. No more in the σώφρων than in the Emperor is there room -for any weakness. After his dispute with Cassius he assumes rather -unjustifiably that he has on the whole been in the right, that he has -been the provoked party, and that at worst he has shown momentary heat. -But even this slight admission, coming from him, fills Cassius with -surprise.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent1"><i>Brutus.</i> When I spoke that, I was ill-temper’d too.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cassius.</i> Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 116.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span> -The Ideal Wise Man must not yield to anger any more than to other -passions, and it costs Brutus something to own that he has done so. But -he minimises his confession by accepting Cassius’ apology for his rash -humour and promising to overlook any future offences, as though none -could be laid to his own door. We like him none the worse for this, his -cult of perfection is so genuine: but sometimes the cult of perfection -becomes the assumption and obtrusion of it. Read the passage where -Messala tells him of Portia’s death.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Messala.</i> Had you letters from your wife, my lord?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> No, Messala.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Messala.</i> Nor nothing in your letters writ of her?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> Nothing, Messala.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Messala.</i><span class="ws7">That, methinks, is strange.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> Why ask you? hear you aught of her in yours?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Messala.</i> No. my lord.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> Now, as you are a Roman, tell me true.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Messala.</i> Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For certain she is dead, and by strange manner.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> Why, farewell, Portia.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 181.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Now Brutus had received earlier tidings. He may -profess ignorance to save himself the pain of explanation, though -surely it would have been simpler to say, “I know all.” But the -effect is undoubtedly to bring his self-control into fuller relief in -presence of Messala and Titinius even than in the presence of Cassius -a few minutes before; for then he was announcing what he already knew, -here he would seem in the eyes of his informants to be encountering -the first shock. Too much must not be made of this, for Cassius who -is aware of the circumstances, is no less impressed than the others, -and Cassius would have detected any hollow ring. But at the least it -savours of a willingness to give a demonstration, so to speak, in -Clinical Ethics.</p> - -<p>A man like this whose desires are set on building up a virtuous -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span> -character, but who is not free from the self-consciousness and -self-confidence of the specialist in virtue, is exposed to peculiar -dangers. His interests and equipment are in the first place for the -inward life, and his chief concern is the well-being of his soul. But -precisely such an one knows that he cannot save his own soul alone. It -is not open to him to disregard the claims of his fellows or the needs -of the world, so he is driven to take in hand matters for which he has -no inclination or aptitude. He may be quite aware of his unfitness for -the work and shrink from investing himself with qualities which he -knows he does not possess. All the same, if the call comes, the logic -of his nature will force him to essay the ungrateful and impossible -task; and he will be apt to imagine a call when there is none. So it -is with Brutus. It is true that many of the best respect do look up -to him and designate him as their leader: it is none the less true -that the unsigned instigations which he takes for the voice of Rome, -are the fabrications of a single schemer. He would not be Brutus -if he suspected or shirked the summons. This votary of duty cannot -acknowledge a merely fugitive and cloistered virtue; this platonic -theorist can easily be hood-winked by the practised politician. So -Brutus, who is so at home in his study with his book, who is so -exemplary in all the private relations of friend, master and husband; -predestined, one would say, for the serene labours of philosophic -thought and the gracious offices of domestic affection, sweeps from his -quiet anchorage to face the storms of political strife, which such as -he are not born to master but which they think they must not avoid.</p> - -<p>It is a common case; and many have by their very conscientiousness -been hurried into a false position where they could not escape from -committing blunders and incurring guilt. But generally the blunders are -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span> -corrigible and the guilt is venial. It is Brutus’ misfortune, that his -very greatness, his moral ascendancy with the prestige it bestows, -gives him the foremost place, and shifts on his shoulders the main -responsibility for all the folly and crime.</p> - -<p>For it is inevitable that he should proceed as he does. Yet it is not -easy for him. There is a conflict in this sensitive and finely tuned -spirit, which, with all his acquired fortitude, bewrays itself in his -bearing to Cassius before any foreign suggestion has entered his mind, -which afterwards makes him unlike himself in his behaviour to his wife, -which drives sleep from his eyes for nights together, which so jars -the rare harmony of his nature, in Antony’s view his chief perfection, -that he seems to suffer from an insurrection within himself. And it -is not hard to understand why this should be. Morality is the guiding -principle of Brutus’ character, but what if it should be at variance -with itself? Now two sets of moral forces are at strife in his heart. -There are the more personal sentiments of love and reverence for Caesar -and of detestation for the crime he contemplates. Even after his -decision he feels the full horror of conspiracy with its “monstrous -visage”; how much more must he feel the horror of assassinating a -friend! On the other side are the more traditional ethical obligations -to state, class, and house. It is almost as fatal to this visionary -to be called Brutus, as it is to the poet to be called Cinna. For a -great historic name spares its bearer a narrow margin of liberty. It -should be impossible for a Bourbon to be other than a legitimist; it -would be impossible for a Romanoff to abandon the Orthodox Church; it -is impossible for a Brutus to accept the merest show of royal power. -The memory of his stock is about him. Now Cassius reminds him of his -namesake who would brook the eternal devil in Rome as easily as a king; -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span> -now the admonition is affixed with wax upon Old Brutus’ statue; now he -himself recalls the share his ancestors had in expelling the Tarquin. -If such an one acquiesced in the coronation of Caesar, he must be the -basest renegade, or more detached from his antecedents than it is given -a mortal man to be. And in Brutus there is no hint of such detachment. -The temper that makes him so attentive and loyal to the pieties of -life, is the very temper that vibrates to all that is best in the past, -and clings to the spirit of use-and-wont. Let it again be repeated -that Brutus reveals himself to Shakespeare very much in the form of a -cultured and high-souled English nobleman, the heir of great traditions -and their responsibilities, which he fulfils to the smallest jot and -tittle; the heir also of inevitable preconceptions.</p> - -<p>But in Brutus there is more than individual morality and inherited -ethos: there is superimposed on these the conscious philosophic theory -with which his actions must be squared. He has to determine his conduct -not by instinct or usage, but by impersonal, unprejudiced reason. It -is to this tribunal that in the last resort he must appeal; and in -that strange soliloquy of his he puts aside all private preferences on -the one hand, all local considerations on the other, and discusses his -difficulty quite as an abstract problem of right and wrong. He sees -that if the personal rule of Caesar is to be averted, half measures -will not suffice. There are no safeguards or impediments that can -prevent the supremacy of so great a man if he is allowed to live. This -is his starting point: “It must be by his death.” But then the question -arises: is the death of such an one permissible? And in answering -it Brutus seems at the first glance to show admirable intellectual -candour. He acquits Caesar of all blame; the quarrel “will bear no -colour for the thing he is.” What could be more dispassionate and -impartial, what more becoming the philosopher? There is no -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span> -sophistication of the facts in the interest of his party. But -immediately there follow the incriminating words:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Would run to these and these extremities.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 30.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">There is a sophistication of the inference. Surely -this line of argument is invented to support a foregone conclusion. -Already that hint to his conscience, “Fashion it thus,” betrays the -resolve to make out a case. And does the mere future contingency -justify the present infliction of death? Brutus is appealing to his -philosophy: by his philosophy he is judged: for just about this date he -was condemning the suicide of Cato because he found it</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">Cowardly and vile,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>For fear of what might fall</i>, so to prevent</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The time of life.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 104.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But the argument is the same in both cases, and if -it does not excuse self-murder, still less does it excuse the murder of -others.</p> - -<p>The truth is that Brutus, though he personates the philosopher, is less -of one than he thinks. It is not his philosophy but his character that -gives him strength to bear the grief of Portia’s death; as Cassius says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I have as much of this in art as you,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But yet my nature could not bear it so.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 194.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">At the end he casts his philosophy to the winds -rather than go bound to Rome: he “bears too great a mind” -(<span class="allsmcap">v.</span> i. 113). And just as on these occasions -he is independent or regardless of it, so here he tampers with it to -get the verdict that is required. For even in his own eyes he has to -play the part of the ideally wise and virtuous man; and though the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span> -obligations of descent and position, the consideration in which he is -held, the urgings of a malcontent, and (as he believes not altogether -without reason) the expectations formed of him by his fellow citizens, -supply his real motives for the murder, he needs to give it the form of -ideal virtue and wisdom before he can proceed to it.</p> - -<p>Now, however, he persuades himself that he has the sanction of reason -and conscience, and he acts on the persuasion. His hesitations are -gone. He can face without wincing the horror of conspiracy. With an -impassioned eloquence, which he nowhere else displays, he can lift the -others to the level of his own views. No doubts or scruples becloud his -enthusiasm now.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">If not the face of men,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The sufferance of our souls, the time’s abuse—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If these be motives weak, break off betimes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And every man hence to his idle bed;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So let high-sighted tyranny range on</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Till each man drop by lottery.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 114.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His certainty has advanced by leaps and bounds. A -few minutes ago there was no complaint against Caesar as he was or had -been, but it could be alleged that he might or would change: now his -tyranny, lighting by caprice on men, is announced as a positive fact of -the future or even of the present. But by this time Brutus is assured -that the plot is just and that the confederates are the pick of men, -both plot and confederates so noble that for them an ordinary pledge -would be an insult:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Unto bad causes swear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Such creatures as men doubt: but do not stain</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The even virtue of our enterprise,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor the insuppressive metal of our spirits,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To think that or our cause or our performance</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Did need an oath.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 132.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He carries them away with him. They abandon the -oath; they accept all his suggestions; we feel that their thoughts are -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span> -ennobled by his intervention, that, as Plutarch noted to be the effect -of his fellowship, he has made them better men, at least for the time.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile it is a devout imagination, an unconscious sophistry that -lends him his power; and this brings its own Nemesis at its heels. In -the future Brutus will be disillusioned of the merit of the exploit. In -the present, persuading his associates of its unparalleled glory, he -makes them take their measures to suit. He will not hear of the murder -of Antony, for that would be bloody and unnecessary. And his clemency -is based on disparagement of Antony’s abilities and contempt for his -moral character. Of this “limb of Caesar,” as he calls him, “who can do -no more than Caesar’s arm when Caesar’s head is off,” he cries:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If he love Caesar, all that he can do</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is to himself, take thought and die for Caesar:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And that were much he should; for he is given</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To sports, to wildness and much company.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 185.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is not so in Plutarch:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Brutus would not agree to it. First for that he -sayd it was not honest: secondly, bicause he told them there was hope -of chaunge in him. For he did not mistrust, but that Antonius being a -noble minded and coragious man (when he should knowe that Caesar was -dead) would willingly helpe his contrie to recover her libertie, having -them an example unto him to follow their corage and vertue.</p> - -<p>In this hope of converting a <i>rusé</i> libertine like Antony, there -is no doubt a hint of idealism, but it is not so marked as in the -high-pitched magnanimity of Shakespeare’s Brutus, who denies a man’s -powers of mischief because his life is loose.</p> - -<p>Yet though Antony would always be a source of danger, the conspirators -might find compensation in the reputation for leniency they would gain, -and the danger might be reduced were effective steps taken to render him -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span> -innocuous. But this is only the beginning of Brutus’ mistakes. If -indeed they had not begun before. With his masterful influence he has -dissuaded his friends from applying to Cicero, on the ground that -Cicero will not share in any scheme of which he is not the author. It -may be so, but one would think it was at least an experiment well worth -the trying. Apart from the authority of his years and position, there -would have been the spell of his oratory; and of that they were soon -to be sorely in need, again through Brutus’ crotchet that their course -evinced its own virtue, and that virtue was a sufficient defence.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">“The first fault that he did,” says Plutarch, -“was, when he would not consent to his fellow conspirators, that Antony -should be slayne: and therefore he was justly accused, that thereby he -had saved a stronge and grievous enemy of their conspiracy. The second -fault was when he agreed that Caesars funeralls should be as Antony -would have them: the which in deede marred all.”</p> - -<p>This hint Shakespeare works out. He sees clearly that this further -blunder marred all, and heightens the folly of it in various ways. For -in Plutarch the question is debated in the Senate, after it has been -determined that the assassins shall be not only pardoned but honoured -and after provinces have been assigned to them, Crete to Brutus, Africa -to Cassius, and the like. Only then, when their victory seems complete -and assured, do they discuss the obsequies.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Antonius thinking good his testament should be red -openly, and also that his body should be honorably buried, and not in -hugger mugger, least the people might thereby take occasion to be worse -offended if they did otherwise: Cassius stowtly spake against it. But -Brutus went with the motion and agreed unto it.</p> - -<p>That is the amount of his error: that when all seemed to be going well -with the faction, Antony, who had shown himself in seeming and for the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span> -time their most influential friend, commended the proposal on -opportunist grounds, and Cassius opposed it, but Brutus supported -it and voted with the majority. In the Play his responsibility is -undivided, and all the explanatory circumstances have disappeared. He -is not one member of an approving Senate, who, when the assassination -seems once for all a <i>chose jugée</i>, accepts a suggestion, made -apparently in the interests of peace and quiet, by the man to whom, -more than to anyone else, the settlement of the affair is due. While -the position is still critical, without any evidence of Antony’s good -will, without any pressure of public opinion or any plea of political -expediency, he endows the helpless suppliant with means to undo what -has been done and destroy those who have done it. No wonder that -Cassius when he hears Brutus giving Antony permission to speak in the -market place, interrupts: “Brutus, a word with you,” and continues in -the alarmed aside:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You know not what you do: do not consent</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That Antony speak in his funeral:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Know you how much the people may be moved</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By that which he will utter?</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 232.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But Brutus waves his remonstrance aside. He is -now so besotted by his own sophisms that he will listen to no warning. -He thinks all risk will be averted by his going into the pulpit first -to show the “reason” of Caesar’s death. He has quite forgotten that -the one reason that he could allege to himself was merely a hazardous -conclusion from doubtful premises; and this forsooth is to satisfy the -citizens of Rome. But meanwhile since their deed is so irreproachable -and disinterested, the conspirators must act in accordance, and show -their freedom from any personal motive by giving Caesar all due rites:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">It shall advantage more than do us wrong.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span> -The infatuation is almost incredible, and it springs not only from -generosity to Antony and Caesar, but from the fatal assumption of the -justice of his cause, and the Quixotic exaltation the assumption brings -with it.</p> - -<p>For were it ever so just, could this be brought home to the Roman -populace? Brutus, who is never an expert in facts, has been misled -by the inventions of Cassius, which he mistakes for the general -voice of Rome. Here, too, Shakespeare departs from his authority to -make the duping of his hero more conspicuous. For in Plutarch these -communications are the quite spontaneous incitements of the public, not -the contrivances of one dissatisfied aristocrat.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">But for Brutus, <i>his frendes and contrie -men</i>, both by divers procurementes, and sundrie rumors of the citie, -and by many bills also, did openlie call and procure him to doe that he -did. For, under the image of his auncestor Junius Brutus, that drave -the kinges out of Rome, they wrote: “O, that it had pleased the goddes -that thou wert now alive, Brutus: and againe that thou wert with us -nowe.” His tribunall (or chaire) where he gave audience during the time -he was praetor, was full of such billes: “Brutus, thou art a sleepe, -and art not Brutus in deede.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">All these in Plutarch are worth their face -value, but in Shakespeare they are not: and it is one of the ironies -of Brutus’ career that he takes them as appeals from the people when -they are only the juggleries of Cassius. So far from objecting to -Imperialism, the citizens when most favourable to Brutus call out, -“Let him be Caesar!” “Caesar’s better parts shall be crowned in Brutus” -(<span class="smcap">iii.</span> ii. 56). This is the acme of his -success and the prologue to his disillusionment.</p> - -<p>But even if the case of the conspirators could be commended to the -populace, Brutus is not the man to do it. It is comic and pathetic to -hear him reassuring Cassius with the promise to speak first as though he -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span> -could neutralise in advance the arts of Antony. Compare his oration -with that of his rival. First, in the matter of it, there is no appeal -to the imagination or passions, but an unvarnished series of arguments -addressed exclusively to the logical reason. Such a speech would make -little impression on an assembly of those who are called educated men, -and to convince an audience like the artisans of Rome (for such was -Shakespeare’s conception of the People), it is ridiculously inadequate. -But the style is no less out of place. The diction is as different as -possible from the free and fluent rhetoric of Antony. Shakespeare had -read in Plutarch:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">They do note in some of his Epistells, that -he counterfeated that briefe compendious maner of speach of the -Lacedaemonians. As when the warre was begonne, he wrote unto the -Pergamenians in this sorte: “I understand you have geven Dolabella -money; if you have done it willingly, you confesse you have offended -me: if against your wills, shewe it then by geving me willinglie.” -An other time againe unto the Samians: “Your counsels be long, your -doinges be slowe, consider the ende.” And in an other Epistell he wrote -unto<a id="FNanchor_178" href="#Footnote_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> -the Patareians: “The Xanthians despising my good wil, have made -their contrie a grave of dispaire: and the Patareians that put them -selves into my protection, have lost no jot of their libertie. And -therefore whilest you have libertie, either choose the judgement of the -Patareians, or the fortune of the Xanthians.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus prompted Shakespeare makes Brutus affect the -balanced structure of Euphuism. Not only in his oration. Read his words -to Cassius at their first interview:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">That you do love me, I am nothing jealous;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What you would work me to, I have some aim;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How I have thought of this and of these times,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I shall recount hereafter; for this present,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I would not, so with love I might entreat you,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be any further moved. What you have said</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span> - <div class="verse indent0">I will consider: what you have to say</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I will with patience hear, and find a time</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Both meet to hear and answer such high things.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 161.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Nothing could be more neat, accurate and -artificial than this Euphuistic arrangement of phrases. It at once -suggests the academic studious quality of Brutus’ expression whenever -he gives thought to it. But it is a style unsuitable to, one might -almost say incompatible with, genuine passion. So it is noteworthy -that when he lets himself go in answer to Cassius and introduces the -personal accent, he abandons his mannerisms. And could the symmetrical -clauses of his oration move the popular heart? It has a noble ring -about it, because it is sincere, with the reticence and sobriety -which the sincere man is careful to observe when he is advocating his -own case. But that is not the sort of thing that the Saviour of his -Country, as Brutus thought himself to be, will find fit to sway a mob. -Nevertheless his eloquence was notorious. Plutarch states that when his -mind “was moved to followe any matter, he used a kind of forcible and -vehement perswasion that calmed not till he had obteyned his desire.” -There is a rush of emotion in his words when he is denouncing the -conventional pledge or wanton bloodshed, but if any personal interest -is involved, the springs are dry. In the Forum it is characteristic -that he speaks with far more warmth—a transition indicated not only by -the change of style, but, after Shakespeare’s wont, by the substitution -of verse for prose—when he no longer pleads for himself but tries to -get a hearing for Mark Antony.</p> - -<p>And this is the man with his formal dialectic and professorial oratory, -impassioned only on behalf of his enemy, who thinks that by a temperate -statement of the course which he has seduced his reason -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span> -to approve, he can prevent the perils of a speech by Caesar’s friend. -He does not even wait to hear it: but if he did, what could he effect -against the sophistries and rhetorical tricks, the fervour and regret, -the gesticulation and tears of Antony’s headlong improvisation?</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER V<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF BRUTUS.<br /> PORTIA</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>Brutus had been doubly duped, by his own subtlety and his own -simplicity in league with his conscientiousness; for in this way he -was led to idealise his deed as enjoined both by the inward moral code -and the demands of his country, and such self-deception avenges itself -as surely as any intentional crime. He is soon disabused in regard to -the wishes of Rome and its view of the alleged wrongs it has suffered -from Caesar. His imagination had dwelt on the time when his ancestors -drove out the Tarquin; now he himself must ride “like a madman” through -the gates. It is not only the first of his reverses but a step towards -his enlightenment, for it helps to show that he has been mistaken in -the people. Still, the momentary mood of the populace may not always -recognise its best interests and real needs, and may not coincide with -the true <i>volonté générale</i>. There is harder than this in store -for Brutus. By the time we meet him again at Sardis a worse punishment -has overtaken him, and his education in disappointment has advanced, -though he does his utmost to treat the punishment as fate and not to -learn the lessons it enforces.</p> - -<p>This scene has won the applause of the most dissimilar minds and -generations. We have seen how Leonard Digges singles it out as the grand -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span> -attraction of the play, by which, above all others, it transcends the -laboured excellences of <i>Catiline</i> or <i>Sejanus</i>. It excited -the admiration and rivalry of the greatest genius of the Restoration -period. Scott says of the dispute between Antony and Ventidius in -<i>All for Love</i>: “Dryden when writing this scene had unquestionably -in his recollection the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, which was -so justly a favourite in his time, and to which he had referred as -inimitable in his prologue to <i>Aureng-Zebe</i>.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">But spite of all his pride, a secret shame</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Invades his breast at Shakespeare’s sacred name:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Awed, when he hears his godlike Romans rage,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He in a just despair would quit the stage;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And to an age less polished, more unskilled,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Does with disdain the foremost honours yield.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In the eighteenth century Dr. Johnson, though he finds -<i>Julius Caesar</i> as a whole “somewhat cold and unaffecting,” perhaps -because Shakespeare’s “adherence to the real story and to Roman manners” -has “impeded the natural vigour of his genius,” excepts particular passages -and cites “the contention and reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius” -as universally celebrated. And Coleridge goes beyond himself in his -praise: “I know no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the -belief of his being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and -Cassius. In the Gnostic heresy it might have been credited with less -absurdity than most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him -to create, previously to his function of representing characters.” -Yet it is not merely in the revelation of character that the scene is -unique. More than any other single episode, more than all the rest -together, it lays bare the significance of the story in its tragic -pathos and its tragic irony. And the wonder of it is increased rather -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span> -than lessened when we take note that it is a creation not out of -nothing but out of chaos. For there is hardly a suggestion, hardly a -detail, that Shakespeare did not find in Plutarch, but here in confused -mixture, there in inert isolation, and nowhere with more than the -possibilities of being organised. It is Shakespeare, who, to borrow -from Milton’s description of the beginning of his Universe, “founded -and conglobed like things to like, and vital virtue infused and vital -warmth.”</p> - -<p>The nucleus of this passage is found just after the account of Brutus’ -exploits in Lycia.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>About that tyme, Brutus sent to pray Cassius to come to the citye of -Sardis, and so he did. Brutus understanding of his comming, went out to -meete him with all his frendes. There both their armies being armed, -they called them both Emperors. Nowe, as it commonly hapneth in great -affayres betwene two persons, both of them having many friends, and so -many Captaines under them; there ranne tales and complaints betwixt -them. Therefore, before they fell in hand with any other matter, they -went into a little chamber together, and bad every man avoyde, and did -shut the dores to them. Then they beganne to powre out their complaints -one to the other, and grew hot and lowde, earnestly accusing one -another, and at length fell both a weeping. Their friends that were -without the chamber hearing them lowde within, and angry betwene them -selves, they were both amased and affrayd also lest it would grow to -further matter: but yet they were commaunded that no man should come -to them. Notwithstanding, one Marcus Phaonius, that had bene a friend -and follower of Cato while he lived, and tooke upon him to counterfeate -a Philosopher, not with wisedom and discretion, but with a certaine -bedlem and frantick motion: he would needes come into the chamber, -though the men offered to keepe him out. But it was no boote to let -Phaonius, when a mad moode or toy tooke him in the head: for he was a -hot hasty man, and sodaine in all his doings, and cared for never a -Senator of them all. Now, though he used this bold manner of speeche -after the profession of the Cynick Philosophers (as who would say, -doggs), yet this boldnes did no hurt many times, bicause they did but -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span> -laugh at him to see him so mad. This Phaonius at that time, in despite -of the doore keepers, came into the chamber, and with a certain -scoffing and mocking gesture which he counterfeated of purpose, he -rehearsed the verses which old Nestor sayd in Homer:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">My lords, I pray you harken both to mee,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For I have seene moe yeares than suchye three.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Cassius fell a-laughing at him: but Brutus thrust him out of the -chamber, and called him dogge, and counterfeate Cynick. Howbeit his -comming in brake their strife at that time, and so they left eche other.</p> -</div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here there seems little enough to tempt the -dramatist; the two generals quarrel, Phaonius bursts in, Cassius -laughs at him, Brutus turns him out, but the interruption temporarily -patches up a truce between them. And this petty incident is made the -most pregnant in Shakespeare’s whole play; and that by apparently such -simple means. To get the meaning out of it, or to read the meaning -into it, he does little more, so far as the mechanical aspects of his -treatment are concerned, than collect a few other notices scattered -up and down the pages of his authority. He had found in an earlier -digression Cassius described as</p> - -<p class="blockquot no-indent">a hot cholerick and cruell man, that -would often tymes be caried away from justice for gayne: it was -certainly thought that he made warre, and put him selfe into sundry -daungers, more to have absolute power and authoritie, than to defend -the liberty of his contrie.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Again after describing Brutus’ success with the -Patareians, Plutarch proceeds:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Cassius, about the selfe same tyme, after he -had compelled the Rhodians every man to deliver all the ready money -they had in gold and silver in their houses, the which being brought -together, amounted to the summe of eyght thousande talents: yet he -condemned the citie besides, to paye the summe of five hundred talents -more. When Brutus in contrary manner, after he had leavyed of all the -contrye of Lycia but a hundred and fiftye talents onely: he departed -thence into the contrye of Ionia, and did them no more hurt.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Previously with reference to the first meeting of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span> -the fugitives after they collected their armies and before they came -to Sardis at all, Plutarch narrates:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Whilst Brutus and Cassius were together in the -citie of Smyrna: Brutus prayed Cassius to let him have some part of -his money whereof he had great store, bicause all that he could rappe -and rend of his side, he had bestowed it in making so great a number -of shippes, that by meanes of them they should keepe all the sea at -their commaundement. Cassius’ friendes hindered this request, and -earnestly disswaded him from it: perswading him, that it was no reason -that Brutus should have the money which Cassius had gotten together by -sparing, and leavied with great evil will of the people their subjects, -for him to bestowe liberally uppon his souldiers, and by this meanes -to winne their good willes, by Cassius charge. This notwithstanding, -Cassius gave him the third part of his totall summe.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Then at Sardis, but not on occasion of the dispute -interrupted by Phaonius, mention is made of the affair with Pella:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The next daye after, Brutus, upon complaynt of -the Sardians did condemne and noted Lucius Pella for a defamed person, -that had been a Praetor of the Romanes, and whome Brutus had given -charge unto: for that he was accused and convicted of robberie, and -pilferie in his office. This judgement much misliked Cassius; bicause -he him selfe had secretly (not many dayes before) warned two of his -friends, attainted and convicted of the like offences, and openly had -cleered them: but yet he did not therefore leave to employ them in any -manner of service as he did before. And therefore he greatly reproved -Brutus, for that he would shew him selfe so straight and seveare in -such a tyme, as was meeter to beare a little, then to take thinges at -the worst. Brutus in contrary manner aunswered, that he should remember -the Ides of Marche, at which tyme they slue Julius Caesar: who nether -pilled nor polled the contrye, but onely was a favorer and suborner of -all them that did robbe and spoyle, by his countenaunce and authoritie. -And if there were any occasion whereby they might honestly sette aside -justice and equitie: they should have had more reason to have suffered -Caesar’s friendes, to have robbed and done what wronge and injurie they -had would, then to beare with their owne men. For then, sayde he, they -could but have sayde they had bene cowards: “and now they may accuse -us of injustice, beside the paynes we take, and the daunger we put our -selves into.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span> -Lastly at the end of the <i>Life of Brutus</i>, Shakespeare would find -a short notice of the death of Portia. No indication is given of the -date at which this took place, except that Plutarch seems on the whole -to discredit the idea that she survived her husband.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">And for Porcia, Brutus’ wife: Nicolaus the -Philosopher, and Valerius Maximus doe wryte, that she determining to -kill her selfe (her parents and frendes carefullie looking to her to -kepe her from it) tooke hot burning coles, and cast them into her -mouth, and kept her mouth so close, that she choked her selfe. There -was a letter of Brutus found wrytten to his frendes, complayning of -their negligence, that his wife being sicke, they would not helpe -her, but suffered her to kill her selfe, choosing to dye rather than -to languish in paine. Thus it appeareth, that Nicolaus knewe not well -that time, sith the letter (at the least if it were Brutus letter) doth -plainly declare the disease and love of this Lady, as also the maner of -her death.</p> - -<p>Now in Shakespeare’s scene all these detached jottings find their -predestined place, and together have an accumulated import of which -Plutarch has only the remotest guess. They are so combined as to -bring out at once the ideal aspect of Brutus’ deed, and its folly and -disastrousness in view of the facts. He maintains his manhood under the -most terrible ordeal, which is well; he clings to his illusion in the -face of the clearest proof, which is not so well. He is gathering evil -fruit where he looked for good, but he refuses to admit that the tree -was corrupt; and of the prestige that his clear conscience confers, he -still makes baneful use. He is raised to the heroic by his persistence -in regarding the murder as an act of pure and disinterested justice, -but for that very reason he makes his blunders, and puts himself and -others in the wrong.</p> - -<p>Perhaps indeed his loss of temper is to be ascribed to another cause. -He is in a tense, over-wrought state, when the slightest thing will -provoke an outbreak. In Cassius’ view his private and personal sorrow, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span> -the only one Cassius could understand, might quite well, apart from all -the rest, have driven him to greater violence:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">How ’scaped I killing when I cross’d you so?</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 150.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>No wonder he uses stinging words to his friend, taxes him most unfairly -with the boast of being a better soldier, and flings aside Cassius’ -temperate correction of “elder,” with the contemptuous, “If you did, -I care not.” No wonder he drives out the poet, while Cassius merely -laughs at him. Yet even here, though he is undoubtedly the angrier and -more unreasonable in the quarrel, his moral dignity just before has -saved him from an indiscretion into which Cassius falls. When the other -begins to complain before the soldiers, Brutus checks him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Cassius, be content;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Speak your griefs softly; I do know you well.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Before the eyes of both our armies here,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which should perceive nothing but love from us,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let us not wrangle: Bid them move away;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then in my tent, Cassius, enlarge your griefs,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And I will give you audience.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> ii. 41.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In the onset of misfortune Brutus does not -forget his weightier responsibilities, though the strain of resisting -it may impair his suavity. The fine balance of his nature that was -overthrown by suspense, may well be shaken by his afflictions. For they -are more numerous than Cassius knew and more poignant than he could -understand.</p> - -<p>Portia’s suicide with all its terrible accessories Brutus brings into -relation with himself. It is absence from him, and, as his love tells -him, distress at the growing power of his enemies that caused her -madness. The ruin of that home life which was his native element, the -agony and death of the wife he worshipped, are the direct consequences -of his own act.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span> -And with this private there has come also the public news. The -proscription has already swept away seventy senators; Cicero, despite -his “silver hairs,” his “judgment,” and his “gravity” being one; and -the number given, according to Messala, is an understatement. Brutus -had talked of each man’s dropping by lottery under Caesar’s rule, but -however much Caesar had degenerated, would he have decreed a more -wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter than this? Was there anything -in his career as described by Brutus himself, that foreshadowed a -callousness like that of the Triumvirs in pricking down and damning -their victims, among them the most illustrious members of Brutus’ own -class? And the perpetrators, far from injuring their cause by these -atrocities, are in a position to take the field with a “mighty power.” -So the civil war with all its horrors and miseries will run its full course.</p> - -<p>But even that is not the worst. Brutus has to realise that his -associates were not the men he supposed them. Their hands are not -clean, their hearts are not pure, even his brother Cassius connives -at corruption and has “an itching palm” himself. Even when the <i>soi -disant</i> deliverers wield the power, what are things better than they -would have been under Caesar who was at least personally free from such -reproach and whose greatness entitled him to his place in front? Surely -there are few more pathetic passages even in Shakespeare than the -confession of disillusionment wrung from Brutus by the force of events, -a confession none the less significant that he admits disillusion only -as to the results and still clings to his estimate of the deed itself. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Remember March, the ides of March remember:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Did not great Julius bleed for justice’ sake?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What villain touch’d his body, that did stab,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And not for justice? What, shall one of us,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That struck the foremost man of all this world</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But for supporting robbers, shall we now</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And sell the mighty space of our large honours</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For so much trash as may be grasped thus?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than such a Roman.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 18.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It has come to this. In anticipating the effects -of Caesar’s rule, he had said he “had rather be a villager than to -repute himself a son of Rome” in the probable conditions. But his -attempt at remedy has resulted in a situation even more intolerable. -He would rather be a dog than such Romans as the confederates whom he -sought to put in Caesar’s place are disclosing themselves to be.</p> - -<p>It says much for his intrinsic force, that when all these things rise -up in judgment against him, he can still maintain to himself and others -the essential nobility of the deed that has brought about all the woe -and wrong; and without any faint-hearted penitence, continue to insist -that their doings must conform to his conception of what has been done: -that if that conception conflicts with the facts, it is the facts that -must give way. Yet on that very account he is quite impracticable and -perverse, as every enthusiast for abstract justice must be, who lets -himself be seduced into crime on the plea of duty, and yet shapes his -course as though he were not a criminal.</p> - -<p>Brutus has brought about an upturn of society by assassinating the one -man who could organize that society. His own motives were honourable, -though not so unimpeachable as he assumed, but they could not change -wrong into right and they could not be taken for granted in others than -himself. Now in the confusions that ensue he finds, to his horror, that -revolutions are not made with rose water, that even champions of virtue -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span> -have to reckon with base and dirty tools. So he condemns Pella for -bribery. Cassius judges the case better. He sees that Pella is an -efficient and useful officer of whose services he does not wish to be -deprived. He sees that in domestic broils the leaders must not be too -particular about their instruments, that, according to the old proverb, -you must go into the water to catch fish. But Brutus will not go into -the water. He thinks that an assassin should only have Galahads in his -troops. And sometimes his offended virtue becomes even a little absurd. -He is angry with Cassius for not giving him money, but listen to his speech:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">I did send to you</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For certain sums of gold, which you denied me:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For I can raise no money by vile means:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By any indirection: I did send</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To you for gold to pay my legions,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which you denied me: was that done like Cassius?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Should I have answer’d Caius Cassius so?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To lock such rascal counters from his friends,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dash him to pieces!</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 69.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>What does all this come to? That the superfine Brutus will not be -guilty of extortion, but that Cassius may: and then Brutus will demand -to share in the proceeds. All this distress and oppression are his -doing, or at least the consequences of his deed, and he would wash his -hands of these inevitable accompaniments. He would do this by using -Cassius as his <i>âme damnée</i> while yet interfering in Cassius’ -necessary measures with his moral rebukes.<a id="FNanchor_179" href="#Footnote_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span> -This of course is between Cassius and himself, and if Cassius chooses -to submit, it is his own concern. But Brutus plays the Infallible to -such purpose, that, what with his loftiness of view, his earnestness, -and his marvellous fortitude, he obtains an authority over Cassius’ -mind that has disastrous results. Though Cassius is both the better -and the elder soldier, he must needs intermeddle with Cassius’ plan of -campaign. Here, as so often, Shakespeare has no warrant for his most -significant touch. Plutarch had said that Cassius, against his will, -was overruled by Brutus to hazard their fortunes in a single battle. -But that was afterwards, at Philippi. There is no hint that Cassius -was opposed to the movement from Sardis to Philippi, and it is on this -invented circumstance that Shakespeare lays most stress. In the play -Brutus, in the teeth of his fellow generals’ disapproval, insists on -their leaving their vantage ground on the hills, chiefly as it appears -because he dislikes the impositions they are compelled to lay on the -people round about:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">They have grudged us contribution;</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 206.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and because he has a vague belief that this is -the nick of time;</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">There is a tide in the affairs of men,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Omitted, all the voyage of their lives</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is bound in shallows and in miseries.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> ii. 218.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span> -These are the arguments which he opposes to Cassius’ skilled strategy. -He will not even listen to Cassius’ rejoinder:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cassius.</i><span class="ws5">Hear me, good brother—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Brutus.</i> Under your pardon:</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 212.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and he runs on. The spiritual dictator carries his -point, as he always does, and as here especially he is bound to do, -when their recent trial of strength has ratified his powers afresh. -Cassius is hypnotised into compliance, “Then, with your will, go on.” -But Brutus is wrong. He is doing the very thing that the Triumvirs -would have him do and dare not hope he will do. Octavius, when he hears -of the movement, exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Now, Antony, our hopes are answered:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You said the enemy would not come down,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But keep the hills and upper regions:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It proves not so.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The adoption of Brutus’ plan, which he secured in -part through the advantage he had gained in the quarrel, leads directly -to the final catastrophe.</p> - -<p>Here then we have the gist of the whole story. The tribulations of -Brutus that ensue on his grand mistake, the wreck of his dearest -affections, the butchery at Rome, the oppression of the provinces, -the appalling discovery that his party is animated by selfish greed -and not by righteous zeal, and that Caesar bore away the palm in -character as well as ability; the dauntless resolution with which -despite his vibrant sensibility he bears up against the rudest blows; -the sustaining consciousness that he himself acted for the best, and -the pathetic imagination even now that the rest must live up to his -standard; the warrant this gives him to complete the outward ruin of -the cause that already is rotten within—all this is brought home to us -in a passage of little more than two hundred lines. It is not merely a -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span> -masterpiece in characterisation; it at once garners the harvest of the -past and sows the seeds of the future. Nor is the execution inferior -to the conception; the passion of the verse, the fluctuation of the -dialogue, provide the fit medium for the pregnancy and wealth of the -matter.<a id="FNanchor_180" href="#Footnote_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a></p> - -<p>But the scene is not yet at an end. Even now we are not for a moment -allowed to forget Brutus, the considerate gentleman and cultured -student, in Brutus, the political pedant and the incompetent commander. -We have a momentary glimpse of him with Lucius, unassuming and gentle, -claiming the indulgence, consulting the comfort, tending the needs of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span> -his slave. This moving little passage is, as we have seen, entirely -due to Shakespeare, and it seems to be introduced for the sake partly -of the dramatic contrast with the prevailing trouble and gloom, partly -of the indication it gives that Brutus is still unchanged at heart. In -the stress of his suffering he may be irritable and overbearing with -Cassius, but he has more than a woman’s tenderness for the boy.</p> - -<p>His habit of reading at night is mentioned by Plutarch, but when -we consider the circumstances, has it not a deeper meaning here? -His love for Portia we know, but after his brief references to her -death, he seems to banish her from his mind, and never, not even -in his dying words, does her name cross his lips again. Is this an -inadvertence on Shakespeare’s part, or an omission due to the kinship -of <i>Julius Caesar</i> with the Chronicle History? Is it not rather -that he conceives Brutus as one of those who are so bound up in their -affections that they fear to face a thought of their bereavement lest -they should utterly collapse? Is it fanciful to interpret that search -for his book with the leaf turned down, in the light of Macaulay’s -confession on the death of his sister: “Literature has saved my life -and my reason; even now I dare not in the intervals of business remain -alone a minute without a book”?</p> - -<p>But this little interlude, which sets Brutus before us with all his -winsome and pathetic charm, leads back to the leading <i>motif</i>, the -destruction he has brought on himself by his own error, though he may -face it like a man and keep the beauty of his soul unsoiled. Here, too, -Plutarch points the way, but Shakespeare advances further in it. What -he found was the following bit of hearsay: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span></p> - -<p class="blockquot">One night very late (when all the campe tooke -quiet rest) as he was in his tent with a little light, thinking of -waighty matters, he thought he heard one come in to him, and casting -his eye towards the doore of his tent, that he saw a wonderfull -straunge and monstruous shape of a body comming towards him, and sayd -never a word. So Brutus boldly asked what he was, a god, or a man, and -what cause brought him thither. The spirit aunswered him, “I am thy -evill spirit, Brutus, and thou shalt see me by the citie of Philippes.” -Brutus beeing no otherwise affrayd, replyed again unto it: “Well, then, -I shall see thee agayne.” The spirit presently vanished away: and -Brutus called his men unto him, who tolde him that they heard no noyse, -nor sawe any thinge at all.</p> - -<p>Shakespeare’s Brutus is not at the outset so unconcerned as Plutarch’s. -Instead of “being no otherwise affrayd,” his blood runs cold and his -hair “stares.” On the other hand, he is free from the perturbation that -seizes Plutarch’s Brutus when he reflects, and that drives him to tell -his experience to Cassius, who “did somewhat comfort and quiet him.” -The Brutus of the play breathes no word of the visitation, though it -is repeated at Philippi, till a few minutes before his death, and then -in all composure as a proof that the end is near, not as a horror from -which he seeks deliverance. He needs not the support of another, and -even in the moment of physical panic he has moral courage enough: he -summons up his resolution, and when he has “taken heart” the spectre -vanishes. This means, too, that it has a closer connection with his -nerves, with his subjective fears and misgivings, than the “monstruous -shape” in Plutarch, and similarly, though he alleges that Lucius and -his attendants have cried out in their sleep, they are unaware of any -feeling or cause of fright. And the significance of this is marked -by the greatest change of all. Shakespeare gives a personality to -Plutarch’s nameless phantom: it is individualised as the ghost of -Caesar, and thus Caesar’s spirit has become Brutus’ evil genius, as -Brutus had been Caesar’s angel. The symbolism explains itself, but is -saved from the tameness of allegory by the superstitious dread with -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span> -which it is enwrapped. The regrets and forebodings of Brutus appear -before him in outward form. All day the mischievousness of his -intervention has been present to his mind: now his accusing thoughts -take shape in the vision of his murdered friend, and his vague -presentiments of retribution at Philippi leap to consciousness in its -prophetic words. But all this does not abash his soul or shake his -purpose. He only hastens the morning march.</p> - -<p>Thus he moves to his doom, and never was he so great. He is stripped -of all adventitious aids. His private affections are wrecked, and the -thought of his wife has become a torture. Facts have given the lie to -his belief that his country has chosen him as her champion. He can no -longer cherish the dream that his course has been of benefit to the -Roman world. He even seems at last to recognise his own guilt, for -not only does he admit the might of Caesar’s spirit in the suicide of -Cassius, but when his own turn comes, his dying words sound like a -proffer of expiation:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Caesar, now be still;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I kill’d not thee with half so good a will.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> v. 50.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The philosophic harness in which he felt so -secure, he has already found useless in the hour of need, and fit only -to be cast aside. So he stands naked to the blows of fate, bereft of -his love, his illusions, his self-confidence, his creed. He has to rely -solely on himself, on his own nature and his own character. Moreover -his nature, in so far as it means temperament, is too delicate and fine -for the rough practical demands on it. Suspense is intolerable to his -sensitive and eager soul. Ere the battle begins, he can hardly endure -the uncertainty:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">O that a man might know</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The end of this day’s business ere it come!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But it sufficeth that the day will end,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And then the end is known.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 123.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span> -The patience in which he tries to school himself cannot protect him -from a last blunder. He gives the word too soon and his impetuosity -ruins all. No doubt he is not so unsuccessful as Titinius thinks, but -he has committed the unpardonable fault of fighting for his own hand -without considering his partner. Thus his imprudence gives the final -blow to the cause that all through he has thwarted and ennobled.</p> - -<p>But in inward and essential matters his character victoriously stands -the test, and meets all the calls that are made upon it. Even when his -life-failure stares him in the face, he does not allow it a wider scope -than its due, or let it disturb his faith in the purity of his motives.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus, I:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Brutus, my country’s friend.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iv. 7.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Even now he can see himself aright, and be sure of -the truth of his patriotism. Even now he can prefer the glory of this -“losing day” to the “vile conquest” of such men as the authors of the -proscription. And he is not without more personal consolations. When -none of his friends will consent to kill him, their very refusal, since -it springs from love, fills his soul with triumph. It is characteristic -that this satisfaction to his private affections ranks with him as -supreme at the end of all.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Countrymen,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My heart doth joy that yet in all my life</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I found no man but he was true to me.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> v. 33.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">We need not bemoan his fate: he is happy in it: -indeed there is nothing that he could live for in the world of the -Triumvirs, and this is what he himself desires:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">My bones would rest,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That have but labour’d to attain this hour.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> v. 41.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>At the side of this rare and lofty nature, we see the kindred figure of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span> -his wife, similar in her noble traits, similar in her experiences, -the true mate of his soul. Their relations are sketched in the merest -outline, or, to be more correct, are implied rather than sketched. Only -in some eighty lines of one scene do we see them together and hear them -exchange words. In only one other scene does Portia appear, when we -witness her tremors on the morning of the assassination. And in a third -we hear of her death in detached notices, which, with the comments they -call forth, barely amount to twenty lines. Yet the impression made -is indelible and overpowering, not only of the lady’s own character, -but of the perfect union in which she and Brutus lived. There is no -obtrusion of their love: it does not exhale in direct professions. -On her part, the claim to share his troubles, the solicitude for his -success, the distraction because of his absence and danger; on his, -the acceptance of her claim, two brief outbursts of adoration—and his -reticence at her death. For he is not the man to wear his heart on his -sleeve; and the more his feelings are stirred the less inclined is he -to prate of them. Just as after slaying Caesar though “he loved him -well,” he never alludes to the anguish he must have endured, so after -his “Farewell, Portia,” he turns to the claims of life (“Well, to our -work alive!”), and never even in soliloquy refers to her again. Even -in the first pang of bereavement, the one hint of grief it can extort -from him is the curt retort, “No man bears sorrow better.” We might -fail to recognise all that it meant for him if we did not see his -misery reflected in the sympathy and consternation of other men; in the -hesitating reluctance of Messala, to break, as he thinks, the news; in -the dismay of Cassius and his wonder at Brutus’ self-control. Cassius -indeed cannot but recur to it despite the prohibition, “Speak no more -of her.” When they have sat down to business his thoughts hark back to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span> -the great loss: “Portia, art thou gone?” “No more, I pray you,” repeats -Brutus, who cannot brook the mention of her, and he plunges into the -business of the hour.</p> - -<p>And this woman, of whom Brutus felt that he was unworthy, and prayed -to be made worthy, noble and devoted as himself, is involved too in -his misfortunes. On her also a greater load is laid than she can bear. -He is drawn by his political, and she by her domestic ideal into a -position that overstrains the strength of each. She demands, as in -Plutarch, though perhaps with father less of the dignity of the Roman -matron and rather more of the yearning of the affectionate wife, to -share in her husband’s secrets. She does this from no curiosity, -intrusiveness or jealousy, but from her unbounded love and her exalted -conception of the marriage tie. And she is confident that she can bear -her part in her husband’s cares.</p> - -<p>She has a great spirit, but it is lodged in a fragile and nervous -frame. Does she make her words good? She gains her point, but her -success is almost too much for her. She can endure pain but not -suspense: like Brutus she is martyr to her sense of what is right. We -presently find her all but ruining the conspiracy by her uncontrollable -agitation. The scene where she waits in the street serves the function -in the main story of heightening our excitement by means of hers, in -expectation of what will presently be enacted at the Capitol; but it is -even more important for the light it throws on her character. She may -well confess: “I have a man’s heart, but a woman’s might.” Her feverish -anxiety quite overmasters her throughout, and makes her do and say -things which do not disclose the plot only because the bystanders are -faithful or unobservant. She sends the boy to the senate house without -telling him his errand. She meaningly bids him</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">take good note</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What Caesar doth, what suitors press about him.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iv. 15.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span> -She interrupts herself with the fancy that the revolt has begun. She -plies the soothsayer with suspicious questions that culminate in the -most indiscreet one on his wish to help Caesar:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Why, know’st thou any harm’s intended towards him?</div> - <div class="verse indent35">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iv. 31.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Then she almost commits herself, and has to -extemporise a subterfuge, before, unable to hold out any longer, she -retires on the point of fainting, though even now her love gives her -strength to send a cheering message to her lord.</p> - -<p>For her as for Brutus the burden of a duty, which she assumes by her -own choice, but which one of her nature must assume, is too heavy. And -in the after consequences, for which she is not directly responsible, -but which none the less flow from the deed that she has encouraged and -approved, it is the same inability to bear suspense, along with her -craving for her husband’s presence and success, that drives her through -madness to death.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VI<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE REMAINING CHARACTERS</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>Far beneath this pair are the other conspirators who rise up against -the supremacy of Caesar.</p> - -<p>Among these lower natures, Cassius is undoubtedly the most imposing and -most interesting.</p> - -<p>The main lines of his character are given in Caesar’s masterly -delineation, which follows Plutarch in regard to his spareness, but in -the other particulars freely elaborates the impression that Plutarch’s -whole narrative produces.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He thinks too much: such men are dangerous....</div> - <div class="verse indent24">He reads much;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He is a great observer, and he looks</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That could be moved to smile at anything.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Such men as he be never at heart’s ease</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And therefore are they very dangerous.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 194 and 201.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Lean, gaunt, hungry, disinclined to sports -and revelry, spending his time in reading, observation, and -reflection—these are the first traits that we notice in him. He too, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span> -like Brutus, has learned the lessons of philosophy, and he finds in -it the rule of life. He chides his friend for seeming to fail in the -practice of it:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Of your philosophy you make no use,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If you give place to accidental evils.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 145.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And even when he admits and admires Brutus’ self-mastery, he attributes -it to nature, and claims as good a philosophic discipline for himself. -There is, however, a difference between them even in this point. -Brutus is a Platonist with a Stoic tinge; Cassius is an Epicurean. -That strikes us at first as strange, that the theory which identified -pleasure with virtue should be the creed of this splenetic solitary: -but it is quite in character. Epicureanism appealed to some of the -noblest minds of Rome, not as a cult of enjoyment, but as a doctrine -that freed them from the bonds of superstition and the degrading fear -of death. This was the spirit of Lucretius, the poet of the sect:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent28">Artis</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo:</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and one grand <i>motif</i> of his poem is the -thought that this death, the dread of which makes the meanness of life, -is the end of all consciousness, a refuge rather than an evil: “What -ails thee so, O mortal, to let thyself loose in too feeble grievings? -Why weep and wail at death?... Why not rather make an end of life and -labour?” And these are the reasons that Cassius is an Epicurean. At the -end, when his philosophy breaks down, he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You know that I held Epicurus strong</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And his opinion: now I change my mind,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And partly credit things that do presage.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 77.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He has hitherto discredited them. And we seem to -hear Lucretius in his noble utterance:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Can be retentive to the strength of spirit:</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span> - <div class="verse indent0">But life, being weary of these worldly bars,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Never lacks power to dismiss itself.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 93.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Free from all superstitious scruples and all -thought of superhuman interference in the affairs of men, he stands out -bold and self-reliant, confiding in his own powers, his own will, his -own management:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Men at some time are masters of their fates:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But in ourselves, that we are underlings.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 139.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And the same attitude of mind implies that he -is rid of all illusions. He is not deceived by shows. He looks quite -through the deeds of men. He is not taken in by Casca’s affectation -of rudeness. He is not misled by Antony’s apparent frivolity. He is -not even dazzled by the glamour of Brutus’ virtue, but notes its weak -side and does not hesitate to play on it. Still less does Caesar’s -prestige subdue his criticism. On the contrary, with malicious contempt -he recalls his want of endurance in swimming and the complaints of -his sick-bed, and he keenly notes his superstitious lapses. He seldom -smiles and when he does it is in scorn. We only once hear of his -laughing. It is at the interposition of the poet, which rouses Brutus -to indignation; but the presumptuous absurdity of it tickles Cassius’ -sardonic humour.</p> - -<p>For there is no doubt that he takes pleasure in detecting the -weaknesses of his fellows. He has obvious relish in the thought that -if he were Brutus he would not be thus cajoled, and he finds food for -satisfaction in Caesar’s merely physical defects. Yet there is as -little of self-complacency as of hero-worship in the man. He turns his -remorseless scrutiny on his own nature and his own cause, and neither -maintains that the one is noble or the other honourable, nor denies the -personal alloy in his motives. This is the purport of that strange -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span> -soliloquy that at first sight seems to place Cassius in the ranks of -Shakespeare’s villains along with his Iagos and Richards, rather than -of the mixed characters, compact of good and evil, to whom nevertheless -we feel that he is akin.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Well, Brutus, thou art noble: yet, I see,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy honourable metal may be wrought</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From that it is disposed: therefore it is meet</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That noble minds keep ever with their likes:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For who so firm that cannot be seduced?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Caesar doth bear me hard: but he loves Brutus:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He should not humour me.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 312.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It frequently happens that cynics view themselves -as well as others in their meaner aspects. Probably Cassius is making -the worst of his own case and is indulging that vein of self-mockery -and scorn that Caesar observed in him.<a id="FNanchor_181" href="#Footnote_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> -But at any rate the lurking sense of unworthiness in himself and his -purpose will be apt to increase in such a man his natural impatience of -alleged superiority in his fellows. He is jealous of excellence, seeks -to minimise it and will not tolerate it. It is on this characteristic -that Shakespeare lays stress. Plutarch reports the saying “that -Brutus could evill away with the tyrannie and that Cassius hated the -tyranne, making many complayntes for the injuries he had done him”; -and instances Caesar’s appropriation of some lions that Cassius had -intended for the sports, as well as the affair of the city praetorship. -But in the play these specific grievances are almost effaced in the -vague statement, “Caesar doth bear me hard”; which implies little more -than general ill-will. It is now resentment of pre-eminence that makes -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span> -Cassius a malcontent. Caesar finds him “very dangerous” just because -of his grudge at greatness; and his own avowal that he “would as lief -not be as live to be in awe” of a thing like himself, merely puts a -fairer colour on the same unamiable trait. He may represent republican -liberty and equality, at least in the aristocratic acceptation, but -it is on their less admirable side. His disposition is to level down, -by repudiating the leader, not to level up, by learning from him. In -the final results this would mean the triumph of the second best, a -dull and uniform mediocrity in art, thought and politics, unbroken -by the predominance of the man of genius and king of men. And it may -be feared that this ideal, translated into the terms of democracy, -is too frequent in our modern communities. But true freedom is not -incompatible with the most loyal acknowledgment of the master-mind; -witness the utterance of Browning’s Pisan republican:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">The mass remains—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Keep but the model safe, new men will rise</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To take its mould.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Yet notwithstanding this taint of enviousness and spite, Cassius is -far from being a despicable or even an unattractive character. He may -play the Devil’s Advocate in regard to individuals, but he is capable -of a high enthusiasm for his cause, such as it is. We must share his -calenture of excitement, as he strides about the streets in the tempest -that fills Casca with superstitious dread and Cicero with discomfort -at the nasty weather. His republicanism may be a narrow creed, but at -least he is willing to be a martyr to it; when he hears that Caesar is -to wear the crown, his resolution is prompt and Roman-like:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I know where I will wear this dagger then:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 89.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>And surely at the moment of achievement, whatever was mean and sordid -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span> -in the man is consumed in his prophetic rapture that fires the soul of -Brutus and prolongs itself in his response.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cassius.</i><span class="ws3">How many ages hence</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall this our lofty scene be acted over</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In states unborn and accents yet unknown!</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That now on Pompey’s basis lies along</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No worthier than the dust!<a id="FNanchor_182" href="#Footnote_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 111.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>And even to individuals if they stand the test of his mordant -criticism, he can pay homage and admiration. The perception that Brutus -may be worked upon is the toll he pays to his self-love, but, that -settled, he can feel deep reverence and affection for Brutus’ more -ideal virtue. Perhaps the best instance of it is the scene of their -dispute. Brutus, as we have seen, is practically, if not theoretically, -in the wrong, and certainly he is much the more violent and bitter; but -Cassius submits to receive his forgiveness and to welcome his assurance -that he will bear with him in future. This implies no little deference -and magnanimity in one who so ill brooks a secondary role. But he does -give the lead to Brutus, and in all things, even against his better -judgment, yields him the primacy. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span></p> - -<p>And then it is impossible not to respect his thorough efficiency. In -whatsoever concerns the management of affairs and of men, he knows the -right thing to do, and, when left to himself, he does it. He sees how -needful Brutus is to the cause and gains him—gains him, in part by a -trickery, which Shakespeare without historical warrant ascribes to him; -but the trickery succeeds because he has gauged Brutus’ nature aright. -He takes the correct measure of the danger from Antony, of his love for -Caesar and his talents, which Brutus so contemptuously underrates. So, -too, after the assassination, when Brutus says,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I know that we shall have him well to friend;</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">he answers,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I wish we may: but yet I have a mind</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That fears him much; and my misgiving still</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Falls shrewdly to the purpose.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 144.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Brutus seeks to win Antony with general -considerations of right and justice, Cassius employs a more effective -argument:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Your voice shall be as strong as any man’s</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the disposing of new dignities.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 177.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He altogether disapproves of the permission -granted to Antony to pronounce the funeral oration. He grasps the -situation when the civil war breaks out much better than Brutus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">In such a time as this it is not meet</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That every nice offence should bear his comment.</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 7.)</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His plans of the campaign are better, and he has a -much better notion of conducting the battle.</p> - -<p>All such shrewd sagacity is entitled to our respect. Yet even in this -department Cassius is outdone by the unpractical Brutus, so soon as -higher moral qualities are required, and the wisdom of the fox yields -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span> -to the wisdom of the man. We have seen that however passionate and -wrong-headed Brutus may be in their contention, he has too much sense -of the becoming to wrangle in public, as Cassius begins to do. Another -more conspicuous example is furnished by the way in which they bear -anxiety. Shakespeare found an illustration of this in Plutarch, which -he has merely dramatised.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">When Caesar came out of his litter: Popilius -Laena, that had talked before with Brutus and Cassius, and had prayed -the goddes they might bring this enterprise to passe, went into Caesar -and kept him a long time with a talke. Caesar gave good eare unto him. -Wherefore the conspirators (if so they should be called) not hearing -what he sayd to Caesar, but conjecturing by that he had told them a -little before, that his talke was none other but the verie discoverie -of their conspiracie: they were affrayed everie man of them, and one -looking in an others face, it was easie to see that they all were of a -minde, that it was no tarying for them till they were apprehended, but -rather that they should kill them selves with their owne handes. And -when Cassius and certaine other clapped their handes on their swordes -under their gownes to draw them: Brutus marking the countenaunce and -gesture of Laena, and considering that he did use him selfe rather like -an humble and earnest suter, then like an accuser: he sayd nothing to -his companions (bicause there were amongest them that were not of the -conspiracie) but with a pleasaunt countenaunce encouraged Cassius. And -immediatlie after, Laena went from Caesar, and kissed his hande; which -shewed plainlie that it was for some matter concerning him selfe, that -he had held him so long in talke.</p> - -<p>Shakespeare, by rejecting the reason for the dumb show, is able to -present this scene in dialogue, and thus bring out the contrast more -vividly. Cassius believes the worst, loses his head, now hurries on -Casca, now prepares for suicide. But Brutus, the disinterested man, is -less swayed by personal hopes and fears, keeps his composure, urges his -friend to be constant, and can calmly judge of the situation. It is -the same defect of endurance that brings about Cassius’ death. Really -things are shaping well for them, but he misconstrues the signs just as -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span> -he has misconstrued the words of Lena, and kills himself owing to a -mistake; as Messala points out:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 66.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>This want of inward strength explains the ascendancy which Brutus with -his more dutiful and therefore more steadfast nature exercises over -him, though Cassius is in many ways the more capable man of the two. -They both have schooled themselves in the discipline of fortitude, -Brutus in Stoic renunciation, Cassius in Epicurean independence; but -in the great crises where nature asserts herself, Brutus is strong and -Cassius is weak. And as often happens with men, in the supreme trial -their professed creeds no longer satisfy them, and they consciously -abandon them. But while Cassius in his evil fortune falls back on the -superstitions<a id="FNanchor_183" href="#Footnote_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> -which he had ridiculed Caesar for adopting on his good fortune, Brutus -falls back on his feeling of moral dignity, and gives himself the death -which theoretically he disapproves.</p> - -<p>Yet, when all is said and done, what a fine figure Cassius is, and how -much both of love and respect he can inspire. Plutarch’s story of his -death already bears witness to this, but Shakespeare with a few deeper -strokes marks his own esteem.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Cassius thinking in deede that Titinius was taken -of the enemies, he then spake these wordes: “Desiring too much to live, -I have lived to see one of my best frendes taken, for my sake, before -my face.” After that, he gote into a tent where no bodie was, and tooke -Pyndarus with him, one of his freed bondmen, whom he reserved ever for -suche a pinche, since the cursed battell of the Parthians, when Crassus -was slaine, though he notwithstanding scaped from that overthrow; but -then casting his cloke over his head, and holding out his bare neck -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span> -unto Pindarus, he gave him his head to be striken of. So the head was -found severed from the bodie: but after that time Pindarus was never -seene more. Whereupon some tooke occasion to say that he had slaine -his master without his commaundement. By and by they knew the horsemen -that came towards them, and might see Titinius crowned with a garland -of triumphe, who came before with great speede unto Cassius. But when -he perceived by the cries and teares of his frends which tormented them -selves the misfortune that had chaunced to his Captaine Cassius by -mistaking; he drew out his sword, cursing him selfe a thousand times -that he had taried so long, and so slue him selfe presentlie in the -fielde. Brutus in the meane time came forward still, and understoode -also that Cassius had bene over throwen: but he knew nothing of his -death, till he came verie neere to his campe. So when he was come -thither, after he had lamented the death of Cassius, calling him the -last of all the Romanes, being impossible that Rome should ever breede -againe so noble and valliant man as he: he caused his bodie to be -buried, and sent it to the citie of Thassos, fearing least his funerals -within the campe should cause great disorder.</p> - -<p>In the play Pindarus is not yet enfranchised, and though he gains his -freedom by the fatal stroke, would rather remain a slave than return to -his native wilds at such a price. Titinius places his garland on the -dead man’s brow, and in fond regret slays himself, not with his own but -with Cassius’ sword. Brutus, with hardly a verbal change, repeats the -eulogy that Plutarch puts in his mouth,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The last of all the Romans, fare thee well!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It is impossible that ever Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Should breed thy fellow.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But he does not stop here. Flushed with his -initial success, he expects to triumph and to live, and the years to -come seem darkened with grief for his “brother”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Friends, I owe more tears</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To this dead man than you shall see me pay.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 99.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>The minor conspirators, with the adherents of the cause and the humbler -dependents, are of course sketched very slightly, as proportion -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span> -requires, but they have all something to individualise them in gait -or pose. Even in the crowded final act, where, as in the chronicle -histories which Shakespeare was leaving behind him, a number of persons -are introduced with whom we are almost or entirely unacquainted, there -is no monotony in the subordinate figures. They are distinguished from -or contrasted with each other in their circumstances, sentiments or -fate. Thus Pindarus and Strato are both described as servants, they are -both attached to their masters, they are both reluctantly compelled -to assist in their masters’ death. Should we have thought it possible -to differentiate them in the compass of the score or so of lines at -the dramatist’s disposal? But Cassius’ slave, who, since his capture, -has been kept like a dog to do whatever his owner might bid him, will -not abide the issue and uses his new liberty to flee beyond the Roman -world. Strato, to whom Brutus characteristically turns because he -is “a fellow of a good respect” with “some snatch of honour” in his -life, claims Brutus’ hand like an equal before he will hold the sword, -confronts the victors with praise of the dead, hints to Messala that -Brutus’ course is the one to follow, and has too much self-respect -to accept employment with Octavius till Messala “prefers,” that is, -recommends him.</p> - -<p>So too with the three captains, all on the losing side, all devoted to -their leaders. Titinius, who seems to feel that his love for Cassius -exceeds that of Brutus</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">(Brutus, come apace,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And see how I regarded Caius Cassius)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">will not outlive him. Lucilius is quite ready to -die for his general, but spared by the generosity of Antony, survives -to exult that Brutus has fulfilled his prophecy and been “like -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span> -himself.” Messala, who brought word of Portia’s death, must now tell -the same tale of Cassius with the same keen sympathy for Brutus’ grief; -and though Strato seems to censure him for consenting to live “in -bondage,” he shows no bondman’s mind when he grounds his preferment -of Strato to Octavius on the fact of Strato’s having done “the latest -service to my master.”</p> - -<p>More prominent, but still in the background, are the subaltern members -of the faction in Rome. Ligarius, the best of them, with his fiery -enthusiasm and personal fealty to Brutus, is an excellent counterpart -to the ingratiating and plausible Decius, the least erected spirit of -the group. Between them comes Casca, the only one who may claim a word -or two of comment, partly because he is sketched in some detail, partly -because he is practically an original creation. Plutarch has only two -particulars about him, the one that he was the first to strike Caesar -and struck him from behind; the other that when Caesar cried out and -gripped his hand, he shouted to his brother in Greek. Shakespeare, as -we have seen, summarily rejects his acquaintance with Greek, but the -stab in the back sets his fancy to work, and he constructs for him a -character and life-history to match.</p> - -<p>Casca is a man who shares with Cassius the jealousy of greatness—“the -envious Casca,” Antony described him—but is vastly inferior to -Cassius in consistency and manhood. He seems to be one of those alert, -precocious natures, clever at the uptake in their youth and full of a -promise that is not always fulfilled: Brutus recalls that “he was quick -mettle when we went to school” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 300). -Such sprightly youngsters, when they fail, often do so from a certain lack -of moral fibre. And so with Casca. He appears before us at first as the -most obsequious henchman of Caesar. When Caesar calls for Calpurnia, Casca -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span> -is at his elbow: “Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.” When Caesar, hearing -the soothsayer’s shout, cries, “Ha! who calls?” Casca is again -ready: “Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!” Cassius would -never have condescended to that. For Casca resents the supremacy of -Caesar as much as the proudest aristocrat of them all: he is only -waiting an opportunity to throw off the mask. But meanwhile in his -angry bitterness with himself and others he affects a cross-grained -bluntness of speech, “puts on a tardy form,” as Cassius says, plays the -satirist and misanthrope, as many others conscious of double dealing -have done, and treats friend and foe with caustic brutality. But it -is characteristic that he is panic-stricken with the terrors of the -tempestuous night, which he ekes out with superstitious fancies. It -illustrates his want both of inward robustness and of enlightened -culture. We remember that Cicero’s remark in Greek was Greek to him, -and that Greek was as much the language of rationalists then, as was -French of the eighteenth century <i>Philosophes</i>. Nor is it less -characteristic that even at the assassination he apparently does not -dare to face his victim. Antony describes his procedure</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Damned Casca, like a cur, behind</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Struck Caesar on the neck.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 43.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Yet even Casca is not without redeeming qualities. -His humour, in the account he gives of the coronation fiasco, has an -undeniable flavour: its very tartness, as Cassius says, is a “sauce to -his good wit.” And there is a touch of nobility in his avowal:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You speak to Casca, and to such a man</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold, my hand:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be factious for redress of all these griefs,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And I will set this foot of mine as far</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As who goes farthest.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 116.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>But among those little vignettes, that of Cicero is decidedly the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span> -masterpiece. For this Shakespeare got no assistance from any of the -three Lives on which he drew for the rest of the play. Indeed the -one little hint they contained he did not see fit to adopt. In the -<i>Marcus Brutus</i> Plutarch says of the conspirators:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">For this cause they durst not acquaint Cicero with -their conspiracie, although he was a man whome they loved dearlie and -trusted best: for they were affrayed that he being a coward by nature, -and age also having increased his feare, he would quite turne and alter -all their purpose.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">In the play their reason for leaving him out -is very different:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He will never follow anything</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That other men begin.</div> - <div class="verse indent17">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 151.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It seems to me, however, highly probable that -Shakespeare had read the <i>Life of Cicero</i> and obtained his -general impression from it, though he invents the particular traits. -The irritable vanity and self-consciousness of the man, which Brutus’ -objection implies, are, for example, prominent features in Plutarch’s -portrait. So too is his aversion for Caesar and Caesarism, which makes -him view the offer of the crown, abortive though it has been, as a -personal offence: Brutus observes that he</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As we have seen him in the Capitol</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Being cross’d in conference with some senators.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 186.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But he is very cautious, and even when venting -his vexation in one of those biting gibes to which, by Plutarch’s -statement, he was too prone, he takes care to veil it in the safe -obscurity of a foreign language. “He spoke Greek ... but those -that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads” -(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 282). This has sometimes been -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span> -misinterpreted. Shakespeare has been taxed with the absurdity of making -Cicero deliver a Greek speech in a popular assemblage. Surely he does -nothing of the kind. It is a sally that he intends for his friends, and -he takes the fit means for keeping it to them; much as St. John might -talk French, if he wished to be intelligible only to those who had made -the Grand Tour and so were in a manner of his own set. Plutarch lays -stress on his familiarity with Greek, as also on his study of the Greek -Philosophers. This may have left some trace in the description of his -bearing in contrast to Casca’s, when they meet in the storm. Cool and -sceptical, he cannot guess the cause of Casca’s alarm. Even when the -horrors of earthquake, wind and lightning, are described in detail, he -asks unmoved:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Why, saw you anything more wonderful?</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And after the enumeration of the portents, -he critically replies:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But men may construe things after their fashion,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 32.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And then after a passing reference<a id="FNanchor_184" href="#Footnote_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> -to current affairs, he bids Casca good night. To him the moral of the -whole tempest is: “This disturbed sky is not to walk in.” Opinions may -differ as to this being the real Cicero; none will deny that it is a -living type.</p> - -<p>Apart from the main group of personages, more or less antagonistic to -Caesar, stands the brilliant figure of his friend and avenger, the -eloquent Mark Antony. Shakespeare conceives him as a man of genius and -feeling but not of principle, resourceful and daring, ambitious of -honour and power, but unscrupulous in his methods and a voluptuary in -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span> -his life. Caesar tells him that he is “fond of plays” and “revels long -o’ nights.” Cassius calls him a “masker and a reveller.” Brutus says -that he is given “to sports, to wildness and much company.”</p> - -<p>He makes his first appearance as the tool of Caesar. With Asiatic -flattery, as though in the eastern formula, to hear were to obey, he -tells his master:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When Caesar says “do this,” it is perform’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 10.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He perceives his unspoken desires, his innermost -wishes, and offers him the crown. It is no wonder that Brutus should -regard him but as a “limb of Caesar,” or that Trebonius, considering -him a mere time-server, should prophesy that he will “live and laugh” -hereafter at Caesar’s death. But they are wrong. They do not recognise -either the genuineness of the affection that underlies his ingratiating -ways, or the real genius that underlies his frivolity. Here, as -everywhere, Cassius’ estimate is the correct one. He fears Antony’s -“ingrafted love” for Caesar, and predicts that they will find in him “a -shrewd contriver.” Of the love indeed there can be no question. It is -proved not only by his public utterances, which might be factitious, -nor by his deeds, which might serve his private purposes, but by his -words, when he is alone with his patron’s corpse.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou art the ruins of the noblest man</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That ever lived in the tide of times.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 254.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is worth noting the grounds that Antony in this solitary -outburst alleges for his love of Caesar. He is moved not by gratitude for -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span> -favours past or the expectation of favours to come, but solely by the -supreme nobility of the dead. To the claims of nobility, in truth, -Antony is always responsive and he is ready to acknowledge it in -Brutus too. “This was the noblest Roman of them all”; so he begins his -heartfelt tribute to his vanquished foe. This generous sympathetic -strain in his nature is one of the things that make him dangerous. He -is far from acting a part in his laments for Caesar. He feels the grief -that he proclaims and the greatness he extols. His emotions are easily -stirred, especially by worthy objects, and he has only to give them -free rein to impress other people.</p> - -<p>But along with this he has a subtle, scheming intellect; he is as much -a man of policy as a man of sentiment. After the flight of Brutus -and Cassius, we see him planning how he and his colleagues may cut -down Caesar’s bequests, of which in his speech he had made so much; -how he may shift some of the odium of his proceedings on to Lepidus’ -back; how they may best arrange to meet the opposition. This mixture -of feeling and diplomacy is especially shown in his words and deeds -after the assassination. He does not shrink from any base compliance. -His servant appears before the murderers, and at his bidding “kneels,” -“falls down,” lies “prostrate” in token of submission, promising that -his master will follow Brutus’ fortunes. But even here it is on the -understanding that Caesar’s death shall be justified; and when he -himself enters he gives his love and grief free scope.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I know not, gentlemen, what you intend,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who else must be let blood, who else is rank:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If I myself, there is no hour so fit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As Caesar’s death’s hour, nor no instrument</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span> - <div class="verse indent0">With the most noble blood of all this world.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fulfil your pleasure. Live a thousand years,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I shall not find myself so apt to die;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No place will please me so, no mean of death,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As here by Caesar, and by you cut off,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The choice and master spirits of this age.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 148.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">What could be more loyal on the one hand, or more -discreet on the other? For, as he is well aware, if he comes to terms -with the assassins at all, he is liable to an alternative accusation. -Either his love for Caesar was genuine, and then his reconciliation -with the murderers implies craven fear; or, if he can freely take their -part, his previous homage to Caesar was mere pretence. As he himself says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">My credit now stands on such slippery ground,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That one of two bad ways you must conceit me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Either a coward or a flatterer.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 191.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And what more dexterous course could he adopt -than to assert his devotion to Caesar without restraint, with -undiminished emphasis: and at the same time to profess his respect for -the conspirators, “the choice and master spirits of this age,” and his -readiness to join them <i>if</i> they prove that Caesar deserved to -die. This honourable and reasonable attitude, which honour and reason -would in reality prescribe, must especially impress Brutus, to whom -Antony is careful chiefly to address himself. He enters a doubtful -suppliant; at the end of the scene not only are his life and credit -safe, but he has won from Brutus’ magnanimity the means to overthrow him.</p> - -<p>It is characteristic of Antony that he has no scruple about using the -vantage ground he has thus acquired. He immediately determines to -employ the liberty of speech accorded him against the men who have -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span> -granted it. To Octavius’ servant, who enters ere he has well ended his -soliloquy, he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou shalt not back till I have borne this corse</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Into the market place: there shall I try,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In my oration, how the people take</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The cruel issue of these bloody men.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 291.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He does not hesitate, though this course will -involve in ruin those who have generously spared him and given him the -weapons against themselves. Not even for his country’s sake will he -pause, though, with his prescient imagination, he sees in all their -lurid details the horrors of the</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Domestic fury and fierce civil strife</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 263.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">that must inevitably ensue.</p> - -<p>And he effects his purpose, without any other help, by his wonderful -address to the citizens. Perhaps nowhere else in History or Literature -do we find the procedure of the demagogue of Genius set forth with such -masterly insight. For Antony shows himself a demagogue of the most -profligate description, but as undeniably the very genius of the art of -moving men. Consider the enormous difficulties of his position. He is -speaking under limitation and by permission before a hostile audience -that will barely give him a hearing, and his task is to turn them quite -round, and make them adore what they hated and hate what they adored. -How does he set about it?</p> - -<p>He begins with an acknowledgment and compliment to Brutus: “For Brutus’ -sake I am beholding to you.” He disclaims the intention of even -praising the dead. He cites the charge of ambition, but not to reply -to it, merely to point out that any ambition has been expiated. But -then he insinuates arguments on the other side: Caesar’s faithfulness -and justice in friendship, the additions not to his private but to the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span> -public wealth that his victories secured, his pitifulness to the poor, -his refusal of the crown. Really these things are no arguments at -all. They have either nothing to do with the case, or are perfectly -compatible with ambition, or may have been its very means or may have -been meant to cloak it. Such indeed we know that in part at least -they were. But that does not signify so far as Antony’s purpose is -concerned. They were all matters well known to the public, fit to call -forth proud and grateful and pleasing reminiscences of Caesar’s career. -The orator has managed to praise Caesar while not professing to do -so: if he does not disprove what Brutus said, yet in speaking what he -does know, he manages to discredit Brutus’ authority. And now these -regretful associations stirred, he can at any rate ask their tears for -their former favourite. Have they lost their reason that they do not -at least mourn for him they once loved? And here with a rhetorical -trick, which, to his facile, emotional nature, may have also been the -suggestion of real feeling, his utterance fails him; he must pause, for -his “heart is in the coffin there with Caesar.”</p> - -<p>We may be sure that whatever had happened to his heart his ear was -intent to catch the murmurs of the crowd. They would satisfy him. -Though he has not advanced one real argument, but has only played as it -were on their sensations, their mood has changed. Some think Caesar has -had wrong, some are convinced that he was not ambitious, all are now -thoroughly favourable to Antony.</p> - -<p>He begins again. And now he strikes the note of contrast between -Caesar’s greatness yesterday and his impotence to-day. It is such a -tragic fall as in itself might move all hearts to terror and pity. -But what if the catastrophe were undeserved? Antony could prove that -it was, but he will keep faith with the conspirators and refrain. -Nevertheless he has the testament, though he will not read it, which, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span> -read, would show them that Caesar was their best friend.</p> - -<p>Compassion, curiosity, selfishness are now enlisted on his side. Cries -of “The will! The will!” arise. He is quick to take advantage of these. -Just as he would not praise Caesar, yet did so all the same; so he -refuses to read the will, for they would rise in mutiny—this is a -little preliminary hint to them—if they heard that Caesar had made -them his heirs.</p> - -<p>Renewed insistence on the part of the mob, renewed coyness on the part -of Antony; till at last he steps down from the pulpit, taking care to -have a wide circle round him that as many as possible may see. But he -does not read the will immediately. Partly with his incomparable eye -to effect, partly out of the fullness of his heart (for the substance -of his words is the same as in his private soliloquy), he stands rapt -above the body. Caesar’s mantle recalls proud memories of the glory of -Caesar and of Rome, the victory over the Barbarian.<a id="FNanchor_185" href="#Footnote_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> -And this mantle is pierced by the stabs of assassins, of Cassius, of -Casca, of Brutus himself. He has now advanced so far that he can attack -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span> -the man who was the idol of the mob but a few minutes before. And he -makes his attack well. The very superiority of Brutus to personal -claims, the very patriotism which none could appreciate better than -Antony, and to which he does large justice when Brutus is no more, this -very disinterestedness he turns against Brutus, and despite all he owes -him, accuses him of black ingratitude. There is so much speciousness in -the charge that it would be hard to rebut before a tribunal of sages: -and when Antony makes his <i>coup</i>, withdrawing the mantle and -displaying the mutilated corpse,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our Caesar’s vesture wounded? Look you here,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Here is himself, marr’d, as you see, with traitors:</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 199.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">the cause of Brutus is doomed. Antony has a right -to exult, and he does so. There is the triumphant pride of the artist -in his art, when, on resuming, he represents Brutus as the rhetorician -and himself as the unpractised speaker. He is no orator as Brutus -is, and—with sublime effrontery—that was probably the reason he was -permitted to address them. But</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Were I Brutus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In every wound of Caesar, that should move</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 230.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Note the last words: for though Antony feels -entitled to indulge in this farcing and enjoys it thoroughly, he does -not forget the serious business. He keeps recurring more and more -distinctly to the suggestion of mutiny, and for mutiny the citizens are -now more than fully primed. All this, moreover, he has achieved without -ever playing his trump card. They have quite forgotten about the will, -and indeed it is not required. But Antony thinks it well to have them -beside themselves, so he calls them back for this last maddening draught. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span></p> - -<p>And all the while, it will be observed, he has never answered Brutus’ -charge on which he rested his whole case, that Caesar was ambitious. -Yet such is the headlong flight of his eloquence, winged by genius, by -passion, by craft, that his audience never perceive this. No wonder: it -is apt to escape even deliberate readers.</p> - -<p>Such a man will go fast and far. We next see him practically the ruler -of Rome, swaying the triumvirate, treating Octavius as an admiring -pupil whom he will tutor in the trade, ordering about or ridiculing the -insignificant and imitative Lepidus.<a id="FNanchor_186" href="#Footnote_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a></p> - -<p>But he has the <i>hybris</i> of genius, unaccompanied by character -and undermined by licence. It would be an anomaly if such an one -were to be permanently successful. Shakespeare was by and by, though -probably as yet he knew it not, to devote a whole play to the story of -his downfall; here he contents himself with indicating his impending -deposition and the agent who shall accomplish it. There is something -ominous about the reticence, assurance, and calm self-assertion of the -“stripling or springall of twenty years” as Plutarch calls Octavius. -At the proscription Lepidus and even Antony are represented as -consenting to the death of their kinsfolk: Octavius makes demands but -no concessions. When Lepidus is ordered off on his errand, and Antony, -secure in his superiority, explains his methods, Octavius listens -silent with just a hint of dissent, but we feel that he is learning -his lessons and will apply them in due time at his teacher’s expense. -Already he appropriates the leadership. Before Philippi, Antony assigns -to him the left wing and he calmly answers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon the right hand I, keep thou the left.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Antony.</i> Why do you cross me in this exigent?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Octavius.</i> I do not cross you: but I will do so.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 18.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span> -All these touches are contributed by Shakespeare, but the last is -especially noticeable, because, though the words and the particular -turn are his own, the incident itself is narrated not of Antony and -Octavius but of their opponents.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Then Brutus prayed Cassius he might have the -leading of the right winge, the whiche men thought was farre meeter for -Cassius: both bicause he was the elder man, and also for that he had -the better experience. But yet Cassius gave it him.</p> - -<p>Octavius too has a higher conception of the dignity of his position. -In that strange scene, another of Shakespeare’s additions, when the -adversaries exchange <i>gabs</i>, like the heroes of the old Teutonic -lays or the <i>Chansons de Gestes</i>, it is Antony who suggests the -somewhat unseemly proceeding and it is Octavius who breaks it off. And -at the close he, as it were, constitutes himself the heir of Brutus’ -reputation, and assumes as a matter of course that he has the right and -duty to provide for Brutus’ followers and take order for Brutus’ funeral.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">All that served Brutus, I will entertain them ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">According to his virtue let us use him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With all respect and rites of burial</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Within my tent his bones to-night shall lie.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> v. 60 and 76.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">For the first of these statements there is no -warrant in Plutarch, and the second contradicts the impression his -narrative produces; for in all the mention he makes of the final -honours paid to Brutus, he gives the credit to Antony.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Antonius, having found Brutus bodie, he caused it to be wrapped up -in one of the richest cote armors he had. Afterwards also, Antonius -understanding that this cote armor was stollen, he put the theefe to -death that had stollen it, and sent the ashes of his bodie to Servilia -his mother.</p> -<p class="author"><i>Marcus Brutus.</i></p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span> -And more explicitly in the <i>Marcus Antonius</i>:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">(Antony) cast his coate armor (which was -wonderfull rich and sumptuous) upon Brutus bodie, and gave -commaundement to one of his slaves infranchised to defray the charge of -his buriall.</p> - -<p>By means of these additions and displacements Shakespeare shows the -young Octavius with his tenacity and self-control already superseding -his older and more brilliant colleague. We see in them the beginning as -well as the prophecy of the end.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA</i></h2> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER I<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">POSITION OF THE PLAY AFTER THE GREAT TRAGEDIES.<br /> -SHAKESPEARE’S INTEREST IN THE SUBJECT</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>It may be taken as certain that Shakespeare did not at once set -about continuing the story which he had brought to the end of one -of its stages in <i>Julius Caesar</i> and of the future progress of -which he had in that play given the partial programme. <i>Antony and -Cleopatra</i> belongs to a different phase of his development.</p> - -<p>Though not published, so far as we know, till it appeared in the -Folio Edition of 1623, there is not much difficulty in finding its -approximate date; and that, despite its close connection with <i>Julius -Caesar</i> in the general march of events and in the re-employment of -some of the characters, was some half-dozen years after the composition -of its predecessor. The main grounds for this opinion, now almost -universally accepted, are the following:</p> - -<p>1. We learn from the <i>Stationers’ Register</i> that the publisher, -Edward Blount, had entered a “booke called <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>” -on May 20th, 1608. Some critics have maintained that this could not be -Shakespeare’s in view of the fact that in November, 1623, license was -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span> -granted to the same Blount and the younger Jaggard, with whom he was -now co-operating, to include in the collected edition the Shakespearian -piece among sixteen plays of which the copies were “not formerly -entered to other men.” But the objection hardly applies, as the -previous entry was in Blount’s favour, and, though he is now associated -with Jaggard, he may not have thought it necessary, because of a -change of firm as it were, to describe himself as “another man.” Even, -however, if the authorship of the 1608 play be considered doubtful, -its publication is significant. For, as has often been pointed out, it -was customary when a piece was successful at one theatre to produce -one on a similar subject at another. The mere existence, then, of an -<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> in the early months of 1608, is in so far -an argument that about that time the great <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> -was attracting attention.</p> - -<p>2. There is evidence that in the preceding years Shakespeare was -occupied with and impressed by the <i>Life of Antony</i>.</p> - -<p>(<i>a</i>) Plutarch tells how sorely Antony took to heart what he -considered the disloyalty of his followers after Actium.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">He forsooke the citie and companie of his frendes, -and built him a house in the sea, by the Ile of Pharos, upon certaine -forced mountes which he caused to be cast into the sea, and dwelt -there, as a man that banished him selfe from all mens companie; saying -he would live Timons life, bicause he had the like wrong offered him, -that was affore offered unto Timon: and that for the unthankefulnes of -those he had done good unto, and whom he tooke to be his frendes he was -angry with all men, and would trust no man.</p> - -<p>In reference to this withdrawal of Antony’s to the Timoneon, as he -called his solitary house, Plutarch inserts the story of Timon of -Athens, and there is reason to believe that Shakespeare made his -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span> -contributions to the play of that name just before he wrote -<i>Macbeth</i>, about the year 1606.<a id="FNanchor_187" href="#Footnote_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a></p> - -<p>(<i>b</i>) In <i>Macbeth</i> itself he has utilised the <i>Marcus -Antonius</i> probably for one passage and certainly for another. In -describing the scarcity of food among the Roman army in Parthia, -Plutarch says:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">In the ende they were compelled to live of erbes -and rootes, but they found few of them that men doe commonly eate of, -and were enforced to tast of them that were never eaten before: among -the which there was one that killed them, and <i>made them out of their -witts</i>. For he that had once eaten of it, his memorye was gone from -him, and he knewe no manner of thing.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare is most likely thinking of this when after the -disappearance of the witches, he makes Banquo exclaim in bewilderment:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Were such things here as we do speak about?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or have we eaten on the insane <i>root</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">That <i>takes the reason prisoner</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 83.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In any case <i>Macbeth</i> contains an -unmistakable reminiscence of the soothsayer’s warning to Antony.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">He ... told Antonius plainly, that his fortune -(which of it selfe was excellent good, and very great) was altogether -bleamished, and obscured by Caesars fortune: and therefore he -counselled him utterly to leave his company, and to get him as farre -from him as he could. “For thy Demon,” said he (that is to say, the -good angell and spirit that kepeth thee), “is affraied of his, and -being coragious and high when he is alone, becometh fearefull and -timerous when he commeth neere unto the other.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare was to make use of this in detail when -he drew on the <i>Life</i> for an independent play.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">O Antony, stay not by his side:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy demon, that’s thy spirit which keeps thee, is</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where Caesar’s is not; but, near him, thy angel</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Becomes a fear, as being o’erpower’d: therefore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Make space enough between you.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 18.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span> -But already in <i>Macbeth</i> it suggests a simile, when the King gives -words to his mistrust of Banquo:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">There is none but he</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose being I do fear: and, under him,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My Genius is rebuked; as, it is said,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mark Antony’s was by Caesar.<a id="FNanchor_188" href="#Footnote_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 54.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>More interesting and convincing is a coincidence that Malone pointed -out in Chapman’s <i>Bussy d’Ambois</i>, which was printed in 1607, but -was probably written much earlier. Bussy says to Tamyra of the terrors -of Sin:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So our ignorance tames us, that we let</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His<a id="FNanchor_189" href="#Footnote_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> shadows fright us: and like <i>empty clouds</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">In which our faulty apprehensions forge</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The forms of <i>dragons</i>, <i>lions</i>, elephants,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When they <i>hold no proportion</i>, the sly charms</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the Witch Policy makes him like a monster.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 22.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Compare Antony’s words:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sometime we see a <i>cloud that’s dragonish</i>:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A vapour sometimes like a bear or lion ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">.... Here I am Antony:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet <i>cannot hold this visible shape</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xiv. 2 and 13.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is hard to believe that there is no connection -between these passages, and if there is Shakespeare must have been the -debtor; but as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span> -<i>Bussy d’Ambois</i> was acted before 1600, this loan is without much -value as a chronological indication.</p> - -<p>3. Internal evidence likewise points to a date shortly after the -composition of <i>Macbeth</i>.</p> - -<p>(<i>a</i>) In versification especially valuable indications are -furnished by the proportion of what Professor Ingram has called the -light and the weak endings. By these terms he denotes the conclusion of -the verse with a syllable that cannot easily or that cannot fully bear -the stress which the normal scansion would lay upon it. In either case -the effect is to break down the independence of the separate line as -unit, and to vest the rhythm in the couplet or sequence, by forcing us -on till we find an adequate resting-place. It thus has some analogy in -formal prosody to enjambement, or the discrepancy between the metrical -and the grammatical pause in prosody when viewed in connection with -the sense. Now the employment of light and weak endings, on the one -hand, and of enjambement on the other, is, generally speaking, much -more frequent in the plays that are considered to be late than in those -that are considered to be early. The tendency to enjambement indeed may -be traced farther back and proceeds less regularly. But the laxity in -regard to the endings comes with a rush and seems steadily to advance. -It is first conspicuous in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> and reaches -its maximum in <i>Henry VIII.</i> In this progress however there is -one notable peculiarity. While it is unmistakable if the percentage -be taken from the light and weak endings combined, or from the weak -endings alone, it breaks down if the light endings be considered by -themselves. Of them there is a decidedly higher proportion in <i>Antony -and Cleopatra</i> than in <i>Coriolanus</i>, which nevertheless is -almost universally held to be the later play. The reason probably is -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span> -that the light endings mean a less revolutionary departure from the -more rigid system and would therefore be the first to be attempted. -When the ear had accustomed itself to them, it would be ready to accept -the greater innovation. Thus the sudden outcrop of light and weak -endings in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, the preponderance of the light -over the weak in that play, the increase in the total percentage of -such endings and especially in the relative percentage of weak endings -in the dramas that for various reasons are believed to be later, all -confirm its position after <i>Macbeth</i> and before <i>Coriolanus</i>.</p> - -<p>(<i>b</i>) The diction tells the same tale. Whether we admire it or no, -we must admit that it is very concise, bold and difficult. Gervinus -censures it as “forced, abrupt and obscure”; and it certainly makes -demands on the reader. But Englishmen will rather agree with the -well-known eulogy of Coleridge: “<i>Feliciter audax</i> is the motto -for its style comparatively with that of Shakspere’s other works, even -as it is the general motto of all his works compared with those of -other poets. Be it remembered, too, that this happy valiancy of style -is but the representative and result of all the material excellences -so expressed.” But in any case, whether to be praised or blamed, it -is a typical example of Shakespeare’s final manner, the manner that -characterises <i>Coriolanus</i> and the Romances, and that shows itself -only occasionally or incompletely in his preceding works.</p> - -<p>4. A consideration of the tone of the tragedy yields similar results. -It has been pointed out<a id="FNanchor_190" href="#Footnote_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> -that there is a gradual lightening in the atmosphere of Shakespeare’s -plays after the composition of <i>Othello</i> and <i>Lear</i>. In them, -and especially in the latter, we move in the deepest gloom. It is to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span> -them that critics point who read in Shakespeare a message of pessimism -and despair. And though there are not wanting, for those who will -see them, glimpses of comfort and hope even in their horror of thick -darkness, it must be owned that the misery and murder of Desdemona, the -torture and remorse of Othello, the persecution of Lear, the hanging -of Cordelia, are more harrowing and appalling than the heart can well -endure. But we are conscious of a difference in the others of the -group. Though Macbeth retains our sympathy to the last, his story does -not rouse our questionings as do the stories of these earlier victims. -We are well content that he should expiate his crimes, and that a -cleaner hand should inherit the sceptre: we recognise the justice of -the retribution and hail the dawn of better times. In <i>Coriolanus</i> -the feeling is not only of assent but of exultation. True, the tragedy -ends with the hero’s death, but that is no unmitigated evil. He has won -back something of his lost nobility and risen to the greatest height -his nature could attain, in renouncing his revenge: after that what was -there that he could live for either in Corioli or Rome?</p> - -<p><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> has points of contact with both these -plays, and shows like them that the night is on the wane. Of course -in one way the view of life is still disconsolate enough. The lust of -the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life: ambitious -egoism, uninspired craft and conventional propriety; these are the -forces that clash in this gorgeous mêlée of the West and the East. At -the outset passion holds the lists, then self-interest takes the lead, -but principle never has a chance. We think of Lucifera’s palace in the -<i>Faerie Queene</i>, with the seven deadly sins passing in arrogant -gala before the marble front, and with the shifting foundations -beneath, the dungeons and ruins at the rear. The superb shows of life -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span> -are displayed in all their superbness and in all their vanity. In the -end their worshippers are exposed as their dupes. Antony is a cloud -and a dream, Cleopatra no better than “a maid that milks and does the -meanest chares”: yet she sees that it is “paltry to be Caesar,” and -hears Antony mock at Caesar’s luck. Whatever the goal, it is a futile -one, and the objects of human desire are shown on their seamy side. -We seem to lose sight of ideals, and idealism would be out of place. -Even the passing reference to Shakespeare’s own art shows a dissipation -of the glamour. In <i>Julius Caesar</i> Brutus and Cassius had looked -forward to an immortality of glory on the stage and evidently regard -the theatre as equal to the highest demands, but now to Cleopatra it is -only an affair of vulgar makeshifts that parodies what it presents.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">I shall see</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ the posture of a whore.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 219.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In so far the impression produced is a cheerless -one, and Gervinus has gone so far as to say: “There is no great or -noble character among the personages, no really elevated feature in the -action of this drama whether in its politics or its love affairs.” This -is excessive: but it is true that, as in <i>Timon</i>, the suggestion -for which came from the same source and the composition of which may -be dated a short time before, no very spiritual note is struck and no -very dutiful figure is to the fore. And the background is a lurid one. -“A world-catastrophe!” says Dr. Brandes, “(Shakespeare) has no mind -now to write of anything else. What is sounding in his ears, what is -filling his thoughts, is the crash of a world falling in ruins.... The -might of Rome, stern and austere, shivered at the touch of Eastern -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</span> -voluptuousness. Everything sank, everything fell,—character and will, -dominions and principalities, men and women. Everything was worm-eaten, -serpent-bitten, poisoned by sensuality—everything tottered and collapsed.”</p> - -<p>Yet though the sultry splendours of the scenes seem to blast rather -than foster, though the air is laden with pestilence, and none of the -protagonists has escaped the infection, the total effect is anything -but depressing. As in <i>Macbeth</i> we accept without demur the -penalty exacted for the offence. As in <i>Coriolanus</i> we welcome -the magnanimity that the offenders recover or achieve at the close. If -there is less of acquiescence in vindicated justice than in the first, -if there is less of elation at the triumph of the nobler self than in -the second, there is yet something of both. In this respect too it -seems to stand between them and we cannot be far wrong if we place it -shortly after the one and shortly before the other, near the end of 1607.</p> - -<p>And that means too that it comes near the end of Shakespeare’s tragic -period, when his four chief tragedies were already composed and when -he was well aware of all the requirements of the tragic art. In his -quartet of masterpieces he was free to fulfil these requirements -without let or hindrance, for he was elaborating material that claimed -no particular reverence from him. But now he turns once more to -authorised history and in doing so once more submits to the limitations -that in his practice authorised history imposed. Why he did so it is -of course impossible to say. It was a famous story, accessible to -the English public in some form or other from the days of Chaucer’s -<i>Legend of Good Women</i>, and at an early age Shakespeare was -attracted by it, or at least was conversant with Cleopatra’s reputation -as one of the world’s paragons of beauty. In <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</span> -Mercutio includes her in his list of those, Dido, Hero, Thisbe and the -rest, who in Romeo’s eyes are nothing to his Rosaline; compared with -that lady he finds “Cleopatra a gipsy.”<a id="FNanchor_191" href="#Footnote_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> -And so indeed she was, for gipsy at first meant nothing else than -Egyptian, and Skelton, in his <i>Garland of Laurel</i>, swearing by St. -Mary of Egypt, exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">By Mary gipcy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quod scripsi scripsi.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But in current belief the black-haired, tawny -vagrants, who, from the commencement of the sixteenth century, despite -cruel enactments cruelly enforced, began to swarm into England, were of -Egyptian stock. And precisely in this there lay a paradox and riddle, -for according to conventional ideas they were anything but comely, -and yet it was a matter of common fame that a great Roman had thrown -away rule, honour and duty in reckless adoration of the queen of the -race. Perhaps Shakespeare had this typical instance in his mind when -in <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> he talks of the madness of the lover -who</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 11.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">For to the end the poet ignores the purity of -Cleopatra’s Greek descent, and seems by many touches to imagine her as -of the same type as those undesirable immigrants against whom the penal -laws were of so little avail. Nevertheless he accepts the fact of her -charm, and, in <i>As You Like It</i>, among the contributions which the -“Heavenly Synod” levied on the supreme examples of womankind for the -equipment of Rosalind, specifies “Cleopatra’s majesty.”<a id="FNanchor_192" href="#Footnote_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> -It is not the quality on which he was afterwards to lay stress, it is -not the quality that Plutarch accentuates, nor is it likely to have -been suggested by the gipsies he had seen. But there was another source -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</span> -on which he may have drawn. Next to the story of Julius Caesar, the -story of Antony and Cleopatra was perhaps the prerogative Roman theme -among the dramatists of the sixteenth century<a id="FNanchor_193" href="#Footnote_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a> -and was associated with such illustrious -personages as Jodelle and Garnier in France, and the Countess of -Pembroke and Daniel in England. It is, as we have seen, highly probable -that Shakespeare had read the versions of his compatriots at any rate, -and their dignified harangues are just of the kind to produce the -impression of loftiness and state.</p> - -<p>Be that as it may, Cleopatra was a familiar name to Shakespeare when he -began seriously to immerse himself in her history. We can understand -how it would stir his heart as it filled in and corrected his previous -vague surmises. What a revelation of her witchcraft would be that -glowing picture of her progress when, careless and calculating, she -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</span> -condescended to obey the summons of the Roman conqueror and answer the -charge that she had helped Brutus in his campaign.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">When she was sent unto by divers letters, both -from Antonius him selfe and also from his frendes, she made so light -of it, and mocked Antonius so much, that she disdained to set forward -otherwise, but to take her barge in the river of Cydnus, the poope -whereof was of gold, the sailes of purple, and the owers of silver, -which kept stroke in rowing after the sounde of the musicke of flutes, -howboyes, citherns, violls, and such other instruments as they played -upon in the barge. And now for the person of her selfe: she was layed -under a pavillion of cloth-of-gold of tissue, apparelled and attired -like the goddesse Venus, commonly drawen in picture: and hard by her, -on either hand of her, pretie faire boyes apparelled as painters doe -set forth god Cupide, with little fannes in their hands, with which -they fanned wind upon her. Her ladies and gentlewomen also, the fairest -of them were apparelled like the nymphes Nereides (which are the -mermaides of the waters) and like the Graces, some stearing the helme, -others tending the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of which there -came a wonderfull passing sweete savor of perfumes, that perfumed the -wharfes side pestered<a id="FNanchor_194" href="#Footnote_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> -with innumerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge -all alongest the rivers side: others also ranne out of the citie to -see her comming in. So that in the end, there ranne such multitudes of -people one after an other to see her, that Antonius was left post alone -in the market place, in his Imperiall seate to geve audience: and there -went a rumor in the peoples mouthes that the goddesse Venus was come to -play with the god Bacchus,<a id="FNanchor_195" href="#Footnote_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a> -for the generall good of all Asia. When Cleopatra landed, Antonius sent -to invite her to supper with him. But she sent him word againe, he -should doe better rather to come and suppe with her. Antonius therefore -to shew him selfe curteous unto her at her arrivall, was contented -to obey her, and went to supper to her: where he found such passing -sumptuous fare that no tongue can expresse it.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Only by a few touches has Shakespeare excelled -his copy in the words of Enobarbus: but he has merely heightened and -nowhere altered the effect. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The barge she sat in, like a <i>burnished throne,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Burn’d</i> on the water: the poop was beaten gold:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Purple the sails and so perfumed that</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The winds <i>were love-sick</i> with them: the oars were silver,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke and made</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>The water which they beat to follow faster,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>As amorous of their strokes</i>. For her own person,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>It beggar’d all description</i>: she did lie</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold of tissue—</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>O’er picturing</i> that Venus where we see</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>The fancy outwork nature</i>: on each side her</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>And what they undid did</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So many mermaids, <i>tended her i’ the eyes</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And made their bends adornings: at the helm</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A seeming mermaid steers: the <i>silken</i> tackle</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">That <i>yarely</i> frame the office. From the barge</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A <i>strange invisible</i> perfume hits the sense</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the adjacent wharfs: and Antony,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Enthroned i’ the market-place, did sit alone,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whistling the air: which, but for vacancy,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>And made a gap in nature</i>....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Invited her to supper: she replied</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It should be better he became her guest;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which she entreated: our courteous Antony,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whom ne’er the word of “No” woman heard speak,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Being barber’d ten times o’er</i>, goes to the feast</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>And for his ordinary pays his heart</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>For what his eyes eat only</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 196.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And the impression of all this magnificence had -not faded from Shakespeare’s mind when in after years he wrote his -<i>Cymbeline</i>. Imogen’s chamber</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent25">is hang’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With tapestry of silk and silver; the story</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Cydnus swell’d above the banks, or for</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The press of boats or pride.<a id="FNanchor_196" href="#Footnote_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iv. 68.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</span> -But it was not only the prodigality of charm that would enthral the -poet. In the relation of the lovers, in the character of Cleopatra, in -the nature of her ascendancy, there is something that reminds us of -the story of passion enshrined in the <i>Sonnets</i>. No doubt it is -uncertain whether these in detail are to be regarded as biographical, -but biographical they are at the core, at least in the sense that they -are authentic utterance of feelings actually experienced. No doubt, -too, the balance of evidence points to their composition, at least in -the parts that deal with his unknown leman, early in Shakespeare’s -career; but for that very reason the memories would be fitter to -help him in interpreting the poetry of the historical record, for as -Wordsworth says: “Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity.” So -once more Shakespeare may have been moved to “make old offences of -affections new,” that is, to infuse the passion of his own youth into -this tale of “old unhappy far-off things.” His bygone sorrows of the -<i>Sonnets</i> come back to him when he is writing the drama, mirror -themselves in some of the situations and sentiments, and echo in the -wording of a few of the lines. It is of course easy to exaggerate the -importance of these reminiscences. The Dark Lady has been described -as the original of Cleopatra, but the original of Cleopatra is the -Cleopatra of Plutarch, and in many ways she is unlike the temptress -of the poet. She is dowered with a marvellous beauty which all from -Enobarbus to Octavius acknowledge, while the other is “foul” in all -eyes save those of her lover; her face “hath not the power to make love -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</span> -groan”; and in her there is no hint of Cleopatra’s royalty of soul. -Nor is the devotion of Antony the devotion of the sonneteer; it is far -more absolute and unquestioning, it is also far more comrade-like and -sympathetic; at first he exults in it without shame, and never till -the last distracted days does suspicion or contempt enter his heart. -Still less is his passing spasm of jealousy at the close like the -chronic jealousy of the poet. It is a vengeful frenzy that must find -other outlets as well as the self-accusing remonstrances and impotent -rebukes of the lyrical complaints. The resemblance between sonnets and -play is confined to the single feature that they both tell the story -of an unlawful passion for a dark woman—for this was Shakespeare’s -fixed idea in regard to Cleopatra—whose character and reputation -were stained, whose influence was pernicious, and whose fatal spells -depended largely on her arts and intellect. But this was enough to -give Shakespeare, as it were, a personal insight into the case, and a -personal interest in it, to furnish him with the key of the situation -and place him at the centre.</p> - -<p>And there was another point of contact between the author and the hero -of the tragedy. It is stated in Plutarch’s account of Antony: “Some say -that he lived three and fiftie yeares: and others say six and fiftie.” -But the action begins a decade, or (for, as we shall see, there is a -jumbling of dates in the opening scenes like that which we have noted -in the corresponding ones of <i>Julius Caesar</i>) more than a decade -before the final catastrophe. Thus Shakespeare would imagine Antony -at the outset as between forty-two and forty-six, practically on the -same <i>niveau</i> of life as himself, for in 1607-1608 he was in his -forty-fourth year. They had reached the same stadium in their career, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</span> -had the same general outlook on the future, had their great triumphs -behind them, and yet with powers hardly impaired they both could say,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Though grey</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Do something mingle with our younger brown, yet ha’ we</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A brain that nourishes our nerves, and can</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Get goal for goal of youth.</div> - <div class="verse indent36">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> viii. 19.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">There would be a general sympathy of attitude, -and it even extends to something in the poet himself analogous to -the headlong ardour of Antony. In the years that had elapsed since -Shakespeare gave the first instalment of his story in <i>Julius -Caesar</i>, a certain change had been proceeding in his art. The -present drama belongs to a different epoch of his authorship, an epoch -not of less force but of less restrained force, an epoch when he -works perhaps with less austerity of stroke and less intellectualism, -but—strange that it should be so in advancing years—with more -abandonment to the suggestions of imagination and passion. In all these -respects the fortunes of Antony and Cleopatra would offer him a fit -material. In the second as compared with the first Roman play, there is -certainly no decline. The subject is different, the point of view is -different, the treatment is different, but subject, point of view and -treatment all harmonise with each other, and the whole in its kind is -as great as could be.</p> - -<p>Perhaps some such considerations may explain why Shakespeare, after -he had been for seven years expatiating on the heights of free tragic -invention, yet returned for a time to a theme which, with his ideas -of loyalty to recorded fact, dragged him back in some measure to the -embarrassments of the chronicle history. It was all so congenial, that -he was willing to face the disadvantages of an action that straggled -over years and continents, of a multiplicity of short scenes that in -the third act rise to a total of thirteen and in the fourth to a total -of fifteen, of a number of episodic personages who appear without -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</span> -preparation and vanish almost without note. He had to lay his account -with this if he dramatised these transactions at all, for to him they -were serious matters that his fancy must not be allowed to distort. -Indeed he accepts the conditions so unreservedly, and makes so little -effort to evade them, that his mind seems to have taken the ply, and -he resorts to the meagre, episodical scene, not only when Plutarch’s -narrative suggests it, but when he is making additions of his own and -when no very obvious advantage is to be secured. This is the only -explanation that readily presents itself for the fourth scene of -the second act, which in ten lines describes Lepidus’ leave-taking -of Mecaenas and Agrippa.<a id="FNanchor_197" href="#Footnote_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a> -There is for this no authority in the <i>Life</i>; and what object does -it serve? It may indicate on the one hand the punctilious deference -that Octavius’ ministers deem fit to show as yet to the incompetent -Triumvir, and on the other his lack of efficient energy in allowing his -private purposes to make him two days late at the <i>rendezvous</i> -which he himself has advocated as urgent. But these hints could quite -well have been conveyed in some other way, and this invented scene -seems theatrically and dramatically quite otiose. Nevertheless, and -this is the point to observe, it so fits into the pattern of the -chronicle play that it does not force itself on one’s notice as superfluous.</p> - -<p>It is partly for this reason that <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> holds its -distinctive place among Shakespeare’s masterpieces. On the one hand -there is no play that springs more spontaneously out of the heart of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</span> -its author, and into which he has breathed a larger portion of his -inspiration; and on the other there is none that is more purely -historical, so that in this respect it is comparable among the Roman -dramas to <i>Richard II.</i> in the English series. This was the -double characteristic that Coleridge emphasised in his <i>Notes on -Shakespeare’s Plays</i>: “There is not one in which he has followed -history so minutely, and yet there are few in which he impresses the -notion of angelic strength so much—perhaps none in which he impresses -it more strongly. This is greatly owing to the manner in which the -fiery force is sustained throughout, and to the numerous momentary -flashes of nature counteracting the historical abstraction.” The -angelic strength, the fiery force, the flashes of nature are due to his -complete sympathy with the facts, but that makes his close adherence to -his authority all the more remarkable.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle"><big><i>ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA</i></big>,<br /> -A HISTORY, TRAGEDY, AND LOVE POEM;<br /> -AS SHOWN BY ITS RELATIONS WITH PLUTARCH</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>The obligations to Plutarch, though very great, are of a somewhat -peculiar kind. Shakespeare does not borrow so largely or so repeatedly -from the diction of North as in <i>Coriolanus</i> or even in <i>Julius -Caesar</i>. His literal indebtedness is for the most part confined to -the exploitation here and there of a few short phrases or sentences, -generally of a not very distinctive character. Thus Octavia is -described as “having an excellent grace, wisedom and honestie, joined -unto so rare a beawtie”; which suggests her “beauty, wisdom, modesty,” -in the play (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> ii. 246). Thus, after the -scourging of Thyreus, Antony sends Caesar the message:</p> - -<p class="blockquot"> -“If this mislike thee,” said he, “thou hast Hipparchus<a id="FNanchor_198" href="#Footnote_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> -one of my infranchised bondmen with thee: hang him if thou wilt, or -whippe him at thy pleasure, that we may cry quittaunce.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This becomes:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent22">If he mislike</div> -<div class="verse indent0">My speech and what is done, tell him he has</div> -<div class="verse indent0">Hipparchus, my enfranchised bondman, whom</div> -<div class="verse indent0">He may at pleasure whip, or hang, or torture,</div> -<div class="verse indent0">As he shall like, to quit me.</div> -<div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 147.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</span> -So, too, Plutarch says of Dolabella’s disclosure to Cleopatra:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">He sent her word secretly as she had requested -him, that Caesar determined to take his journey through Suria, and that -within three dayes he would sende her away before with her children.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">The words are closely copied in Dolabella’s statement:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">Caesar through Syria</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Intends his journey, and within three days</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You with your children will he send before:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Make your best use of this: I have perform’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your pleasure and my promise.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 200.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is only now and then that such small loans stand out as examples -of the “happy valiancy of style” that characterises the drama as a -whole. For instance, at the end when Cleopatra is dead and Charmian has -applied the asp, the brief interchange of question and answer which -Plutarch reports could not be bettered even by Shakespeare.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">One of the souldiers seeing her, angrily sayd unto -her: “Is that well done, Charmion?” “Verie well,” sayd she againe, “and -meete for a Princes discended from a race of so many noble Kings.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare knows when he is well off and accepts -the goods the gods provide.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>1st Guard.</i><span class="ws2">Charmian, is this well done?</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Charmian.</i> It is well done and fitting for a princess</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Descended from so many royal kings.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 238.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Perhaps the noblest and one of the closest of -these paraphrases is in the scene of Antony’s death. With his last -breath he persuades her</p> - -<p class="blockquot no-indent">that she should not lament nor sorowe -for the miserable chaunge of his fortune at the end of his dayes: but -rather that she should thinke him the more fortunate, for the former -triumphes and honors he had received, considering that while he lived -he was the noblest and greatest Prince of the world, and that now he -was overcome, not cowardly but valiantly, a Romane by an other Romane.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</span> -Shakespeare’s Antony says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The miserable change now at my end</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lament nor sorrow at: but please your thoughts</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In feeding them with those my former fortunes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o’ the world,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The noblest: and do now not basely die,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not cowardly put off my helmet to</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My countryman,—a Roman by a Roman</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Valiantly vanquish’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xv. 51.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">As a rule, however, even these short reproductions -are not transcripts. Shakespeare’s usual method is illustrated in his -recast of Antony’s pathetic protest to Caesar that</p> - -<p class="blockquot no-indent">he made him angrie with him, bicause he -shewed him selfe prowde and disdainfull towards him, and now specially -when he was easie to be angered, by reason of his present miserie.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare gives a more bitter poignancy -to the confession.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">Look, thou say</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He makes me angry with him, for he seems</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Proud and disdainful, <i>harping on what I am,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Not what he knew I was: he makes me angry</i>;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And at this time most easy ’tis to do ’t,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>When my good stars, that were my former guides,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Have empty left their orbs, and shot their fires</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Into the abysm of hell</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 140.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Much the same estimate holds good of the longer -passages derived from North, which for the rest are but few. The most -literal are as a rule comparatively unimportant. A typical specimen is -the list of complaints made by Antony against Octavius, and Octavius’ -rejoinder:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">And the chiefest poyntes of his accusations -he charged him with, were these: First, that having spoyled Sextus -Pompeius in Sicile, he did not give him his parte of the Ile. Secondly, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</span> -that he did deteyne in his handes the shippes he lent him to make that -warre. Thirdly, that having put Lepidus their companion and triumvirate -out of his part of the Empire, and having deprived him of all honors: -he retayned for him selfe the lands and revenues thereof, which had -been assigned to him for his part.... Octavius Caesar aunswered him -againe: that for Lepidus, he had in deede deposed him, and taken -his part of the Empire from him, bicause he did overcruelly use his -authoritie. And secondly, for the conquests he had made by force of -armes, he was contented Antonius should have his part of them, so that -he would likewise let him have his part of Armenia.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare copies even Caesar’s convenient -reticence as to the borrowed vessels.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Agrippa.</i><span class="ws5">Who does he accuse?</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Caesar.</i> Caesar: and that, having in Sicily</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sextus Pompeius spoil’d, we have not rated him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His part o’ the isle: then does he say, he lent me</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Some shipping unrestored: lastly, he frets</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That Lepidus of the triumvirate</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Should be deposed; and, being, that we detain</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All his revenue.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Agrippa.</i> Sir, this should be answer’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Caesar.</i> ’Tis done already, and the messenger gone.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have told him Lepidus was grown too cruel:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That he his high authority abused,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And did deserve his change: for what I have conquer’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I grant him part: but then, in his Armenia,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And other of his conquer’d kingdoms, I</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Demand the like.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> vi. 23.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Less matter-of-fact, because more vibrant with -its fanfare of names, but still somewhat of the nature of an official -schedule, is the list of tributaries in Antony’s host.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">(He) had with him to ayde him these kinges -and subjects following: Bocchus king of Lybia, Tarcondemus king -of high Cilicia, Archelaus king of Cappadocia, Philadelphus king -of Paphlagonia, Mithridates king of Comagena, and Adallas king of -Thracia. All the which were there every man in person. The residue -that were absent sent their armies, as Polemon king of Pont, Manchus -king of Arabia, Herodes king of Iury; and furthermore, Amyntas king of -Lycaonia, and of the Galatians: and besides all these he had all the -ayde the king of Medes sent unto him.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</span> -The long bead-roll of shadowy potentates evidently delights -Shakespeare’s ear as it would have delighted the ear of Milton or -Victor Hugo<a id="FNanchor_199" href="#Footnote_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">He hath assembled</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos king</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">King Malchus of Arabia; king of Pont;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, king</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of Comagene; Polemon and Amyntas,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The kings of Mede and Lycaonia,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With a more larger list of sceptres.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> vi. 68.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Still, of the longer passages that show throughout -a real approximation to North’s language, the two already quoted, -the soothsayer’s warning to Antony, and the description of Cleopatra -on the Cydnus are the most impressive: and even they, and especially -the latter, have been touched up and revised. Shakespeare’s general -procedure in the cases where he borrows at all is a good deal freer, -and may be better illustrated from the passage in which Octavius -recalls the bygone fortitude of Antony.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">These two Consuls (Hircius and Pansa) together -with Caesar, who also had an armye, went against Antonius that beseeged -the citie of Modena, and there overthrew him in battell: but both the -Consuls were slaine there. Antonius flying upon this overthrowe, fell -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</span> -into great miserie all at once: but the chiefest want of all other, -and that pinched him most, was famine. Howbeit he was of such a strong -nature, that by pacience he would overcome any adversitie, and the -heavier fortune lay upon him, the more constant shewed he him selfe.... -It was a wonderfull example to the souldiers, to see Antonius that was -brought up in all finenes and superfluitie, so easily to drink puddle -water, and to eate wild frutes and rootes: and moreover it is reported, -that even as they passed the Alpes, they did eate the barcks of trees, -and such beasts, as never man tasted of their flesh before.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This is good, but Shakespeare’s version visualises -as well as heightens Antony’s straits and endurance, and brings them -into contrast with his later effeminacy.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">When thou once</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Did famine follow: whom thou fought’st against,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Though daintily brought up, with patience more</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than savages could suffer: thou didst drink</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did deign</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The roughest berry on the rudest hedge:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The barks of trees thou browsed’st; on the Alps</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which some did die to look on: and all this—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It wounds thine honour that I speak it now—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So much as lank’d not.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iv. 56.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But including such elaborations, the number of -passages repeated or recast from North is not considerable. In the -whole of the first act this description of the retreat from Modena is -the only one of any consequence, and though the percentage increases -as the play proceeds, and they are much more frequent in the second -half, even in the fifth act, the proportion of easily traceable lines -is fifty-seven to four hundred and forty-six, or barely more than an -eighth.</p> - -<p>Much more numerous and generally much more noteworthy than the strictly -verbal suggestions are those that, conveyed altogether in Shakespeare’s -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</span> -phrase, give such immediate life to the play, whether they supply -episodes for acting or merely material for the dialogue. Sometimes a -whole paragraph is distilled into a sentence, like that famous bit of -domestic chit-chat that must have impressed Plutarch when a boy.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">I have heard my grandfather Lampryas report, that -one Philotas a Physition, born in the citie of Amphissa, told him that -he was at the present time in Alexandria, and studied physicke: and -that having acquaintance with one of Antonius cookes, he tooke him with -him to Antonius house, (being a young man desirous to see things) to -shew him the wonderfull sumptuous charge and preparation of one only -supper. When he was in the kitchin, and saw a world of diversities of -meates, and amongst others eight wilde boares rosted whole: he began -to wonder at it, and sayd, “Sure you have a great number of ghestes -to supper.” The cooke fell a-laughing, and answered him: “No,” (quoth -he), “not many ghestes, nor above twelve in all: but yet all that is -boyled or roasted must be served in whole, or else it would be marred -straight. For Antonius peradventure will suppe presently, or it may be -in a pretie while hence, or likely enough he will deferre it longer, -for that he hath dronke well to-day, or else hath had some other great -matters in hand: and therefore we doe not dresse one supper only, but -many suppers, bicause we are uncerteine of the houre he will suppe in.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">In what strange ways has the gossip of the -inquisitive medical student been transmitted through Lampryas and his -grandchild to furnish an arabesque for Shakespeare’s tapestry! And, -when we know its history, what a realistic touch does this anecdote -lend to Mecaenas’ badinage, though Shakespeare has raised the profuse -to the sublime by transferring the banquet from the evening to the -morning, suppressing the fact of the relays, and insinuating that this -was nothing out of the common!</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Mecaenas.</i> Eight wild boars roasted whole at a breakfast,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">and but twelve persons there: is this true?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Enobarbus.</i> This was but as a fly by an eagle: we had</div> - <div class="verse indent0">much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily</div> - <div class="verse indent0">deserved noting.</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 183.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</span> -Or again we are told of Cleopatra’s precautions after Actium.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Now to make proofe of those poysons which made men -dye with least paine, she tried it upon condemned men in prison. For -when she saw the poysons that were sodaine and vehement, and brought -speedy death with grievous torments: and in contrary manner, that suche -as were more milde and gentle, had not that quicke speede and force -to make one dye sodainly: she afterwardes went about to prove the -stinging of snakes and adders, and made some to be applied unto men in -her sight, some in one sorte, and some in an other. So when she had -dayly made divers and sundrie proofes, she found none of all them she -had proved so fit as the biting of an Aspicke, the which only causeth -a heavines of the head, without swounding or complaining, and bringeth -a great desire also to sleepe, with a little swet on the face, and -so by little and little taketh away the sences and vitall powers, no -living creature perceiving that the pacientes feele any paine. For they -are so sorie when any bodie waketh them, and taketh them up; as those -that being taken out of a sound sleepe, are very heavy and desirous to -sleepe.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This leaves a trace only in three lines of -Caesar’s reply when the guard detects the aspic’s trail; but these -lines gain in significance if we remember the fuller statement.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Most probable</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That so she died: for her physician tells me</div> - <div class="verse indent0">She hath pursued conclusions infinite</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of easy ways to die.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 356.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Apart from the great pivots and levers of -the action Plutarch has supplied numbers of these minor fittings. -Including with them the more literal loans, from which they cannot -always be discriminated, we find in addition to the instances -already cited the following unmistakable reminiscences: in Act <span -class="allsmcap">i.</span>, Antony’s proposal to roam the streets with -Cleopatra; in Act <span class="smcap">ii.</span>, the motive assigned -for Fulvia’s rising, Antony’s ambiguous position as widower, Sextus -Pompeius’ courtesy to Antony’s mother, Charmian’s description of the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</span> -fishing, the conditions of peace offered to Pompey, Pompey’s flout at -the seizure of his father’s house, the bantering of Antony in regard to -Cleopatra, the banquet on the galley, Menas’ suggestion and Pompey’s -reply; in Act <span class="smcap">iii.</span>, 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 -<span class="smcap">iv.</span>, 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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</span> -commendation of Proculeius; in Act <span class="allsmcap">v.</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</span> -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 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, 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.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">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 -<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>—“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.”</p> - -<p>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 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</span> -as a result of which he was granted Sicily and Sardinia on the -conditions mentioned in the play.</p> - -<p>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 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span></p> - -<p>In 37 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>Leaving his wife and children in Octavius’ care, Antony proceeded -directly to Asia.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">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.</p> - -<p>He does not, however, in seeming, neglect his expedition to Parthia, -but gathers a huge and well appointed host wherewith to invade it. -Nevertheless</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</span> -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.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">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.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Arrived at the Syrian coast he awaits her -coming.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Meanwhile, in 36 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, -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 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, -Antony, who had overrun and seized Armenia, celebrated his triumph not -in Rome but in Alexandria.</p> - -<p>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. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</span></p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>Then came the interchange of uncompromising messages in 33 -<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>In 32 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> Octavius declared war -against Cleopatra, and had Antony deprived of his authority. -The battle of Actium followed on the 2nd September, 31 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> -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 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, less, however, -in despair at his overthrow than for grief at Cleopatra’s alleged death.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">(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.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i>Julius -Caesar</i>. 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 <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. 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. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</span></p> - -<p>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 <i>data</i>, 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 -<i>Marcus Antonius</i> 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<a id="FNanchor_200" href="#Footnote_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a> -to the 1578 version of Appian; but always treating the <i>Life</i> 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</span> -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, <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> -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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</span> -implies that Shakespeare is not only true to Plutarch, but virtually -true to what is still considered the spirit of his subject.<a id="FNanchor_201" href="#Footnote_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a></p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <i>Life</i>, 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.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">The gods withhold me!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall I do that which all the Parthian darts,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Though enemy, lost aim, and could not?</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xiv. 69.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Why this reticence in regard to one of the most -ambitious enterprises with which the name of Antony was associated? The -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</span> -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:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">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, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</span> -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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</span> -above the level of the Chronicle History, and makes it a true tragedy. -In its deference for facts, <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> is to be ranked -with such pieces as <i>Richard II.</i> and <i>Henry VIII.</i>, 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 <i>Antony -and Cleopatra</i> is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its -strength and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of <i>Macbeth</i>, -<i>Lear</i>, <i>Hamlet</i>, and <i>Othello</i>.”</p> - -<p>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,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Have I my pillow left unpress’d in Rome,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forborne the getting of a lawful race,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And by a gem of women, to be abused</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By one that looks on feeders?</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 106.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</span> -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.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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, <i>as -she would have yelded unto strokes</i>; and afterwards suffred her -selfe to be cured and dieted as they listed.</p> - -<p>Shakespeare makes no use of this save in the warning of Octavius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">If you seek</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To lay on me a cruelty, by taking</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Antony’s course, you shall bereave yourself</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of my good purposes, and put your children</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To that destruction which I’ll guard them from,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If thereon you rely.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 128.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">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.</p> - -<p>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 <i>Life</i> and the drama as a whole.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</span> -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, <i>All for Love -or the World well lost</i>. 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 -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</span> -introduces his account of the meeting at the Cydnus, with the deliberate -statement which the rest of his story merely works out in detail:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Similarly his final verdict in the <i>Comparison -of Demetrius and Marcus Antonius</i> is unrelenting:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">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 <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> and <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, 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.<a id="FNanchor_202" href="#Footnote_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</span> -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 <i>Leit-motif</i> 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 <i>Romeo and -Juliet</i> he idealises youthful love with its raptures, its wonders, -its overthrow in collision with the harsh facts of life. <i>Troilus -and Cressida</i> shows the inward dissolution of such love when it is -unworthily bestowed, and suffers from want of reverence and loftiness. -In <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> 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.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">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.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER III<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE ASSOCIATES OF ANTONY</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>The political setting of <i>Julius Caesar</i> had been the struggle -between the Old Order and the New. The Old goes out with a final and -temporary flare of success; the New asserts itself as the necessary -solution for the problem of the time, but is deprived of its guiding -genius who might best have elicited its possibilities for good and -neutralised its possibilities for evil. In <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> -we see how its mastery is established and confirmed despite the faults -and limitations of the smaller men who now represent it. But in the -process very much has been lost. The old principle of freedom, which, -even when moribund, serve to lend both the masses and the classes -activity and self-consciousness, has quite disappeared. The populace -has been dismissed from the scene, and, whenever casually mentioned, it -is only with contempt. Octavius describes it:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">This common body,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To rot itself with motion.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iv. 44.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Antony has passed so far from the sphere of his -oratorical triumph, that he thinks of his late supporters only as -“the shouting plebeians,” who cheapen their sight-seeing “for poor’st -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</span> -diminutives, for doits” (<span class="smcap">iv.</span> xiii. 33). -His foreign Queen has been taught his scorn of the Imperial people, -and pictures them as “mechanic slaves, with greasy aprons, rules, and -hammers,” and with “their thick breaths, rank of gross diet” -(<span class="allsmcap">v.</span> ii. 208). Beyond these insults there is -no reference to the plebs, except that, as we learn from Octavius, he and -Antony have both notified it of their respective grievances against -each other; but this is a mere formality that has not the slightest -effect on the progress of events, and no citizen or group of citizens -has part in the play.</p> - -<p>Even the idea of the State is in abeyance. The sense of the majesty -of Rome, which inspired both the conspirators and their opponents, -seems extinct. No enterprise, whether right or wrong, is undertaken -in the name of patriotism. On the very outposts of the Empire, where, -in conflict with the national foe, the love of country is apt to burn -more clearly than amidst the security and altercation of the capital, -we see a general, in the moment of victory, swayed in part by affection -for his patron, in part by care for his own interest, but not in the -slightest degree by civic or even chivalrous considerations. When -Ventidius is urged by Silius to pursue his advantage against the -Parthians, he replies that he has done enough:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Who does i’ the wars more than his captain can</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Becomes his captain’s captain: and ambition,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice of loss,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than gain which darkens him.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I could do more to do Antonius good,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But ’twould offend him; and in his offence</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Should my performance perish.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 21.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And not only is Silius convinced; he gives his -full approval to Ventidius’ policy:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Thou hast, Ventidius, that</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Without the which a soldier, and his sword,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Grants scarce distinction.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 27.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</span></p> -<p>Are things better with Octavius’ understrappers? They serve him well -and astutely, but there is no hint that their service is prompted -by any large public aim, and its very efficacy is due in great -measure to its unscrupulousness. Agrippa and Mecaenas are ready for -politic reasons to suggest or support the marriage of the chaste and -gentle Octavia with a voluptuary like Mark Antony, whose record they -know perfectly well, and pay decorous attentions to Lepidus while -mocking him behind his back: Thyreus and Proculeius make love to the -employment, when Octavius commissions them to cajole and deceive -Cleopatra; Dolabella produces the pleasantest impression, just because, -owing to a little natural manly feeling, he palters with his prescribed -obligations to his master. But in none of them all is there a trace of -any liberal or generous conception of duty; they are human instruments, -more or less efficient, more or less trustworthy, who make their career -by serving the purposes of Octavius’ personal ambition.</p> - -<p>Or turn to the court of Alexandria with its effeminacy, -wine-bibbing, and gluttony. Sextus Pompeius talks of its “field -of feasts,” its “epicurean cooks,” its “cloyless sauce” -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> i. 22, <i>et seq.</i>). Antony palliates -his neglect of the message from Rome with the excuse that, having newly -feasted three kings, he did “want of what he was i’ the morning” -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> ii. 76). But even in the morning, as -Cleopatra recalls, he can be drunk to bed ere the ninth hour, and then -let himself be clad in female garb (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> v. 21).</p> - -<p>It is not indeed to Egypt that this intemperance is confined. The -contagion has spread to the West, as we see from the picture of the -orgy on board the galley at Misenum; a picture we may take in a special -way to convey Shakespeare’s idea of the conditions, since he had no -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</span> -authority for it, but freely worked it up from Plutarch’s innocent -statement that Pompey gave the first of the series of banquets on board -his admiral galley, “and there he welcomed them and made them great -cheere.” But in the play all the boon companions, and not merely the -home-comers from the East, cup each other till the world goes round; -save only the sober Octavius, and even he admits that his tongue -“splits what it speaks.” “This is not yet an Alexandrian feast,” says -Pompey. “It ripens towards it,” answers Antony (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> vii. 102). -It ripens towards it indeed; but more in the way of crude excess -than of curious corruption. In that the palace of the Ptolemies with -its eunuchs and fortune-tellers, its male and female time-servers and -hangers-on, is still inimitable and unchallenged. It is interesting -to note how Shakespeare fills in the previous history of Iras and -Charmian, whom Plutarch barely mentions till he tells of their heroic -death. In the drama they are introduced at first as the products of a -life from which all modesty is banished by reckless luxury and smart -frivolity. Their conversation in the second scene serves to show the -unabashed <i>protervitas</i> that has infected souls capable of high -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</span> -loyalty and devotion.<a id="FNanchor_203" href="#Footnote_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a> -And their intimate is the absolutely contemptible Lord Alexas, with his -lubricity, officiousness and flatteries, who, when evil days come, will -persuade Herod of Jewry to forsake the cause of his patrons and will -earn his due reward (<span class="smcap">iv.</span> vi. 12). For there -is no moral cement to hold together this ruinous world. After Actium -the deserters are so numerous that Octavius can say:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">Within our files there are,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of those that served Mark Antony but late,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Enough to fetch him in.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> i. 12.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">There is not even decent delay in their apostasy. -The battle is hardly over when six tributary kings show “the way -of yielding” to Canidius, who at once renders his legions and his -horse to Caesar (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> x. 33). Shakespeare -heightens Plutarch’s statement in regard to this, for in point of fact -Canidius waited seven days on the chance that Antony might rejoin -them, and then, according to Plutarch, merely fled without changing -sides: but the object is to set forth the universal demoralisation and -instability, and petty qualifications like that implied in the week’s -delay or abandonment of the post instead of desertion to the enemy -are dismissed as of no account. In another addition, for which he has -likewise no warrant, Shakespeare clothes the prevalent temper in words. -When Pompey rejects the unscrupulous device to obtain the empire, Menas -is made to exclaim:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">For this,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ll never follow thy pall’d fortunes more.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vii. 87.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Menas is a pirate, but he speaks the thought of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</span> -the time; for it is only to fortune that the whole generation is -faithful. Everywhere the cult of material good prevails, whether in -the way of acquisition or enjoyment; and that can give no sanction to -payment of service apart from the results.</p> - -<p>The corroding influence of the <i>Zeitgeist</i> even on natures -naturally honest and sound is vividly illustrated in the story of -Enobarbus: and the study of his character is peculiarly interesting -and instructive, because he is the only one of the more prominent -personages who is practically a new creation in the drama, the only -one in whose delineation Shakespeare has gone quite beyond the limits -supplied by Plutarch, even while making use of them. Lepidus and -Pompey, with whom he proceeds in a somewhat similar fashion, are mere -subordinates. Octavius and even Cleopatra are only interpreted with -new vividness and insight. Antony himself is exhibited only with the -threads of his nature transposed, as, for example, when a fabric is -held up with its right side instead of its seamy side outwards. But for -Enobarbus, who often occupies the front of the stage, the dramatist -found only a few detached sentences that suggested a few isolated -traits, and while preserving these intact, he introduces them merely as -component elements in an entirely original and complex personality. It -is therefore fair to suppose that the character of Enobarbus will be of -peculiar importance in the economy of the piece.</p> - -<p>Plutarch refers to him thrice. The first mention is not very -noticeable. Antony, during his campaign in Parthia, had on one occasion -to announce to his army a rather disgraceful composition with the -enemy, according to which he received permission to retreat in peace.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">But though he had an excellent tongue at will, and -very gallant to enterteine his souldiers and men of warre, and that he -could passingly well do it, as well, or better then any Captaine in his -time, yet being ashamed for respects, he would not speake unto them at -his removing, but willed Domitius Ænobarbus to do it.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</span> -Thus we see Enobarbus designated for a somewhat invidious and trying -task, and this implies Antony’s confidence in him, and his own efficiency.</p> - -<p>Then we are told that when the rupture with Caesar came,</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Antonius, through the perswasions of Domitius, -commaunded Cleopatra to returne againe into Ægypt, and there to -understand<a id="FNanchor_204" href="#Footnote_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> -the successe of this warre,</p> - -<p class="no-indent">a command, which, however, she managed to -overrule. Here again in Enobarbus’ counsel we see the hard-headed -and honest officer, who wishes things to be done in the right way, -and risks ill-will to have them so done. It is on this passage that -Shakespeare bases the outburst of Cleopatra and the downright and -sensible remonstrance of Enobarbus.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cle.</i> I will be even with thee, doubt it not.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> But why, why, why?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cle.</i> Thou hast forespoke my being in these wars,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And say’st it is not fit.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> Well, is it, is it?</div> - <div class="verse indent33">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> vii. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">More remotely too this gave Shakespeare the hint -for Enobarbus’ other censures on Antony’s conduct of the campaign.</p> - -<p>Thirdly, in the account of the various misfortunes that befell Antony -before Actium, and the varying moods in which he confronted them, -Shakespeare read:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Furthermore, he dealt very friendely and -courteously with Domitius, and against Cleopatraes mynde. For, he -being sicke of an agewe when he went and tooke a little boate to goe -to Caesars campe, Antonius was very sory for it, but yet he sent after -him all his caryage, trayne and men: and the same Domitius, as though -he gave him to understand that he repented his open treason, he died -immediately after.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</span> -This, of course, supplied Shakespeare with the episodes of Enobarbus’ -desertion and death, though he altered the date of the first, delaying -it till the last flicker of Antony’s fortune; and the manner of the -second, making it the consequence, which the penitent deliberately -desires, of a broken heart.</p> - -<p>But this is all that Plutarch has to say about the soldier. He is -capable; he is honest and bold in recommending the right course; when -Antony wilfully follows the wrong one, he forsakes him; but, touched -perhaps by his magnanimity, dies, it may be, in remorse.</p> - -<p>Now see how Shakespeare fills in and adds to this general outline. -Practical intelligence, outspoken honesty, real capacity for feeling, -are still the fundamental traits, and we have evidence of them all from -the outset. But, in the first place, they have received a peculiar -turn from the habits of the camp. Antony, rebuking and excusing his -bluntness, says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou art a soldier only, speak no more.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 109.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Indeed he is a soldier, if not only, at any -rate chiefly and essentially; and a soldier of the adventurer type, -carrying with him an initial suggestion of the more modern gentlemen -of fortune like Le Balafré or Dugald Dalgetty, who would fight for -any cause, and offered their services for the highest reward to the -leader most likely to secure it for them. He has also their ideas of -a soldier’s pleasures, and has no fancy for playing the ascetic. In -Alexandria he has had a good time, in his own sphere and in his own way -indulging in the feasts and carouses and gallantries of his master. He -tells Mecaenas, thoroughly associating himself with the exploits of Antony:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>We did sleep day out of countenance, and made the night -light with drinking.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 181.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</span> -He speaks with authority of the immortal breakfast at which the eight -wild boars were served, but makes little of it as by no means out of -the way. Similarly he identifies himself with Antony in their love -affairs when Antony announces his intention of setting out at once:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Why, then, we kill all our women: we see how mortal an unkindness is -to them: if they suffer our departure, death’s the word.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 137.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And after the banquet on the galley, when the -exalted personages, “these great fellows,” as Menas calls them, have -retired more than a little disguised in liquor, he, fresh from the -Egyptian Bacchanals, stays behind to finish up the night in Menas’ -cabin.</p> - -<p>Yet he has a certain contempt for the very vices in which he himself -shares, at least if their practitioners are overcome by them and cannot -retain their self-command even in their indulgence. When Lepidus -succumbs, this more seasoned vessel jeers at him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent5">There’s a strong fellow, Menas!</div> - <div class="verse indent10">[<i>pointing to the attendant who carries off Lepidus.</i>]</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Men.</i> Why?</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Eno.</i> A’ bears the third part of the world, man: see’st not?</div> - <div class="verse indent40">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vii. 95.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Nor does he suffer love to interfere with business:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Under a compelling occasion, let women die: it were pity to cast -them away for nothing: though, between them and a great cause, they -should be esteemed nothing.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 141.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">His practical shrewdness enables him, though of -a very different nature from Cassius, to look, like Cassius, quite -through the deeds of men. He always lays his finger on the inmost -nerve of a situation or complication. Thus when Mecaenas urges the -need of amity on the Triumvirs, Enobarbus’ disconcerting frankness -goes straight to the point that the smooth propriety of the other evades: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>If you borrow one another’s love for the instant, you may, -when you hear no more words of Pompey, return it again: you -shall have time to wrangle in when you have nothing else to do.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 103.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Antony silences him, saying he wrongs this -presence; but Octavius sees he has hit the nail on the head though in a -somewhat indecorous way:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I do not much dislike the matter, but</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The manner of his speech.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 113.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Just in the same way he takes the measure of -the arts and wiles and affectations of Cleopatra and her ladies, and -admits no cant into the consolations which he offers Antony on Fulvia’s -death:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice.... Your old -smock brings forth a new petticoat; and indeed the tears -live in an onion that should water this sorrow.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 167.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Yet he is by no means indifferent to real charm, -to the spell of refinement, grace and beauty. Like many who profess -cynicism, and even in a way are really cynical, he is all the more -susceptible to what in any kind will stand his exacting tests, -especially if it contrast with his own rough jostling life of the -barracks and of the field. It is in his mouth that Shakespeare places -that incomparable description of Cleopatra on the Cydnus, and there -could be no more fitting celebrant of her witchery. Of course the -poetry of the passage is supposed in part to be due to the theme, and -is a tribute to Cleopatra’s fascinations; but Enobarbus has the soul -to feel them and the imagination to portray them. Indeed she has no -such enraptured eulogist as he. He may object to her presence in the -camp and to her interference in the counsels of war; but that is only -because, like Bacon, he believes that “they do best, who if they cannot -but admit love, make it keep quarter, and sever it wholly from their -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</span> -serious affairs and actions of life”; it is not because he underrates her -enchantment or would advise Antony to forego it. On the contrary, he -seems to reproach his general when, in a passing movement of remorse, -Antony regrets having ever seen her:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>O, sir, you then had left unseen a wonderful piece of work; which -not to have been blest withal would have discredited your travel.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 159.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And he not only sees that Antony, despite the most -sacred of ties, the most urgent of interests, will inevitably return to -her: the enthusiasm of his words shows that their predestinate union -has his full sympathy and approval.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Mec.</i> Now Antony must leave her utterly.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> Never; he will not;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her infinite variety: other women cloy</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where most she satisfies.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 238.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And this responsiveness to what is gracious, has -its complement in his responsiveness to what is magnificent. He has an -ardent admiration for his “Emperor.” He is exceeding jealous for his -honour, and has no idea of the mighty Antony stooping his crest to any -power on earth. When Lepidus begs him to entreat his captain “to soft -and gentle speech” towards Octavius, he retorts with hot pride and -zeal, like a clansman’s for his chief:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent21">I shall entreat him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To answer like himself: if Caesar move him,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let Antony look over Caesar’s head</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And speak as loud as Mars. By Jupiter,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were I the wearer of Antonius’ beard,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I would not shave’t to-day.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 3.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">He glories even in Antony’s more doubtful -qualities, his lavishness, his luxury, his conviviality, his success -in love, for in all these his master shows a sort of royal exuberance; -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</span> -and they serve in the eyes of this practical but splendour-loving -veteran to set off his more technical excellences, the “absolute -soldiership,” the “renowned knowledge” on which he also dwells (<span -class="smcap">iii.</span> vii. 43 and 46). But with all his enthusiasm -for Antony, he is from the first critical of what he considers his -weaknesses and mistakes, just as with all his enthusiasm for Cleopatra -he has a keen eye for her affectations and interferences. Knowing -Antony’s real bent, he sees the inexpedience of the Roman marriage, and -foretells the result:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Men.</i> Then is Caesar and he for ever knit together.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> If I were bound to divine of this unity, I would not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">prophesy so.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Men.</i> I think the policy of that purpose made more in the</div> - <div class="verse indent0">marriage than the love of the parties.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> I think so too. But you shall find, the band that</div> - <div class="verse indent0">seems to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler</div> - <div class="verse indent0">of their amity.</div> - <div class="verse indent38">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vi. 122.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He is as contemptuous of Antony’s easy -emotionalism as of Octavius’ politic family affection. At the parting -of brother and sister, Enobarbus and Agrippa exchange the asides:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> Will Caesar weep?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Agr.</i> He has a cloud in’s face.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> He were the worse for that, were he a horse;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So is he, being a man.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Agr.</i><span class="ws6">Why, Enobarbus,</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">When Antony found Julius Caesar dead,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He cried almost to roaring: and he wept</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> That year, indeed, he was troubled with a rheum;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What willingly he did confound he wail’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Believe’t, till I wept too.</div> - <div class="verse indent35">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 51.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is therefore not hard to understand how, when -Antony wilfully sacrifices his advantages and rushes on his ruin, his -henchman’s feelings should be outraged and his fidelity should receive -a shock. After the flight at Actium, Cleopatra asks him: “Is Antony -or we in fault for this?” And Enobarbus, though he had opposed the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</span> -presence and plans of the Queen, is inexorable in laying the blame on -the right shoulders:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Antony only, that would make his will</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lord of his reason.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 3.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He is raised above the common run of the -legionaries by his devotion to his master; but his devotion is half -instinctive, half critical; and, as a rational man, he can suppress in -his nature the faithful dog. For the tragedy of Enobarbus’ position -lies in this: that in that evil time his reason can furnish him with -no motive for his loyalty except self-interest and confidence in his -leader’s capacity; or, failing these, the unsubstantial recompense -of fame. He is not Antony’s man from principle, in order to uphold a -great cause,—no one in the play has chosen his side on such a ground; -and fidelity at all costs to a person is a forgotten phrase among the -cosmopolitan materialists who are competing for the spoils of the -Roman world. So what is he to do? His instincts pull him one way, his -reason another, and in such an one instincts unjustified by reason lose -half their strength. At first he fights valiantly on behalf of his -inarticulate natural feeling. When Canidius deserts, he still refuses -in the face of evidence to accept the example:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent23">I’ll yet follow</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sits in the wind against me.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> x. 35.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But Antony’s behaviour in defeat, his alternations -between the supine and the outrageous, shake him still more; and only -the allurement of future applause, not a very cogent one to such a man -in such an age, wards off for a while the negative decision:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Mine honesty and I begin to square.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The loyalty well held to fools does make</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our faith mere folly: yet he that can endure</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To follow with allegiance a fall’n lord</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Does conquer him that did his master conquer,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And earns a place i’ the story.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 41.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</span> -The paltering of Cleopatra however is a further object lesson:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Sir, sir, thou art so leaky,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy dearest quit thee.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 63.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Then the observation of Antony’s frenzy of wrath -and frenzy of courage finally convinces him that the man is doomed, and -he forms his resolution:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Now he’ll outstare the lightning. To be furious</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is to be frighted out of fear: and in that mood</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A diminution in our captain’s brain</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Restores his heart: when valour preys on reason,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Some way to leave him.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 195.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">There is something inevitable in his recreancy, -for the principle that Menas puts in words is the presupposition on -which everybody acts; and Antony himself can understand exactly what -has taken place:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">O, my fortunes have</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Corrupted honest men!</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> v. 16.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Enobarbus’ heart is right, but in the long run -it has no chance against the convincing arguments of the situation. -And yet his heart has shown him the worthy way, and, in his despair -and remorse, it recovers hold of the truth that his head had made -him doubt. Observe however that even his revulsion of feeling is -brought about by the appeal to his worldly wisdom; it is not by their -unassisted power that the discredited whispers of conscience make -themselves heard and regain their authority. Enobarbus’ penitence, -though sudden, is all rationally explained, and is quite different -from the miraculous conversions of some wrong-doers in fiction, who in -an instant are awakened to grace for no conceivable cause and by no -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</span> -intelligible means. He is made to realise that he has taken wrong -measures in his own interest, by Octavius’ treatment of the other -deserters.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Alexas did revolt; and went to Jewry on</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Affairs of Antony; there did persuade</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Great Herod to incline himself to Caesar</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And leave his master Antony: for this pains</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Caesar hath hang’d him. Canidius and the rest</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That fell away have entertainment, but</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No honourable trust. I have done ill:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of which I do accuse myself so sorely,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That I will joy no more.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 11.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Then the transmission to him of his treasure with increase, makes -him feel that after all loyalty might have been a more profitable -investment:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">O Antony,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou mine of bounty, how would’st thou have paid</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My better service, when my turpitude</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou dost so crown with gold!</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 31.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">But he does not stop here. It is only in this way -that his judgment, trained by the time to test all things by material -advantage, can be convinced. But when it is convinced, his deeper and -nobler nature finds free vent in self-recrimination and self-reproach. -He goes on:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">This blows my heart:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall outstrike thought: but thought will do’t, I feel.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I fight against thee! No: I will go seek</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Some ditch wherein to die; the foul’st best fits</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My latter part of life.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 35.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And this too is most natural. Antony’s generosity -restores to him his old impression of Antony’s magnificence which -he had lost in these last sorry days. With that returns his old -enthusiasm, and with that awakes the sense of his own transgression -against such greatness. He is ready now in expiation to sacrifice the -one thing that in the end made him still shrink from treason. He had -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</span> -tried to steady himself, as we have seen, with the thought that the -glory of loyalty would be his, if he remained faithful to the last. Now -he demands the brand of treachery for his name, though he fain would -have Antony’s pardon for himself:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent23">O Antony,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nobler than my revolt is infamous,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forgive me in thine own particular:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But let the world rank me in register</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A master-leaver and a fugitive.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> ix. 18.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus he dies heart-broken and in despair. Personal -attachment to an individual, the one ethical motive that lingers in a -world of self-seekers to give existence some dignity and worth, is the -inspiration of his soul. But even this he cannot preserve unspoiled: on -accepted assumptions he is forced to deny and desecrate it. He succumbs -less through his own fault than through the fault of the age; and this -is his grand failure. When he realises what it means, there is no need -of suicide: he is killed by “swift thought,” by the consciousness that -his life with this on his record is loathsome and alien, a “very rebel -to his will,” that only “hangs on him” (<span class="smcap">iv.</span> ix. 14).</p> - -<p>Among the struggling and contentious throng of worldlings and egoists -who to succeed must tread their nobler instincts underfoot, and even so -do not always succeed, are there any honest and sterling characters at -all? There are a few, in the background, barely sketched, half hid from -sight. But we can perceive their presence, and even distinguish their -gait and bearing, though the artist’s purpose forbade their portrayal -in detail.</p> - -<p>First of these is Scarus, the simple and valiant fightingman, -who resents the infatuation of Antony and the ruinous influence -of Cleopatra as deeply as Enobarbus, but whose unsophisticated -soldier-nature keeps him to his colours with a troth that the less naïf -Enobarbus could admire but could not observe. It is from his mouth that -the most opprobrious epithets are hurled on the absconding pair, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</span> -“ribaudred nag of Egypt, whom leprosy o’ertake,” and “the doting -mallard,” “the noble ruin of her magic” who has kissed away kingdoms -and provinces. But as soon as he hears they have fled toward -Peloponnesus, he cries:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">’Tis easy to’t; and there will I attend</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What further comes.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> x. 32.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He attends to good purpose, and is the hero of the -last skirmish; when Antony’s prowess rouses him to applause, from which -he is too honest to exclude reproach:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O my brave emperor, this is fought indeed!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Had we done so at first, we had droven them home</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With clouts about their heads.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vii. 4.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Then halting-bleeding, with a wound that from a T -has been made an H, he still follows the chase. It is a little touch of -irony, apt to be overlooked, that he, who has cursed Cleopatra’s magic -and raged because kingdoms were kissed away, should now as grand reward -have his merits commended to “this great fairy,” and as highest honour -have leave to raise her hand—the hand that cost Thyreus so dear—to -his own lips. Doubtless, despite his late outbreak, he appreciates -these favours as much as the golden armour that Cleopatra adds. Says -Antony,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He has deserved it, were it carbuncled</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like holy Phoebus car.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> viii. 28.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He has: for he is of other temper than his -nameless and featureless original in Plutarch, who is merely a -subaltern who had fought well in the sally.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Cleopatra to reward his manlines, gave him an -armor and head peece of cleene gold: howbeit the man at armes when he -had received this rich gift, stale away by night and went to Caesar.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Not so Scarus. He is still at his master’s side on -the disastrous morrow and takes from him the last orders that Antony as -commander ever gave. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</span></p> - -<p>In this Roman legionary the spirit of military obligation still asserts -its power; and the spirit of domestic obligation is as strong in the -Roman matron Octavia. Shakespeare has been accused of travestying -this noble and dutiful lady. He certainly does not do that, and the -strange misstatement has arisen from treating seriously Cleopatra’s -distortion of the messenger’s report, or from taking that report, when -the messenger follows Cleopatra’s lead, as Shakespeare’s deliberate -verdict. If the messenger says that she is low-voiced and not so -tall as her rival, is that equivalent to the “dull of tongue, and -dwarfish” into which it is translated? And finding it so translated, -is it wonderful that the browbeaten informant should henceforth adopt -the same style himself, and exaggerate her deliberate motion to -creeping, her statuesque dignity to torpor, the roundness of her face -to deformity—which Cleopatra at once interprets as foolishness—the -lowness of her forehead to as much as you please, or, in his phrase, -“as she would wish it.” Agrippa, on the other hand speaks of her as one,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent13">whose beauty claims</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No worse a husband than the best of men:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose virtue and whose general graces speak</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That which none else can utter.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 130.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Mecaenas, too, pays his tribute to her “beauty, wisdom, modesty” -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> ii. 246). And if the praises of the courtiers are -suspect, they are not more so than the censures with which Cleopatra -flatters herself or is flattered. But if we dismiss, or at least -discount, both sets of overstatements, and with them Antony’s own -phrase, “a gem of women,” uttered in the heat of jealous contrast, -there are other conclusive evidences of the opinion in which she is -held. Enobarbus speaks of her “holy, cold, and still conversation” -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> vi. 131). Antony thinks of her as patient, even when he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</span> -threatens Cleopatra with her vengeance by personal assault -(<span class="smcap">iv.</span> xii. 38). Cleopatra, with her finer intuition, even when -recalling Antony’s threat, conjectures more justly what that vengeance -would be:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Demuring upon me.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xv. 27.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And elsewhere she asserts that she will not</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">once be chastised with the sober eye</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of dull Octavia.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 54.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is easy to construct her picture from these -hints. Calm, pure, devout, submissive; quite without vivacity or -initiative, she presents the old-fashioned ideal of womanhood, that -finds a sphere subordinate though august, by the domestic hearth. And -this is in the main Plutarch’s conception of her too. But there are -differences. The sacrifices of the lady to the exigencies of statecraft -is emphasised by the historian: “She was maryed unto him as it were -of necessitie, bicause her brother Caesars affayres so required it,” -and that even in her year of mourning, so that a dispensation had to -be obtained; since it was “against the law that a widow should be -maried within tenne monethes after her husbandes death.” Nevertheless -her association with Antony is far more intimate in Plutarch than in -Shakespeare; she is the mother of his children, feels bound to him, -and definitely takes his side. When relations first become strained -between the brothers-in-law, and not, as in the drama, just before -the final breach, she plays the peace maker, but successfully and on -Antony’s behalf. She seeks out her brother; tells him she is now the -happiest woman in the world; if war should break out between them, “it -is uncertaine to which of them the goddes have assigned the victorie or -overthrowe. But for me, on which side soever victorie fall, my state -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</span> -can be but most miserable still.” In Shakespeare this petition, eked -out with reminiscences of the appeal of Blanch in <i>King John</i>, and -with anticipations of the appeal of Volumnia in <i>Coriolanus</i>, is -addressed to Antony, and the even balance of her sympathies is accented -and reiterated in a way for which Plutarch gives no warrant.</p> - -<p>In the <i>Life</i> again, even when Antony has rejoined Cleopatra, has -showered provinces on her and his illegitimate children, and, after the -Parthian campaign, is living with her once more, Octavia insists on -seeking him out and brings him</p> - -<p class="blockquot no-indent">great store of apparell for souldiers, -a great number of horse, summe of money, and gifts, to bestow on his -friendes and Captaines he had about him: and besides all those, she -had two thowsand souldiers chosen men, all well armed, like unto the -Praetors bands.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">She has to return from Athens without seeing -Antony, but, despite Caesar’s command, she still lives in her husband’s -house, still tries to heal the division, looks after his children and -promotes the business of all whom he sends to Rome.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Howbeit thereby, thinking no hurt, she did -Antonius great hurt. For her honest love and regard to her husband, -made every man hate him, when they sawe he did so unkindly use so noble -a Lady.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">And finally, when Antony sent her word to leave -his house, she took with her all his children save Fulvia’s eldest -son who was with his father, and instead of showing resentment, only -bewailed and lamented “her cursed hap that had brought her to this, -that she was accompted one of the chiefest causes of this civill -warre.”</p> - -<p>Her even more magnanimous care for all Antony’s offspring without -distinction, when Antony is no more, belongs of course to a later date; -but all the previous instances of her devotion to his interest fall well -within the limits of the play, and yet Shakespeare makes no use of them. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</span></p> - -<p>It does not suit him to suggest that Antony ever deviated from his -passion for Cleopatra or bestowed his affection elsewhere: indeed, on -the eve of his marriage, he reveals his heart and intentions clearly -enough. But Shakespeare also knows that without affection to bring it -out, there will be no answering affection in a woman like Octavia. She -will be true to all her obligations, so long as they are obligations, -but no love will be roused to make her do more than is in her bond. -And of love there is in the play as little trace on her part as on -Antony’s. It is brother and sister, not husband and wife, that exchange -the most endearing terms: “Sweet Octavia,” “My dearest sister,” and “my -noble brother,” “most dear Caesar”; while to Antony she is “Octavia,” -“gentle Octavia,” or at most “Dear Lady,” and to her he is “Good my -lord.” At the parting in Rome Caesar has a cloud in his face and her -eyes drop tears like April showers. At the parting in Athens there is -only the formal permission to leave, on the one hand, and the formal -acknowledgment on the other. Evidently, if, as she says, she has her</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">heart parted betwixt two friends</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That do afflict each other,</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> vi. 77.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">or if Antony describes her equipoise of feeling as</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent13">the swan’s down-feather,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That stands upon the swell at full of tide,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And neither way inclines,</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 48.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">it is not because she regards them both with -equal tenderness. Her brother has her love; her husband, so long as he -deserves it, has her duty. But when he forfeits his claim, she has done -with him, unlike Plutarch’s Octavia, who pursues him to the end, and -beyond the end, with a self-forgetfulness that her mere covenant could -never call forth. Of all this there is nothing in the play. Her appeal -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</span> -to Antony in defence of Caesar is far warmer than her appeal to Caesar -on behalf of Antony, and when she definitely hears that Antony has not -only joined Cleopatra against her brother but has installed Cleopatra -in her own place, she merely says, “Is it so?” and falls silent. No -wonder. She is following Antony’s instructions to the letter:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Let your best love draw to that point, which seeks</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Best to preserve it.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> iv. 21.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And again:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When it appears to you where this begins,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Turn your displeasure that way; for our faults</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Can never be so equal that your love</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Can equally move with them.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> iv. 33.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">But this tacit assumption, fully borne out by -her previous words, that the claims of husband and brother are equal -in her eyes, and that the precedence is to be determined merely -by a comparison of faults, shows how little of wifely affection -Octavia felt, though doubtless she would be willing to fulfil her -responsibilities to the smallest jot and tittle.</p> - -<p>The hurried, loveless and transitory union, into which Antony has -entered only to suit his convenience, for as Enobarbus says, “he -married but his occasion here,” and into which Octavia has entered -only out of deference to her brother who “uses his power unto her,” -has thus merely a political and moral but no emotional significance. -This Roman marriage lies further apart from the love story of Antony -than the marriage in Brittany does from the love story of Tristram. -This diplomatic alliance interferes as little with Octavia’s sisterly -devotion to Octavius as the political alliances of Marguerite -d’Angoulême interfered with her sisterly devotion to Francis I. And -much is gained by this for the play. In the first place the hero no -longer, as in the biography, offends us by fickleness in his grand -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</span> -idolatry and infidelity to a second attachment, on the one hand, or -by ingratitude to a longsuffering and loving wife on the other. But -just for that reason Octavia does not really enter into his life, -and claims no full delineation. She is hardly visible, and does not -disturb our sympathies with the lovers or force on us moral regards by -demuring on them and chastising them with her sober eyes. Nevertheless -visible at intervals she is, and then she seems to tell of another life -than that of Alexandrian indulgence, a narrower life of obligations -and pieties beside which the carnival of impulse is both glorified -and condemned. And she does this not less effectually, but a great -deal less obtrusively, that in her shadowy form as she flits from the -mourning-chamber to the altar at the bidding of her brother, and from -Athens to Rome to preserve the peace, we see rather the self-devoted -sister than the devoted wife. For in the play she is sister first and -essentially, and wife only in the second place because her sisterly -feeling is so strong.</p> - -<p>Still more slightly sketched than the domestic loyalty of Octavia or -even than the military loyalty of Scarus, is the loyalty of Eros the -servant; but it is the most affecting of all, for it is to the death. -Characteristically, he who obtains the highest spiritual honours that -are awarded to any person in the play, is one of a class to which in -the prime of ancient civilisation the possibility of any moral life -would in theory have been denied. Morality was for the free citizen -of a free state: the slave was not really capable of it. And indeed -it is clear that often for the slave, who might be only one of the -goods and chattels of his owner, the sole chance of escape from a -condition of spiritual as well as physical servitude would lie in -personal enthusiasm for the master, in willing self-absorption in him. -But in a world like that of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> such personal -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</span> -enthusiasm, as we have seen, is almost the highest thing that remains. -So it is the quondam slave, Eros the freedman, bred in the cult of it, -who bears away the palm. Antony commands him to slay him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When I did make thee free, sworest thou not then</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or thy precedent services are all</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But accidents unpurposed. Draw, and come.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xiv. 81.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But Eros by breaking his oath and slaying himself, -does his master a better service. He cheers him in his dark hour by -this proof of measureless attachment:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent13">Thus do I escape the sorrow</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of Antony’s death.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xiv. 94.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IV<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE POLITICAL LEADERS</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>So much for the freedman whom Antony hails as his master, thrice nobler -than himself. But what about his betters, the “great fellows” as Menas -calls them, his rivals and associates in Empire?</p> - -<p>Let us run through the series of them; and despite his pride of place -we cannot begin lower than with the third Triumvir.</p> - -<p>Lepidus, the “slight unmeritable man, meet to be sent on errands,” as -he is described in <i>Julius Caesar</i>, maintains the same character -here, and is hardly to be talked of “but as a property.” In the first -scene where he appears, when he and Octavius are discussing Antony’s -absence, he is a mere cypher. Even in this hour of need, Octavius -unconsciously and as a matter of course treats Antony’s negligence -as a wrong not to them both but only to himself. The messenger never -addresses Lepidus and assumes that the question is between Caesar and -Pompey alone. At the close this titular partner “beseeches” to be -informed of what takes place, and Octavius acknowledges that it is his -“bond,” but clearly it is not his choice.</p> - -<p>No doubt on the surface he pleases by his moderate and conciliatory -attitude. When Octavius is indicting his absent colleague, Lepidus is -frank in his excuse: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">I must not think there are</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Evils enow to darken all his goodness:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His faults in him seem as the spots of heaven,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">More fiery by night’s blackness.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iv. 10.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Knowing the zeal and influence of Enobarbus, he -recommends his mediation as a becoming and worthy deed, and tries to -mitigate his vehemence:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Your speech is passion:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But, pray you, stir no embers up.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 12.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And when the Triumvirs meet, the counsels of -forbearance, which Shakespeare assigns to him and which in Plutarch are -not associated with his name, are just in the right tone:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">Noble friends,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That which combined us was most great, and let not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A leaner action rend us. What’s amiss</div> - <div class="verse indent0">May it be gently heard: when we debate</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our trivial difference loud, we do commit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Murder in healing wounds: then, noble partners,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The rather, for I earnestly beseech,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor curstness grow to the matter.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 17.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But all this springs from no real kindliness or -public spirit. Pompey understands the position:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Lepidus flatters both,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of both is flatter’d: but he neither loves,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor either cares for him.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is mere indolence and flaccidity of temper that -makes him ready to play the peace-maker, and his efforts are proof of -incompetence rather than of nobility. He is so anxious to agree with -everybody and ingratiate himself with both parties, that he excites the -ridicule not only of the downright Enobarbus, but of the reticent and -diplomatic Agrippa:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Eno.</i> O, how he loves Caesar!</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Agr.</i> Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony!</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Eno.</i> Caesar? Why, he’s the Jupiter of men.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Agr.</i> What’s Antony? The god of Jupiter. - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Eno.</i> Spake you of Caesar? How! the nonpareil!</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Agr.</i> O Antony! O thou Arabian bird!</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Eno.</i> Would you praise Caesar, say “Caesar”: go no further.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Agr.</i> Indeed, he plied them both with excellent praises.</div> - <div class="verse indent35">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 7.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He will be all things to all men that he himself -may be saved; and his love of peace runs parallel with his readiness -for good cheer. He likes to enjoy himself and soon drinks himself -drunk. The very servants see through his infirmity:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Sec. Serv.</i> As they pinch one another by the -disposition, he cries out “no more”; reconciles them to his -entreaty and himself to the drink.<a id="FNanchor_205" href="#Footnote_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a></p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vii. 6.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And they proceed to draw the moral of the whole -situation. Lepidus’ ineptitude is due to the same circumstance that -brings Costard’s criticism on Sir Nathaniel when the curate breaks -down in the pageant. “A foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, -and soon dashed. He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, ... but, -for Alexander,—alas, you see how ’tis,—a little o’erparted.” Lepidus -too is a marvellous good neighbour, but for a Triumvir,—alas, you see -how ’tis,—a little o’erparted. He is attempting a part or role that -is too big for him. He is in a position and company where his nominal -influence goes for nothing and his want of perception puts him to the blush. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Sec. Serv.</i> Why, this it is to have a name in great men’s -fellowship: I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service as a -partizan I could not heave.</p> - -<p><i>First Serv.</i> To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be -seen to move in’t, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully -disaster the cheeks.</p> - -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vii. 12.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">In his efforts at <i>bonhomie</i>, he becomes so -bemused that even Antony, generally so affable and courteous, does not -trouble to be decently civil, and flouts him to his wine-sodden face, -with impertinent school-boy jests about the crocodile that is shaped -like itself, and is as broad as it has breadth, and weeps tears that -are wet. Caesar, ever on the guard, asks in cautious admonition: “Will -this description satisfy him?” But Antony is scornfully aware that he -may dismiss punctilios:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">With the health that Pompey gives him; else he is a very epicure.</div> - <div class="verse indent40">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vii. 56.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His deposition, which must come in the natural -course of things, is mentioned only casually and contemptuously:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Caesar, having made use of him in the wars ’gainst Pompey, presently -denied him rivality: would not let him partake in the glory of the -action: and not resting here, accuses him of letters he had formerly -wrote to Pompey: upon his own appeal, seizes him: so the poor third is -up, till death enlarge his confine.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> v. 7.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Accused of letters written to Pompey! So he -had been at his old work, buttering his bread on both sides. His -suppression is one of the grievances Antony has against Caesar, who has -appropriated his colleague’s revenue; and it is interesting to note the -defence that Caesar, who never chooses his grounds at random, gives for -his apparent arbitrariness:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I have told him, Lepidus was grown too cruel;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That he his high authority abused,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And did deserve his change.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> vi. 32.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</span> -So this friend of all the world may be accused of inhumanity and -misrule. The charge is plausible. Shakespeare could not here forget -that at the proscription, Lepidus is represented as acquiescing in the -death of his own brother-in-law to secure the death of Antony’s nephew. -Still his alleged cruelty may only have been a specious pretext on -Octavius’ part to screen his own designs, and even to transfer his own -offences to another man’s shoulders. Pompey says, in estimating the -chances of his venture,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Caesar gets money where</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He loses hearts.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 13.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Appian refers to these exactions, but in Plutarch -there is as yet no mention of Octavius making himself unpopular by -exorbitant imposts, and only at a later time is he said to have done -so in preparing for his war with Antony. The subsequent passage, which -Shakespeare does not use, or hardly uses, in its proper place, may have -suggested the present statement:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The great and grievous exactions of money did -sorely oppresse the people.... Hereuppon there arose a wonderfull -exclamation and great uprore all Italy over: so that among the greatest -faults that ever Antonius committed., they blamed him most for that he -delayed to give Caesar battell.... When such a great summe of money was -demaunded of them, they grudged at it, and grewe to mutinie upon it.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Does Shakespeare, by antedating Caesar’s -oppressive measures, mean to insinuate his own gloss on the charge of -cruelty against Lepidus that he found in Plutarch? At any rate in that -case Octavius would be merely following the course that Antony had -already laid down:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Though we lay these honours on this man,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To groan and sweat under the business,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Either led or driven, as we point the way: - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And having brought our treasure where we will,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then take we down his load, and turn him off,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And graze in commons.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<i>J. C.</i> <span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> i. 19.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Octavius certainly carries out Antony’s programme -in the result, and it would add to the irony of the situation if he had -also done so in the process, and, while exploiting Lepidus’ resources, -had incidentally eased himself of a slanderous load. No wonder that -Antony is annoyed. But if he frets at his colleague’s undoing, we may -be sure that apart from personal chagrin, it is only because Octavius’ -influence has been increased and his own share of the spoils withheld. -Of personal regret there is nothing in his reported reception of the -news. Lepidus the man, Antony dismisses with an angry gesture and -exclamation: he</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent28">spurns</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The rush that lies before him; cries, “Fool, Lepidus!”</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> v. 17.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Sextus Pompeius who at one time had a fair chance of entering into a -position equal or superior to that of Lepidus, comes higher in the -scale than he. He has a certain feeling for righteousness:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If the great gods be just, they shall assist</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The deeds of justest men.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He has a certain nobility of sentiment that -enables him to rise to the occasion. When to his surprise he learns -that he will have to reckon with the one man he dreads, he cries:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">But let us rear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The higher our opinion, that our stirring</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Can from the lap of Egypt’s widow pluck</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The ne’er-lust-wearied Antony.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 35.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So, when told that he looks older, his reply is -magnanimous:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Well, I know not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What counts harsh Fortune casts upon my face;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But in my bosom shall she never come,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To make my heart her vassal.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vi. 55.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</span> -Antony confesses that he owes him thanks for generous treatment:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He hath laid strange courtesies and great</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of late upon me.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 157.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">We presently get to hear what these were, and must -admit that he acted like a gentleman:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Though I lose</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The praise of it by telling, you must know,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When Caesar and your brother were at blows,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your mother came to Sicily, and did find</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her welcome friendly.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vi. 43.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He has moreover a certain filial piety for the -memory of his father, and a certain afterglow of free republican -sentiment:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent26">What was’t</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That moved pale Cassius to conspire; and what</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Made the all-honour’d, honest Roman, Brutus,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With the arm’d rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To drench the Capitol: but that they would</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have one man but one man? And that is it</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hath made me rig my navy: at whose burthen</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The anger’d ocean foams; with which I meant</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To scourge the ingratitude that despiteful Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cast on my noble father.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vi. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But even if all this were quite genuine, it -would not suffice to form a really distinguished character. In the -first place Sextus never penetrates to the core of things but lingers -over the shows. Thus he has no grip of his present strength or of the -insignificance to which he relegates himself by his composition. For -Shakespeare differs from Plutarch, and follows Appian, in making his -rising a very serious matter.<a id="FNanchor_206" href="#Footnote_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a> -It is this that in the play, and in complete contradiction of the -<i>Life</i>, is the chief motive for Antony’s return to Italy: and he -gives his reasons. He says that Pompey “commands the empire of the -sea” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 191),—a great exaggeration -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</span> -of Plutarch’s statement that he “so scoored<a id="FNanchor_207" href="#Footnote_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a> -all the sea thereabouts (<i>i.e.</i>, near Sicily) that none durst -peepe out with a sayle.” He continues, that “the slippery people” begin -to throw all the dignities of Pompey the Great upon his son -(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 193), though there is no hint of this -popular support in the history. And he concludes that Pompey’s</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent19">... quality, going on,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The sides o’ the world may danger.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 198.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In Plutarch it is not prudence but courtesy that moves the Triumvirs -to negociate with him. His hospitality to Antony’s mother is expressly -mentioned as the cause of their leniency; “<i>therefore</i> they -thought good to make peace with him.” Similarly Shakespeare may have -warrant from Appian, but he certainly has not warrant from Plutarch, -to represent Octavius as listening in dismay to reports of malcontents -“that only have fear’d Caesar” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iv. 38) -crowding to Pompey’s banners from love of him; or as harassed by -Antony’s absence, when this occasion “drums him from his sport” -(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iv. 29); or as driven by fear of -Pompey to “cement their divisions and bind up the petty difference” -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> i. 48). In all these ways Shakespeare -treats the trifling disturbance of Plutarch’s account as a civil war -waged by not unequal forces. And even after the tension has been -somewhat relieved by Antony’s arrival, Octavius bears witness in regard -to Pompey’s strength by land that it is</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Great and increasing: but by sea</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He is an absolute master.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 165.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Obviously then Shakespeare conceives Pompey as -having much to hope for, and much to lose. But Pompey does not realise -his own power. By the treaty he throws away his advantages. In the -division of the world he only gets Sicily and Sardinia, which were his -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</span> -already; and in return he must rid all the sea of pirates, and -send wheat to Rome. By the first provision he deprives himself of -recruits like Menas and Menecrates; by the second, he caters for -his scarce atoned enemies. Surely there is justification for Menas’ -aside: “Thy father, Pompey, would ne’er have made this treaty” -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> vi. 84), and his like remark to -Enobarbus: “Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune” -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> vi. 109). He practically gives over the -contest which he has a fair prospect of winning, and allows himself to -be cajoled of the means by which he might at least gain security and -power. But the most that he obtains is a paper guarantee for a fraction -of the spoils; though he ought to have known that such guarantees -are rotten bands with rivals like Octavius, who will only wait the -opportunity, that must now inevitably come, to set them aside.</p> - -<p>But besides, this magnanimity, which he is so fond of parading, is not -only insufficient, even were it quite sterling coin; in his case it -rings counterfeit. We cannot forget that his noble sentiments about -justice are uttered to Menas and Menecrates, “great thieves by sea.” Is -Pompeius Magnus to be avenged, is freedom to be restored by the help -of buccaneers who find it expedient to “deny” what they have done by -water? Surely all this is not very dexterous make-believe, intended -to impose on others or himself. Even his rejection of Menas’ scheme -for doing away with the Triumvirs, though it shows his regard for -appearances, does not imply any honourable feeling of the highest kind. -For listen to his words:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">Ah, this thou should’st have done,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And not have spoke on’t! In me, ’tis villany;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In thee ’t had been good service. Thou must know,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">’Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mine honour, it. Repent that e’er thy tongue</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hath so betray’d thine act: being done unknown,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I should have found it afterwards well done;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But must condemn it now.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vii. 79.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</span> -Here he shows no moral scruple, but only anxiety about his reputation. -He would have no objection to reap the reward of crime, and would -even after a decorous interval approve it; but he will not commit or -authorise it, because he wishes to pose in his own eyes and the eyes -of others as the man of justice, principle and chivalry. He is one of -the people who “would not play false and yet would wrongly win,” and -who often excite more contempt than the resolute malefactor. And the -reason is that their abstention from guilt arises not from tenderness -of conscience but from perplexity of intellect. They confound shadow -and substance; for by as much as genuine virtue is superior to material -success, by so much is material success superior to the illusion of -virtue. In the case of Pompey, the treachery of Octavius is almost -excused by the ostentation, obtuseness, and half-heartedness of the -victim. It is fitting that after being despoiled of Italy he should -owe his death to a mistake. This at least is the story, not found in -Plutarch, which Shakespeare in all probability adopts at the suggestion -of Appian. It is not given as certain even by Appian, who leaves it -open to question whether he was killed by Antony’s command or not. -But perhaps Shakespeare considers that his futile career should end -futilely through the overzeal of an agent who misunderstands his -master’s wishes; so he makes Eros tell how Antony</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Threats the throat of that his officer</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That murder’d Pompey.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> v. 19.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It suits the dramatist too to free his hero from -complicity in such a deed, and exhibit him as receiving the news with -generous indignation and regret. Yet such regret is very skin-deep. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</span> -Even Antony’s chief complaint in regard to Pompey’s overthrow is that -he gets none of the unearned increment; or, as Octavius says,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">that, having in Sicily</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sextus Pompeius spoil’d, we had not rated him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His part o’ the isle.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> vi. 24.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Higher still in our respect, if not in our affection, but even in -our respect not very high, is Octavius at the head of his statesmen, -politicians, men of the world, his Mecaenases, Agrippas and the rest, -with their <i>savoir faire</i> and <i>savoir vivre</i>. They never let -themselves go in thought or in deed; all their words and behaviour are -disciplined, reserved, premeditated. Antony’s description of their -principal is no doubt true, and it breathes the contempt of the born -soldier, who has drunk delight of battle with his peers, for the mere -deviser of calculations and combinations:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">He at Philippi kept</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His sword e’en like a dancer; while I struck</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The lean and wrinkled Cassius; and ’twas I</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That the mad Brutus ended: he alone</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the brave squares of war.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xi. 35.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Nor is there any prestige of genius or glamour of -charm to conciliate admiration for such men. Theirs are the practical, -rather uninteresting natures, that generally rise to the top in this -workaday world. They know what they wish to get; they know what they -must do to get it; and the light from heaven never shines on their eyes -either to glorify their path or to lead them astray.</p> - -<p>The most obvious trait, as Kreyssig remarks, in the somewhat bourgeois -personality of Octavius is his sobriety, in every sense of the word: a -self-contained sobriety, which, though supposed to be a middle-class -virtue, is in him pushed so far as to become almost aristocratic. For -it fosters and cherishes his self-esteem; and his self-esteem rises to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</span> -an enormous and inflexible pride, which finds expression alike in his -dignity and in his punctiliousness. In both respects it is outraged by -the levity of Antony, which he resents as compromising himself. His -colleague must</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">No way excuse his soils, when we do bear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So great weight in his lightness.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iv. 24.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">A man like this, fast centred in himself, cannot -but despise the impulse-driven populace; he could never have courted -it to sway it to his purposes, as Antony did of old; to him it is a -rotting water-weed. This temper, lofty and imposing in some respects, -is apt to attach undue importance to form and etiquette, as when the -“manner” of Enobarbus’ interruption, not its really objectionable -because all too incontrovertible matter, arouses his disapproval: -but it is a difficult temper to take liberties with. None of his -counsellors dreams of venturing with him on the familiarity which -Enobarbus, Canidius, and even the common soldier, employ as a matter -of course with Antony. And this is partly due to his lack of sympathy, -to his deficient social feeling. Such an one plumes himself on being -different from and superior to his fellows. He is like the Prince of -Arragon in the <i>Merchant of Venice</i>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I will not choose what many men desire,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Because I will not jump with common spirits</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<i>M. of V.</i> <span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ix. 3.)</div> - </div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is because Antony’s vices are those of the -common spirits and the barbarous multitudes that Octavius despises -him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">You shall find there</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A man who is the abstract of all faults</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That all men follow.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iv. 8.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His own failings do not lie in the direction of vulgar indulgence. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</span> -He is a foe to all excess. When the feasters pledge him, he objects to -the compulsory carouse:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">I could well forbear ’t.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It’s monstrous labour, when I wash my brain,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And it grows fouler....</div> - <div class="verse indent4">I had rather fast from all four days</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than drink so much in one.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vii. 105.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And he can address a dignified remonstrance and -rebuke to his less temperate associates:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">What would you more? Pompey, good night. Good brother,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let me request you off: our graver business</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Frowns at this levity. Gentle lords, let’s part:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You see we have burnt our cheeks....</div> - <div class="verse indent12">The wild disguise hath almost</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Antick’d us all.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vii. 126.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">A man of this kind will be externally faultless in -all the domestic requirements, a good husband and a good brother, in so -far as rigid fidelity to the nuptial tie and scrupulous care for his -sister’s provision are concerned. He is honestly shocked at Antony’s -violation of his marriage bond. We feel that if Cleopatra did really -entertain the idea of subduing him by her charms, it was nothing but an -undevout imagination. One might as well think to set on fire “a dish of -skim milk,” as Hotspur calls men of this sort.</p> - -<p>But the better side of this is his genuine family feeling. His love -for his sister may be limited and alloyed, but it is unfeigned. It has -sometimes been pointed out that his indignation at Octavia’s scanty -convoy when she returns from Athens to Rome, is stirred quite as much -on his own behalf as on hers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Why have you stolen upon us thus? You come not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like Caesar’s sister.... You are come</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A market maid to Rome; and have prevented</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The ostentation of our love, which, left unshown,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is often left unlov’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> vi. 42.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is quite true that he thinks of what is due to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</span> -himself, but he does not altogether forget her claims; and even when -he regrets the defective “ostentation” of love—a term that is apt to -rouse suspicion, no doubt, but less so in Elizabethan than in modern -ears—he bases his regret on the just and valid ground that without -expression love itself is apt to die. That behind his own “ostentation” -of fondness (which of course he is careful not to neglect, for it is a -becoming and creditable thing), there is some reality of feeling, is -proved by the parting scene. His affectionate farewell and even his -gathering tears might be pretence; but he promises to send her regular -letters:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">Sweet Octavia,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You shall hear from me still.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 58.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It really means something when a man like -Octavius, busy with the affairs of the whole world, spares time for -frequent domestic correspondence.</p> - -<p>And yet this admirable brother has not hesitated to arrange for his -sister a “mariage de convenance” with Antony, a man whom he disapproves -and dislikes. From the worldly point of view it is certainly the most -brilliant match she could make; and this perhaps to one of Octavius’ -arid nature, with its total lack of sympathy, imagination and generous -ideals, may have seemed the main consideration. All the same we cannot -help feeling that he was thinking mainly of himself, and, though with -some regrets, has sacrificed her to the exigencies of statecraft. Menas -and Enobarbus, shrewd and unsentimental observers, agree that policy -has made more in the marriage than love. So much indeed is obvious, -even if its purpose is what on the face of it it professes to be, the -reconcilement of the men it makes brothers-in-law. But, as we shall -see, Octavius may have a more tortuous device in it than this.</p> - -<p>Treating it meanwhile, however, as an expedient for knitting the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</span> -alliance with his rival, what inference does it suggest? If for the -sake of his own interests, Octavius shows himself far from scrupulous -in regard to the sister whom he loves and whose material well-being -is his care, what may we expect of him in the case of those who are -indifferent or dangerous or hostile?</p> - -<p>He has no hesitation about ousting his colleague Lepidus, or ruining -the reconciled rebel Pompeius, despite his compacts with both. Then -it is Antony’s turn; and Antony is a far more formidable antagonist, -with all his superiority in material resources, fertility of genius, -proven soldiership and strategic skill. It is not because Octavius is -the greater man that he succeeds. It is, in the first place, because he -concentrates all his narrow nature to a single issue, while Antony with -his greater width of outlook disperses his interest on many things at -once. How typical of each are the asides with which respectively they -enter their momentous conference. Antony is already contemplating other -contingencies:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If we compose well here, to Parthia:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hark, Ventidius.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 15.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Octavius will not be diverted from the -immediate business:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">I do not know,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mecaenas; ask Agrippa.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 16.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So, too, when the composition has taken place, -Antony squanders his strength in the invasion of Parthia, the conquest -of Armenia and other annexations, not to mention his grand distraction -in Egypt. But Octavius pursues his one purpose with the dogged tenacity -of a sleuth hound, removes Pompey who might be troublesome, seizes the -resources of Lepidus, and is able to oppose the solid mass of the West -to Antony’s loose congeries of Asiatic allies and underlings, whose -disunited crowd seems to typify his own unreconciled ambitions. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</span></p> - -<p>But even so it is not so much that Octavius wins, as that Antony loses. -In another sense than he means, the words of the latter are true:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Not Caesar’s valour hath o’erthrown Antony,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But Antony’s hath triumph’d on itself.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xv. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is his extraordinary series of blunders, -perversities, and follies that play into his antagonist’s hands and -give him the trick, though that antagonist holds worse cards and is -less expert in many points of the game.</p> - -<p>But in so far as Octavius can claim credit for playing it, it is due to -cunning and chicane rather than to any wisdom or ability of the higher -kind. At the outset he prepares a snare for Antony, into which Antony -falls, and by the fall is permanently crippled. It seems more than -probable that the marriage with Octavia was suggested, not to confirm -the alliance, but to provoke a breach at a more convenient season. The -biographer expressly assigns the same sort of ulterior motive to a -later act of apparent kindliness, when Octavia was again used as the -unconscious pawn. When she, just before the final breach, insists on -setting out to join her husband, Plutarch explains:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Her brother Octavius was willing unto it, not for -his (<i>i.e.</i> Antony’s) respect at all (as most authors doe report) -as for that he might have an honest culler to make warre with Antonius -if he did misuse her, and not esteeme of her as she ought to be.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This was quite enough to suggest to Shakespeare -a similar interpretation of the marriage project from the first. He -does not indeed expressly state but he virtually implies it, as appears -if we realise the characters and circumstances of those concerned. At -the time the match is being arranged, Enobarbus quite clearly foresees -and openly predicts the upshot to Mecaenas and Agrippa. Will they, and -especially Agrippa, who is nominal author of the plan and announces it -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</span> -as “a studied not a present thought,” have overlooked so probable an -issue? Will it never have occurred to the circumspect and calculating -Octavius, who evidently leads up to Agrippa’s intervention and -proposal? Or if through some incredible inadvertence it has hitherto -escaped them all, will not the vigilant pair of henchmen hasten to -inform their master of the unexpected turn that things seem likely to -take? Not at all. Despite the convinced and convincing confidence of -Enobarbus’ prophecy, they waive it aside. Mecaenas merely replies with -diplomatic decorum:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The heart of Antony, Octavia is</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A blessed lottery to him.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 247.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">No doubt. But though Touchstone says, “Your If -is your only peace-maker,” it can also be a very good peace-breaker -on occasion. In Enobarbus’ opinion (and in his own way Octavius is -just as shrewd), Octavia with her “holy, cold and still conversation” -is no dish for Antony. But though this is now expressly pointed out -to Octavius’ confidants, the marriage goes on as though nothing could -be urged against it. The reason is that nothing can, from the point -of view of the contrivers. If it turns out well, so far good; if it -turns out ill, so much the better. Only when it is an accomplished -fact, does Caesar give a glimpse of what it involves in the sinister -exhortation:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Let not the piece of virtue which is set</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Betwixt us, as the cement of our love,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To keep it builded, be the ram to batter</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The fortress of it.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 28.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus when Antony returns to Cleopatra, as he was -bound to do, Octavius manages to represent himself as the aggrieved -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</span> -party, as champion of the sanctity of the hearth, the vindicator of -old Roman pieties; and in this way gains a good deal of credit at the -outset of the quarrel.</p> - -<p>And for the fortunate conduct of it, he is indebted, apart from -Antony’s demoralisation, to his adroitness in playing on the weakness -of others, rather than to any nobler strength in himself. Thus he -irritates Antony’s reckless chivalry, both vain and grandiose, by -defying him to give battle by sea at Actium. Antony is not bound even -by any punctilio of honour to consent, for Octavius has twice declined -a similar challenge.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Ant.</i><span class="ws5">Canidius, we</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will fight with him by sea.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cle.</i><span class="ws6">By sea! What else?</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Can.</i> Why will my lord do so?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Ant.</i><span class="ws7">For that he dares us to’t.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> So hath my lord dared him to single fight.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Can.</i> Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where Caesar fought with Pompey; but these offers,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And so should you.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> vii. 28.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But Octavius knows his man, and this appeal to his -audacity, enforced by the command of Cleopatra, determines Antony like -a true knight-errant to the fatal course.</p> - -<p>This passage is of great significance in Shakespeare’s delineation of -Octavius, because, though suggested by Plutarch, it completely alters -the complexion and some of the facts of Plutarch’s story. That records -the two-fold challenge of Antony, but represents it as answering, not -preceding the message of Octavius. Moreover that message contains no -reference to a naval combat and has nothing in common with the shape it -assumes in the play.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Octavius Caesar sent unto Antonius, to will him to -delay no more time, but to come on with his army into Italy: and that -for his owne part he would give him safe harber, to lande without any -trouble, and that he would withdraw his armie from the sea, as farre as -one horse could runne, until he had put his army ashore, and had lodged -his men.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</span> -That is, in the original Octavius takes the lead in dare-devilry, and -seems voluntarily to suggest such terms as even Byrhtnoth at the Battle -of Maldon conceded only by request. Shakespeare could not fit this in -with his conception of the cold-blooded politician, and substitutes for -it a proposal that will put the enemy at a disadvantage; while at the -same time he accentuates Octavius’ unblushing knavery, by making him -apply this provocation after he has twice rejected offers that do not -suit himself.</p> - -<p>Again, having won his first victory through Cleopatra’s flight, Caesar -cynically reckons for new success on her corruptibility:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">From Antony win Cleopatra: promise,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And in our name, what she requires; add more,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From thine invention, offers: women are not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In their best fortunes strong; but want will perjure</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The ne’er-touch’d vestal: try thy cunning, Thyreus.</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xii. 24.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This scheme indeed miscarries owing to Antony’s -intervention, but meanwhile it has become unnecessary owing to the -torrent of deserters. So Octavius is sure of his case, and can dismiss -with ridicule the idea of a single fight. In Plutarch he does so too, -but with the implied brag that he would certainly be victor: “Caesar -answered him that he had many other wayes to dye then so;” when the -<i>he</i> stands for Antony: but owing to North’s fortunate ambiguity -Shakespeare takes it as referring to the speaker:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Let the old ruffian know</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have many other ways to die; mean time</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Laugh at his challenge.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> i. 4.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">A more subtle contumely; for it implies that -Caesar with scornful impartiality acknowledges Antony’s superiority as -a <i>sabreur</i>, but can afford to dismiss that as of no moment. His -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</span> -response has already been annotated in advance by Enobarbus, when -Antony was inditing his cartel:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Against a sworder!... That he should dream,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His judgement too.</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 29.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Octavius has by this time the ball at his feet, -and can even cast the contemptuous alms of his pity on “poor Antony,” -as he calls him (<span class="smcap">iv.</span> i. 16). Nor are his -expectations deceived, for he reckons out everything:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Go, charge Agrippa.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Plant those that have revolted in the van,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That Antony may seem to spend his fury</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon himself.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 8.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And though he suffers a momentary check, he -presently achieves the final triumph through the treason and baseness -of Antony’s Egyptian followers, on which he rightly felt he might rely.</p> - -<p>And when he has won the match he makes use of his advantage with more -appearance than reality of nobleness. He wishes to have not only the -substantial rewards of victory, but the shows and trappings of it as -well. He seeks to preserve Cleopatra alive,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">for her life in Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Would be eternal in our triumph.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 65.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is the secret of his clemency and generosity, -that he would have her “grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels.” -And if he has another reason for sparing her, it is not for the sake -of clemency and generosity in themselves, but for the parade of these -qualities: as indeed Proculeius unconsciously lets out in the naïf -advice he gives her:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Do not abuse my master’s bounty by</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The undoing of yourself: let the world see</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His nobleness well acted, which your death</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will never let come forth.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 44.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</span> -And ably does Octavius play his role: he “extenuates rather than -enforces,” gilds his covert threats with promises, and dismisses the -episode of the unscheduled treasure with Olympian serenity. His only -fault is that he rather overacts the part. His excess of magnanimity, -when by nature he is far from magnanimous, tells Cleopatra all she -needs to know, and leaves little for the definite disclosures of -Dolabella:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be noble to myself.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 191.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But, though not magnanimous, he is intelligent: -and his intelligence enables and enjoins him to recognise greatness -when it is no longer opposed to his own interest, and when the -recognition redounds to his own credit, by implying that the conqueror -is greater still. His panegyrics on Antony, and afterwards on -Cleopatra, are very nearly the right things to say and are very nearly -said in the right way. When he hears of his rival’s suicide, his first -exclamation does not ill befit the occasion:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The breaking of so great a thing should make</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A greater crack: ... the death of Antony</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is not a single doom; in the name lay</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A moiety of the world.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But this disinterested emotion does not last long. -The awe at fallen greatness soon leads to comparisons with the living -greatness that has proved its match. The obsequious bystanders find -this quite natural and point it out without a hint of sarcasm:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Agr.</i><span class="ws8">Caesar is touch’d.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Mec.</i> When such a spacious mirror’s set before him,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He needs must see himself.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So Octavius proceeds to a recital of Antony’s merits -in which he bespeaks a double portion of the praise he seems to dispense: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">O Antony!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have follow’d thee to this; but we do lance</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Diseases in our bodies: I must perforce</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have shown to thee such a declining day,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or look on thine: we could not stall together</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the whole world: but yet let me lament,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That thou, my brother, my competitor,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In top of all design, my mate in empire,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Friend and companion in the front of war,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The arm of mine own body, and the heart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where mine his thoughts did kindle,—that our stars,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unreconciliable, should divide</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our equalness to this.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 35.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And here, as business calls, he breaks off and -postpones the rest to “some meeter season.” Similarly when he finds -Cleopatra dead he has the insight to do her justice:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent26">Bravest at the last,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">She levell’d at our purposes, and, being royal,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Took her own way.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 238.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Then follows the official valediction:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">She shall be buried by her Antony:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No grave upon the earth shall clip in it</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A pair so famous. High events as these</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Strike those that make them</i>; and their story is</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No less in pity than <i>his glory which</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Brought them to be lamented</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 361.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So the last word is a testimonial to himself.</p> - -<p>These are eulogies of the understanding, not of the heart. They are -very different in tone from the tributes of Antony to his patron -Julius or his opponent Brutus. The tears and emotion, genuine though -facile, of the latter are vouched for even by the sarcasms of Agrippa -and Enobarbus. Octavius’ utterance, when he pronounces his farewell, -is broken, we may be sure, by no sob and choked by no passion. His -<i>éloge</i> has been compared to a funeral sermon, and will not -interfere with the victor’s appetite for the fruits of victory. But -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</span> -though his feeling is not stirred to the depths, he is fairly just and -fairly acute. He is no contemptible character, this man who carries -off the palm from one of infinitely richer endowment. The contrast -between the two rivals, and the justification of the success of the -less gifted, is summed up in a couple of sentences they exchange at the -banquet off Misenum. When Octavius shrinks from the carouse, Antony -bids him: “Be a child o’ the time” (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> vii. 106). -“Possess it, I’ll make answer,” is Octavius’ reply and reproof.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER V<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">MARK ANTONY</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>“Be a child o’ the time,” says Antony, and he carries out his maxim -to the letter. Only that time could bring forth such a devotee of the -joys of life and lavish on him such wealth of enjoyment. But the time -was one that devoured its own children. Those who chose to be merely -its products, must accept its ordinances, and it was cruel as well as -indulgent. It was the manlier as well as the safer course for the child -to possess the time, to repudiate its stock, and, if might be, to usurp -the heritage.</p> - -<p>We must bear the counter admonition of Octavius in mind when we -approach the personage to whom it was addressed. All who have a -wide range of interests, and with these warmth of imagination and -spontaneity of impulse, must feel that their judgment is apt to be -bribed by the attractions of Mark Antony. He is so many-sided, so -many-ways endowed, so full of vitality and vigour, potentially so -affluent and bright, that we look to find his life a clear and abundant -stream, and disbelieve our senses when we see a turbid pool that loses -itself in the sands. If we listen to the promptings of our blood, we -hail him as demi-god, but the verdict of our reason is that he is only -a futility. And both estimates base on Shakespeare who inspires and -reconciles them both. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</span></p> - -<p>Of course we are apt to carry with us to the present play the -impression we have received from the sketch of Antony in <i>Julius -Caesar</i>. And not without grounds. He is still a masquer and a -reveller, he is still a shrewd contriver. But we gradually become aware -of a difference. First, the precedence that these characteristics takes -is reversed. In <i>Julius Caesar</i> it is the contriving side of -his nature that is prominent, and the other is only indicated by the -remarks of acquaintances: in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, it is his -love of pleasure that is emphasised, while of his contrivance we have -only casual glimpses. And the contrast is not merely an alteration in -the point of view, it corresponds to an alteration in himself; in the -earlier drama he subordinates his luxury to his schemes, and in the -latter he subordinates his schemes to his luxury. But this is not all. -In the second place, his two main interests have changed in the degree -of what may be called their organisation. In <i>Julius Caesar</i> he -concentrates all his machinations on the one object of overthrowing -the tyrannicides and establishing his power; his pleasures, however -notorious, are random and disconnected dissipations without the -coherence of a single aim. In <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, however -manifold they may be, they are all subdued to the service of his master -passion, they are all focussed in his love for Cleopatra; while his -strategy is broken up to mere shifts and expedients that answer the -demand of the hour. Passion has become not only the regulative but the -constitutive force in his character.</p> - -<p>When the action begins, he is indemnifying himself with a round of -indulgence for the strenuous life between the fall of Julius and the -victories at Philippi, some of the toils and privations of which, -passed over in the earlier play, Octavius now recalls in amazement at -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</span> -the contrast. It is not so strange. One remembers Professor von -Karsteg’s indictment of the English that they spare no pains because -they live for pleasure. “You are all in one mass, struggling in the -stream to get out and lie and wallow and belch on the banks. You -work so hard that you have all but one aim, and that is fatness and -ease!”<a id="FNanchor_208" href="#Footnote_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> -Something similar strikes us in Antony. It is natural that action -should be followed by reaction and that abstinence should lead to -surfeit. It is doubly natural, when effort and discipline are not -prized for themselves or associated with the public good, but have -only been accepted as the means to a selfish aim. By them he has -acquired more than mortal power: why should he not use it in his own -behoof, oblivious of every call save the prompting of desire? A vulgar -attitude, we may say; but it is lifted above vulgarity by the vastness -of the orbit through which his desire revolves. It is grandiose, and -almost divine; in so far at least as it is a circle whose centre is -everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. He has a gust for -everything and for everything in the highest degree, for each several -pleasure and its exact antithesis. In what does he not feel zest? -Luxury, banqueting, drunkenness, appeal to him, so that Pompey prays -they “may keep his brain fuming” (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> -i. 24). Or he acts the god, and with Cleopatra as Isis, dispenses -sovereignty from the “tribunal silver’d,” as they sit on their “chairs -of gold” (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> vi. 3). Or he finds a relish -in vulgar pleasures, and with the queen on his arm, mingles incognito -in the crowd, wandering through the streets “to note the qualities of -people” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 52). Or he goes a-fishing, -in which art he is a novice and presently becomes a dupe, when he pulls -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</span> -up the salt-fish “with fervency” (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> v. 18). -And a willing dupe, the conscious humorous dupe of love to his -tricksy enchantress, he is pleased to be in many other ways:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">That time,—O times!—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I laugh’d him out of patience; and that night</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I laugh’d him into patience; and next morn,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I wore his sword Philippian.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> v. 18.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In short his breathless pursuit of all sorts of -experiences more than justifies the scandalised summary of Octavius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">He fishes, drinks, and wastes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolemy</div> - <div class="verse indent0">More womanly than he.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iv. 4.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And he goes on to describe how Antony has been so -indiscriminate as</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To give a kingdom for a mirth; to sit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And keep the turn of tippling with a slave;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With knaves that smell of sweat.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iv. 17.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Yet, however he may seem to sink in his pleasures, -he is never submerged; such is his joyousness and strength that they -seem to bear him up and carry him along rather than drag him down. As -Cleopatra perceives:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">His delights</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were dolphin-like; they show’d his back above</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The element they lived in.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 88.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is this demand to share in all the -<i>Erdgeist</i> has to offer, that raises Antony above the level of the -average sensualist. His dissipations impose by their catholicity and -heartiness. His blithe eagerness never flags and nothing mundane leaves -him unmoved:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Without some pleasure now.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 46.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</span> -This is his ideal, an infinity of pastimes under the presidency of his -love; and any ideal, no matter what, always dignifies those whom it -inspires. But it also demands its sacrifice; and in the present case -Antony with a sort of inverse sublimity offers up to it all that the -ambitious, the honourable or the virtuous man counts good.</p> - -<p>For a life like his is hardly compatible even in theory with the -arduous functions of the commander, the governor, the administrator; -and in practice it inevitably leads to their neglect. In the opening -scene we see him leave unheard the momentous tidings from Rome, and -turn aside to embrace his royal paramour. His followers are filled with -angry disgust:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Nay, but this dotage of our general’s</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O’erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That o’er the files and musters of the war</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have glow’d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The office and devotion of their view</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon a tawny front.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The general voice cries out against him at home, -where his faults are taunted</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">With such full licence as both truth and malice</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have power to utter.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 112.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His newly arrived friends find the worst libels -verified, as Demetrius admits:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">I am full sorry</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That he approves the common liar, who</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thus speaks of him at Rome.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 59.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Octavius is not unduly severe in his condemnation:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">To confound such time,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As his own state and ours,—’tis to be chid</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As we rate boys, who, being mature in knowledge,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And so rebel to judgement.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iv. 28.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</span> -Nor is he without qualms himself. Sudden revulsions of feeling disturb -his riots when “a Roman thought hath struck him” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 87). -He feels that stopping short in his labours and relaxing his energy, he -gives his baser tendencies the sway, and cries:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">O, then we bring forth weeds,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When our quick minds lie still.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 113.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">This, however, makes things worse rather than -better. It does not rouse him to any constant course, it only perplexes -his purpose. He does not wish to give up anything: the life at Rome and -the life at Alexandria both tug at his heart-strings; and he cannot see -that the Eastern and the Western career are not to be reconciled. It -is still nominally open to him to make a choice, but at any rate the -choice must be made. It must often have occurred to him to throw aside -his civil ties, and to set up as independent Emperor with his Egyptian -Queen. And apart from old associations there were only two reasons why -he should not: lingering respect for his marriage with Fulvia, whom in -a way he still loved, and dread of the avenging might of Rome directed -by all the craft of Octavius. These impediments are suddenly removed; -and their removal belongs to Shakespeare’s conception. It may be traced -in part to his own invention, in part perhaps to the suggestion of -Appian, but in any case it is of far-reaching significance.</p> - -<p>In the biography the situation is fundamentally different, though -superficially alike. There Antony is threatened at once in the West -and the East. Octavius has driven his wife and brother out of Italy; -Labienus, the old foe of Caesarism, has led the Parthians into the -provinces. It is to meet these dangers that Antony leaves Egypt, and to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</span> -the Parthian as the more pressing he addresses himself first. Only at -Fulvia’s entreaty does he alter his plan and sail for home with two -hundred ships; but her opportune death facilitates a composition with -Octavius. Then the alliance between them having been confirmed, and the -petty trouble with Sextus Pompeius having been easily settled, Antony -is able with ampler resources to turn against the troublesome Parthians.</p> - -<p>These are the facts as Caesar narrates them; and according to them -Antony had no option but to break off his love affair and set out -to face one or both of the perils that menaced him; the peril from -Octavius who has defeated him in his representatives, the peril from -Labienus who has overrun the Near East. These items are not wanting in -Shakespeare, and as the news of them arrives, his Antony exclaims as -Plutarch’s might have done:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or lose myself in dotage.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 120.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But even as he speaks a second messenger arrives -who supplements the tidings of the first with new circumstances that -are really of much later date and quite different significance in -Plutarch, and that entirely alter the complexion of affairs. He hears -by word of mouth that Fulvia is dead, and, apparently by letter, that -Sextus Pompeius stands up against Caesar and commands the empire of -the sea. In Plutarch he is called to Rome by the fact not of Fulvia’s -being dead but of her being alive; and her death only prepares the way -for a reconciliation when he is already nearing home. Still less is -his return connected with the enterprise of Pompey which is mentioned -only after the reconciliation is accomplished, and, as we have seen, -is treated quite as a detail. But Shakespeare, inserting these matters -here and viewing them as he does, dismisses altogether or in part the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</span> -motive which Plutarch implies for Antony’s behaviour. Indeed they -should rather be reasons for his continuing and proceeding further in -his present course. One main objection to his connection with Cleopatra -is removed, and the way is smoothed to marriage with his beloved. All -danger from Rome is for the time at an end; and the opportunity is -offered for establishing himself in Egypt while Pompey and Octavius -waste each other’s strength, or for making common cause with Pompey, -who, as we know, is well inclined to him and takes occasion to pay him -court.</p> - -<p>But in Shakespeare’s Antony, the very removal of external hindrances -gives new force to those within his own heart. Regrets and compunctions -are stirred. The memory of his wife rises up with new authority, the -entreaties of his friends and the call of Rome sound with louder appeal -in his ears:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Not alone</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Do strongly speak to us: but the letters too</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of many our contriving friends in Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Petition us at home.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 186.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">With a man of his emotional nature, precisely the -opportunity so procured to carry out one set of his wishes, gives the -other set the mastery. Of his wife’s death he exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">There’s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What our contempt doth often hurl from us,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By revolution lowering, does become</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The opposite of itself: she’s good, being gone;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The hand could pluck her back that shoved her on.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I must from this enchanting queen break off.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 126.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>It is no doubt the nobler and more befitting course that he proposes to -himself, but it is so only on the condition that he follows it out with -his whole heart. If he takes it up to let it go; if one half or more -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</span> -than one half of his soul lingers with the flesh-pots of Egypt, then -nothing could be more foolish and calamitous. He merely throws away -the grand chance of realising his more alluring ambition, and advances -no step to the sterner and loftier heights. For he will patch up the -Roman Triumvirate and rehabilitate the power of Octavius to his own -hurt, unless he resolves henceforth to act as a Roman Triumvir and -as the dominant partner with Octavius; and he will never again have -so good an occasion for legitimising and thus excusing his relation -with Cleopatra. This latter step was so obviously the natural one that -Octavius almost assumes he must have taken it. On making his proposal -for the match with Octavia, Agrippa says: “Great Antony is now a -widower,” but Octavius interrupts:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Say not so, Agrippa:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were well deserved of rashness.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 122.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But though he thus shrinks from the irrevocable -choice, we see clearly enough at his departure from Egypt that the -impulse towards Rome must soon be spent, and that therefore his refusal -to commit himself, and his whole enterprise, show rather weakness and -indecision than resolution and strength. To soothe Cleopatra he tells her:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Be prepared to know</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The purposes I bear; which are, or cease,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As you shall give the advice. By the fire</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That quickens Nilus’ slime, I go from thence</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As thou affect’st.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 66.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He is speaking too true when he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Our separation so abides, and flies,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That thou, residing here, go’st yet with me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 102.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</span> -And his last message runs:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Say, the firm Roman to great Egypt sends</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To mend the petty present, I will piece</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her opulent throne with kingdoms: all the east,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Say thou, shall call her mistress.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> v. 44.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And with these pledges like so many mill-stones -round his neck, he sets off to swim in the dangerous cross-currents -of Roman politics. It is true that pledges do not weigh over heavily -with him, but in this case their weight is increased by his inner -inclinations.</p> - -<p>So the reconciliation with Octavius is hollow from the first, and being -hollow it is a blunder. Antony of course is able to blind himself to -its hollowness and to conduct the negociations with great adroitness. -His dignified and frank apology is just what he ought to say, supposing -that the particular end were to be sought at all, and it has an air of -candour that could not well be consciously assumed:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">As nearly as I may,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ll play the penitent to you: but mine honesty</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Work without it. Truth is, that Fulvia,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To have me out of Egypt, made wars here;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For which myself, the ignorant motive, do</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So far ask pardon as befits mine honour</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To stoop in such a case.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 91.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But this is only another instance of the born -orator’s faculty for throwing himself into a situation, and feeling for -the time what it is expedient to express. It is a fatal gift, which -betrays him oftener than it helps. If it prompts his moving utterances -over the bodies of Caesar and Brutus, and in so far directly or -indirectly assists his cause, it nevertheless even then to some cynical -observers like Enobarbus suggests a spice of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy it is -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</span> -not, but it comes almost to the same thing; for the easily aroused -emotion soon subsides after it has done its work and yields to some -quite contrary impulsion. But meanwhile the worst of it is, that it -carries away the eloquent speaker, and hurries him in directions and to -distances that are not for his good. With Antony’s real and permanent -bias, even a temporary reconcilement with Octavius is a mistake; but -what shall we say of his marriage with Octavia? Yet he jumps at it -at once; and with that convincing air of sincerity that can only be -explained by his really liking it for the moment, exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">May I never</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To this good purpose, that so fairly shows,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Further this act of grace: and from this hour</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The heart of brothers govern in our loves</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And sway our great designs.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 146.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And again he realises just what is proper to feel -and say to his betrothed, and says it so that we are sure he feels it -so long as he is speaking:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">My Octavia,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Read not my blemishes in the world’s report:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have not kept my square: but that to come</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall all be done by the rule.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 4.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Yet she has barely left him, when, at the warning -of the soothsayer, and the thought of Octavius’ success in games of -chance and sport, he resolves to outrage the still uncompleted marriage -and return to his Egyptian bondage:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent19">I will to Egypt:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For though I make this marriage for my peace,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ the East my pleasure lies.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 38.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But when this is his fixed determination, why make -the marriage at all? Does he fail to see that it will bring not peace -but a sword? Yet he is so hood-winked by immediate opportunism that he -bears his share in making Pompey harmless to the mighty brother-in-law -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</span> -he is just about to offend. And knowing his own heart as he does, he -can nevertheless assume an air of resentment at the veiled menace in -Octavius’ parting admonition: “Make me not offended in your mistrust” -(<span class="smcap">iii.</span> ii. 33).</p> - -<p>He has truly with all diligence digged a pit for himself. Already he -is the wreck of the shrewd contriver whose machinations Cassius so justly -feared. And this collapse of faculty, this access of presumption and -hebetude belong to Shakespeare’s conception of the case. In Plutarch -the renewed agreement of the Triumvirs is expedient and even necessary; -the marriage scheme is adopted in good faith and for a period serves its -purpose; the granting of terms to Pompey is an unimportant act of grace.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless some powers of contrivance Shakespeare’s Antony still -retains. He despatches the capable Ventidius on the Parthian campaign, -and he has the credit and <i>éclat</i>, when</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">with his banners and his well-paid ranks,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The ne’er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia</div> - <div class="verse indent0">(Are) jaded out o’ the field.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 32.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He himself over-runs and conquers Armenia, and -other Asiatic kingdoms, and with his new prestige and resources is -able to secure the support of a formidable band of subject kings. When -Octavia has returned to Rome and he to Egypt, and war breaks out, he is -still, thanks to these allies and to his own veteran legionaries whom -he has so often led to victory and spoil, the master of a power that -should more than suffice to make the fortune his.</p> - -<p>But in his infatuation he throws all his advantages away. He pronounces -on himself the verdict which his whole story confirms:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">When we in our viciousness grow hard—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O misery on’t!—the wise gods seel our eyes;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In our own filth drop our clear judgements; make us</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Adore our errors; laugh at’s, while we strut</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To our confusion.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 111.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</span> -Of the preliminary blunder, which Plutarch signalises as “among the -greatest faults that ever Antonius committed,” viz., his failure to -give Octavius battle, when universal discontent was excited at home -by Octavius’ exactions, there is no mention, or only a very slight -and doubtful one in the play. When Eros has told the news of Pompey’s -overthrow and Lepidus’ deposition, Enobarbus at once foresees the sequel:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps, no more:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And throw between them all the food thou hast,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They’ll grind the one the other.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> v. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And presently he continues:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent13">Our great navy’s rigg’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eros.</i> For Italy and Caesar. More, Domitius,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My lord desires you presently; my news</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I might have told hereafter.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Eno.</i> ’Twill be nought:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But let it be. Bring me to Antony.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> v. 20.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here we seem to have a faint reminiscence of -Plutarch’s statement. Eros takes for granted as the obvious course, -that the great navy ready to start will make an immediate descent -on the enemy’s stronghold. Enobarbus, who understands Antony, knows -that nothing will come of it, and that their destination is Egypt. In -point of fact we learn in the next scene that Antony has arrived in -Alexandria and there kept his state with Cleopatra.</p> - -<p>But if Shakespeare glides over this episode, he dwells with all the -greater detail on the array of imbecilities with which Antony follows -it up. First, despite the advice of Enobarbus, he lets Cleopatra -be present in the war. Then to please her caprice, and gratify his -own fantastic chivalry, he sets aside the well-based objections of -Enobarbus, of Canidius, of the common soldiers; and accepts Octavius’ -challenge to fight at sea, though his ships are heavy, his mariners -inexpert, and he himself and his veterans are more used to the dry -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</span> -land. Even so the inspiration of his soldiership and generalship is -giving him a slight superiority, when the panic of Cleopatra withdraws -her contingent of sixty ships:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt,—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whom leprosy o’ertake!—i’ the midst o’ the fight,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When vantage like a pair of twins appear’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Both as the same, or rather ours the elder,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The breese upon her, like a cow in June,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hoists sail and flies.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> x. 10.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Not all is lost even then. But Antony follows -the fugitive, when, if he were true to himself, the day might -still be retrieved. This is the view that Shakespeare assigns to -Canidius; and while all the previous items he derived from Plutarch, -only distributing them among his persons, and adding to their -picturesqueness and force, this is an addition of his own to heighten -the ignominy of Antony’s desertion:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Had our general</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Been what he knew himself, it had gone well.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> x. 25.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And the explanation of his “most unnoble -swerving,” if in one way an excuse, in another is an extra shame to -his manhood, and too well justifies Enobarbus’ dread of Cleopatra’s -influence:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Your presence needs must puzzle Antony;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Take from his heart, take from his brain, from’s time,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What should not then be spared.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> vii. 11.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The authority for the idea that Antony was in a -manner hypnotised by her love, Shakespeare found, like so much else, -in the <i>Life</i>, but he enhances the effect immeasurably, first by -putting the avowal in Antony’s own lips, and again by the more poignant -and pitiful turn he gives it. Plutarch says:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">There Antonius shewed plainely, that he had not -onely lost the corage and hart of an Emperor, but also of a valliant -man, and that he was not his owne man: (proving that true which an -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</span> -old man spake in myrth that the soule of a lover lived in another body, -and not in his owne) he was so caried away with the vaine love of this -woman, as if he had bene glued into her, and that she could not have -removed without moving of him also.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Antony cries in the play:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt?...</div> - <div class="verse indent20">Thou knew’st too well</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And thou shouldst tow me after: o’er my spirit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy full supremacy thou knew’st, and that</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Command me....</div> - <div class="verse indent22">You did know</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How much you were my conqueror: and that</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My sword, made weak by my affection, would</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Obey it on all cause.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> x. 51.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But in Shakespeare’s view the final decision was -not reached even at the battle of Actium. Despite that disaster and the -subsequent desertions, Antony is still able to offer no inconsiderable -resistance in Egypt. In direct contradiction of Plutarch’s statement, -he says, after the reply to Euphronius and the scourging of Thyreus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent23">Our force by land</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hath nobly held; our sever’d navy too</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have knit again, and fleet, threatening most sea-like.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 169.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Whether this be fact or illusion, it shows that -in his own eyes at least some hope remains: but in the hour of defeat -he was quite unmanned and seemed to give up all thought of prolonging -the struggle. When for the first time after his reverse we meet him in -Alexandria, he prays his followers to “take the hint which his despair -proclaims” (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> xi. 18), and to leave him, -with his treasure for their reward. This circumstance Shakespeare -obtained from Plutarch, but in Plutarch it is not quite the same. There -the dismissal takes place at Taenarus in the Peloponnesus, the first -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</span> -stopping-place at which Antony touches in his flight, and apparently is -dictated by the difficulty of all the fugitives effecting their escape. -At any rate he was very far even then from despairing of his cause, -for in the previous sentence we read that he “sent unto Canidius, to -returne with his army into Asia, by Macedon”; and some time later we -find him, still ignorant of the facts, continuing to act on the belief -“that his armie by lande, which he left at Actium, was yet -whole.”<a id="FNanchor_209" href="#Footnote_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a> -Here on the other hand he has succeeded in reaching his lair, and it is -as foolish as it is generous to throw away adherents and resources that -might be of help to him at the last. But he is too despondent to think -even of standing at bay. He tells his friends:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I have myself resolved upon a course</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which has no need of you.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xi. 9.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>That course was to beseech Octavius by his schoolmaster,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">To let him breathe between the heavens and earth,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A private man in Athens.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xii. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here he touches the bottom mud of degradation and -almost sinks to the level of Lepidus who did obtain permission to live -under surveillance at Circeii “till death enlarged his confine.” And -here too Shakespeare follows Plutarch, but here too with a difference. -For in the biography this incident comes after some time has elapsed, -and new disappointments and new indulgences have made deeper inroads -in Antony’s spirit. In one aspect no doubt he is less pitiable in thus -being brought to mortification by degrees. In Shakespeare he adopts -this course before ever he has seen the Queen, and in so far shows -greater weakness of character. Like Richard II. he bows his head at -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</span> -once, and without an effort takes “the sweet way to despair.” Yet just -for that reason he is from another point of view less ignoble. It is -the sudden sense of disgrace, the amazement, the consternation at his -own poltroonery that turns his knees to water. But the very immediacy -and poignancy of his self-disgust is a guarantee of surviving nobility -that needs only an occasion to call it forth. The occasion comes in -the refusal of his own petition and the conditional compliance with -Cleopatra’s. Antony’s answer to this slighting treatment is his second -challenge. This too Shakespeare obtained from Plutarch, but of this -too he altered the significance and the date. In Plutarch it is sent -after Antony’s victorious sally, apparently in elation at that trifling -success, and is recorded without other remark than Octavius’ rejoinder. -In Shakespeare it is the retort of Antony’s self-consciousness to -the depreciation of his rival, and it is the first rebound of his -relaxed valour. When the victor counts him as nought he is stung to -comparisons, and feels that apart from success and external advantages -he is still of greater worth:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Tell him he wears the rose</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of youth upon him; from which the world should note</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Something particular: his coin, ships, legions,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">May be a coward’s; whose ministers would prevail</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Under the service of a child as soon</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As i’ the command of Caesar: I dare him, therefore,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To lay his gay comparisons apart,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And answer me declined, sword against sword,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ourselves alone.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 20.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Of course it is absurd and mad; and the madness -and absurdity are brought out, in the play, not in the <i>Life</i>, -by the comments of Enobarbus, Octavius and Mecaenas. Indeed at this -juncture Antony’s valour, or rather his desperation, does not cease -to prey on his reason. His insult to Caesar in the scourging of his -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</span> -messenger is less an excess of audacity than the gnash of the teeth in -the last agony: as Enobarbus remarks:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">’Tis better playing with a lion’s whelp</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than with an old one dying.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> xiii. 94.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Octavius may treat these transports of a great -spirit in the throes as mere bluster and brutality, and find in them a -warrant for his ruthless phrase, “the old ruffian.” There is a touch -of the ruffian in Antony’s wild outbursts. Even the mettlesome vein -in which he commands another gaudy night on Cleopatra’s birthday is -open to Enobarbus’ disparagement: that a diminution of his captain’s -brain restores his heart. Truly the last shreds of prudence are whirled -away in his storm of recklessness and anguish and love. At the defiant -anniversary feast his soul is so wrung with gratitude to his true -servants and grief at the near farewell, that he must give his feelings -words though they will discourage rather than hearten the company. -Cleopatra does not understand it, for her own nature has not the depth -of Antony’s, and deep can only call to deep. “What means this?” she asks.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Eno.</i> ’Tis one of those odd tricks which sorrow shoots</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Out of the mind.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> ii. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Again, in amazement at his tearful pathos, -she exclaims: “What does he mean?” And with an effort at cynicism, -Enobarbus, who has scoffed at Antony’s emotion over the bodies of -Caesar and Brutus, replies: “To make his followers weep”; for Enobarbus -tries to think that it is merely the orator’s eloquence that runs away -with him in his melting mood. Nevertheless his own sympathies are -touched for the moment: “I, an ass, am onion-eyed.” In truth none can -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</span> -mistake the genuine feeling of Antony’s words, though at the hint -he can at once change their tone and give them an heroic and even a -sanguine turn.<a id="FNanchor_210" href="#Footnote_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Know, my hearts,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I hope well of to-morrow; and will lead you</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where rather I’ll expect victorious life</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than death and honour.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> ii. 41.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But whatever deductions be made, Antony’s last -days in Alexandria bring back a St. Martin’s summer of genial power and -genial nobility that are doubly captivating when set off against the -foil of Caesar’s coldness. The grand proportions of his nature, that -are obscured in the vintage time of success and indulgence, show forth -again when the branches are bare. No doubt he again and again does the -wrong things, or at least the things that lead to no useful result. His -patron god deserts him as in Plutarch, but that god in Shakespeare is -not Bacchus but Hercules, and he departs earlier than in the story and -not on the last night before the end; for the withdrawal of the divine -friend is now less the presage of death than the symbol of inefficacy. -Antony’s insight and judgment may be failing; his flashes of power may -be like his flashes of jealousy, and indicate the dissolution of his -being. Still when all is said and done, he seems to become bolder, -grander, more magnanimous, as the fuel is cut off from his inward fire -and it burns and wastes in its own heat. His reflux of heroism cannot -save him against the material superiority and concentrated ambition of -Octavius, for it is not the consequent energy that commands success and -that implies a consequent purpose in life: but all the more impressive -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</span> -and affecting is this gallant fronting of fate. As Cleopatra -arms him for his last little victory, he cries with his old -self-consciousness:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent30">O love,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That thou couldst see my wars to-day, and knew’st</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The royal occupation! thou shouldst see</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A workman in ’t.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> iv. 15.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He welcomes the time for battle:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">This morning, like the spirit of a youth,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That means to be of note, begins betimes.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> iv. 26.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Cleopatra recognises his greatness and his doom:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Determine this great war in single fight!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then, Antony,—but now—well, on.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> iv. 36.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">That day he does well indeed. He pursues the -recreant Enobarbus with his generosity and the vanquished Romans with -his valour. He returns victorious and jubilant to claim his last -welcoming embrace.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">O thou day o’ the world,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Chain mine arm’d neck; leap thou, attire and all,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through proof of harness to my heart, and there</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ride on the pants triumphing.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> viii. 13.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Then the morrow brings the end. His fleet deserts, -and for the moment he suspects Cleopatra as the cause, and overwhelms -her with curses and threats. The suspicion is natural, and his nature -is on edge at the fiasco, which this time is no fault of his.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The soul and body rive not more in parting</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than greatness going off.<a id="FNanchor_211" href="#Footnote_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xiii. 5.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</span> -But his mood changes. Even before he hears Cleopatra’s disclaimer and -the news of her alleged death, he has become calm, and only feels the -futility of it all; he is to himself “indistinct, as water is in water” -(<span class="smcap">iv.</span> xiv. 10). Then comes the message that -his beloved is no more, and his resolution is fixed:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Unarm me, Eros; the long day’s task is done,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And we must sleep.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xiv. 36.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His thoughts are with his Queen in the Elysian -fields where he will ask her pardon,<a id="FNanchor_212" href="#Footnote_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> -and he only stays for Eros’ help. But when Eros chooses his own rather -than his master’s death, Antony in his large-hearted way gives him the -praise, and finds in his act a lesson.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Thrice-nobler than myself!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I should, and thou couldst not.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xiv. 95.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The wound he deals himself is not at once fatal. -He lives long enough to comfort his followers in the heroic words:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To grace it with your sorrows: bid that welcome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which comes to punish us, and we punish it</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Seeming to bear it lightly. Take me up:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have led you oft: carry me now, good friends,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And have my thanks for all.<a id="FNanchor_213" href="#Footnote_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</span> -He has heard the truth about Cleopatra, and only importunes death -that he may snatch that one last interview sacred to his love of her, -his care for her, and to that serene, lofty dignity which now he has -attained. The world seems a blank when this full life is out; and -looking at the race that is left, we feel inclined to echo Cleopatra’s -words above the corpse:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O, wither’d is the garland of the war,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The soldier’s pole is fall’n: young boys and girls</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Are level now with men; the odds is gone,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And there is nothing left remarkable</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Beneath the visiting moon.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xv. 64.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VI<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">CLEOPATRA</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>To Cleopatra, the lodestar, the temptress, the predestined mate -of Antony, we now turn: and perhaps even Shakespeare has no more -marvellous creation than she, or one in which the nature that inspires -and the genius that reveals, are so fused in the ideal truth. Campbell -says: “He paints her as if the gipsy herself had cast her spell over -him, and given her own witchcraft to his pencil.” The witchcraft -everybody feels. It is almost impossible to look at her steadily, or -keep one’s head to estimate her aright. She is the incarnate poetry -of life without duty, glorified by beauty and grace; of impulse -without principle, ennobled by culture and intellect. But however -it may be with the reader, Shakespeare does not lose his head. He -is not the adept mesmerised, the sorcerer ensorcelled. Such avatars -as the Egyptian Queen have often been described by other poets, but -generally from the point of view either of the servile devotee or of -the unsympathetic censor. Here the artist is a man, experienced and -critical, yet with the fires of his imagination still ready to leap -and glow. He stands in right relation to the laws of life; and his -delineation is all the more impressive and all the more aesthetic, the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</span> -more remorselessly he sacrifices the one-sided claims of the conception -in which he delights to the laws of tragic necessity.</p> - -<p>Cleopatra is introduced to us as a beauty of a somewhat dusky African -type in the full maturity, or perhaps a little past the maturity, of -her bloom. The first trait is for certain historically wrong.<a id="FNanchor_214" href="#Footnote_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> -The line of the Ptolemies was of the purest Grecian breed, with a purity -of which they were proud, and which they sought to preserve by close -intermarriage within their house. But Shakespeare has so impressed his -own idea of Cleopatra on the world that later painters and poets have -followed suit ever since. Tennyson, in the <i>Dream of Fair Women</i> -tells how she summons him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I, turning, saw throned on a flowery rise</div> - <div class="verse indent0">One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A Queen with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Brow-bound with burning gold.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Hawthorne in his <i>Transformation</i>, describing -Story’s statue of Cleopatra, which here he attributes to Kenyon, goes further:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The face was a marvellous success. The -sculptor had not shunned to give the full Nubian lips and the other -characteristics of the Egyptian physiognomy. His courage and integrity -had been abundantly rewarded: for Cleopatra’s beauty shone out richer, -warmer, more triumphantly beyond comparison, than if, shrinking timidly -from the truth, he had chosen the tame Grecian type.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Hawthorne goes astray through taking Shakespeare’s -picture, or rather another picture which Shakespeare’s suggested to -his own fancy, as a literal portrait; but his very mistake shows how -incongruous a fair Cleopatra would now seem to us.</p> - -<p>Not often or obtrusively, but of set purpose and beyond the possibility -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</span> -of neglect, does Shakespeare refer to her racial peculiarities. Philo -talks of her “tawny front” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 6), -and both he and Antony call her a gipsy with reference not merely -to the wily and vagabond character with which these landlopers in -Shakespeare’s day were stigmatised, but surely to the darkness of her -complexion as well. But the most explicit and the most significant -statement is her own:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent26">Think on me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That am with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> v. 27.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is one of her ironical exaggerations; but -does it not suggest something torrid and tropical, something of the -fervours of the East and South, that burn in the volcanic fires of -Othello and the impulsive splendours of Morocco? Does it not recall the -glowing plea of the latter,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Mislike me not for my complexion,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To whom I am a neighbour and near bred.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<i>M. of V.</i>, <span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> i. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The sun has indeed shone on her and into her. She -has known the love and adoration of the greatest.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Broad-fronted Caesar,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When thou wast here above the ground, I was</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A morsel for a monarch: and great Pompey</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">There would he anchor his aspect and die</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With looking on his life.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> v. 29.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare magnifies the glories of her -conquests, for it was not Pompey the Great but his son who had been -her lover of old. But these experiences were only the preparation for -the grand passion of her life. She has outgrown them; and if the first -freshness is gone, the intoxication of fragrance, the flavour and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</span> lusciousness are -enhanced. However much she believed herself engrossed by these early -fancies, now that she is under the spell of her Antony, her “man of -men,” she looks back on them as of her</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent26">salad days</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When (she) was green in judgement, cold in blood.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> v. 73.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Talking of her preparations to meet Antony, -Plutarch says:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Gessing by the former accesse and credit she had -with Julius Caesar and Cneus Pompey (the sonne of Pompey the Great) -only for her beawtie; she began to have good hope that she might more -easily win Antonius. For Caesar and Pompey knew her when she was but a -young thing, and knew not then what the world ment: but now she went -to Antonius, at the age when a womans beawtie is at the prime, and she -also of best judgement.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">“At the prime” are Plutarch’s words; for in point -of fact she was then twenty-eight years of age. In this Shakespeare -follows and goes beyond his authority; he gives us the impression -of her being somewhat older. Pompey talks of her contemptuously as -“Egypt’s widow,” and prays:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">All the charms of love,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Salt Cleopatra, soften thy waned lip.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> i. 20.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">She herself in ironical self-disparagement avows -that she is “wrinkled deep in time” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> -v. 29) and exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Though age from folly could not give me freedom,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It does from childishness.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 57.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But what then? Like Helen and Gudrun and the -ladies of romance, or like Ninon de Lenclos in actual life, she never -grows old. As even the cynical Enobarbus proclaims, “age cannot -wither her.” She has only gained skill and experience in the use -and embellishment of her physical charms, and with these the added -charms of grace, culture, expressiveness. She knows how to set off her -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</span> -attractions with all the aids of art, wealth and effect, as we see from -the <i>mise-en-scène</i> at the Cydnus: and her mobility and address, -her wit, her surprises, her range of interest do the rest. Again -Shakespeare has got the clue from Plutarch:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Now her beawtie (as it is reported) was not so -passing, as unmatchable of other women,<a id="FNanchor_215" href="#Footnote_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> -nor yet suche, as upon present viewe did enamor men with her; but -so sweete was her companie and conversacion, that a man could not -possiblie but be taken. And besides her beawtie, the good grace she had -to talke and discourse, her curteous nature that tempered her words and -dedes, was a spurre that pricked to the quick. Furthermore, besides all -these, her voyce and words were marvelous pleasant; for her tongue was -an instrument of musicke to divers sports and pastimes, the which she -easely turned to any language that pleased her. </p> - -<p class="no-indent">In one respect Shakespeare differs from Plutarch; -he bestows on her surpassing and unmatchable beauty, so that she -transcends the artist’s ideal as much as that transcends mortal -womanhood; she o’er-pictures</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">that Venus where we see</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The fancy outwork nature.<a id="FNanchor_216" href="#Footnote_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> ii. 205.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But he agrees with Plutarch in making her beauty -the least part of her spell. Generally speaking it is taken for granted -rather than pointed out; and of its great triumph on the Cydnus we hear -only in the enraptured reminiscences of Enobarbus. Thus it is removed -from the sphere of sense to the sphere of imagination, and is idealised -in the fervour of his delight; but, though this we never forget, it -is of her other charms that we think most when she is present on the scene. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</span></p> - -<p>She is all life and movement, and never the same, so that we are -dazzled and bewildered, and too dizzy to measure her by any fixed -standard. Her versatility of intellect, her variety of mood, are -inexhaustible; and she can pass from gravity to gaiety, from fondness -to banter, with a suddenness that baffles conjecture. We can forecast -nothing of her except that any forecast will be vain. At her very first -entrance the languishing gives place in a moment to the exasperating vein:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If it be love indeed, tell me how much.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 14.)</div> - </div> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Fulvia perchance is angry; or, who knows</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His powerful mandate to you.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 20.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">For she turns to account even the gibe and the -jeer, stings her lover with her venomous punctures, and pursues a -policy of pin-pricks not to repel but to allure. The hint comes from -Plutarch.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">When Cleopatra found Antonius jeasts and slents -to be but grosse and souldier-like, in plaine manner; she gave it him -finely and without feare taunted him throughly.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">And on the other hand she can faint at will, weep -and sob beyond measure.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears: they -are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 152.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here, too, the hint is given by Plutarch, but in a -later passage, when she fears Antony may return to Octavia:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">When he went from her, she fell a weeping and -blubbering, looked rufully of the matter, and still found the meanes -that Antonius should often tymes finde her weeping.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">In the play, when he announces his departure, she -is ready to fall; her lace must be cut; she plays the seduced innocent; -but she mingles wormwood with her pathos and overwhelms him with all -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</span> -sorts of opposite reproaches. Since he does not bewail Fulvia, that is -proof of infidelity:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">O most false love!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In Fulvia’s death, how mine received shall be.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 62.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When his distress is not to be confined, she taxes -him with mourning for his wife:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I prithee, turn aside and weep for her;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Belong to Egypt.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 76.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When he loses patience, she mocks at him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Ant.</i> You’ll heat my blood: no more.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cle.</i> You can do better yet; but this is meetly.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Ant.</i> Now, by my sword,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cle.</i> And target. Still he mends;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How this Herculean Roman does become</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The carriage of his chafe.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 80.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But at the word of his leaving she is at once all -wistful tenderness:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent11">Courteous lord, one word.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sir, you and I have loved, but there’s not it;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That you know well: something it is I would,—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O, my oblivion is a very Antony,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And I am all forgotten.<a id="FNanchor_217" href="#Footnote_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 86.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But thence again she passes on the instant to -grave and quiet dignity:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">All the gods go with you! upon your sword</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sit laurel victory! and smooth success</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be strew’d before your feet!</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 99.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is the unexpectedness of her transitions, the -impossibility of foreseeing what she will say or do, the certainty that -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</span> -whatever she says or does will be a surprise, that keeps Antony and -everyone else in perpetual agitation.<a id="FNanchor_218" href="#Footnote_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> -Tranquillity and dullness fly at the sound of her name. Her love relies -on provocation in both senses of the word, and to a far greater extent -in Shakespeare than in Plutarch. Thus Plutarch tells how Octavius’ -expedition in occupying Toryne caused dismay among Antony’s troops: -“But Cleopatra making light of it: ‘And what daunger, I pray you,’ said -she, ‘if Caesar keepe at Toryne?’” On which North has the long marginal note:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The grace of this tawnt can not properly be -expressed in any other tongue, bicause of the equivocation of this -word Toryne, which signifieth a citie of Albania, and also, a ladell -to scoome the pot with: as if she ment, Caesar sat by the fire side, -scomming of the pot.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare makes no attempt to find an equivalent -for the untranslatable jest, but substitutes one of those bitter mocks -before which Antony has so often to wince. When he expresses wonder at -his rival’s dispatch, she strikes in:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Celerity is never more admired</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than by the negligent.</div> - <div class="verse indent17">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> vii. 25.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</span> -And she does this sort of thing on principle. She tells Alexas:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">See where he is, who’s with him, what he does:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I did not send you: if you find him sad,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That I am sudden sick.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 2.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Is it then all artifice? Are all her eddying -whims and contradictions mere stratagems to secure her sway? For a -moment Antony seems to think so. “She is cunning past man’s thought,” -he says in reference to her swooning: and perhaps it is because of -her cunning as well as her sinuous grace that his endearing name for -her is his “Serpent of old Nile” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> v. 25). -Enobarbus’ reply is in effect that her displays of emotion are too -vehement to be the results of art; they are the quintessence of -feeling: “her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of -pure love” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 151).</p> - -<p>And both these views are correct. It is her deliberate programme to -keep satiety afar by the swiftness and diversity of the changes she -assumes; but it is a programme easy to carry out, for it corresponds to -her own nature. She is a creature of moods. Excitement, restlessness, -curiosity pulse in her life-blood. In Antony’s absence she is as -flighty with herself as ever she was with him. She feeds on memories -and thoughts of him, but they plague rather than soothe her. In little -more than a breathing-space she turns to music, billiards, and fishing; -and abandons them all to revel once in her day-dreams.</p> - -<p>When the messenger arrives after Antony’s marriage, she in her -ungovernable eagerness interrupts him and will not let him disclose the -tidings for which she longs. When she hears what they are, she loses -all restraint; she stuns him with threats, curses, blows; she hales him -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</span> -by the hair and draws a knife upon him. Then, sinking down in a faint, -she suddenly recovers herself with that irrepressible vitality and -inquisitiveness of hers, that are bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Report the feature of Octavia, her years,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her inclination, let him not leave out</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The colour of her hair.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> v. 111.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And while we are still smiling at the last little -touch, comes that moving outburst of a sensitive and sorely stricken -soul:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Pity me, Charmian,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But do not speak to me.</div> - <div class="verse indent19">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> v. 118.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Not long, however, is she in despair. Her -knowledge of Antony’s character, her knowledge of her own charms, -even her vanity and self-illusion combine to give her assurance of -final triumph; and when we next meet her, she is once more hopeful -and alert. “Why, methinks,” she sums up at the close of her not very -scientific investigation, “this creature’s no such thing” -(<span class="smcap">iii.</span> iii. 43); and she concludes, -“All may be well enough” (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> iii. 50).</p> - -<p>The charm and piquancy of this nimble changefulness are obvious, and -it is not without its value as a weapon in the warfare of life. But it -is equally true that such shifting gusts will produce unreliability, -and even shiftiness. It is quite natural that Cleopatra, a queen -and the daughter of kings, should, in her presumptuous mood, insist -on being present in the campaign and on leading to battle her own -sixty ships. It is no less natural that amid the actual horrors of -the conflict, the luxuriously bred lady should be seized with panic -and take to flight. Indeed it is precisely what we might expect. For -despite the royalty of soul she often displays, there is in Cleopatra a -strain of physical timidity, for which Shakespeare has already prepared -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</span> -us. When the messenger of woe is to give his tidings to Antony, he hesitates and -says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The nature of bad news infects the teller,</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and Antony answers nobly and truly:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When it concerns the fool or coward.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 99.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">We cannot help remembering Antony’s words when -Cleopatra visits on the bearer the fault of the bad news to her:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou wouldst appear most ugly.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> v. 96.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Such a reception according to Antony stamps the -fool or the coward. Cleopatra is no fool, but there is a touch of -cowardice in her, that appears over and over again.</p> - -<p>Thus it is perhaps fear, fear blended with worldliness, that gains a -hearing for Thyreus. There is absolutely no indication that she is -playing a part and temporising, out of faithfulness to Antony. She -had already sent her own private petition to Caesar, confessing his -greatness, submitting to his might, and requesting “the circle of the -Ptolemies” for her heirs. This, otherwise than in Plutarch, she had -done without Antony’s knowledge, who tells her, as though for her -information, that he had sent his schoolmaster to bear his terms; with -which Cleopatra’s were not associated. Her whole behaviour shows that -she dreads Octavius’ power, and dreads the loss of her own wealth and -dignities. But, in the scene with Thyreus, is she really prepared -to desert and betray her lover? Antony suspects that she is, and -appearances are indeed against her. Enobarbus believes that she is, and -Enobarbus generally hits on the truth. Yet we have always to remember -the temptation she would feel to try her spells on Thyreus and his -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</span> -master: and even after Enobarbus’ desertion she remains with Antony, -clings to him, encourages him, arms him, is proud of him. In any -case it would not be cold-blooded perfidy, but one of those flaws -of weakness, of fear, of self-pity, of self-interest, that take her -unawares.<a id="FNanchor_219" href="#Footnote_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> -For the final treason of the fleet at any rate, of which Antony -imagines her guilty, she seems in no way responsible. Plutarch mentions -Antony’s infuriated suspicion but adds no word in confirmation, and -Shakespeare, who would surely not have left us without direction on -so important a matter, is equally reticent. Such hints as he gives, -point the other way. We may indeed discount the disclaimers of Mardian -and Diomedes who would probably say anything they were told to say. -But when Antony greets Cleopatra, “Ah, thou spell! avaunt!” her exclamation,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Why is my lord enraged against his love?</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xii. 31.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">seems to express genuine amazement rather than -assumed innocence. And in her conversation with her attendants her -words, to all appearance, imply that she cannot understand his rage: to -her it is merely inexplicable frenzy:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Help me, my women! O, he is more mad</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Was never so emboss’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xiii. 1.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Moreover, if she had packed cards with Caesar, it -is difficult to see why she should not claim a price for her treachery, -instead of locking herself up in the Monument as she does, and trying -to keep the Romans out. All the negociations and interviews after -Antony’s death seem to imply that she had no previous understanding -with Octavius.</p> - -<p>But she recoils from her lover’s desperation, as she always does when -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</span> -he is deeply moved. She has ever the tact to feel the point at which -her blandishments and vexations are out of place and will no longer -serve her turn. Just as after the disaster of Actium she only sobs:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">O my lord, my lord,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forgive my fearful sails!</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> xi. 54.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and then can urge no plea but “pardon”; just as -after her interview with Thyreus, with no hint of levity, she solemnly -imprecates curses on herself and her offspring if she were false; so -now she bows before his wrath and flees to the monument. Then follows -the fiction of her death, a fiction in which the actress does not -forget the <i>finesses</i> of her art.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Say, that the last I spoke was “Antony,”</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And word it, prithee, piteously.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xiii. 8.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is not the most candid nor dignified expedient, -but probably it is the most effective one; for violent ills need -violent cures; and perhaps there was nothing that could allay Antony’s -storm of distrust but as fierce a storm of regret. At any rate it -has the result at which Cleopatra aims; but she knows him well, and -presently foresees that the antidote may have a further working than -she intends. Diomedes seems to state the mere truth when he says that -her prophesying fear dispatched him to proclaim the truth.</p> - -<p>But it is too late; and there only remains the lofty parting scene, -when if she still fears to open the gates lest Caesar should enter, she -draws her lover up to the monument, and lightens his last moments no -less with her queenliness than with her love. She feels the fitness and -the pathos in his ending, that none but Antony should conquer Antony: -she not obscurely hints that she will take the same path. When he bids her:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Of Caesar seek your honour, with your safety;</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xv. 47.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</span> -she answers well, “They do not go together.” Her passionate ejaculation -ere she faints above his corpse, her appeal to her frightened women,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">what’s brave, what’s noble,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion,</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> xv. 87.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">have a whole-heartedness and intensity that first -reveal the greatness of her nature.</p> - -<p>And yet even now she seems to veer from the prouder course on which she -has set out. We soon find her in appearance paltering with her Roman -decision. She sends submissive messages to Caesar; she delays her death -so long that Proculeius can surprise her in her asylum; she accepts -her conqueror’s condescension; she stoops to hold back and conceal the -greater part of her jewels.</p> - -<p>It is a strange riddle that Shakespeare has here offered to the -student, and perhaps no certain solution of it is to be found. In this -play, even more than in most, he resorts to what has been called his -shorthand, to the briefest and most hurried notation of his meaning, -and often it is next to impossible to explain or extend his symbols.</p> - -<p>The usual interpretation, which has much to commend it, accepts all -these apparent compliances of Cleopatra for what on the face they -are. They are taken as instances of Shakespeare’s veracious art that -abstains from sophisticating fact for the sake of effect, and attains a -higher effect through this very conscientiousness and self-restraint. -Just as he makes the enthusiastic fidelity of Enobarbus fail to stand -the supreme test, so he detects a flaw in the resolute yearning -of Cleopatra. The body of her dead past weighs her down, and she -cannot advance steadily in the higher altitudes. She wavers in her -determination to die, as is implied by her retention of her treasure, -and “the courtesan’s instincts of venality and falsehood”<a id="FNanchor_220" href="#Footnote_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a> -still assert their sway. She has too easily taken to heart Antony’s advice, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</span> -and is but too ready, despite all her brave words, to grasp at her -safety along with her honour, or what she is pleased to consider her -honour to be. And, just as in the case of Enobarbus, an external -stimulus is needed to urge her to the nobler course. The gods in -their unkindness are kind to her. Dolabella’s disclosures and her own -observations convince her that Caesar spares her only for his own glory -and for her shame; that, as she foreboded, her safety and her honour do -not go together. Then, at the thought of the indignity, all her royal and -aristocratic nature rises in revolt, and she at last chooses as she ought.</p> - -<p>On the other hand it is possible to maintain that all these apparent -lapses are mere subterfuges forced on Cleopatra to ensure the success -of her scheme; and this interpretation receives some support not only -from the text of the play, but from the comparison of it with North, -and a consideration of what in the original narrative Shakespeare takes -for granted, of what he alters, and of what he adds.<a id="FNanchor_221" href="#Footnote_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a></p> - -<p>After her more or less explicit statements in Antony’s death scene, -her suppliant message from the monument is an interpolation of the -dramatist’s; but so is the very different declaration which she -subsequently makes to her confidantes and in which her purpose of -suicide seems unchanged:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">My desolation does begin to make</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A better life. ’Tis paltry to be Caesar;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not being Fortune, he’s but Fortune’s knave,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A minister of her will: and it is great</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To do the thing that ends all other deeds;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which shackles accidents and bolts up change;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which sleeps, and never palates more the dung,<a id="FNanchor_222" href="#Footnote_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The beggar’s nurse and Caesar’s.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</span> -Which of these two utterances gives the true Cleopatra, the one -transmitted at second hand for Octavius’ consumption, or the one -breaking from her in private to her two women who will be true to -her till death? Quite apart from the circumstances in which, and the -persons to whom, they are spoken, there is a marked difference in -tone between the ceremonious official character of the first, and the -spontaneous sincerity of the second.</p> - -<p>Then just at this moment Proculeius arrives and engages her in talk. -It is not wonderful that she should look for a moment to the man Antony -had recommended to her; but, though she is deferential to Octavius, her -one request is not for herself but for her son. And when the surprise -is effected, there is no question of the genuineness of her attempt -at self-destruction. Even when she is disarmed, she persists, as with -Plutarch, in her resolution to kill herself if need be by starvation. -In Plutarch she is dissuaded from this by threats against her children; -in Shakespeare events proceed more rapidly, and she has no time to put -such a plan in practice; nor is any serious use made of the maternal -“motif.” From first to last it is, along with grief for Antony, -resentment at the Roman triumph that moves her. And these feelings are -in full activity when immediately afterwards she is left in charge of -Dolabella. This passage also is an addition, and it is noteworthy that -it begins with her deification of Antony, and ends with Dolabella’s -assurance, which in Plutarch only follows later where the play repeats -it, of her future fate.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cle.</i> He’ll lead me, then, in triumph?</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Dol.</i> Madam, he will; I know’t.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 109.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is just then that Caesar is announced; and it -is hard to believe that Cleopatra, with her two master passions excited -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</span> -to the height, should really contemplate embezzling treasure as -provision for a life which surely, in view of the facts, she could -not care to prolong. Moreover, in Plutarch’s narrative there is a -contradiction or ambiguity which North’s marginal note brings into -relief, and which would be quite enough to set a duller man than -Shakespeare thinking about what it all meant.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">At length, she gave him a breefe and memoriall of -all the readie money and treasure she had. But by chaunce there stoode -Seleucus by, one of her Treasorers, who to seeme a good servant, came -straight to Caesar to disprove Cleopatra, that she had not set in al, -but kept many things back of purpose. Cleopatra was in such a rage with -him, that she flew upon him and tooke him by the heare of the head, and -boxed him wellfavoredly. Caesar fell a-laughing, and parted the fray. -“Alas,” said she, “O Caesar: is not this a great shame and reproche, -that thou having vouchsaved to take the peines to come unto me, and -hast done me this honor, poore wretche, and caitife creature, brought -into this pitiefull and miserable estate: and that mine owne servaunts -should come now to accuse me, though it may be I have reserved some -juells and trifles meete for women, but not for me (poore soule) to -set out my selfe withall, but meaning to geve some pretie presents and -gifts unto Octavia and Livia, that they making meanes and intercession -for me to thee, thou mightest yet extend thy favor and mercie upon me?” -Caesar was glad to heare her say so, <i>perswading him selfe thereby -that she had yet a desire to save her life</i>. So he made -her answere, that he did not only geve her that to dispose of at her -pleasure, which she had kept backe, but further promised to use her -more honorably and bountifully then she would thinke for: and so he -tooke his leave of her, <i>supposing he had deceived her, but in -deede he was deceived him selfe</i>.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">And North underlines the suggestive clauses with -his comment:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Cleopatra finely deceiveth Octavius Caesar, as -though she desired to live.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">It is not hard therefore to see how the whole -episode may be taken as contrived on her part. It would be a device of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</span> -the serpent of old Nile, one of her triumphs of play-acting, by means -of which she gets the better of her conqueror and makes him indeed an -ass unpolicied. And though the suggestion would come from Plutarch, -whom Shakespeare follows in the main very closely throughout this -passage, it is pointed out that some of Shakespeare’s modifications in -detail seem to favour this view.</p> - -<p>And to begin with it should be noticed that in all this episode -he passes over what is abject or hysterical or both in Plutarch’s -Cleopatra, and gives her a large measure of royal self-respect and -self-command. This is how Octavius finds her in the original story:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Cleopatra being layed upon a little low bed in -poore estate, when she sawe Caesar come in to her chamber, she sodainly -rose up, naked in her smocke, and fell downe at his feete marvelously -disfigured: both for that she had plucked her heare from her head, -as also for that she had martired all her face with her nailes, and -besides, her voyce was small and trembling, her eyes sonke into her -heade with continuall blubbering.</p> - -<p>Thus, and with other traits that we omit, Plutarch describes her “ougly -and pitiefull state,” when Caesar comes to see and comfort her. We -cannot imagine Shakespeare’s Cleopatra ever so forgetting what was due -to her beauty, her rank, and herself. Then the narrative proceeds:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">When Caesar had made her lye downe againe, and -sate by her beddes side; Cleopatra began to cleere and excuse her -selfe for that she had done, laying all to the feare she had of -Antonius. Caesar, in contrarie maner, reproved<a id="FNanchor_223" -href="#Footnote_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a> her in every poynt.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">In the play this suggestion is put back to the -interview with Thyreus; and is made, not refuted, on the authority of -Octavius.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Thy.</i> He knows that you embrace not Antony</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As you did love, but as you fear’d him.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cle.</i><span class="ws12">O!</span> - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Thy.</i> The scars upon your honour, therefore, he</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Does pity as constrained blemishes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not as deserved.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cle.</i><span class="ws3">He is a god, and knows</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">What is most right: mine honour was not yielded,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But conquer’d merely.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> xiii. 56.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But this was before the supreme sorrow had come -to quicken in her, her nobler instincts. Now she has no thought of -incriminating Antony and exculpating herself. She says with quiet -dignity:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Sole sir o’ the world,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I cannot project mine own cause so well</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To make it clear: but do confess I have</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Been laden with like frailties, which before</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have often shamed our sex.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 120.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Even her wrath at Seleucus is less outrageous than -in Plutarch. She threatens his eyes, but does not proceed to physical -violence. She does not fly upon him and seize him by the hair of the -head and box him well-favouredly. These vivacities Shakespeare had -remarked, but he transfers them to the much earlier scene when she -receives news of Antony’s marriage and strikes the messenger to the -ground, and strikes him again, and drags him up and down. Now she has -somewhat more self-control, and is no longer carried beyond all limits -of decency by her ungovernable moods. Shakespeare, therefore, gives her -a new dignity and strength even in this most equivocal scene; and how -could these be reconciled with a craven hankering for life and a base -desire to retain by swindling a share of its gewgaws?</p> - -<p>But a further alteration, we are told, gives a definite though -unobtrusive hint that all the while she is in collusion with Seleucus, -and that the whole affair is a comedy arranged between them to keep -open the door of death. Not only does the treasurer escape unpunished -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</span> -after his disclosure, but he is invited to make it. In Plutarch he -merely happens to stand by, and intervenes “to seeme a good servant.” -Here Cleopatra calls for him; bids Caesar let him speak on his peril; -and herself orders him, “Speak the truth, Seleucus.”</p> - -<p>Moreover his statement and her excuse point to a much more serious -embezzlement than Plutarch suggests, and just in so far would give -Octavius a stronger impression of her desire to live. In the biography -Seleucus confines himself to saying that “she had not set in al, -but kept many things back of purpose”: and she confesses only to -“some juells and trifles meete for women ... meaning to geve some -pretie presents and gifts unto Octavia and Livia.” In the play to her -question: “What have I kept back?” Seleucus answers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Enough to purchase what you have made known:</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 148.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and she, after the express proviso she makes in -advance, that she has not admitted petty things in the schedule, now -acknowledges that she has reserved not only “lady trifles, immoment -toys“—these were already accounted for—but some “nobler token” for -Octavius’ sister and wife.</p> - -<p>If these clues are unduly faint, we are reminded that such elliptical -treatment is not without parallel in other incidents of the drama. -Octavius’ policy in regard to Octavia’s marriage, for example, has, in -just the same way, to be gathered from the general drift of events and -the general probabilities of the case, from an unimportant suggestion -in Plutarch, from the opportunity furnished to Agrippa, and his agency -in that transaction, which are not more explicit than the opportunity -furnished to Seleucus, and his agency in this.</p> - -<p>These arguments are ingenious and not without their cogency, but they -leave one unconvinced. The difficulties in accepting them are far -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</span> -greater than in the analogous question of Antony’s marriage. For in -the latter the theory of Octavius’ duplicity does not contradict the -impression of the scene. Nor does it contradict but only supplements -the statement of the historian: the utmost we can say is that it is not -made sufficiently prominent. And, lastly, the doubt that is thus left -possible does not concern a protagonist of the drama, but at most the -chief or one of the chief of the minor characters. But in the present -case the impression produced on the unsophisticated reader is certainly -that Cleopatra is convicted of fraud: and however that impression may -be weakened by a review of the circumstances as a whole, there is no -single phrase or detail that brings the opposite theory home to the -imagination. Besides, the complicity of Seleucus would be a much bolder -fabrication than the complicity of Agrippa: the latter is not recorded, -but the opposite of the former is recorded, and was accepted by all -who dealt with this episode from Jodelle to Daniel, and probably by -all who read Plutarch: the treasurer was present by accident and used -the opportunity to ingratiate himself. So Shakespeare, without giving -adequate guidance himself, would leave people to the presuppositions -they had formed under the guidance of his author. Surely this is a very -severe criticism on his art. But this is not all. The misconstruction -which he did nothing to prevent and everything to produce, would -concern the heroine of the piece, an even more important personage than -the hero, as is shown by her receiving the fifth act to herself, while -Antony is dismissed in the fourth.</p> - -<p>These objections, however, only apply to the view that the suppression -and discovery of the treasure were parts of a deliberate stratagem. -They do not affect the arguments that Cleopatra has virtually accepted -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</span> -death as the only practical solution, and that the rest of her -behaviour at this stage accords ill with mercenary imposture.</p> - -<p>In a word both these antagonistic theories approve themselves in so -far as they take into account the facts alleged and the impressions -produced by the drama. If we credit our feelings, it is quite true -that Cleopatra is taken by surprise and put out of countenance, that -she seeks to excuse herself and passionately resents the disloyalty of -Seleucus. And again, if we credit our feelings, it is quite true that -from the time the mortally wounded Antony is brought before her, she -has made up her mind to kill herself, and that she is nobler and more -queenly for her decision than she was before or than Plutarch makes her.</p> - -<p>Of course, buoyant and versatile, feeling her life in every limb, and -quick to catch each passing chance, she may even now without really -knowing it, without really believing it, have hoped against hope that -she might still obtain terms she could accept undisgraced. And the hope -of life would bring with it the frailties of life, for clearly it is -only the resolve to die that lifts her above herself. So here we should -only have another instance of the complexity of her strange nature that -can consciously elect the higher path, and yet all the while in its -secret councils provide, if it may be, for following the lower.</p> - -<p>But is there not another interpretation possible? What are these “lady -trifles” and “nobler tokens” that together would purchase all the -wealth of money, plate and jewels she has declared. Plutarch, talking -of her magnificence when she obeyed Antony’s first summons, evidently -does not expect to be believed, and adds that it was such “as is -credible enough she might bring from so great a house, and from so -wealthie a realme as Ægypt was.” And now she is “again for Cydnus,” and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</span> -needs her “crown and all.” Already to all intents and purposes she has -resolved on her death, as is shown by her frequent assurances. She has -also resolved on the means of it; for scarcely has Caesar left, than -she tells Charmian:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I have spoke already, and it is provided.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 195.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Will she not also have resolved on the manner of -it; and both in the self-consciousness of her beauty and in memory -of her first meeting with Antony, does she not desire to depart life -for the next meeting with due pomp and state? If we imagine she was -keeping back her regalia for this last display, we can understand why -Shakespeare inserted the “nobler token” in addition to the unconsidered -trifles which she was quite ready to own she had reserved, and of which -indeed in Shakespeare though not in Plutarch she had already made -express mention as uninventoried.<a id="FNanchor_224" href="#Footnote_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> We can understand her consternation and resentment -at the disclosure; for just as in regard to the “nobler token” she -could not explain her real motives without ruining her plan. And we can -admire her “cunning past man’s thought” in turning the whole incident -to account as proof that she was willing to live on sufferance as -<i>protégée</i> of Caesar.</p> - -<p>No doubt this suggestion is open to the criticism that it is nowhere -established by a direct statement; but that also applies to the most -probable explanation of some other matters in the play. And meanwhile I -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</span> -think that it, better than the two previous theories we have discussed, -satisfies the conditions, by conforming with the <i>data</i> of the -play, the treatment of the sources, and the feelings of the reader. On -the one hand it fully admits the reality of Cleopatra’s fraud and of -her indignation at Seleucus. On the other it removes the discrepancy -between her dissimulation, and the loftiness of temper and readiness -for death, which she now generally and but for the usual interpretation -of this incident invariably displays. It tallies with what we may -surmise from Shakespeare’s other omissions and interpolations; and if -it goes beyond Plutarch’s account of Caesar’s deception by Cleopatra, -it does not contradict it, and therefore would not demand so full and -definite a statement as a new story entirely different from the original.</p> - -<p>Be that as it may, there is at least no trace of hesitation or -compliance in the Queen from the moment when she perceives that -Octavius is merely “wording” her. Her self-respect is a stronger or, -at any rate, a more conspicuous motive than her love. Antony, when he -believed her false had said to her:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And blemish Caesar’s triumph. Let him take thee,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of all thy sex; most monster-like be shown</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For poor’st diminutives, for doits: and let</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Patient Octavia plough thy visage up</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With her prepared nails.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xii. 32.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">These words of wrath have lingered in her memory -and she echoes them in his dying ears:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Not the imperious show</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the full-fortuned Caesar ever shall</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be brooch’d with me; if knife, drugs, serpents have</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Demuring upon me.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xv. 23.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</span> -The loathsomeness of the prospect grows in her imagination, and -compared with it the most loathsome fate is desirable. She tells -Proculeius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Know, sir, that I</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will not wait pinion’d at your master’s court;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor once be chastised with the sober eye</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And show me to the shouting varletry</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be gentle grave unto me! rather on Nilus’ mud</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Blow me into abhorring! rather make</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My country’s high pyramides my gibbet,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And hang me up in chains.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 52.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And now in the full realisation of the scene, she -brings it home to her women:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cle.</i><span class="ws4">Now, Iras, what think’st thou?</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In Rome, as well as I: mechanic slaves</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And forced to drink their vapour.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Iras.</i><span class="ws8">The gods forbid!</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cle.</i> Nay, ’tis most certain, Iras: saucy lictors</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will catch at us, like strumpets; and scald rhymers</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ballad us out of tune.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 207.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Such thoughts expel once for all her mutability -and flightiness:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">My resolution’s placed and I have nothing</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of woman in me: now from head to foot</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I am marble constant; now the fleeting moon</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No planet is of mine.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 238.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And the scene that follows with the banalities -and trivialities of the clown who supplies the aspics among the figs, -brings into relief the loneliness of a queenly nature and a great -sorrow. Yet not merely the loneliness, but the potency as well. Who -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</span> -would have given the frivolous waiting-women of the earlier scenes -credit for devotion and heroism? Yet inspired by her example they learn -their lesson and are ready to die as nobly as she. Iras has spoken for -them all:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Finish, good lady; the bright day is done,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And we are for the dark.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 193.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Now she brings the robe and crown Cleopatra wore -at Cydnus, and then, like Eros, ushers the way. Charmian stays but to -close the eyes and arrange the diadem of her dead mistress:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Downy windows, close;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And golden Phoebus never be beheld</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of eyes again so royal. Your crown’s awry;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ll mend it, and then play.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 319.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thereupon she too applies the asp and provokes -its fang.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O, come apace, dispatch.</div> - <div class="verse indent13">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 325.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Even in the last solemn moment there is vanity, -artifice, and voluptuousness in Cleopatra. She is careful of her looks, -of her state, of her splendour, even in death; and doubtless would have -smiled if she could have heard Caesar’s tardy praise:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">She looks like sleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As she would catch another Antony</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In her strong toil of grace.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 349.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And she does not depart quite in the high Roman fashion. She has -studied to make her passage easy, and has taken all measures that may -enable her to liken the stroke of death to a lover’s pinch and the -biting of the asp to the suckling of a babe, and to say:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 314.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">None the less her exit in its serene grace and -dignity is imperial, and deserves the praise of the dying Charmian and -the reluctant Octavius.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VII<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>Hitherto this discussion of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> has so far as -possible passed over the most distinctive thing in the history of the -hero and heroine, the fatal passion that binds them together, gives -significance to their lives, and makes their memories famous. Knowing -their environment and their nature we are in a better position to see -in some measure what it meant.</p> - -<p>We have noted how in that generation all ties of customary morality -are loosed, how the individual is a law to himself, and how -selfishness runs riot in its quest of gratification, acquisition, -material ambition. Among the children of that day those make the -most sympathetic impression who import into the somewhat casual -and indefinite personal relations that remain—the relation of the -legionary to his commander, of the freedman to his patron, of the -waiting-woman to her mistress—something of universal validity and -worth. But obviously no connection in a period like this at once arises -so naturally from the conditions, and has the possibilities of such -abiding authority, as the love of the sexes. On the one hand it is -the most personal bond of all. Love is free and not to be compelled. -It results from the spontaneous motion of the individual. Were we to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</span> -conceive the whole social fabric dissolved, men and women would still -be drawn together by mutual inclination in more or less permanent -unions of pairs. And yet this attraction that seems to be and that is -so completely dictated by choice, that is certainly quite beyond the -domain of external compulsion, is in another aspect quite independent -of the will of the persons concerned, and sways them like a resistless -natural force. It has been said that the highest compliment the lover -can pay the beloved is to say, “I cannot help loving you.” Necessity is -laid upon him, and he is but its instrument. If then the inclination -is so pervasive and imperious that it becomes a master passion, -clearly it will supply the grand effective bond when other social -bonds fail. When nothing else can, it will enable a man and woman to -overleap a few at least of the barriers of their selfishness, and in -some measure to merge their egoism in sympathy. This is what justifies -Antony’s idolatry of Cleopatra to our feelings. The passion is -enthusiastic, and in a way is self-forgetful; and passion, enthusiasm, -self-forgetfulness, whatever their aberrations, always command respect. -They especially do so in this world of greeds and cravings and -calculating self-interest. This infinite devotion that shrinks from no -sacrifice, is at once the greatest thing within Antony’s reach, and -witness to his own greatness in recognising its worth. The greatest -thing within his reach: when we remember what the ambitions of his -fellows and his rivals were, there is truth in the words with which he -postpones all such ambitions to the bliss of the mutual caress:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Is to do thus: when such a mutual pair (<i>embracing</i>)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On pain of punishment, the world to weet</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We stand up peerless.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 33.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And only one of grand general outlook could feel -like this, when he had tasted the sweets of conquest and power, and -when all the kingdoms of the world were reached to his hand as the -alternative for the kingdom of his love. It takes a hero, with such -experiences behind him and such opportunities before, to make the -disastrous choice. Heine tells us how he read Plutarch at school and -how the master “impressed on us that Antony for this woman spoiled his -public career, involved himself in domestic unpleasantnesses, and at -last plunged himself in ruin. In truth my old master was right, and it -is extremely dangerous to establish intimate relations with a person -like Cleopatra. It may be the destruction of a hero; but only of a -hero. Here as everywhere there is no danger for worthy mediocrity.”</p> - -<p>But despite the sympathy with which Shakespeare regards Antony’s -passion both as an object of pursuit and as an indication of nobility, -he is quite aware that it is pernicious and criminal. Relatively it may -be extolled: absolutely it must be condemned. It is rooted in breach -of troth and duty, and it bears within itself the seeds of infidelity -and wrong. It has none of the inviolability and security of a lawful -love. After all, Cleopatra’s gibes about Antony’s relations with “the -married woman” and herself, despite their affectation of petulance, are -only too much to the point, so far as he is concerned; and when she has -yielded to Julius, Pompey, and Antony in turn, what guarantee has the -last favourite that she will not do so again to some later supplanter? -In point of fact each is untrue to the other, Antony by his marriage -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</span> -with Octavia, Cleopatra by her traffickings with Octavius and -Thyreus.<a id="FNanchor_225" href="#Footnote_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a> -She forfeits in the sequel her right to be angry at his truancy; he has -forfeited in advance the right to be angry at hers. But it is their -penalty that these resentments should come between them; and at the -very time when they most need each other’s support, their relation, -being far from the perfect kind that casts out mistrust, is vitiated -by jealousy on the one side and fear on the other. She flees to the -Monument, shuts herself up from his blind rage in craven panic, and -seeks to save her life by lies. At the sight of the liberties she has -allowed Thyreus to take, he loses himself in mad outbursts which have -but a partial foundation in the facts. Then he jumps to the conclusion -that she has arranged for the desertion of the sailors, and dooms her -to death, when in reality she seems to know nothing about it.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent23">Betray’d I am:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose eye beck’d forth my wars and call’d them home;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xii. 24.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">These terrors and suspicions are inevitable in -such love as theirs.</p> - -<p>Or is their feeling for each other to be called love at all? The -question has been asked even in regard to Antony. From first to last he -is aware not only of her harmfulness but of her pravity. He is under no -illusions about her cunning, her boggling, her falsity. And can this -insight co-exist with devotion?</p> - -<p>Much more frequently it has been asked in regard to Cleopatra. She -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</span> -frankly avows even in retrospect her policy of making him her prey. -Thus does she mimic fact in her pastime:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Give me mine angle: we’ll to the river; there,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My music playing far off, I will betray</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tawny-finn’d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their slimy jaws; and, as I draw them up,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ll think them every one an Antony,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And say, “Ah, ha! you’re caught.”</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> v. 10.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Moreover, her first capture of him at that banquet -where he paid his heart as ordinary, was a mere business speculation. -He has been useful to her since, for he is the man to piece her opulent -throne with kingdoms. When he seems lost to her, she realises that she -can no longer gratify her caprices as once she did.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Alex.</i> Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But when you are well pleased.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cle.</i><span class="ws9">That Herod’s head</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ll have: but how, when Antony is gone</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through whom I might command it?</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> iii. 4.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Or, if other motives supervene, they belong to -wanton whim and splendid coquetry. Her deliberate allurements, her -conscious wiles, her calculated tenderness, are all employed merely to -retain her command of the serviceable instrument, and at the same time -minister to her vanity, since Antony would accept such a rôle only from her.</p> - -<p>If both or either of these theories were adopted, the whole interest -and dignity of the theme would be gone. If Antony were not genuinely -in love, his follies and delinquencies would cast him beyond the pale -of our tolerance. If Cleopatra were not genuinely in love, she would -at best deserve the description of Ten Brink, “a courtesan of genius.” -If the love were not mutual, Antony would be merely the toy of the -courtesan, Cleopatra merely the toy of the sensualist. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</span></p> - -<p>But in point of fact, it is mutual and sincere. Antony’s feeling has to -do with much more than the senses. It goes deeper and higher; and even -when he doubts Cleopatra’s affection, he never doubts his own:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">(Her) heart I thought I had, for she had mine.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xiv. 16.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Cleopatra’s feeling may have originated in -self-interest and may make use of craft. But in catching Antony she has -been caught herself; and though interest and vanity are not expelled, -they are swallowed up in vehement admiration for the man she has -ensnared. Her artifices are successful, because they are the means made -use of by a heart that is deeply engaged; and it is no paradox to say -that they are evidence of her sincerity. So often as she refers to her -lover seriously, it is with something like adoration. After the first -separation, he is her “man of men.” In her first bitterness at his -marriage, she cannot let him go, for</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The other way’s a Mars.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> v. 116.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Even when he is fallen and worsted, she has no -doubt how things would go were it a merely personal contest between him -and his rival. When he returns from his last victory, she greets him: -“Lord of lords! O infinite virtue!” (<span class="smcap">iv.</span> -viii. 16). When he dies, the world seems to her “no better than a -sty” (<span class="smcap">iv.</span> xv. 62). When she recalls his -splendour, his bounty, his joyousness, it seems not a reality, but a -dream, which yet must be more than a dream.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If there be, nor ever were, one such,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It’s past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To vie strange forms with fancy; yet, to imagine</div> - <div class="verse indent0">An Antony, were nature’s piece ’gainst fancy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Condemning shadows quite.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 96.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Various interpretations have been given of these -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</span> -lines, but on any possible interpretation they exalt Antony alike -above fact and fancy.<a id="FNanchor_226" href="#Footnote_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a> -And when we run through the whole gamut of the words and deeds of the -pair, from their squabbles to their death, it seems to me possible to -doubt their love only by isolating some details and considering them to -the exclusion of the rest.</p> - -<p>But the truth is that the love of Antony and Cleopatra is genuine and -intense; and if it leads to shame as well as to glory, this is to be -explained, apart from the circumstances of the time, apart from the -characters of the lovers, in the nature of the variety to which it belongs.</p> - -<p>Plutarch, whose thoughts when he is discussing such subjects are never -far from Plato’s, has a passage in which he characterises Antony’s -passion by reference to the famous metaphor in the <i>Phaedrus</i>.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">In the ende, the horse of the minde, as Plato -termeth it, that is so hard of rayne (I meane the unreyned lust -of concupiscence), did put out of Antonius’ heade all honest and -commendable thoughts.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Certainly it is not the milder and more docile -steed that takes the lead in Antony’s affection. But it is perhaps a -little surprising that Plutarch did not rather go for his Platonic -illustration to the <i>Symposium</i>, where the disquisitions of -Aristophanes and Diotima explain respectively what Antony’s love is -and is not. Aristophanes, with his myth that men, once four-legged and -four-armed, were split in two because they were too happy, and now are -pining to find their counterparts, gives the exact description of what -the love of Antony and Cleopatra is. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</span></p> - -<p class="blockquot">Each of us when separated is but the indenture of -a man, having one side only like a flat-fish, and he is always looking -for his other half.... When one of them finds his other half, ... the -pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and -one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a -moment.<a id="FNanchor_227" href="#Footnote_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">And, on the other hand, Diotima’s opposite theory -does not apply to this particular case, at least, to begin with or -superficially:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">You hear people say that lovers are seeking for -their other half; but I say that they are seeking neither for the half -of themselves, nor for the whole, unless the half or the whole be also -a good. And they will cut off their own hands and feet and cast them -away, if they are evil.... For there is nothing which men love but the -good.<a id="FNanchor_228" href="#Footnote_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a></p> - -<p>We may put the case in a somewhat more popular and modern fashion. All -love that really deserves the name must base more or less completely on -sympathy, on what Goethe called <i>Wahlverwandschaft</i>, or elective -affinity. But such affinity may be of different kinds and degrees, -and according to its range will tend to approximate to one of two -types. It may mean sympathy with what is deepest and highest in us, -our aspiration after the ideal, our bent towards perfection; or it -may mean sympathy with our whole nature and with all our feelings and -tendencies, alike with those that are high and with those that are low. -The former is the more exacting though the more beneficent. It implies -the suppression and abnegation in us of much that is base, of much that -is harmless, of much, even, that may be good, for the sake of the best. -In it we must inure ourselves to effort and sacrifice for the sake of -advance in that supersensible realm where the union took place.</p> - -<p>The second is less austere, and, for the time being, more -comprehensive. It is founded on a correspondence in all sorts of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</span> -matters, great and small, noble and base, of good or of bad report. If -it lacks the exclusive loftiness of the other, it affords many more -points of contact and a far greater wealth of daily fellowship. And -of this latter variety, the love of Antony and Cleopatra is perhaps -the typical example. At first sight it is evident that they are, as -we say, made for each other. They are both past the first bloom of -youth. Cleopatra, whom at the outset Plutarch makes twenty-eight years -of age, and of whose wrinkles and waned lip Shakespeare, though in -irony and exaggeration, finds it possible to speak, has relatively -reached the same period of life as Antony, whom Plutarch makes at the -outset forty-three or forty-six years of age, and whom Shakespeare -represents as touched with the fall of eld. And they correspond in -their experiences. Neither is a novice in love and pleasure: Cleopatra, -the woman with a history, Antony, the masquer and reveller of Clodius’ -set, have both seen life. They are alike in their emotionalism, their -impressibility, their quick wits, their love of splendour, their genial -power, their intellectual scope, their zest for everything. Plutarch -narrates—and it is strange that <i>à propos</i> of this he did not -quote Aristophanes’ saying in the <i>Symposium</i>—</p> - -<p class="blockquot">She, were it in sport, or in matter of earnest, -still devised sundrie new delights to have Antonius at commaundement, -never leaving him night nor day, nor once letting him go out of her -sight. For she would play at dyce with him, drinke with him, and hunt -commonly with him, and also be with him when he went to any exercise -or activity of body. And sometime, also, when he would goe up and -downe the citie disguised like a slave in the night, and would peere -into poore men’s windowes and their shops, and scold and brawle with -them within the house: Cleopatra would be also in a chamber-maides -array, and amble up and downe the streets with him, so that oftentimes -Antonius bare away both mockes and blowes.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Here we have a picture of the completest -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</span> -<i>camaraderie</i> in things serious and frivolous, athletic and -intellectual, decorous and venturesome, with memories of which the play -is saturated. We are witnesses of Cleopatra’s impatience when he is -away for a moment: we hear of her drinking him to bed before the ninth -hour, and of their outdoor sports. Antony proposes to roam the streets -with her and note the qualities of the people. Perhaps it was some such -expedition that gave Enobarbus material for his description:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">I saw her once</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hop forty paces through the public street;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That she did make defect perfection,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And, breathless, power breathe forth.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 233.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is such doings that raise the gorge of the genteel Octavius, who has -no sense for popular pleasures, whether we call them simple or vulgar. -But the daughter of the Ptolemies is less fastidious, and is as ready -as Antony to escape from the etiquette of the court and take her share -in these unceremonious frolics. Yet it is not only these lighter moods -and moments that draw them together. In the depth of his mistrust, -Antony recalls the “grave charm” of his enchantress; and she, when he -is no more, remembers that</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">his voice was propertied</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As all the tuned spheres.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 83.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But what of serious and elevated they have in -common gains warmth and colour by their mutual delight in much that is -neither one nor other. He tells her,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">But that your royalty</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Holds idleness your subject, I should take you</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For idleness itself.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 91.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And he pays homage to her in every mood:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Fie, wrangling queen!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whom everything becomes, to chide, to laugh,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To weep; whose every passion fully strives</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To make itself, in thee, fair and admired!</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 48.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</span> -It is as genuine and catholic admiration as Florizel’s for Perdita:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent19">What you do</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Still betters what is done....</div> - <div class="verse indent19">Each your doing,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So singular in each particular,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That all your acts are queens.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<i>W.T.</i> <span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iv. 135.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But apart from their sincerity and range, -how different are the two tributes: Florizel’s all innocence and -simplicity, Antony’s <i>raffiné</i> and sophisticated. We feel from his -words that he would endorse Shakespeare’s ambiguous praise of his own -dark lady:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That in the very refuse of thy deeds</div> - <div class="verse indent0">There is such strength and warrantise of skill,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<i>Sonnet</i> <span class="smcap">cl.</span> 5.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Does not Enobarbus speak in almost exactly the -same way of the Cleopatra that Antony adores?</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">Vilest things</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Become themselves in her; that the holy priests</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bless her when she is riggish.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 243.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus the two are alike not only in great and -indifferent things, but in their want of steadfastness, their want of -principle, their compliance with baseness. Hence they encourage each -other in what debilitates and degrades, as well as in what fortifies -and exalts. At its worst their love has something divine about it, but -often it seems a divine orgy rather than a divine inspiration. Not -seldom does it lead to madness and ignominy. That Antony loses the -world for it is a small matter and even proves his grandeur of soul. -But for it, besides “offending reputation,” he profanes his inward -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</span> -honour as well; and that unmasks it as the Siren and Fury of their -lives. Indeed, such love is self-destructive, and for it the lovers -sacrifice the means of securing it against the hostile power of things. -Yet, just because it is so plenary and permeating, it becomes an -inspiration too. When its prodigal largesse fails, at the hour when it -is stripped of its inessential charms, the lovers are thrown back on -itself; and at once it elevates them both. Antony, believing Cleopatra -dead, and not yet undeceived as to the part that he fancies she played -at the last, thinks only of following her to entreat and obtain a -reconciliation.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Weep for my pardon.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xiv. 44.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When he learns that she still lives, no reproach -crosses his lips for the deceit; his only wish as the blood flows -from his breast is to be borne “where Cleopatra bides” to take a last -farewell. He wrestles with death till he receives the final embrace:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I am dying, Egypt, dying: only</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I here importune death awhile, until</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of many thousand kisses the poor last</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I lay upon thy lips.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xv. 18.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thereafter he has no thought of himself but -only of her, counselling her in complete self-abnegation to seek of -Caesar her honour with her safety, and recommending her to trust only -Proculeius—one who, as we soon learn, would be eager to preserve her life.</p> - -<p>And her love, too, though perhaps more fitfully, yet all the more -strikingly, is deepened and solemnised by trial. After Actium it quite -loses its element of mockery and petulance. Her flout at Antony’s -negligence before the battle is the last we hear her utter. Henceforth, -whether she protests her faith, or speeds him to the fight, or welcomes -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</span> -him on his return, her words have a new seriousness and weight.<a id="FNanchor_229" href="#Footnote_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> -Her feeling seems to become simpler and sincerer as her fortunes cloud, and -at her lover’s death it is nature alone that triumphs. In the first -shock of bereavement Iras, attempting consolation, addresses her as -“Royal Egypt, Empress”; and she replies:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">No more, but e’en a woman, and commanded</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By such poor passion as the maid that milks</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And does the meanest chares.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xv. 72.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Her grief for her great loss, a grief, perhaps, -hardly anticipated by herself, is in her own eyes her teacher, and -“begins to make a better life.” Even now she may falter, if the usual -interpretation of her fraud with the treasure is correct. Even now, at -all events, she has to be urged by the natural and royal but not quite -unimpeachable motive, the dread of external disgrace. Cleopatra is very -human to the last. Her weaknesses do not disappear, but they are but as -fuel to the flames of her love by which they are bred and which they -help to feed. It is still as the “curled Antony” she pictures her dead -lover, and it is in “crown and robe” that she will receive that kiss -which it is her heaven to have. But even in this there is a striking -similarity to Antony’s expectation of the land where “souls do couch -on flowers,” and where they will be the cynosure of the gazing ghosts. -Their oneness of heart and feeling is indeed now complete, and their -love is transfigured. It is at his call she comes, and his name is -the last word she utters, before she lays the second asp on her arm. -The most wonderful touch of all is that now she feels her right to be -considered his wife. This, of course, is due to Shakespeare, but it is -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</span> -not altogether new. It occurs in Daniel’s tragedy, when she calls on -Antony’s spirit to pray the gods on her behalf:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O if in life we could not severd be,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall death divide our bodies now asunder?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Must thine in Egypt, mine in Italy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be kept the Monuments of Fortune’s wonder?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If any powres be there whereas thou art</div> - <div class="verse indent0">(Sith our country gods betray our case),</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O worke they may their gracious helpe impart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To save thy wofull <i>wife</i> from such disgrace.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It also occurs twice in Plutarch, from whom Daniel -probably obtained it. In the <i>Comparison of Demetrius and Marcus -Antonius</i>, he writes:<a id="FNanchor_230" href="#Footnote_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a></p> - -<p class="blockquot">Antonius first of all married two wives together, -the which never Romane durst doe before, but him self.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">In the biography, when Cleopatra has lifted him to -the Monument, we are told:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Then she dryed up his blood that had berayed -his face, and called him her Lord, <i>her husband</i>, and Emperour, -forgetting her owne miserie and calamity for the pitie and compassion -she tooke of him.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">It is not, therefore, the invention of the -idea, but the new position in which he introduces it, that shows -Shakespeare’s genius. It has no great significance, either in Plutarch -or Daniel. In the one, Cleopatra is speaking in compassion of Antony; -in the other, she is bespeaking Antony’s compassion for herself. But in -Shakespeare, when she scorns life for her love, and prefers honour with -the aspic’s bite to safety with shame, she feels that now at last their -union has the highest sanction, and that all the dross of her nature is -purged away from the pure spirit:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Husband, I come:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now to that name my courage prove my title!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I am fire and air: my other elements</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I give to baser life.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 290.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</span> -Truly their love, which at first seemed to justify Aristophanes against -Diotima, just because it is true love, turns out to answer Diotima’s -description after all. Or perhaps it rather suggests the conclusion in -the <i>Phaedrus</i>: “I have shown this of all inspirations to be the -noblest and the highest, and the offspring of the highest; and that he -who loves the beautiful, is called a lover, because he partakes of it.” -Antony and Cleopatra, with all their errors, are lovers and partake of -beauty, which we cannot say of the arid respectability of Octavius. It -is well and right that they should perish as they do: but so perishing -they have made their full atonement; and we can rejoice that they have -at once triumphed over their victor, and left our admiration for them free.</p> - -<p> </p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>CORIOLANUS</i></h2> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER I<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">POSITION OF THE PLAY BEFORE THE ROMANCES.<br /> -ITS POLITICAL AND ARTISTIC ASPECTS</span></h3> -</div> - -<p><i>Coriolanus</i> seems to have been first published in the folio -of 1623, and is one of the sixteen plays described as not formerly -“entered to other men.” In this dearth of information there has -naturally been some debate on the date of its composition, yet the -opinions of critics with few exceptions agree as to its general -position and tend more and more to limit the period of uncertainty to a -very few months.</p> - -<p>This comparative unanimity is due to the evidence of style, -versification, and treatment rather than of reminiscences and -allusions. Though a fair number of the latter have been discovered -or invented, some of them are vague and doubtful, some inapposite or -untenable, hardly any are of value from their inherent likelihood.</p> - -<p>Of these, one which has been considered to give the <i>terminus a -quo</i> in dating the play was pointed out by Malone in the fable of -Menenius. Plutarch’s account is somewhat bald: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</span></p> - -<p class="blockquot">On a time all the members of mans bodie, dyd -rebell against the bellie, complaining of it, that it only remained in -the middest of the bodie, without doing any thing, neither dyd beare -any labour to the maintenaunce of the rest: whereas all other partes -and members dyd labour paynefully, and was very carefull to satisfie -the appetites and desiers of the bodie. And so the bellie, all this -notwithstanding, laughed at their follie, and sayed: “It is true, I -first receyve all meates that norishe mans bodie: but afterwardes I -send it againe to the norishement of other partes of the same. Even so -(quoth he) O you, my masters, and cittizens of Rome: the reason is a -like betwene the Senate, and you. For matters being well digested, and -their counsells throughly examined, touching the benefit of the common -wealth; the Senatours are cause of the common commoditie that commeth -unto every one of you.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This is meagre compared with Shakespeare’s -full-blooded and dramatic narrative, and though in any case the chief -credit for the transformation would be due to the poet, who certainly -contributes most of the picturesque and humorous details and all of -the interruptions and rejoinders, it has been thought that he owes -something to the expanded version in Camden’s <i>Remaines concerning -Britaine</i>, which appeared in 1605.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">All the members of the body conspired against the -stomacke, as against the swallowing gulfe of all their labors; for -whereas the eies beheld, the eares heard, the handes labored, the feete -traveled, the tongue spake, and all partes performed their functions, -onely the stomacke lay idle and consumed all. Here uppon they ioyntly -agreed al to forbeare their labors, and to pine away their lasie and -publike enemy. One day passed over, the second followed very tedious, -but the third day was so grievous to them all, that they called a -common Counsel; the eyes waxed dimme, the feete could not support the -bodie, the armes waxed lasie, the tongue faltered, and could not lay -open the matter; therefore they all with one accord desired the advise -of the Heart. Then Reason layd open before them that hee against whome -they had proclaimed warres, was the cause of all this their misery: -For he as their common steward, when his allowances were withdrawne of -necessitie withdrew theirs fro them, as not receiving that he might -allow. Therefore it were a farre better course to supply him, than that -the limbs should faint with hunger. So by the perswasion of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</span> -Reason, the stomacke was served, the limbes comforted, and peace -re-established. Even so it fareth with the bodies of Common weale; for -albeit the Princes gather much, yet not so much for themselves, as for -others: So that if they want, they cannot supply the want of others; -therefore do not repine at Princes heerein, but respect the common good -of the whole publike estate.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">It has been pointed out,<a id="FNanchor_231" href="#Footnote_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a> -in criticism of Malone’s suggestion, that in some respects -Shakespeare’s version agrees with Plutarch’s and disagrees with -Camden’s. Thus in Camden it is the stomach and not the belly that is -denounced, the members do not confine themselves to words but proceed -to deeds, it is not the belly but Reason from its seat in the heart -that sets forth the moral. This is quite true, but no one doubted that -Shakespeare got from Plutarch his general scheme; the only question is -whether he fitted into it details from another source. It has also been -objected that Shakespeare was quite capable of making the additions -for himself; and this also is quite true as the other and more vivid -additions prove, if it needed to be proved. Nevertheless, when we -find Shakespeare’s expansions in the play following some of the lines -laid down by Camden in the <i>Remaines</i>, occasionally with verbal -coincidence, it seems not unlikely that the <i>Remaines</i> were known -to him. Thus he does not treat the members like Plutarch in the mass, -but like Camden enumerates them and their functions; the stomach in -Camden like the belly in Shakespeare is called a gulf, a term that is -very appropriate but that would not occur to everyone; the heart where -Reason dwells and to which Camden’s mutineers appeal for advice, is the -counsellor heart in Shakespeare’s list.<a id="FNanchor_232" href="#Footnote_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a> -Moreover, it has been shown by Mr. Sidney Lee that there were friendly -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</span> -relations between the two men. So it is a conjecture no less probable -than pleasing that Shakespeare owed a few hints to the great and -patriotic scholar whom Ben Jonson hailed as “most reverend head.”</p> - -<p>It is clear, however, that if the debt to Camden was more certain than -it is, this would only give us the year before which <i>Coriolanus</i> -could not have been written, and it would not of itself establish a -date shortly after the publication of the <i>Remaines</i>. Such a date -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</span> -has been suggested, but the reference to Camden has been made merely -auxiliary to the argument of a connection between the play and the -general circumstances of the time. This surmise, for it can hardly be -called more, will presently be noticed, and meanwhile it may be said -that the internal evidence is all against it.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, an excessively late date has been proposed for -<i>Coriolanus</i> on the ground of its alleged indebtedness to the -fourth edition of North, of which it is sometimes maintained that -Shakespeare possessed a copy. Till 1612, Volumnia says in her great appeal:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Think now with thy selfe, how much more -<i>unfortunatly</i>, then all the women livinge we are come hether;</p> - -<p class="no-indent">but in the fourth edition this becomes -<i>unfortunate</i>, and so Shakespeare has it:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Think with thyself</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How more unfortunate than all living women</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Are we come hither.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 96.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But the employment of the adjectival for the -adverbial form is a very insignificant change, and is, besides, -suggested by the rhythm. Moreover, such importance as it might have, is -neutralised by a counter argument on similar lines, which would go to -prove that one of the first two editions was used. In them Coriolanus -tells Aufidius:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">If I had feared death, I would not have come -hither to have put my life in hazard: but prickt forward with -<i>spite</i> and desire I have to be revenged of them that thus have -banished me, etc.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">In 1603, this suffers the curtailment, “pricked -forward with desire to be revenged, etc.” But Shakespeare says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent29">If</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I had fear’d death, of all men i’ the world</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I would have ’voided thee, but in mere <i>spite</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To be full quit of those my banishers,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Stand I before thee here.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> v. 86.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</span> -This argument is no doubt of the same precarious kind as the other; -still in degree it is stronger, for the persistence of <i>spite</i> is -much more distinctive than the disappearance of a suffix.</p> - -<p>In any case this verbal detail is a very narrow foundation to build -a theory upon, which there is nothing else to support, except one -of those alluring and hazardous guesses that would account for the -play in the conditions of the time. This, too, as in the previous -case, may be reserved for future discussion. Meanwhile the dating -of <i>Coriolanus</i>, subsequently to 1612, is not only opposed to -internal evidences of versification and style, but would separate it -from Shakespeare’s tragedies and introduce it among the romantic plays -of his final period.</p> - -<p>If, however, we turn to the supposed allusions that make for the -intermediate date of 1608 or 1609, we do not find them much more -satisfactory.</p> - -<p>Thus it has been argued that the severe cold in January, 1608, when -even the Thames was frozen over, furnished the simile:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">You are no surer, no,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than is the coal of fire upon the ice.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 176.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But surely there must have been many opportunities -for such things to present themselves to Shakespeare’s observation or -imagination, by the time that he was forty-four years old.</p> - -<p>Again Malone found a reference to James’s proclamation in favour of -breeding silk-worms and the importation of young mulberry trees during -1609, in the expression:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Now humble as the ripest mulberry</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That will not hold the handling.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 79.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But even in <i>Venus and Adonis</i> Shakespeare -had told how, in admiration of the youth’s beauty, the birds</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries; (1103.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</span> -and in <i>Midsummer-Night’s Dream</i>, Titania orders the fairies to -feed Bottom</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<i>III.</i> i. 170.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>A third of these surmises is even more gratuitous. Chalmers calls -attention to the repeated references in the play to famine and dearth, -and supposes they were suggested by the scarcity which prevailed in -England during the years 1608 and 1609. But the lack of corn among the -people is one of the presuppositions of the story, to which Plutarch -also recurs.</p> - -<p>There is only one allusion that has strength to stand by itself, -though even it is doubtful; and it belongs to a different class, for, -if authentic, it is suggested not to Shakespeare by contemporary -events, but to a contemporary writer by Shakespeare. Malone noticed the -coincidence between the line, “He lurch’d all swords of the garland” -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> ii. 105), and a remark in <i>Epicoene</i>: -“You have lurched your friends of the better half of the garland” -(<span class="allsmcap">v.</span> i.); and considered that here, as -not infrequently, Ben Jonson was girding at Shakespeare. Afterwards he -withdrew his conjecture because he found a similar expression in one -of Nashe’s pamphlets, and concluded that it was proverbial; but it has -been pointed out in answer to this<a id="FNanchor_233" href="#Footnote_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> -that Nashe has only the <i>lurch</i> and not the supplementary words, -<i>of the garland</i>, while it is to the phrase as a whole, not to the -component parts, that the individual character belongs. This, if not -absolutely beyond challenge, is at least very cogent, and probably few -will deny that <i>Coriolanus</i> must have been in existence before -<i>Epicoene</i> was acted in January 1609, old style.</p> - -<p>How long before? And did it succeed or precede <i>Antony and -Cleopatra</i>?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</span> -Attempts have been made to find in that play immediate anticipations -of the mental attitude and of particular thoughts that appear in -<i>Coriolanus</i>. Thus Octavia’s dilemma in her petition has been -quoted:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">A more unhappy lady,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If this division chance, ne’er stood between,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Praying for both parts:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The good gods will mock me presently,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When I shall pray, “O, bless my lord and husband!”</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Undo that prayer, by crying out as loud,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">“O, bless my brother!” Husband win, win brother,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Prays, and destroys the prayer; no midway</div> - <div class="verse indent0">’Twixt these extremes at all.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> iv. 12.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And this has been taken as a link with Volumnia’s -perplexity:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">And to poor we</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thine enmity’s most capital: thou barr’st us</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That all but we enjoy: for how can we,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Alas, how can we for our country pray,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whereto we are bound? Alack, or we must lose</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our comfort in the country. We must find</div> - <div class="verse indent0">An evident calamity, though we had</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our wish, which side should win.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 103.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But then the same sort of conflict puzzles the -Lady Blanch in <i>King John</i>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Which is the side that I must go withal?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I am with both: each army hath a hand;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And in their rage, I having hold of both,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They whirl asunder and dismember me.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Father, I may not wish the fortune thine;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Assured loss before the match be play’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 327.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Could not this style of argument be used to prove -that <i>Coriolanus</i> and <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> immediately -followed <i>King John</i>? -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</span></p> - -<p>Or again the contemptuous descriptions of the people by Octavius, -Cleopatra and Antony himself have been treated as preludes to the more -savage vituperations in <i>Coriolanus</i>. But <i>Julius Caesar</i> -gives an equally unflattering account of mob law, and some of Casca’s -gibes would quite fit the mouth of Coriolanus or Menenius. On these -lines we should be as much entitled to make this play the direct -successor of the first as of the second of its companions, a theory -that would meet with scant acceptance. The truth is that whenever -Shakespeare deals with the populace, he finds some one to disparage it -in the mass.</p> - -<p>Still there is little doubt that <i>Coriolanus</i> does occupy the -position these arguments would assign to it, but the real evidence -is of another kind. To begin with there is what Coleridge describes -in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> as the “happy valiancy of style,” -which first becomes marked in that play, which is continued in this, -and which henceforth in a greater or less degree characterises all -Shakespeare’s work. Then even more conclusive are the peculiarities -of metre, and especially the increase in the total of weak and light -endings together with the decrease of the light by themselves. Finally, -there is the conduct of the story to a conclusion that proposes -no enigma and inflicts no pang, but even more than in the case of -<i>Macbeth</i> satisfies, and even more than in the case of <i>Antony -and Cleopatra</i> uplifts the heart, without troublesome questionings -on the part of the reader. “As we close the book,” says Mr. Bradley, -“we feel more as we do at the close of <i>Cymbeline</i> than as we do -at the close of <i>Othello</i>.” We cannot be far wrong in placing it -in the last months of 1608 or the first months of 1609.</p> - -<p>Attempts have been made to find suggestions of a personal kind for -Shakespeare’s choice of the subject. The extreme ease with which they -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</span> -have been discovered for the various dates proposed may well teach us -caution. Thus Professor Brandl who assigns it an earlier position than -most critics and discusses it before <i>Lear</i> sees in it the outcome -of events that occurred in the first years of the century.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The material for <i>Coriolanus</i> was perhaps put -in Shakespeare’s way by a contemporary tragedy which keenly excited -the Londoners, and especially the courtly and literary circles, about -1603 and 1604. Sir Walter Raleigh had been one of the most splendid -gentlemen at the court of Elizabeth, was a friend of Spenser and Ben -Jonson, had himself tried his hand at lyric poetry, and in addition -as adventurous officer had discovered Virginia and annexed Guiana. -He was the most highly considered but also the best hated man in -England: for his behaviour was domineering, in the consciousness of -his innate efficiency he showed without disguise his contempt for the -multitude, the farm of wine-licenses granted him by the Queen had made -him objectionable to the pothouse politicians, and his opposition in -parliament to a bill for cheapening corn had recently drawn on him -new unpopularity. He, therefore, shortly after the accession of James -succumbed to the charge, that he, the scarred veteran of the Spanish -wars, the zealous advocate of new expeditions against Spain, had -involved himself in treasonous transactions with this, the hereditary -foe of England. In November 1603 the man who had won treasure-fleets -and vast regions for his country, almost fell a victim to popular rage -as he was being transferred from one prison to another.<a id="FNanchor_234" href="#Footnote_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> -A month later he was condemned to death on wretched evidence: he was -not yet executed however but locked up in the Tower, so that men were -in suspense as to his fate for many years. To depict his character his -biographer Edwards involuntarily hit on some lines of Shakespeare’s -<i>Coriolanus</i>. The figure of the Roman, who had deserved well but -incurred hatred, of the patriot whom his aristocratic convictions -drive to the enemy, was already familiar to the dramatist from North’s -translation of Plutarch; and Camden’s <i>Remaines concerning -Britaine</i>, which had newly appeared in 1605 contributed a more -detailed version of the fable of the belly and the members, first set -forth by Livy. From this mood and about this time <i>Coriolanus</i>, -for the dating of which only the very relative evidence of metre and -style is available, may most probably have proceeded.<a id="FNanchor_235" href="#Footnote_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</span> -In this passage, Professor Brandl has brought out some of the -considerations that would lend the case of Raleigh a peculiar interest -in the eyes of men like Shakespeare, and has made the most of the -parallels between his story and the story of Coriolanus.<a id="FNanchor_236" href="#Footnote_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a> -It is necessary of course to look away from almost all the points except -those enumerated, for when we remember Sir Walter’s robust adulation -of Elizabeth, and tortuous policy at court, it is difficult to pair -him with the Roman who “would not flatter Neptune for his trident,” -and of whom it was said, “his heart’s his mouth.” Still the analogies -in career and character are there, so far as they go; but they are -insufficient to prove that the actual suggested the poetical tragedy, -still less to override the internal evidence, relative though that -be; for they could linger and germinate in the poet’s mind to bring -forth fruit long afterwards: as for example the treason and execution -of Biron in 1602 inspired Chapman to write <i>The Conspiracie</i> and -<i>The Tragedie</i> which were acted in 1608.</p> - -<p>Again, in connection with what seems to be the actual date, an attempt -has been made to explain one prominent characteristic of the play -from a domestic experience through which Shakespeare had just passed. -His mother died in September 1608, and her memory is supposed to be -enshrined in the picture of Volumnia. As Dr. Brandes puts it:<a id="FNanchor_237" href="#Footnote_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a></p> - -<p class="blockquot">The death of a mother is always a mournfully -irreparable loss, often the saddest a man can sustain. We can realise -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</span> -how deeply it would go to Shakespeare’s heart when we remember -the capacity for profound and passionate feeling with which -nature had blessed and cursed him. We know little of his -mother; but judging from that affinity which generally -exists between famous sons and their mothers, we may suppose -she was no ordinary woman. Mary Arden, who belonged to -an old and honourable family, which traced its descent -(perhaps justly) back to the days of Edward the Confessor, -represented the haughty patrician element in the Shakespeare -family. Her ancestors had borne their coat of arms for -centuries, and the son would be proud of his mother for this -among other reasons, just as the mother would be proud of -her son. In the midst of the prevailing gloom and bitterness -of his spirits,<a id="FNanchor_238" href="#Footnote_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a> -this fresh blow fell upon him, and out of his weariness of life as -his surroundings and experiences showed it to him, recalled this one -mainstay to him—his mother. He remembered all she had been to him for -forty-four years, and the thoughts of the man and the dreams of the -poet were thus led to dwell upon the significance in a man’s life of -this unique form, comparable to no other—his mother. Thus it was that, -although his genius must follow the path it had entered upon and pursue -it to the end, we find, in the midst of all that was low and base in -his next work, this one sublime mother-form, the proudest and most -highly-wrought that he has drawn, Volumnia.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus Shakespeare, in a mood of pessimism, and in -the desolation of bereavement, turned to a subject that he treated on -its seamy side, but redeemed from its meanness by exalting the idea -of the mother in obedience to his own pious regrets. Even, however, -if we grant the assumptions in regard to Mary Arden’s pedigree and -her aristocratic family pride, and the unique support she gave to her -son, does this statement give a true account of the impression the -play produces? Is it the fact that, apart from the figure of Volumnia, -the story is “low and base,” and is it not rather the record of grand -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</span> -though perverted heroism? Is it the fact that Volumnia stands out as a -study of motherhood, such as the first heartache at a mother’s death -would inspire? The most sympathetic traits in her portrait are drawn -by Plutarch. Shakespeare’s many touches supply the harshness, the -ambition, the prejudice. If these additions are due to Shakespeare’s -wistful broodings on his own mother, a woman with a son of genius may -well hope that he will never brood on her.</p> - -<p>Then, especially by those who advocate a later date for the play, a -political motive for it has been discovered. Mr. Whitelaw, who would -assign it to 1610, when James’s first parliament was dissolved, -conjectures that “in <i>Coriolanus</i> Shakespeare intended a two-fold -warning, to the pride of James, and to the gathering resistance of -the Commons.”<a id="FNanchor_239" href="#Footnote_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a> Mr. Garnett,<a id="FNanchor_240" href="#Footnote_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a> -on the other hand, maintains that “Coriolanus, to our apprehension, -manifestly reflects the feelings of a conservative observer of the -contests between James and his refractory parliaments,” and placing -it after the <i>Tempest</i>, would connect it with the dissolution -of the Addled Parliament in 1614. But since the friction between -King and Commons, though it intensified with the years, was seldom -entirely absent, this theory adapts itself pretty well to any date, -and Dr. Brandes, while refusing to trace the spirit of the play to -any “momentary political situation,” adopts the general principle as -quite compatible with the state of affairs in 1608. He puts the case as -follows:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Was it Shakespeare’s intention to allude to the -strained relations existing between James and his parliament? Does -Coriolanus represent an aristocratically-minded poet’s side-glance at -the political situation in England? I fancy it does. Heaven knows there -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</span> -was little resemblance between the amazingly craven and vacillating -James and the haughty, resolute hero of Roman tradition, who fought a -whole garrison single-handed. Nor was it personal resemblance which -suggested the comparison, but a general conception of the situation -as between a beneficent power on the one hand, and the people on the -other. He regarded the latter wholly as mob, and looked upon their -struggle for freedom as mutiny, pure and simple.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This theory, however, in all its varieties seems -to attribute too definite an influence to the controversies of the -hour, and to turn Shakespeare too much into the politician prepense. -Certainly <i>Coriolanus</i> is not meant to be a constitutional -manifesto; probably it does not, even at unawares, idealise a -contemporary dispute; it is hardly likely that Shakespeare so much -as intrudes conscious allusions to the questions then at issue. And -this on account not only of the particular opinions attributed to him, -but, much more, of his usual practice in poetic creation. Do any of -these alleged incentives in the circumstances, public or private, of -his life go far to explain his attraction to a story and selection of -it, its power over him and his power over it? Doubtless in realising -the subject that took his fancy, he would draw on the stores of his -experience as well as his imagination. In dealing with the tragedy of -a proud and unpopular hero of antiquity, very possibly he would be -helped by what he knew of the tragedy of a proud and unpopular worthy -of his own time. In dealing with the influence of a mother and the -reverence of a son, very probably the memories of his own home would -hover before his mind. In dealing with the plebeians and patricians of -Rome, he would inevitably fill in the details from his knowledge of the -burgesses and nobles of England, and he might get hints for his picture -of the bygone struggle, from the struggle that he himself could watch. -But it is the story of Coriolanus that comes first and that absorbs all -such material into itself, just as the seed in its growth assimilates -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</span> -nourishment from the earth and sunshine and rain. These things are not -the seed. The experiences are utilised in the interest of the play; the -play is not utilised in the interest of the experiences.</p> - -<p>It is particularly important to emphasise this in view of the -circumstance that <i>Coriolanus</i> has often been regarded as a drama -of principles rather than of character, even by those who refrain -from reading into it any particular reference. But Shakespeare’s -supreme preoccupation is always with his fable, which explains, and is -explained by, human nature in action. He does not set out to commend or -censure or examine a precept or a theory or a doctrine. Of course the -life of men is concerned with such matters, and he could not exclude -them without being untrue to his aim. Thus, to take the most obvious -example, it is impossible to treat of character with a total omission -of ethical considerations, since character is connected with conduct, -and conduct has its ethical aspect; and, indeed, success in getting to -the truth of character depends very much on the keenness of the moral -insight. It is very largely Shakespeare’s moral insight that gives him -his unrivalled position among the interpreters of men; and we may, if -we like, derive any number of improving lessons from his works. But he -is an artist, not a moralist; and he wrote for the story, not for the -moral. Just in the same way an architect seeks to design a beautiful or -convenient building, not to illustrate mechanical laws. Nevertheless, -in proportion as these are neglected, the building will not rise -or will not last; and if they are obeyed, however unconsciously, -the illustration of them will be provided. In Charlotte Brontë’s -<i>Shirley</i>, when Caroline gives Robert Moore this very play to -read, he asks, “Is it to operate like a sermon?” And she answers: “It -is to stir you; to give you new sensations. <i>It is to make you feel -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</span> -life strongly</i>”—(that is the main thing, and then comes the indirect -consequence)—“not only your virtues but your vicious perverse points.”</p> - -<p>Now just as in all Shakespeare’s dramas, though or rather because they -are personal, the ethical considerations cannot be excluded; so in a -drama that moves through a constitutional crisis, though or rather -because it, too, is personal, political considerations cannot be -excluded. They are there, though it is on the second plane. And just -as his general delineation of character would be unsatisfactory if -his moral insight were at fault, so his delineation of the characters -that play their part in this history would be unsatisfactory if his -political insight were at fault. He is not necessarily bound to -appreciate correctly the conditions that prevailed in reality or by -report: that is required only for historical accuracy or fidelity to -tradition. But he is bound to appreciate the conditions as he imagines -them, and not to violate in his treatment of them the principles that -underlie all political society.</p> - -<p>Yet this he has been accused of doing. He has been charged with a -hatred of the people that is incompatible even with a benevolent -tyranny, and with a glorification of the protagonist’s ruthless -disregard of popular claims. Thus Dr. Brandes, in the greater part -of a chapter, dwells upon Shakespeare’s “physical aversion for the -atmosphere of the people,” and “the absence of any humane consideration -for the oppressed condition of the poor”; and, on the other hand, -upon his “hero-worship” for Marcius, whom he glorifies as a demi-god. -Though admitting the dramatist’s detestation of the crime of treason, -this critic sees no implicit censure of what preceded it. To him -Shakespeare’s impression of life as conveyed in the play is that “there -must of necessity be formed round the solitary great ones of the earth, -a conspiracy of envy and hatred raised by the small and mean.” -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</span></p> - -<p>It is no doubt true that this and many other Shakespearian plays -abound in hostile or scornful vituperation of the people; and not only -of their moral and mental demerits; their sweaty clothes, their rank -breaths, their grossness and uncleanness are held up to derision and -execration. But are we to attribute these sentiments to Shakespeare? -Such utterances are <i>ex hypothesi</i> dramatic, and show us merely -the attitude of the speakers, who are without exception men of the -opposite camp or unfriendly critics. Only once does Shakespeare -give his personal, or rather, impersonal estimate. It is in the -<i>Induction</i> to the second part of <i>Henry IV.</i>, when Rumour, -whose words, in this respect at least, cannot be influenced by -individual bias, speaks of</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">the blunt monster of uncounted heads,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The still-discordant, wavering multitude. (line 18.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">That is, the populace as a whole is stupid, -disunited, fickle. And this is how, apart from the exaggerations of -their opponents, Shakespeare invariably treats crowds of citizens, -whether in the ancient or modern world. He therefore with perfect -consistency regards them as quite unfit for rule, and when they have -it or aspire to it, they cover themselves with ridicule or involve -themselves in crime. But this is by no means to hate them. On the -contrary he is kindly enough to individual representatives, and he -certainly believes in the sacred obligation of governing them for their -good. Where then are the governors to be found? Shakespeare answers: -in the royal and aristocratic classes. It is the privilege and duty -of those born in high position to conduct the whole community aright. -Shakespeare can do justice to the Venetian oligarchy and the English -monarchy. But while to him the rule of the populace is impossible, he -also recognises that nobles and kings may be unequal to their task. The -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</span> -majority of his kings indeed are more or less failures; his nobles—and -in this play, the patricians—often cut a rather sorry figure. In short, -popular government must be wrong, but royal or aristocratic government -need not be right.</p> - -<p>And this was exactly what historical experience at the time seemed to -prove. The Jacqueries, the Peasants’ Wars, the Wat Tyler or Jack Cade -Insurrections, were not calculated to commend democratic experiments; -and, on the other hand, the authority of king and nobles had often, -though not always, secured the welfare of the state.</p> - -<p>Now, holding these opinions, would Shakespeare be likely to glorify -Coriolanus? Of course, in a sense he does. There is a <i>Lues -Boswelliana</i> to which the dramatist like the biographer should and -must succumb. He must have a fellow-feeling for his hero and understand -from within all that can be urged on his behalf. So Shakespeare -glorifies Coriolanus in the same way that he glorifies Hamlet or Brutus -or Antony. That is, he appreciates their greatness and explains their -offences so that we sympathise with them and do not regard them as -unaccountable aberrations; but offences they remain and they are not -extenuated. On the contrary they receive all due prominence and are -shown to bring about the tragic catastrophe. This is even more the case -with Coriolanus than with some of the others. So much stress is laid on -his violence and asperities that to many he is antipathetic, and the -antipathy is reflected on the cause that he champions. Gervinus says -very truly:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">It will be allowed that from the example of Brutus -many more would be won over to the cause of the people, than would be -won over to aristocratic principles by Coriolanus.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Quite apart from the final apostasy he strikes the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</span> -unprejudiced reader as an example to eschew rather than to imitate. -Charlotte Brontë, not a Shakespearian scholar but a woman of no less -common sense than genius, gives the natural interpretation of his -career in the passage I have already referred to. After Caroline and -Moore have finished the play, she makes the former ask concerning the hero:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>“Was he not faulty as well as great?”</p> -<p>Moore nodded.</p> -<p>“And what was his fault? What made him hated by the citizens? -What caused him to be banished by his countrymen?”</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">She answers her own question by quoting Aufidius’ -estimate, and proceeds:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">“And you must not be proud to your work people; -you must not neglect the chance of soothing them; and you must not be -of an inflexible nature, uttering a request as austerely as if it were -a command.”</p> - -<p class="no-indent">That, so far as it goes, is a quite legitimate -“moral” to draw from the story; and it is the obvious one.</p> - -<p>How then does Shakespeare conceive the political situation? On the -one side there is a despised and famished populace, driven by its -misery to demand powers in the state that it cannot wisely use, and -trusting to leaders that are worse than itself. On the other side -there is a prejudiced aristocracy, numbering competent men in its -ranks, but disorganised and, to some extent, demoralised by plebeian -encroachments, so that it can no longer act with its old efficiency -and consistency. And there is one great aristocrat, pre-eminently -consistent and efficient, but whose greatness becomes mischievous -to himself and others, partly because it is out of harmony with the -times, partly because it is corrupted by his inordinate pride. And -to all these persons, or groups of persons, Shakespeare’s attitude, -as we shall see, is at once critical and sympathetic. Admitting the -conditions, we can only agree with Coleridge’s verdict: “This play -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</span> -illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of Shakespeare’s -politics.<a id="FNanchor_241" href="#Footnote_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a> -And there is no reason why the conditions should not be admitted. -It is easy to imagine a society in which the masses are not yet -ripe for self-government, and in which the classes are no longer -able to steer the state, while a gifted and bigoted champion of -tradition only makes matters worse. Indeed, something similar has been -exemplified in history oftener than once or twice. Whether in point -of fact Shakespeare’s conception is correct for the particular set of -circumstances he describes is quite another question, that concerns -neither the excellence of <i>Coriolanus</i> as a drama nor the fairness -of its political views, but solely its fidelity to antiquarian truth -and the accuracy of its antiquarian <i>data</i>.”</p> - -<p>Clearly it was impossible for Shakespeare to revive the spirit of the -times in <i>Coriolanus</i>, even to the extent that he had done so in -<i>Julius Caesar</i> or <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, for the simple -reason that in them, with whatever trespasses into fiction on the -part of himself or his authority, he was following the record of what -had actually taken place, while now he was dealing with a legend that -seems to have the less foundation in fact the more it is examined. The -tribunate, with the establishment of which the whole action begins, the -opposition to which by Marcius is his main offence, and the occupants -of which play so important a part in the proceedings, is now generally -held to be of much later origin than the supposed date of the story. -There is no agreement as to the names of the chief persons; Coriolanus -is Cneius or Caius, his mother is Veturia or Volumnia, his wife is -Volumnia or Vergilia, the Volscian leader Tullus Aufidius or Amfidius -or Attius Tullius. Even the appellation Coriolanus rouses suspicion, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</span> -for the bestowal of such titles seems to have been unknown till long -afterwards, and, in the view of some, points not to conquest but to -origin; and there are contradictory accounts of the hero’s end. It -has been conjectured<a id="FNanchor_242" href="#Footnote_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a> -that the whole story arose in connection with religious observances and -contains a large mythological admixture; and we may remember how at -the end it is associated with the erection of the temple to <i>Fortuna -Muliebris</i>.</p> - -<p>This much at least is beyond doubt, that the account given by Plutarch, -from whom Shakespeare took his material, and even by Livy, whom he may -have read, has much less matter-of-fact reality than characterises the -later Roman lives. There are many discrepancies and contradictions, -especially in Plutarch’s description. Now he gives what we may consider -an idealised picture of the plebs, attributing to it extraordinary -self-control and sagacity, and again it is to him merely the rascal -vulgar. Now he seems to approve the pliancy which the Senate showed on -the advice of the older and wiser men, and again he seems to blame it -as undignified. And the mixture of bravado and pusillanimity during -the siege is almost unintelligible. Now the city sends the humblest -embassages to the rebel, now it haughtily refuses to treat till he has -withdrawn from Roman soil, and again it despatches what North calls “a -goodly rabble of superstition and priestes” with new supplications.</p> - -<p>From a narrative that teemed with incongruities like the above, -Shakespeare was entitled to select the alternatives that would combine -to a harmonious whole, and he rightly chose those that were nearest -to his own comprehension and experience, though perhaps in doing so -he failed to make the most of such elements of historic truth as the -tradition may contain, and certainly effaced some of the antique colouring. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</span></p> - -<p>But if Plutarch’s <i>Coriolanus</i> has less foundation in fact than -some of the later Lives, it is not without compensating advantages. The -circumstance that it is in so large measure a legend, implies that the -popular imagination has been busy working it up, and it already falls -into great scenic crises which lend themselves of their own accord -to the dramatist’s art. It is rather remarkable in view of this that -it had received so little attention from the tragedians of the time. -Perhaps its two-fold remoteness, from worldwide historical issues on -the one hand, and from specifically romantic feeling on the other, -may have told against it. The stories of Lucretia and Virginia had as -primitive and circumscribed a setting, and were nevertheless popular -enough: but they have an emotional interest that appeals to the general -taste. The story of Julius Caesar lacks the sentimental lure, but -concerns such mighty issues that it was the best beloved of all. And -next comes the story of Antony and Cleopatra, which in a high degree -unites both attractions. But <i>Coriolanus</i>, even as treated by -Shakespeare, is unsympathetic to many, and the legend is of so little -historic significance that it is often omitted from modern handbooks of -Roman history; so, for these reasons, despite its pre-eminent fitness -for the stage, it was generally passed over.</p> - -<p>Not universally, however. It seems already to have engaged the -attention of one important dramatist in France, the prolific and gifted -Alexandre Hardy. Hardy began to publish his works only in 1623, and the -volume containing his <i>Coriolan</i> appeared only in 1625; so there -is hardly any possibility of Shakespeare’s having utilised this play. -And, on the other hand, it was certainly written before 1608, probably -in the last years of the sixteenth century, but in any case by 1607, so -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</span> -there is even less possibility of its being influenced by Shakespeare’s -treatment. All the more interesting is it to observe the coincidences -that exist between them, and that are due to their having selected a -great many of the same <i>motifs</i> from Plutarch’s story. It shows -that in that story Plutarch met the playwright half way, and justifies -the statement of Hardy in his argument that “few subjects are to be -found in Roman history which are worthier of the stage.”<a id="FNanchor_243" href="#Footnote_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> -The number of subsequent French dramas with Coriolanus as hero proves -that he was right, though in England, as so frequently, Shakespeare’s -name put a veto on new experiments.</p> - -<p>Hardy’s tragedy in style and structure follows the Senecan manner of -Jodelle and Garnier, but he compromised with mediaeval fashions in so -far as to adopt the peculiar modification of the “simultaneous” or -“complex” decoration which is usual in his other plays. In accordance -with that, several scenes were presented at the same time on the stage, -and actors made their first speeches from the area appropriated to -that one of them which the particular phase of the action required. -There was thus considerable latitude in regard to the unity of place, -and even more in regard to the unity of time; but the freedom was -not so great as in the Elizabethan theatre, for after all there was -space only for a limited number of scenes, or “mansions” as they -would formerly have been called. Generally there were five, two at -each side and one at the back. In the <i>Coriolan</i> there were six, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</span> -and there is as well a seventh place indicated in the play without -scenical decoration.<a id="FNanchor_244" href="#Footnote_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> -Even so they are few, compared with the two and -twenty<a id="FNanchor_245" href="#Footnote_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a> -that Shakespeare employs; and though no doubt that number might be -considerably reduced without injury to the effect, by running together -localities that approximate in character and position, one street with -another street, the forum with a public place and the like, still it -would in any case exceed what Hardy allows himself. This may account -for some of his omissions as compared with Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>His scenarium includes the house of Coriolanus and the forum at Rome, -the house of Coriolanus and the house of Amfidius at Antium, the -Volscian camp near Rome, the council-hall at Antium, and in addition -to these an indeterminate spot where Coriolanus soliloquises after his -expulsion.<a id="FNanchor_246" href="#Footnote_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a> -There is no room for Corioli, and this may be why Hardy begins somewhat -later than Shakespeare with the collision between the hero and the -people, and gets as far as the banishment by the end of the first act. -In the second, Marcius leaves Rome, presents himself to Amfidius, and -obtains the leadership of the Volscians. The third portrays the panic -of the Romans and the reception of their embassage by Coriolanus. -In the fourth, the Roman ladies make ready to accompany Volumnia on -her mission, Amfidius schemes to use all Coriolanus’ faults for his -destruction, Volumnia arrives in the camp and makes her petition, which -her son at length grants though he foresees the result. The fifth is -occupied with his murder in the Senate House at Antium, and concludes -with his mother’s reception of the news.</p> - -<p>Thus the sequence and selection of episodes are much the same in the -two tragedies, except that Hardy, perhaps, as I have said, owing to the -exigencies of his decorative system, does not begin till the exploit -at Corioli is over, and adds, as he could do so by using once more -Coriolanus’ house in Rome, the final scene with Volumnia. Otherwise the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</span> -scaffolding of the plays is very similar, and it is because both follow -closely the excellent guidance of Plutarch. But it is interesting also -to note that some of their additions are similar, for when they were -independently made, it shows how readily Plutarch’s narrative suggested -such supplements. Thus, as in Shakespeare, but not as in Plutarch, -Volumnia counsels her son to bow his pride before the people, and he, -though in the end consenting, at first refuses.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Volomnie.</i> Voicy le jour fatal qui te donne (mon fils)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Par une humilité tes hayneurs deconfits;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tu vaincras, endurant, la fiere ingratitude</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et le rancoeur malin de ceste multitude.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tu charmes son courroux d’une submission;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Helas! ne vueille donc croire à ta passion.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cede pour un moment, et la voila contente,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et tu accoiseras une horrible tourmente,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Que Rome divisée ébranle à ton sujet:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">La pieté ne peut avoir plus bel objet,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et faire mieux paroistre à l’endroit d’une mere,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A l’endroit du païs, qu’escoutant ma priere.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolan.</i> Madame, on me verroit mille morts endurer,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Plustôt que suppliant sa grace procurer,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Plustôt qu’un peuple vil à bon tiltre se vante</div> - <div class="verse indent0">D’avoir en mon courage imprimé l’épouvante,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Que ceux qui me devroient recognoistre seigneur,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Se prévallent sur moy du plus petit honneur:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Moy, fléchir le genoüil devant une commune!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Non, je ne le veux faire, et ne crains sa rancune.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus Coriolanus, again as in Shakespeare but not -as in Plutarch, accepts his banishment as a calamity to those that -inflict it.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Je luy obeirai, ouy ouy, je mettrai soin</div> - <div class="verse indent0">De quitter ces ingrats plustost qu’ils n’ont besoin.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus the machinations of Amfidius before the final -cause of offence are amplified far beyond the limits of Plutarch, and -these are in part excused by his previous rivalry with Coriolanus -which, as in Shakespeare, is made ever so much more personal and graphic. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Un esperon d’honneur cent fois nous a conduits,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Aveugles de fureur, à ces termes reduits</div> - <div class="verse indent0">De sentre-deffier<a id="FNanchor_247" href="#Footnote_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a> - au front de chaque armée,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Vouloir mourir, ou seul vaincre de renommée.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In short, though Hardy’s drama, as compared with -Shakespeare’s, is a work of talent as compared with a work of genius, -it shows that the <i>Life</i> had in it the material for a tragedy -already rough-dressed, with indications, obvious to a practised -playwright, of some of the processes that still were needed.</p> - -<p>Shakespeare, then, was now dealing with a much more tractable theme -than in his previous Roman plays, and this is evident in the finished -product. Technically and artistically it is a more perfect achievement -than either of them. In <i>Julius Caesar</i> the early disappearance -of the titular hero does not indeed affect the essential unity of -the piece, but it does, when all is said and done, involve, to the -feelings of most readers, a certain break in the interest. In <i>Antony -and Cleopatra</i> the scattering of the action through so many short -scenes does not interfere with the main conception, but it does make -the execution a little spasmodic. In both instances Shakespeare had -to suit his treatment to the material. But that material in the case -of <i>Coriolanus</i> offered less difficulty. It lay ready to the -dramatist’s hand and took the shape that he imposed, almost of itself. -The result is a masterpiece that, as an organic work of art, has been -placed on the level of Shakespeare’s most independent -tragedies.<a id="FNanchor_248" href="#Footnote_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a></p> - -<p>Thus it is easy to see how the personality of the hero dominates the -complex story, as the heart transmits the life-blood through the body -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</span> -and its members, and receives it back again; how his character contains -in itself the seeds of his offence and its reparation; how the other -figures are related to him in parallel and contrast; how the two grand -interests, the conflict between Coriolanus and Aufidius, the conflict -between Coriolanus and the people, intertwine, but always so that the -latter remains the principal strand; how the language is suited to the -persons, the circumstances, and the prevailing tone. In short, whatever -the relations in which we consider the play, they seem, like the radii -of a circle, to depart from and meet in one centre.</p> - -<p>Hardly less admirable are the balance and composition of the whole, -which yet in no wise impair the interest of the individual scenes. -Dr. Johnson indeed makes the criticism: “There is perhaps too much -bustle in the first act and too little in the last.” This possibly is -more noticeable when the play is acted than when it is read; but it is -fitting that from the noise and hubbub of the struggle there should be -a transition to the outward quietude of the close that harmonises with -the inward acquiescence in the mind of reader or spectator. Nor is the -element of tumult entirely lacking at the last. To the uproar in the -street of Rome, where the life of Marcius is threatened, corresponds -the uproar in the public place of Antium where it is actually taken. -But Dr. Johnson was probably thinking of those battle scenes beloved by -Elizabethan audiences and generally wearisome to modern taste. There -are no fewer than five of them in the first act, a somewhat plentiful -allowance. But they are written by no means exclusively in the -drum-and-trumpet style. On the contrary they are rich in psychological -interest, and bring home to us many characteristics of the hero that we -have to realise. Not only are we witnesses of his prowess, but his pride -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</span> -in Rome, his contempt of baseness, his rivalry with Aufidius, his power -of rousing enthusiasm in the field, are all shown in relief. Such -things lift these concessions to temporary fashion above the level of -outworn crudities.</p> - -<p>And the construction is very perfect too. Perhaps the crisis, -understood as the acme of Coriolanus’ success, when he is voted to -the consulship in the middle of the third scene of the second act -comes a little early. But crisis may bear another meaning. It may -denote the decisive point of the conflict, and this is only reached -in the centre of the play. To the supreme tension of the scenes that -describe Coriolanus’ denunciation of the Tribunes, the consultations -in his house, his final condemnation, all that goes before gradually -leads up, and from that all that follows after gradually declines. In -the first act we are introduced to the circumstances, the opposition -between the Romans and the Volsces, the Senate and the Plebs, and to -all the leading characters, as well as Coriolanus and his friends -and opponents, in an exposition that is not merely declaratory but -is full of action and life: and we see that the situation is fraught -with danger. In the second act we are shown more definitely how the -grand disaster will come from the collision of Coriolanus with the -people, and the cloud gathers even in the instant of his success. In -the third the storm breaks, and, despite a momentary lull, in the end -sweeps away all wonted landmarks. The fourth presents the change that -follows in the whole condition of things: the rival of Aufidius has -recourse to his generosity, the champion of Rome becomes her foe, and -the people, after its heedless triumph, is plunged into dismay. In the -fifth we proceed by carefully considered ways to the catastrophe: the -deliverance of Rome from material and the hero from moral perdition, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</span> -the expiation of his passion in death and the fruitless triumph -of his rival.</p> - -<p>But through this symmetrical rise and fall of the excitement, there is -no abatement of the interest. Attention and suspense are always kept on -the alert. They are secured partly by the diversity of the details and -the swiftness of the fluctuations. Dr. Johnson says:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The Tragedy of <i>Coriolanus</i> is one of the -most amusing of our author’s performances. The old man’s merriment in -Menenius, the lofty lady’s dignity in Volumnia, the bridal modesty -in Virgilia, the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus, -the plebeian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and -Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety; and the -various revolutions of the hero’s fortune fill the mind with anxious -curiosity.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This is so because, while the agitation culminates -in the third act, the emotion is neither overtaxed in the two that -precede nor allowed to subside in the two that follow. For though this -movement, first of intensification, then of relaxation, is discernible -in the play as a whole, it is not uniform or uninterrupted. There is -throughout a throb and pulse, an ebb and flow. The quieter scenes -alternate with the more vehement: Coriolanus’ fortune by turns advances -and retires. Only when we reflect do we become aware that we have -risen so high out of our daily experience, and have returned “with new -acquist” of wisdom to a spot whence we can step back to it once more.</p> - -<p>But to produce so consummate a masterpiece from the material of -history, no matter how dramatic that material was, Shakespeare was -bound to reshape it more freely than he was wont to do when dealing -with historical themes. We have seen from Hardy’s example what stores -of half-wrought treasure Plutarch’s narrative offered to a dramatist -who knew his business. Still it was only half-wrought, and in working it -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</span> -up Shakespeare consciously or unconsciously allowed himself more -liberties than in his other Roman plays. His loans indeed are none -the fewer or the less on that account; nowhere has he borrowed more -numerous or so lengthy passages. But it almost seems as though with the -tact of genius he had the feeling that he was at work, not on fact, but -on legend. Though he is far from recasting the Roman tradition as he -recast the pseudo-historic traditions of his own island in <i>Lear</i> -and <i>Macbeth</i>, yet he gives a new colouring to the picture as he -hardly does to genuine histories like <i>Richard II.</i> or <i>Antony -and Cleopatra</i>.</p> - -<p>This will appear from a comparison of the play with the <i>Life</i>.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">PARALLELS AND CONTRASTS WITH PLUTARCH</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>The first impression produced by a comparison of the biography and the -play is that the latter is little more than a scenic replica of the -former. Shakespeare has indeed absorbed so many suggestions from the -translation that it is difficult to realise how much he has modified -them, or to avoid reading these modifications into his authority when -we try to distinguish what he has received from what he has supplied. -And the illusion is confirmed by the frequency with which we light on -familiar words, familiar traits, familiar incidents. For the similarity -seems at first to pervade the language, the characterisation, and the -action.<a id="FNanchor_249" href="#Footnote_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a></p> - -<p>In the language it is most marked. Nowhere has Shakespeare borrowed -so much through so great a number of lines as in Volumnia’s appeal -to the piety of her son. This passage, even if it stood alone, would -serve to make the play a notable example of Shakespeare’s indebtedness -to North.<a id="FNanchor_250" href="#Footnote_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a> -But it does not stand alone. Somewhat shorter, but still longer than -any loan in the other plays, is Coriolanus’ announcement of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</span> -himself to Aufidius, and in it Shakespeare follows North even more -closely than in the former instance.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">If thou knowest me not yet, Tullus, and seeing -me, dost not perhappes beleeve me to be the man I am in dede, I must -of necessitie bewraye my selfe to be that I am. I am that Caius -Martius, who hath done to thy self particularly, and to all the Volsces -generally, great hurte and mischief, which I cannot denie for my -surname of Coriolanus that I beare. For I never had other benefit nor -recompence, of all the true and paynefull service I have done, and the -extreme daungers I have bene in, but this only surname: a good memorie -and witnes, of the malice and displeasure thou showldest beare me. In -deede the name only remaineth with me: for the rest, the envie and -crueltie of the people of Rome have taken from me, by the sufference -of the dastardlie nobilitie and magistrates, who have forsaken me, and -let me be banished by the people. This extremitie hath now driven me -to come as a poore suter, to take thy chimney harthe, not of any hope -I have to save my life thereby. For if I had feared death, I would not -have come hither to have put my life in hazard: but prickt forward with -strife and desire I have to be revenged of them that thus have banished -me, whom now I beginne to be avenged on, putting my persone betweene -their enemies. Wherefore, if thou hast any harte to be -wrecked<a id="FNanchor_251" href="#Footnote_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> -of the injuries thy enemies have done thee, spede thee now, and let my -miserie serve thy turne, and so use it, as my service maye be a benefit -to the Volsces: promising thee, that I will fight with better good will -for all you, then ever I dyd when I was against you, knowing that they -fight more valliantly, who know the force of their enemie, then such -as have never proved it. And if it be so that thou dare not, and that -thou art wearye to prove fortune any more; then am I also weary to live -any lenger. And it were no wisedome in thee, to save the life of him, -who hath bene heretofore thy mortall enemie, and whose service now can -nothing helpe nor pleasure thee.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare gives little else than a transcript, -though, of course, a poetical and dramatic transcript, of this splendid -piece of forthright prose.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> If, Tullus,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not yet thou knowest me, and, seeing me, dost not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Think me for the man I am, necessity</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Commands me name myself.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</span> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Aufidius.</i><span class="ws5">What is thy name?</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> A name unmusical to the Volscians’ ears,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And harsh in sound to thine.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Aufidius.</i><span class="ws5">Say, what’s thy name?</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bears a command in’t: though thy tackle’s torn,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou show’st a noble vessel: what’s thy name?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> Prepare thy brow to frown; know’st thou me yet?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Aufidius.</i> I know thee not: thy name?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Great hurt and mischief: thereto witness may</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My surname, Coriolanus: the painful service,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shed for my thankless country are requited</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But with that surname; a good memory,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And witness of the malice and displeasure</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which thou should’st bear me: only that name remains;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The cruelty and envy of the people,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Permitted by our dastard nobles, who</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have all forsook me, hath devoured the rest:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And suffer’d me by the voice of slaves to be</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whoop’d out of Rome. Now this extremity</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hath brought me to thy hearth; not out of hope—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mistake me not—to save my life, for if</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I had fear’d death, of all men i’ the world</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I would have ’voided thee, but in mere spite,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To be full quit of those my banishers,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Stand I before thee now. Then if thou hast</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And make my misery serve thy turn: so use it</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That my revengeful services may prove</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As benefits to thee, for I will fight</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Against my canker’d country with the spleen</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of all the under fiends. But if so be</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou darest not this and that to prove more fortunes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou’rt tired, then, in a word, I also am</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Longer to live most weary, and present</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which not to cut would show thee but a fool,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Since I have ever follow’d thee with hate,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country’s breast</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And cannot live but to thy shame, unless</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It be to do thee service.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> v. 60.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</span> -As much material, though it is amplified and rearranged, has been -incorporated, as we shall have to point out, in Coriolanus’ invective -against the tribunate and the distribution of corn. Within a narrower -compass we see the same adherence to North’s phraseology in Brutus’ -instructions to the people, where, very notably, Shakespeare’s fidelity -to his author has made it possible to supply an omission in the text -with absolute certainty as to the sense and great probability as to the -wording. The opening sentences of the <i>Life</i> run as follows:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The house of the Martians at Rome was of the -number of the patricians, out of the which hath sprong many noble -personages: whereof Ancus Martius was one, King Numaes daughters sonne, -who was king of Rome after Tullus Hostilius. Of the same house were -Publius, and Quintus, who brought Rome their best water they had by -conducts. Censorinus also came of that familie, that was so surnamed, -bicause the people had chosen him Censor twise.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare puts the notifications in the -Tribune’s mouth:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Say we read lectures to you,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How youngly he began to serve his country,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How long continued, and what stock he springs of,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The noble house o’ the Marcians, from whence came</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That Ancus Martius, Numa’s daughter’s son,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who, after great Hostilius, here was king:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That our best water brought by conduits hither:</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>And Nobly nam’d, so twice being Censor,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Was his great Ancestor</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> iii. 242.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Many editors saw that something had dropped out, -but no attempt to fill the gap was satisfactory, till Delius, having -recourse to North, supplemented,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">[And Censorinus, that was so surnamed]</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And nobly named so, twice being censor.<a id="FNanchor_252" href="#Footnote_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</span> -These lines also show how Shakespeare reproduces Plutarch’s statement -even when they are for him not quite in keeping. Plutarch, writing in -the second century, could instance Publius, Quintus and Censorinus as -ornaments of the Marcian gens; but Brutus’ reference to them is an -anachronism as they come after the supposed date of the play. So too -Plutarch says of the attack on the Romans before Corioli:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">But Martius being there at that time, ronning out -of the campe with a fewe men with him, he slue the first enemies he met -withall, and made the rest of them staye upon a sodaine, crying out to -the Romaines that had turned their backes, and calling them againe to -fight with a lowde voyce. For he was even such another, as Cato would -have a souldier and a captaine to be: not only terrible, and fierce to -laye about him, but to make the enemie afeard with the sounde of his -voyce, and grimnes of his countenaunce.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare makes short work of chronology by -putting this allusion into the mouth of Titus Lartius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Thou wast a soldier</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Even to Cato’s<a id="FNanchor_253" href="#Footnote_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a> wish, not fierce and terrible</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Only in strokes; but, with thy grim looks, and</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou madest thine enemies shake, as if the world</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were feverous and did tremble.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iv. 56.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Occasionally even mistakes in North’s text or -marginal notes, or in Shakespeare’s interpretation or recollection of -what he had read, have passed into the play. Thus it has been -shown<a id="FNanchor_254" href="#Footnote_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a> -that North, owing to a small typographical error in the French, -misunderstood the scope of Cominius’ offer to Marcius. Amyot says: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</span></p> - -<p class="blockquot">“Et en fin lui dit, que de <i>tous les -cheveaux prisonniers</i>, et autres biens qui avoient esté pris -et gaignés en grande quantité, il en choisist dix de chaque sorte à sa -volonté, avant que rien en fust distribué, ni desparti aux autres.”</p> - -<p>There should be a comma after <i>cheveaux</i>, as appears on reference -to the Greek,<a id="FNanchor_255" href="#Footnote_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a> -and Marcius is told to select ten of the horses, prisoners, and other -chattels; but North took the <i>prisonniers</i> as used adjectivally in -agreement with the preceding noun and translated:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">So in the ende he willed Martius, he should choose -<i>out of all the horses they had taken</i> of their enemies, -and of all the goodes they had wonne (whereof there was great store) -tenne of every sorte which he liked best, before any distribution -should be made to other.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Further there is the quite incorrect abridgment in -the margin:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The tenth parte of the enemies goods offered -Martius for rewarde of his service by Cominius the Consul.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare combines these misstatements:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Of all the horses,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whereof we have ta’en good and good store, of all</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The treasure in this field achieved and city,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We render you the tenth, to be ta’en forth,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Before the common distribution, at</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your only choice.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 31.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Of great frequency are the short sentences -from North that are embedded in Shakespeare’s dialogue. Thus, the -preliminary announcement of Marcius’ hardihood is introduced with the -remark:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Now in those dayes, valliantnes was honoured -in Rome above all the other vertues.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Cominius begins his panegyric:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">It is held</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That valour is the chiefest virtue, and</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Most dignifies the haver.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> ii. 87.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</span> -When Marcius drives the Volscians back to Corioli and the Romans -hesitate to pursue, we are told:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">He dyd encorage his fellowes with wordes and -deedes, crying out to them, that fortune had opened the gates of the -cittie more for the followers, then for the flyers.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Compare his exhortation:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So, now the gates are ope: now prove good seconds:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">’Tis for the followers fortune widens them,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not for the fliers.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iv. 43.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When the proposal to distribute the corn is being -discussed, many senators are in favour of it:</p> - -<p class="no-indent">But Martius standing up on his feete, dyd somewhat -sharpely take up those, who went about to gratifie the people therein, -and called them people pleasers and traitours to the nobilitie.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Brutus charges him with this in the play:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When corn was given them gratis, you repined;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Scandal’d the suppliants for the people, call’d them</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 43.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Sometimes the debt is confined to a single phrase -or word and yet is unmistakable. When Coriolanus has reached Antium, -Plutarch quotes Homer on Ulysses:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So dyd he enter into the enemies towne.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In the play Coriolanus before the house of -Aufidius soliloquises:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent19">My love’s upon</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This enemy town. I’ll enter.</div> - <div class="verse indent19">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> iv. 23.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Now and then some apparently haphazard detail can -be explained if we trace it to its source. Thus, Cominius talks of the -“seventeen battles” which the hero had fought since his first exploit. -Why seventeen? Doubtless Shakespeare had in his mind the account of the -candidature, when Marcius showed the wounds “which he had receyved in -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</span> -seventeene yeres service at the warres, and in many sundrie battells.” -In Plutarch the number of years is prescribed by his mythical -chronology, for he dates the beginning of Marcius’ career from the wars -with the Tarquins, which were supposed to have broken out in 245 <span -class="smcap">a.u.c.</span>, while Corioli was taken in 262: but when -transferred to the battles it becomes a mere survival which serves at -most to give apparent definiteness.</p> - -<p>But occasionally such survivals have a higher value. It is instructive, -for example, to notice how Shakespeare utilises the tradition dear -to Plutarch’s antiquarian tastes but not very interesting to an -Elizabethan audience of the acknowledgment made to the goddess, -<i>Fortuna Muliebris</i>, after the withdrawal of Coriolanus from Rome.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The Senate ordeined, that the magistrates to -gratifie and honour these ladyes, should graunte them all that they -would require. And they only requested that they would build a temple -of Fortune of the women, for the building whereof they offered them -selves to defraye the whole charge of the sacrifices, and other -ceremonies belonging to the service of the goddes. Nevertheles, the -Senate commending their good will and forwardnes, ordeined, that the -temple and image should be made at the common charge of the cittie.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">And the marginal note sums up: “The temple of -Fortune built for the women.” This seems to be the archaeological ore -from which is forged Coriolanus’ gallant hyperbole:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">Ladies, you deserve</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To have a temple built you.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 206.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">From the worshippers they become the worshipped.</p> - -<p>Sometimes in the survival the fact is transformed to figure, the prose -to poetry. After Marcius’ miracles of valour at Corioli, Cominius gives -him, “in testimonie that he had wonne that day the price of prowes -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</span> -above all other, a goodly horse with a capparison, and all furniture to -him.” This Shakespeare does not omit. Cominius declares:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">Caius Marcius</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wears this war’s garland: in token of the which</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My noble steed,<a id="FNanchor_256" href="#Footnote_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a> known to the camp, I give him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With all his trim belonging.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 59.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But the same episode furnishes Titus Lartius with -his imagery as he points to the wounded and victorious hero:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">O general,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Here is the steed, we the caparison!</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 11.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This illustrates the sort of sea-change that -always takes place in the language of North under the hands of the -magician, though it may not always be equally perceptible. But it -is never entirely lacking, even where we are at first more struck -by the amount that Shakespeare has retained without alteration. The -<i>Life</i>, for instance, describes what takes place after Marcius has -joined Cominius, before they hurry off to the second fight.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Martius asked him howe the order of their enemies -battell was, and on which side they had placed their best fighting -men. The Consul made him aunswer, that he thought the bandes which -were in the voward of their battell, were those of the Antiates, whom -they esteemed to be the war-likest men, and which for valliant corage -would give no place, to any of the hoste of their enemies. Then prayed -Martius to be set directly against them.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Here is what Shakespeare makes of this:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Mar.</i> How lies their battle? Know you on which side</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They have placed their men of trust?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Com.</i><span class="ws4">As I guess, Marcius,</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their bands in the vaward are the Antiates,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of their best trust; o’er them Aufidius,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their very heart of hope. - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Mar.</i><span class="ws4">I do beseech you,</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">By all the battles wherein we have fought,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By the blood we have shed together, by the vows</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We have made to endure friends, that you directly</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Set me against Aufidius and his Antiates;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And that you not delay the present, but,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Filling the air with swords advanced and darts,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We prove this very hour.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> vi. 51.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here to begin with Shakespeare hardly does more -than change the indirect to the direct narrative and condense a -little, but presently he adds picturesqueness, passion, and, by the -introduction of Aufidius, dramatic significance. And this is invariably -his method. It is unfair to quote the parallel passages without the -context, for, apart from the subtle transmutation they have undergone, -they are preludes to original utterance and almost every one of -them is a starting point rather than the goal. Shakespeare’s normal -practice is illustrated in the fable of Menenius, in which, with every -allowance made for possible assistance from Camden, the words of his -authority or authorities are only so many spur-pricks that set his own -imagination at a gallop. And what goes before and comes after is pure -Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>And it should be noticed that his textual appropriations from North, -long or short, obvious or covert, never clash with his more personal -contributions, which in bulk are far more important. They are all -subdued to the tone that the purpose of the dramatist imposes. -Delius says with absolute truth: “This harmonious colouring would -make it impossible for us, in respect of style, to discover real -or suppositious loans from Plutarch in Shakespeare’s drama, and -definitely identify them as such, if by chance North’s translation were -inaccessible.” Yet this harmonious colouring, that has its source in -the author’s mind and that is required by the theme, does not prevent -an individualisation in the utterance, whether wholly original or partly -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</span> -borrowed, that fits it for the lips of the particular speaker. The -language, even when it is suggested by North, is not only spontaneous -and consistent, it is dramatic as well, and apposite to the strongly -marked characters of whom the story is told.</p> - -<p>To these characters, and their development by Shakespeare, we now -turn. It may be remarked that all of them, except the quite episodical -Adrian and Nicanor, are nominally to be found in Plutarch, by whom -the hero himself is drawn at full length and in great detail. For his -delineation then there was a great deal to borrow and Shakespeare -has borrowed a great deal. In his general bearing and in many of -his features the Coriolanus of the play is the Coriolanus of the -<i>Life</i>, though of course imagined with far more firmness and -comprehension. Only on very close scrutiny do we see that each has a -physiognomy of his own, and that the difference in the impressions -they produce is due not merely to the execution but to the conception. -This will become clear as the general discussion proceeds and will -incidentally occupy our attention from time to time. Meanwhile it -should be noticed that, Coriolanus excepted, Plutarch’s persons are -very shadowy and vague. If we compare this biography with those that -Shakespeare had used for his earlier Roman plays, it is obvious that it -is much more of a monograph. In the others room is found for sketches -of many subordinate figures in connection with the titular subject, but -Marcius stands out alone and the remaining personages are scarcely more -than names. In the tragedy, too, he is in possession of the scene, but -his relatives, his friends, and his enemies are also full of interest -and life; and for their portraiture Shakespeare had to depend almost -entirely on himself.</p> - -<p>Next to the hero, for example, it is his mother who is most conspicuous -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</span> -in the play; and how much did Plutarch contribute to the conception of -her concrete personality? He supplies only one or two hints, some of -which Shakespeare disregards or contradicts. They both attribute to her -the sole training of the boy, but Plutarch implies that her discipline -was slack and her instruction insufficient, while in Shakespeare she -incurs no such blame except in so far as we infer a certain lack of -judiciousness from her peculiar attitude to her grandson and from her -son’s exaggeration of some of her own traits. But injudiciousness is -not quite the same as the laxity that Plutarch’s apologetic paragraph -would insinuate:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Caius Martius, whose life we intend now to write, -being left an orphan by his father, was brought up under his mother -a widowe, who taught us by experience, that orphanage bringeth many -discommodities to a childe, but doth not hinder him to become an honest -man, and to excell in vertue above the common sorte; as they, are -meanely borne, wrongfully doe complayne, that it is the occasion of -their casting awaye, for that no man in their youth taketh any care of -them to see them well brought up, and taught that were meete. This man -is also a good proofe to confirme some mens opinions, that a rare and -excellent witte untaught, doth bring forth many good and evill things -together; like as a fat soile bringeth forth herbes and weedes, that -lieth unmanured.<a id="FNanchor_257" href="#Footnote_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a> -For this Martius naturell wit and great harte dyd marvelously -sturre up his corage, to doe and attempt notable actes. But on the -other side for lacke of education, he was so chollericke and impacient, -that he would yeld to no living creature; which made him churlishe, -uncivill, and altogether unfit for any mans conversation.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Again, in reference to Marcius’ strenuous career, -Plutarch writes:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The only thing that made him to love honour, was -the joye he sawe his mother dyd take of him. For he thought nothing -made him so happie and honorable, as that his mother might heare every -bodie praise and commend him, that she might allwayes see him returne -with a crowne upon his head, and that she might still embrace him with -teares ronning downe her cheekes for joye.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</span> -In the play, it is not with tears of joy that Volumnia welcomes her -warrior home.</p> - -<p>Here is another instance of piety that Plutarch cites:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Martius thinking all due to his mother, that had -bene also due to his father if he had lived; dyd not only content him -selfe to rejoyce and honour her, but at her desire tooke a wife also, -by whom he had two children, and yet never left his mothers house -therefore.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">In Shakespeare there is no word of Marcius’ -marrying at his mother’s desire, and though she apparently lives with -him, it is in his, not in her house.</p> - -<p>All these notices occur in the first pages of the <i>Life</i>. -Thenceforward till her intervention at the close there is only a -passing mention of her affliction at her son’s banishment.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">When he was come home to his house againe, and -had taken his leave of his mother and wife, finding them weeping, and -shreeking out for sorrowe, and had also comforted and persuaded them -to be content with his chaunce; he immediately went to the gate of the -cittie.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Even in regard to the intercession, where -Shakespeare follows Plutarch most closely, he makes one significant -omission. In the original, it is the suggestion of Valeria “through -the inspiration of some god above,” that the women should sue for -peace, and she visits Marcius’ kinswoman to secure their help: by -the suppression of this circumstance, the prominent place is left to -Volumnia. And in the appeal itself Shakespeare, besides the various -vivifying and personal touches, makes one important addition. In -Plutarch her words are throughout forcible and impassioned, but they do -not burst into the wrathful indignation of the close, which alone is -sufficient to break down Coriolanus’ resolution.</p> - -<p>Now it is clear that the presence of Volumnia does not pervade the -<i>Life</i> as it does the play, and she has not nearly so much to do. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</span> -Moreover, besides being less important, she is less masculine and -masterful. Indeed, from Plutarch’s hints it would be possible -to construct for her a character that differed widely from that of -Shakespeare’s heroine. She is like the latter in her patriotism, her -love for and delight in her son, and, at the critical moment, in her -influence over him. But even her influence is less constant, and -seems to be stronger in the way of unconscious inspiration than of -positive direction. It would be quite legitimate to picture her as an -essentially womanly woman, high-souled and dutiful, but finding her -chosen sphere in the home, overflowing with sympathy and affection, -and failing in her obligations as widowed mother only by a lack of -sternness.</p> - -<p>And if Shakespeare has given features to Volumnia, much more has he -done so to Virgilia and young Marcius. Both, of course, are presented -in the merest outline, but in Plutarch the wife is only once named and -the children are not named at all. Shakespeare’s Virgilia, on the other -hand, by the few words she speaks and the few words spoken to her, by -her very restraint from speech and the atmosphere in which she moves, -produces a very definite as well as a very pleasing impression. Ruskin, -after enumerating some other of Shakespeare’s female characters, -concludes that they “and last and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all -faultless; conceived in the highest heroic type of humanity.” This -enthusiasm may be, as Ruskin’s enthusiasms sometimes were, exaggerated -and misplaced, but it could not be roused by a nonentity; and a -nonentity Plutarch’s Virgilia is.</p> - -<p>Young Marcius, again, is not merely one of the two children mentioned -in the <i>Life</i>. As Mr. Verity remarks,<a id="FNanchor_258" href="#Footnote_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> -in this case “the half is certainly better than the whole”; and the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</span> -named half has a wholeness of his own that the anonymous brace can lay -no claim to. He is a thorough boy, and an attractive though boisterous -one. If he is cruel to winged things, he is brave and circumspect -withal. He has a natural objection to be trodden on even for a -patriotic cause; if the risk is too great, “he’ll run away till he’s -bigger, but then he’ll fight.”</p> - -<p>Passing from Coriolanus’ kinsfolk to his friends, we meet with -very similar results. Titus Lartius is sketched very slightly in -Shakespeare, but a good deal more visually than in Plutarch, who says -of him in two sentences that he was “one of the valliantest men the -Romaines had at that time,” and that, having entered Corioli with -Marcius, he, “when he was gotten out, had some leysure to bring the -Romaines with more safetie into the cittie.” Cominius is hardly more -distinct. As Consul he conducts the campaign against Corioli; welcomes -Marcius from his first exploit, and gives him the opportunity for his -second, in the double engagement that then took place; thereafter -officially rewards and eulogises his gallantry, which “he commended -beyond the moone”; and that is practically all that is said about -him. In the play, though in it too his part was a small one, he has -characteristics of his own which Shakespeare has created for him -without much help from these vague suggestions. Nor has Marcius, in -the original story, any intimate association with either of his fellow -soldiers. It is stated that at first he is in Lartius’ division of the -army, and afterwards joins Cominius and wins his praises, but it is -only in the affair of Corioli that their names are mentioned together.</p> - -<p>In the drama, however, Menenius is undoubtedly the chief of the young -man’s friends as well as one of the most prominent persons; and what -has Plutarch to say about him? He is introduced only in connection with -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</span> -the fable which he tells the seceders to the Holy Hill, and, apart from -the fable, all that we hear of him is confined to the following few -sentences:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The Senate being afeard of their departure, dyd -send unto them certaine of the pleasauntest olde men, and the most -acceptable to the people among them. Of those, Menenius Agrippa was he, -who was sent for chief man of the message from the Senate. He, after -many good persuasions and gentle requestes made to the people, on the -behalfe of the Senate, knit up his oration in the ende, with a notable -tale.... These persuasions pacified the people, conditionally, that the -Senate would graunte there should be yerely chosen five magistrates, -which they now call <i>Tribuni Plebis</i>.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Even the few particulars given in this passage -Shakespeare alters or neglects. It is not to the secessionists on -the Mons Sacer, but to a street mob in Rome, that the fable is told. -It not merely serves to lubricate in advance the negotiations that -result in the tribunate, but effectually discomfits the murmurers, and -Menenius learns only subsequently and to his surprise that the Senate -has meanwhile conceded the political innovation. There is no hint in -Plutarch of his being himself one of the patricians, and if Shakespeare -glanced at Holland’s Livy he would see that in point of fact tradition -assigned to him a plebeian origin.<a id="FNanchor_259" href="#Footnote_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a> -Above all he has no dealings whatever with Marcius, and, according -to Livy, died a year before his banishment. Plutarch thus furnishes -hardly anything for the portrait of the man, and nothing at all for his -relations with the hero.</p> - -<p>And it is the same, or nearly the same, if we turn from Marcius’ -friends to his enemies.</p> - -<p>The tribunes, for example, are comparatively colourless. On the -institution of the new magistracy,</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Junius Brutus, and Sicinius Vellutus were the -first tribunes of the people that were chosen, who had only bene the -causes and procurers of this sedition.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</span> -Then we hear of their opposition to the colonisation of Velitrae -because it was infected with the plague, and to a new war with the -Volscians, because it was in the interest only of the rich; but they -have nothing to do with the rejection of Marcius when he is candidate -for the consulship. Only at a later time, when he inveighs against -the relief of the people and the tribunitian power, do they stir up a -popular tumult and insist that he shall answer their charges, adopting -tactics not unlike those that are attributed to them in the play.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">All this was spoken to one of these two endes, -either that Martius against his nature should be constrained to -humble him selfe, and to abase his hawty and fierce minde: or els if -he continued still in his stowtnes, he should incurre the peoples -displeasure and ill-will so farre, that he should never possibly winne -them againe. Which they hoped would rather fall out so, then otherwise; -as in deede they gest unhappely, considering Martius nature and -disposition.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">He answers not only with his wonted boldness, but -“gave him selfe in his wordes to thunder and looke therewithall so -grimly as though he made no reckoning of the matter.” This affords his -opponents their chance:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Whereupon Sicinius, the cruellest and stowtest of -the Tribunes, after he had whispered a little with his companions, dyd -openly pronounce in the face of all the people, Martius as condemned by -the Tribunes to dye.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Matters do not end here. A formal trial is -agreed to, at which the resourceful magistrates procure the sentence -of banishment, partly by arranging that the votes shall be taken not -by centuries but by tribes, so that “the poore needy people” and the -rabble may be in the majority, partly by eking out the indictments to -which they are pledged to confine themselves, with other accusations. -Then they drop out. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</span></p> - -<p>It may be observed that Brutus is only once named, and nothing is said -of his disposition or ways. Even of Sicinius, who is more conspicuous, -we only read that he was “the cruellest and stowtest” of the two. But -it is less their character than their policy that occupies Plutarch, -and even their policy is presented in an ambiguous light. They are -described as the only authors of the rising which culminated in the -exodus from the city; but with that exodus Plutarch on the whole seems -to sympathise. They are described as “seditious tribunes” when they -oppose the colonisation of Velitrae and the renewal of the war; but -Plutarch shows they had good grounds for doing so. Even their action -against Coriolanus for opposing the grant of corn and advocating the -abolition of their office, was from their own point of view, and -perhaps from any point of view, perfectly legitimate. We can only say -that in the measures they took they were violent and unscrupulous. Yet -when we consider the bitterness of party feeling and the exigencies -of public life, they seem no worse than many statesmen who have been -accounted great. Even their overt policy then is more respectable -than that of Shakespeare’s pair of demagogues, and of course it is -Shakespeare who has created, or all but created, for them their vulgar -but life-like characters.</p> - -<p>Nor are things greatly different in the case of the third of Marcius’ -enemies, Tullus Aufidius, though Plutarch tells us somewhat more about -him, and Shakespeare in the main fills in rather than alters Plutarch’s -sketch. The first mention of him occurs when the exile determines on -his revenge.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>Now in the cittie of Antium, there was one -called Tullus Aufidius, who for his riches, as also for his nobilitie -and valliantnes, was honoured emong the Volsces as a king. Martius -knewe very well that Tullus dyd more malice and envie him, then he dyd -all the Romaines besides: bicause that many times in battells where -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</span> -they met, they were ever -at the encounter one against another, like lustie coragious youthes, -striving in all emulation of honour, and had encountered many times -together. In so muche, as besides the common quarrell betweene them, -there was bred a marvelous private hate one against another. Yet -notwithstanding, considering that Tullus Aufidius was a man of a greate -minde, and that he above all other of the Volsces, most desired revenge -of the Romaines, for the injuries they had done unto them; he dyd an -act that confirmed the true wordes of an auncient Poet, who sayed:</p> - -<p>It is a thing full harde, mans anger to withstand.</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">After the welcome at Antium, Tullus and Coriolanus -combine to bring on the war and are entrusted with the joint command; -but Tullus chooses to remain at home to defend his country, while -Coriolanus conducts the operations abroad, in which he is wonderfully -successful. A truce he grants the Romans is however the occasion for a -rift in their alliance.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">This was the first matter wherewith the Volsces -(that most envied Martius glorie and authoritie) dyd charge Martius -with. Among those, Tullus was chief: who though he had receyved no -private injurie or displeasure of Martius, yet the common faulte and -imperfection of mans nature wrought in him, and it grieved him to see -his owne reputation bleamished, through Martius great fame and honour, -and so him selfe to be lesse esteemed of the Volsces, then he was -before.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">We do not hear of him after this till Coriolanus -has come back from the siege of Rome.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Now when Martius was returned againe into the -cittie of Antium from his voyage, Tullus that hated him and could no -lenger abide him for the feare he had of his authoritie; sought divers -meanes to make him out of the waye, thinking that if he let slippe -that present time, he should never recover the like and fit occasion -againe.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">So he contrives and effects the assassination of -his rival.</p> - -<p>Thus the chief features of Aufidius’ character and the story of its -development, the emulation that is dislodged by generosity, the -generosity that is submerged in envy, were already supplied for -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</span> -Shakespeare’s use. But the darker hues are lacking in the earlier -picture. There is neither the unscrupulous rancour in his initial -relations with Marcius that Shakespeare attributes to them, nor the -hypocritical pretence at the close. Plutarch does not bring the -contrast with Coriolanus to a head. And in connection with this it -should be observed that Tullus appears late and intervenes only -incidentally. Less than a sentence is spared to his earlier antagonism -with Coriolanus, nor is he present in the march on Rome or during -the siege. And this is typical of Plutarch’s treatment of all the -subordinate persons. They enter for a moment, and are dismissed. But -in Shakespeare they accompany the action throughout, and do this in -such a way that they illustrate and influence the character and career -of the hero, and have their own characters and careers illustrated and -influenced by him. They are all, even young Marcius by description, -introduced in the first four scenes, with an indication of their -general peculiarities and functions, and with the single exception of -Titus Lartius, they continue to reappear almost to the end.</p> - -<p>The recurrent presence of the agents of itself involves considerable -modification in the conduct of the plot, but in this respect too we are -at first more struck by the resemblances than the differences between -the two versions; and it is possible to exhibit the story in such a -manner that its main lines seem the same in both.</p> - -<p>The setting is furnished by the primitive Roman state when it has -newly assumed its republican form. Less than a score of years before, -it passed through its first great crisis in its successful rejection -of the kingship, and ever since has been engaged in a life-and-death -struggle with representatives of the exiled dynasty and with jealous -neighbours somewhat similar in power and character to itself. It has -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</span> -made good its position under the direction of a proud and valiant -aristocracy, but not without paying the price. The constant wars have -resulted in widespread poverty and distress among the lower classes -till they can bear it no longer and demand constitutional changes by -which, as they think, their misery may be redressed. Rome is thus -confronted with the internal peril of revolution as well as the foreign -peril of invasion, and the future mistress of the world runs the -risk of being cut off at the outset of her career by tribal broils -and domestic quarrels. It is this that gives the legend a certain -grandeur of import. The Senate, finding itself and its partisans in -the minority, concedes to the commons rights which have the effect of -weakening its old authority, and for that reason are bitterly resented -by upholders of the old order. Meanwhile, however, Rome is able to take -the field against the Volscians and gains a decisive victory over them, -mainly owing to the soldiership of the young patrician, Marcius, who -wins for himself in the campaign the name of Coriolanus. The ability he -has shown, the glory he has achieved, the gratitude that is his due, -seem to mark him out for a leading role. He almost deserves, and almost -attains, the highest dignity the little state has to confer: but he has -already given proof of his scorn for popular demands and opposition to -the recent innovations, and at the last moment he is set aside. Not -only that, but the new magistrates, in dread of his influence, incite -the people against him and procure his condemnation to death, which, -however, is afterwards mitigated to banishment. His friends of the -nobility dare not or cannot interpose, and he departs into exile. Then -his civic virtue breaks beneath the strain, and, reconciling himself -with the Volscians, he leads them against his country. Nothing can stay -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</span> -his advance, and he is on the point of reducing the city, when, -yielding to filial affection what he had refused to patriotic -obligation, he relinquishes his revenge when he has it within his -grasp. But this gives a pretext to those among his new allies who envy -his greatness, and soon afterwards he is treacherously slain.</p> - -<p>This general scheme is common to the biography and the play, and many -of the details, whether presented or recounted, are derived from the -former by the latter. Such, in addition to those already mentioned -in another connection, are Marcius’ first exploit in the battle with -Tarquin, when he bestrides a citizen, avenges his injury, and is -crowned with the garland of oak; the dispersion of the soldiers to take -spoil in Corioli, and Marcius’ consequent indignation; the response to -his call for volunteers; his petition on behalf of his former host; -the initial approval of his candidature by the plebs from a feeling of -shame; the custom of candidates wearing the humble gown and showing -their old wounds at an election; the popular joy at his banishment; -the muster of nobles to see him to the gates; his popularity with -the Volscian soldiery and their eagerness to serve under him; the -perturbation and mutual recriminations in Rome at his approach; his -reception of former friends when they petition him for mercy; the -device of interrupting his speech in Antium lest his words should -secure his acquittal.</p> - -<p>To this extent Shakespeare and Plutarch agree, and the agreement is -important and far-reaching. Has the dramatist, then, been content -to embellish and supplement the diction of the story, and give new -life to the characters, while leaving the fable unchanged except in -so far as these other modifications may indirectly affect it? On the -contrary we shall see that the design is thoroughly recast, that each -of the borrowed details receives a new interpretation or a heightened -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</span> -colouring, that significant insertions and no less significant -omissions concur to alter the effect of the whole.</p> - -<p>Sometimes Shakespeare’s innovations followed almost necessarily and -without any remoter result from the greater fullness and concreteness -of his picture, and the care with which he grouped the persons round -his hero. Such are many of the conversations and subordinate scenes, -by means of which the story is conveyed to us in all its reality and -movement; the episode of Valeria’s call, the description and words of -Marcius’ little son, Aufidius’ self-disclosure to his soldiers and his -lieutenant, even the interview between the Volscian scout and the Roman -informer.</p> - -<p>Still in this class, but more important, are the inventions that have -no authority in Plutarch, but that are not opposed to and may even -have been suggested by some of his hints. Thus in the <i>Life</i>, -Volumnia’s interposition is not required to make Marcius submit himself -to the judgment of the people, and in this connection she is not -mentioned at all; but at any rate her action in Shakespeare does not -belie the influence that Plutarch ascribes to her.</p> - -<p>Occasionally, again, the deviation from and observance of the -biographer’s statements follow each other so fast, and are both so -dominated by truth to his spirit, that it needs some vigilance to note -all the points where the routes diverge or coincide. Take, for example, -the account of the candidature:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Shortely after this, Martius stoode for the -Consulshippe; and the common people favored his sute, thinking it would -be a shame to denie, and refuse, the chiefest noble man of bloude, and -most worthie persone of Rome, and specially him that had done so great -service and good to the common wealth. For the custome of Rome was at -that time, that such as dyd sue for any office, should for certen dayes -before be in the market place, only with a poore gowne on their backes, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</span> -and without any coate underneath, to praye the cittizens to remember -them at the daye of election: which was thus devised, either to move -the people the more, by requesting them in suche meane apparell, or -els bicause they might shewe them their woundes they had gotten in the -warres in the service of the common wealth, as manifest markes and -testimonie of their valliantnes.... Now Martius following this custome, -shewed many woundes and cuttes upon his bodie, which he had receyved in -seventeene yeres service at the warres, and in many sundrie battells, -being ever the formest man that dyd set out feete to fight. So that -there was not a man emong the people, but was ashamed of him selfe, -to refuse so valliant a man: and one of them sayed to another, “We -must needes chuse him Consul, there is no remedie.” But when the daye -of election was come, and that Martius came to the market place with -great pompe, accompanied with all the Senate, and the whole Nobilitie -of the cittie about him, who sought to make him Consul, with the -greatest instance and intreatie they could, or ever attempted for any -man or matter: then the love and good will of the common people, turned -straight to an hate and envie toward him, fearing to put this office -of soveraine authoritie into his handes, being a man somewhat partiall -toward the nobilitie, and of great credit and authoritie amongest the -Patricians, and as one they might doubt would take away alltogether the -libertie from the people.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Now Shakespeare borrows from Plutarch the -explanation of the rather remarkable circumstance that the people at -first gave Martius their support, and, like Plutarch, he emphasises it -by giving it twice over, though he avoids the dullness of repetition by -making one of the statements serious and one humorous. The first is put -in the mouth of the official of the Capitol:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>He hath so planted his honours in their eyes, -and his actions in their hearts, that for their tongues to be silent, -and not confess so much, were a kind of ingrateful injury: to report -otherwise, were a malice, that giving itself the lie, would pluck -reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it.</p> - -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 32.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">The second is given in the language of the -plebeians themselves: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>First Citizen.</i> Once, if he do require our voices, we ought -not to deny him.</p> -<p><i>Second Citizen.</i> We may, sir, if we will.</p> -<p><i>Third Citizen.</i> We have power in ourselves to do it, but it -is a power that we have no power to do: for if he show us his wounds -and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and -speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell -him our noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the -multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude: -of the which we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous -members.</p> - -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 1.)</p> -</div> - -<p>But this is only before he wears the candidate’s gown, for, otherwise -than in Plutarch, he does not show his wounds—“No man saw them,” say -the citizens (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> iii. 173)—and gives such -offence by his contumacy that it is on this the tribunes are able to -take further action. In the biography he is rejected only because the -indiscreet advocacy of the nobles makes the plebeians fear that he -will be too much of a partizan. He shows no reluctance either to stand -or to comply with the conditions. All these things are the inventions -of Shakespeare, and are made to bring about the catastrophe which in -his authority was due to very different causes. Nevertheless, they -are suggested by Plutarch in so far as they are merely additional -illustrations of that excess of aristocratic pride, on which Plutarch, -too, insists as the source of Marcius’ offences and misfortunes.</p> - -<p>But this example merges into another kind of alteration which may -primarily have been due to the need of greater economy and dramatic -condensation, but which in its results involves a great deal more. In -Plutarch, Coriolanus’ unsuccessful candidature has, except as it adds -to his private irritation, no immediate result; and only some time -later does his banishment follow on quite another occasion. Corn had -come from Sicily, and in the dearth it was proposed to distribute it -gratis: but Marcius inveighed against such a course and urged that the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</span> -time was opportune for the abolition of the Tribunate, in a speech -which, in the play, he “speaks again” when his election is challenged. -But the <i>Life</i> reports it only as delivered in the Senate; and the -tribunes, who are present, at once leave and raise a tumult, attempt -to arrest him and are resisted. The senators, to allay the commotion, -resolve to sell the corn cheap, and thus end the discontent against -themselves, but the tribunes persist in their attack on the ringleader, -hoping, as we have seen, that he will prove refractory and give a -handle against himself. When he does this and the death-sentence is -pronounced, there is still so much feeling of fairness that a legal -trial is demanded, which the tribunes consent to grant him, and to -which he consents to submit on the stipulation that he shall be -charged only on the one count of aspiring to make himself king. But -when the assembly is held the tribunes break their promise and accuse -him of seeking to withhold the corn and abolish the Tribunate, and of -distributing the spoils of the Antiates only among his own followers. -For shortly after the fall of Corioli, the people had refused to march -against the Volsces, and Coriolanus, organising a private expedition, -had won a victory, taken great booty, and given it to all those who had -been of the party. So the unexpectedness and injustice of this last -indictment throws him out.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">This matter was most straunge of all to Martius, -looking least to have been burdened with that, as with any matter of -offence. Whereupon being burdened on the sodaine, and having no ready -excuse to make even at that instant: he beganne to fall a praising of -the souldiers that had served with him in that jorney. But those that -were not with him, being the greater number, cried out so lowde, and -made such a noyse, that he could not be heard. To conclude, when they -came to tell the voyces of the Tribes, there were three voyces odde, -which condemned him to be banished for life.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Now there are several things to notice in Shakespeare’s -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</span> -very different version. The first is the tact with which he compresses -a great many remotely connected incidents into one. He antedates the -affair about the corn with Marcius’ speech against the distribution and -the Tribunate, and only brings it in as a supplementary circumstance -in the prosecution. The real centre of the situation is Coriolanus’ -behaviour when a candidate, and round this all else is grouped: and -this behaviour, it will be remembered, is altogether a fabrication on -Shakespeare’s part. Two other things follow from this.</p> - -<p>In the first place, the unreasonableness of the Romans as a whole -is considerably mitigated. More prominence, indeed, is given to the -machinations of the tribunes, but on the other hand the body of -electors is not only acting less on its own initiative than on the -prompting of its guides, but it proceeds quite properly to avenge -grievances that do exist and avert dangers that do threaten. And this -excuse is to some extent valid for the leaders too. In Plutarch, the -Senate has come to terms on the question of the corn, yet Coriolanus is -hounded down for an opposition which has turned out to be futile. In -the play, though he has met with a check, both he and his friends hope -that even now he may win the election, and the evils that would result -to the people from his consulship are still to be feared.</p> - -<p>Again, Plutarch dwells on the unfairness of the arrangements for taking -the votes, which has the effect of packing the jury:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">And first of all the Tribunes would in any case -(whatsoever became of it) that the people would proceede to geve their -voyces by Tribes, and not by hundreds: for by this meanes the multitude -of the poore needy people (and all such rabble as had nothing to lose, -and had lesse regard of honestie before their eyes) came to be of -greater force (bicause their voyces were numbered by the polle) then -the noble honest cittizens: whose persones and purse dyd duetifully -serve the common wealth in their warres.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</span> -This is not exactly omitted in the drama, but it is slurred over, and -Plutarch’s clear explanation is entirely suppressed, so that few of -Shakespeare’s readers and still fewer of his hearers could possibly -suspect the significance.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Sicinius.</i><span class="ws6">Have you a catalogue</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of all the voices that we have procured</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Set down by the poll?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Ædile.</i><span class="ws6">I have; ’tis ready.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Sicinius.</i> Have you collected them by tribes?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Ædile.</i><span class="ws8">I have.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> iii. 8.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Above all, the accusations brought against Coriolanus, in Shakespeare, -are substantially just. He may not seek to wind himself into a power -tyrannical, if we take <i>tyrant</i>, as Plutarch certainly did but -as Shakespeare probably did not, in the strict classical sense of -<i>tyrannus</i>, but with his disregard of aged custom and his avowed -opinions of the people, there can be no doubt that he would have -wielded the consular powers tyrannically, in the ordinary acceptation -of the word. For there can be as little doubt about his ill-will to the -masses and his abhorrence of the tribunitian system. And it is on these -grounds that he is condemned. It is very noticeable that the division -of the Antiate spoil, which in Plutarch is the most decisive and -unwarrantable allegation against him, is mentioned by Shakespeare only -in advance as a subordinate point that may be brought forward, but, as -a matter of fact, it is never urged.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i> In this point charge him home, that he affects</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tyrannical power: if he evade us there,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Enforce him with his envy to the people,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And that the spoil got on the Antiates</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Was ne’er distributed.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> iii. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare makes no further use of a circumstance -to which Plutarch attaches so great importance that he dwells on it -twice over and gives it the prominent place in the narrative of the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</span> -trial. This piece of sharp practice becomes quite negligible in the -play, and the only chicanery of which the tribunes are guilty in the -whole transaction is that, as in the <i>Life</i>, but more explicitly, -they goad Coriolanus to a fit of rage in which he avows his real -sentiments—a tactical expedient that many politicians would consider -perfectly permissible. Shakespeare, as has often been pointed out, in -some ways shows even less appreciation than Plutarch of the merits of -the people; so it is all the more significant that, at the crisis of -the play, he softens down and obliterates the worst traits in their -proceedings against their enemy.</p> - -<p>And the second thing we observe is that by all this Shakespeare -emphasises the insolence and truculence of the hero. It is Coriolanus’ -pride that turns his candidature, which begins under the happiest -auspices, to a snare. It is still his pride that plays into the -tribunes’ hands and makes him repeat in mere defiance his offensive -speech. It is again his pride, not any calumny about his misapplying -the profits of his raid, that gives the signal for the adverse -sentence. Just as in this respect the plebs is represented as on the -whole less ignoble than Plutarch makes it, so Coriolanus’ conduct is -portrayed as more insensate.</p> - -<p>And this two-fold tendency, to palliate the guilt of Rome and to stress -the violence that provoked it, appears in the more conspicuous of -Shakespeare’s subsequent deviations from his authority.</p> - -<p>In Plutarch, Tullus and Aufidius have great difficulty in persuading -the magnates of Antium to renew the war, and only succeed when the -Romans expel the Volscian residents from their midst.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">On a holy daye common playes being kept in Rome, -apon some suspition, or false reporte, they made proclamation by sound -of trumpet, that all the Volsces should avoyde out of Rome before -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</span> -sunne set. Some thincke this was a crafte and deceipt of Martius, -who sent one to Rome to the Consuls, to accuse the Volsces falsely, -advertising them howe they had made a conspiracie to set upon them, -whilest they were busie in seeing these games, and also to sette their -cittie a fyre.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">At any rate, the proclamation brings about a -declaration of hostilities, and war speedily follows.</p> - -<p>Now in Shakespeare, Lartius, for fear of attack, has to surrender -Corioli even before Coriolanus meets with his rebuff.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> Tullus Aufidius then had made new head?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Lartius.</i> He had, my lord, and that it was which caused</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our swifter composition.</div> - <div class="verse indent36">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Moreover, all the preparations of the Volsces are -complete for a new incursion. Cominius, indeed, cannot believe that -they will again tempt fortune so soon.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">They are worn, lord consul, so</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That we shall hardly in our ages see</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their banners wave again.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 6.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But Cominius is wrong. In the little intercalated -scene between the Roman and the Volsce, we learn that they have -mustered an army which the latter thus describes:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>A most royal one; the centurions and their charges, distinctly -billeted, already in the entertainment, and to be on foot at an hour’s -warning.</p> - -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> iii. 47.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And Aufidius welcomes Coriolanus to the feast with -the words:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">O, come, go in,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And take our friendly senators by the hands:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who now are here, taking their leaves of me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who am prepared against your territories,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Though not for Rome itself.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> v. 137.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The arrival of such an auxiliary, however, at once -alters that plan, and we presently learn that they are now going to -make direct for the city:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>To-morrow; to-day; presently; you shall have the drum struck up -this afternoon: ’tis, as it were, a parcel of their feast, and to be -executed ere they wipe their lips.</p> - -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> v. 229.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</span> -Now in Plutarch we cannot but be struck by the pusillanimous part -the Romans play when menaced by their great peril. They answer the -declaration of war with a bravado which events quite fail to justify, -but, despite the warning they have received, they make no resistance -and do not even prepare for it. In Shakespeare there is more excuse for -them. They are taken completely by surprise. Their foe has almost been -their match before, when they were equipped to meet him, and had their -champion on their side. Now that champion is not only gone, but is at -the head of the invading army.</p> - -<p>Nor is this all. In Plutarch, Coriolanus begins operations by making -a raid on the Roman territories with light-armed troops, retiring -again with his plunder. Still the Romans do not take any precautions. -In a second campaign he gets within five miles of the city, and still -they do nothing but send an embassage. Even when, at the peril of his -popularity, he grants them a truce of thirty days, they make no use -of it for defence, but only continue to transmit arrogant or abject -messages. This further opportunity, too, which they so strangely -neglect, is wisely omitted by Shakespeare. With him the irruption is -swift and sudden beyond the grasp of human thought. Coriolanus breaks -across the border and strikes straight for Rome. There is no time -for defensive measures, no possibility of aid. Even so, the part the -Romans play is not so heroic as might be expected, but it is at least -intelligible and much less dastardly than in the history.</p> - -<p>Or take another instance. In describing the first inroad of Coriolanus, -Plutarch writes:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">His chiefest purpose was, to increase still the -malice and dissention betweene the nobilitie, and the communaltie: and -to drawe that on, he was very carefull to keepe the noble mens landes -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</span> -and goods safe from harme and burning, but spoyled all the whole -countrie besides, and would suffer no man to take or hurte any thing -of the noble mens. This made greater sturre and broyle betweene the -nobilitie and people, then was before. For the noble men fell out with -the people, bicause they had so unjustly banished a man of so great -valure and power. The people on thother side, accused the nobilitie, -how they had procured Martius to make these warres, to be revenged of -them: bicause it pleased them to see their goodes burnt and spoyled -before their eyes, whilest them selves were well at ease, and dyd -behold the peoples losses and misfortunes, and knowing their owne -goods safe and out of daunger: and howe the warre was not made against -the noble men, that had the enemie abroad, to keepe that they had in safety.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">In Shakespeare there is no word of Coriolanus -making any such distinction either from policy or partisanship: he is -incensed against all the inhabitants of Rome, “the dastard nobles” -quite as much as the offending plebeians. And, on the other hand, -though the patricians revile the populace and its leaders, there is no -division between the orders, and they show no inclination to disregard -the solidarity of their interests. This contrast becomes more marked in -the sequel. According to Plutarch, the people in panic desire to recall -the exile; but the</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Senate assembled upon it, would in no case yeld to -that. Who either dyd it of a selfe will to be contrarie to the peoples -desire: or bicause Martius should not returne through the grace and -favour of the people.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Afterwards, however, when he encamps so near Rome, -the majority has its way:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">For there was no Consul, Senatour, nor Magistrate, -that durst once contrarie the opinion of the people, for the calling -home againe of Martius.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Accordingly, the first envoys are instructed to -announce to him his re-instatement in all his rights.</p> - -<p>In Shakespeare’s account the action of Rome becomes much more -dignified. In none of the negociations, in no chance word of citizen, -tribune or senator, is there any hint of the sentence on Coriolanus -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</span> -being revoked. Only when peace is concluded does his recall follow -quite naturally, as an act of gratitude, in the burst of jubilant relief:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Unshout the shout that banish’d Marcius,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Repeal him with the welcome of his mother.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> v. 4.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This, too, is one of the indications of Shakespeare’s feeling for Roman -greatness, that we should bear in mind when elsewhere he seems to show -less sense even than Plutarch of her civic virtue.</p> - -<p>The last notable deviation of the play from the biography occurs in the -passage which deals with the murder of Coriolanus, and the difference -is such as to make the victim far more responsible for the crime.</p> - -<p>In Plutarch, after his return to Antium, Tullus, wishing to make away -with him, demands that he should be deposed from his authority and -taken to task. Marcius replies that he is willing to resign, if this -be required by all the lords, and also to give account to the people -if they will hear him. Thereupon a common council is called, at which -proceedings begin by certain orators inciting popular feeling against him.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">When they had tolde their tales, Martius rose up -to make them aunswer. Now, notwithstanding the mutinous people made a -marvelous great noyse, yet when they sawe him, for the reverence they -bare unto his valliantnes, they quieted them selves, and gave still -audience to alledge with leysure what he could for his purgation. -Moreover, the honestest men of the Antiates, and who most rejoyced -in peace, shewed by their countenaunce that they would heare him -willingly, and judge also according to their conscience. Whereupon -Tullus fearing that if he dyd let him speake, he would prove his -innocencie to the people, bicause emongest other things he had an -eloquent tongue, besides that the first good service he had done to -the people of the Volsces, dyd winne him more favour, then these last -accusations could purchase him displeasure: and furthermore, the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</span> -offence they layed to his charge, was a testimonie of the good will -they ought him, for they would never have thought he had done them -wrong for that they tooke not the cittie of Rome, if they had not bene -very neare taking of it, by meanes of his approche and conduction. For -these causes Tullus thought he might no lenger delaye his pretence and -enterprise, neither to tarie for the mutining and rising of the common -people against him: wherefore those that were of the conspiracie, -beganne to crie out that he was not to be heard, nor that they would -not suffer a traytour to usurpe tyrannicall power over the tribe of the -Volsces, who would not yeld up his estate and authoritie. And in saying -these wordes, they all fell upon him, and killed him in the market -place, none of the people once offering to rescue him. Howbeit it is a -clear case, that this murder was not generally consented unto, of the -most parte of the Volsces: for men came out of all partes to honour his -bodie, and dyd honorablie burie him, setting out his tombe with great -store of armour and spoyles, as the tombe of a worthie persone and -great captaine.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Here the conspirators do not give him a chance, -but kill him before a word passes his lips. In the tragedy, on the -contrary, all might have been well, if in his rage of offended pride -at Tullus’ insults and taunts, he had not been carried away with his -vaunts and reminders to excite and excuse the passions of his hearers. -And thus with Shakespeare his ungovernable insolence is now made the -cause of his death, just as before it has been accentuated as the cause -of his banishment.</p> - -<p>Still, though the exasperation against Coriolanus in Rome as in Corioli -is thus in a measure justified, his own violence also receives its -apology. In the latter case it is the provocation of Aufidius that -rouses him to frenzy. In the former, it is the ineptitude of the -citizens that fills him with scorn for their claims. And it is with -reference to this and his whole conception of the Roman plebs that -Shakespeare has made the most momentous and remarkable change in his -story, the consideration of which we have purposely left to the last. -The discussion of the difference in Plutarch’s and in Shakespeare’s -attitude to the people will show us some of the most important aspects -of the play.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER III<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE GRAND CONTRAST.<br />SHAKESPEARE’S CONCEPTION<br /> -OF THE SITUATION IN ROME</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>It is difficult to describe with any certainty the reasons for -Shakespeare’s variations from Plutarch in his treatment of the people. -They may, like some of those already discussed, be due to the dramatic -requirement of compression. They may be due to the deliberate purpose -of exonerating the hero. They may, and this is more likely, have arisen -quite naturally and unconsciously from Shakespeare’s indifference to -questions of constitutional theory and his inability to understand the -ideals of an antique self-governing commonwealth controlled by all -its free members as a body. In any case the result is a picture of -the primitive society, from which some of Plutarch’s inconsistencies, -but with them some of the most typical traits, have been removed. The -grand characteristic which the Tudor Englishman rejects, or all but -rejects, is the intuitive political capacity which Plutarch, perhaps -in idealising retrospect, attributes to all classes of citizens in the -young republic, and which at any rate in after development formed the -distinctive genius of the Roman state. He has indeed an inarticulate -sense of it that enables him to suggest the general impression. He -could not but have a sense of it; for few men have been so pentrated -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</span> -with the greatness of later Rome as he, and he seems to have felt, as -the shapers of the tradition and as Plutarch felt, that such a tree -must have sprung from a healthy seed. So when we examine what his story -involves, we have evidence enough of a general spirit of moderation, -accommodation, compromise, that flow from and minister to an efficient -practical patriotism; an ingrafted love of the city; and a conviction -of the community of interests among high and low alike. Mr. Watkiss -Lloyd puts this with great emphasis, and on the whole with great truth.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Rome is preserved from cleaving in the midst by -the virtues of the state, the reverence for the political majority -which pervades both contending parties. The senate averts the last evil -by the timely concession of the tribunitian power first, and then by -sacrifice of a favourite champion of their own order, rather than civil -war shall break out and all go to ruin in quarrel for the privilege and -supremacy of a part. Rather than this they will concede, and trust to -temporising, to negociating, to management, to the material influence -of their position and the effect of their own merits and achievements, -to secure their power or recover it hereafter. Among the people, on -the other hand, there is also a restraining sentiment, a religion that -holds back from the worst abuses of successful insurrection and excited -faction. The proposition to kill Marcius is easily given up. Even the -tribunes are capable of being persuaded to forego the extremity of -rancour against the enemy of the people and of their authority, when -he is fairly in their power, and commute death for banishment; and, -the victory achieved, they counsel tranquility, as Menenius, on the -other hand, softens down; and all goes smoothly again like a reconciled -household, after experience of the miseries of adjusting wrongs by -debate and anger.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Similarly the interests of the country are supreme -when Coriolanus, with his new allies, advances to the attack:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Some impatience of the people against the tribunes -is natural, but the tribunes with all their faults, take their -humiliation not ignobly, and the nobles never for a moment -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_520">[Pg 520]</span> -dream of getting a party triumph by foreign aid. The danger of the -country engrosses all, and at last Volumnia presses upon her son the -right and the noble, and employs all the influences of domestic and -natural affection—but all entirely to the great political and national -end,—and is as disregardful of the fortunes or interests of the -aristocratical party, which might have hoped to seize the opportunity -for recovering lost ground, as she is apparently unaware, unconscious, -regardless of what may be the consequences personally to her much loved son.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">And Mr. Lloyd clinches his plea by his estimate of -the catastrophe.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">In the concluding scene we appear to see the -supremacy of Rome assured.... In the senate house of the Volscians -is perpetrated the assassination, from the disgrace of which the -better spirit of the Romans preserved their city: Aufidius and his -fellows with equal envy and ingratitude take the place of the plotting -tribunes, and the senators are powerless to control the conspirators -and mob of citizens who abet them.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">They are, in short, in comparison with Rome -self-condemned; and this becomes more manifest if we contrast the -finale of the play with the concluding sentences in Plutarch, which -Shakespeare leaves unused.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Now Martius being dead, the whole state of the -Volsces hartely wished him alive again. For first of all they fell out -with the Æques (who were their friendes and confederates) touching -preheminence and place: and this quarrell grew on so farre betwene -them, and frayes and murders fell out apon it one with another. After -that, the Romaines overcame them in battell, in which Tullus was -slaine in the field, and the flower of all their force was put to the -sworde: so that they were compelled to accept most shameful conditions -of peace, in yelding them selves subject unto the conquerors, and -promising to be obedient at their commandement.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">It is at first sight rather strange that -Shakespeare should give no indication that the Volscians, first by -condoning Tullus’ crime, the breach of friendship from desire for -pre-eminence, then by repeating it as a community, prepare the way for -their own downfall. Perhaps he felt that no finger-post was necessary, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</span> -and that all must see how in the long -run such a state must inevitably succumb to the greater moral force of -Rome.</p> - -<p>A few slight qualifications would have to be made in Mr. Lloyd’s -statement of his thesis to render it absolutely correct, but it is -true in the main. Nevertheless, true though it be, it makes no account -of two very important considerations. One of these is that despite -the general appreciation which Shakespeare shows for the attitude of -the Roman <i>Civitas</i>, he has no perception of the real issues -between the plebeians and the patricians, or of the course which the -controversy took, though these matters constitute the chief claim of -the citizens of early Rome to the credit they receive in Plutarch’s -narrative. And the other consideration is, that Shakespeare’s general -appreciation of the community he describes is perceptible only when we -view the play at a distance and in its mass: the impression in detail -as we follow it from scene to scene is by no means so favourable to -either party.</p> - -<p>The first point is well brought out by the total omission in the drama -of the initial episode in the discussion between the populace and the -senate, and between the populace and Marcius. And the omission is all -the more noticeable since Plutarch gives it particular prominence as -directly leading to the establishment of the tribunate, which the -drama, as we shall see, ascribes merely to an insignificant bread -riot. Here is what Shakespeare must have read, and what slips from him -without leaving more than a trace, though to modern feeling it is one -of the most impressive passages in the whole <i>Life</i>.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Now (Martius) being growen to great credit and -authoritie in Rome for his valliantnes, it fortuned there grewe -sedition in the cittie, bicause the Senate dyd favour the riche against -the people, who dyd complaine of the sore oppression of userers, of -whom they borowed money. For those that had litle, were yet spoyled of -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</span> -that litle they had by their creditours, for lack of abilitie to paye -the userie: who offered their goodes to be solde, to them that would -geve most. And suche as had nothing left, their bodies were layed -holde of, and they were made their bonde men, notwithstanding all -the woundes and cuttes they shewed, which they had receyved in many -battells, fighting for defence of their countrie and common wealth: of -the which, the last warre they made, was against the Sabynes, wherein -they fought apon the promise the riche men had made them, that from -thenceforth they would intreate them more gently, and also upon the -worde of Marcus Valerius chief of the Senate, who by authoritie of the -counsell, and in the behalfe of the riche, sayed they should performe -that they had promised. But after that they had faithfully served in -this last battell of all, where they overcame their enemies, seeing -they were never a whit the better, nor more gently intreated, and that -the Senate would geve no eare to them, but make as though they had -forgotten their former promise, and suffered them to be made slaves and -bonde men to their creditours, and besides, to be turned out of all -that ever they had; they fell then even to flat rebellion and mutinie, -and to sturre up daungerous tumultes within the cittie. The Romaines -enemies, hearing of this rebellion, dyd straight enter the territories -of Rome with a marvelous great power, spoyling and burning all as -they came. Whereupon the Senate immediatly made open proclamation by -sounde of trumpet, that all those which were of lawfull age to carie -weapon, should come and enter their names into the muster masters -booke, to goe to the warres: but no man obeyed their commaundement. -Whereupon their chief magistrates, and many of the Senate, beganne -to be of divers opinions emong them selves. For some thought it was -reason, they should somewhat yeld to the poore peoples request, and -that they should a little qualifie the severitie of the lawe. Other -held hard against that opinion, and that was Martius for one. For he -alleaged, that the creditours losing their money they had lent, was -not the worst thing that was thereby: but that the lenitie that was -favored, was a beginning of disobedience, and that the prowde attempt -of the communaltie, was to abolish lawe, and to bring all to confusion. -Therefore he sayed; if the Senate were wise, they should betimes -prevent, and quenche this ill favored and worse ment beginning. The -Senate met many dayes in consultation about it: but in the end they -concluded nothing. The poore common people seeing no redresse, gathered -them selves one daye together, and one encoraging another, they all -forsooke the cittie, and encamped them selves upon a hill, called at -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</span> -this daye the holy hill, alongest the river of Tyber, offering no -creature any hurte or violence, or making any shewe of actuall -rebellion; saving that they cried as they went up and down, that the -riche men had driven them out of the cittie, and that all Italie -through they should finde ayer, water and ground to burie them in. -Moreover, they sayed, to dwell at Rome was nothing els but to be -slaine, or hurte with continuell warres and fighting for defence of the -riche mens goodes.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Plutarch goes on to tell how in this crisis -the Senate adopts a conciliatory attitude, and how after the fable -of Menenius, the mutineers are pacified by the concession of five -<i>Tribuni plebis</i>, “whose office should be to defend the poore -people from violence and oppression.” Then he concludes this part of -his recital:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Hereupon the cittie being growen againe to good -quiet and unitie, the people immediatly went to the warres, shewing -that they had a good will to doe better than ever they dyd, and to -be very willing to obey the magistrates in that they would commaund -concerning the warres.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Now, in this account there is no question which -side is on the right and has a claim on our sympathies. The plebs is -reduced to distress by fighting for the state and for the aristocratic -<i>régime</i> that was set up some twenty years before: its misery is -aggravated by harsh and inadequate laws, the redress of which it seeks -by a policy of passive resistance; its demands are so equitable that -they are approved by a portion of the Senate, and so urgent that they -are conceded by the Senate as a whole: but such is the strength of -class selfishness, that when the hour of need is past, the patricians -violate their explicit promise, and the grievances become more -intolerable than before. Even now the plebeians break out in no violent -rebellion, and hardly show their discontent in a casual riot. In their -worst desperation they merely secede, and in their very secession they -are far from stubborn. They admit Menenius’ moral that the Senate has -an essential function in the state: and as a preliminary to their -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</span> -return, only stipulate for a machinery that will protect them against -further oppression.</p> - -<p>But hardly a line in the description of this movement which the -plebeians conducted so moderately and sagaciously to a successful -end, has passed into the picture of Shakespeare. He ignores the -reasonableness of their cause, the reasonableness of their means, -and fails to perceive the essential efficiency and steadiness of -their character, though all these things are expressed or implied in -Plutarch’s narrative. This episode, in which the younger contemporary -of Nero favours the people, the elder contemporary of Pym summarily -dismisses, and substitutes for it another far less important, in which -they appear in no very creditable light, but which had nothing to do -with the institution of the Tribunate, and occurred in consequence of -the dearth only after the capture of Corioli.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Now when this warre was ended, the flatterers -of the people beganne to sturre up sedition againe, without any newe -occasion, or just matter offered of complainte. For they dyd grounde -this seconde insurrection against the Nobilitie and Patricians, apon -the people’s miserie and misfortune, that could not but fall out, by -reason of the former discorde and sedition, betweene them and the -Nobilitie. Bicause the most parte of the errable land within the -territorie of Rome, was become heathie and barren for lacke of plowing, -for that they had no time nor meane to cause corne, to be brought them -out of other countries to sowe, by reason of their warres which made -the extreme dearth they had emong them. Now those busie pratlers that -sought the peoples good will, by suche flattering wordes, perceyving -great scarsitie of corne to be within the cittie, and though there had -bene plenty enough, yet the common people had no money to buye it: -they spread abroad false tales and rumours against the Nobilitie, that -they in revenge of the people, had practised and procured the extreme -dearthe emong them.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This circumstance, combined with the still later -demand for a distribution of corn, Shakespeare transposes, and makes -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_525">[Pg 525]</span> -the surely rather inappropriate cause of the appointment of the -tribunes. Inappropriate, that is, to what the logic of the situation -requires, and to what the sagacity of the traditional plebs would -solicit. They ask for bread and they get a magistrate. But not -inappropriate to the unreasoning demands of a frenzied proletariat. -Many parallels might be cited from the French revolutions. But this -is just an instance of Shakespeare’s inability to conceive a popular -rising in other terms than the outbreak of a mob.</p> - -<p>And this leads us to the second point. The general moderation -and dignity implied in the attitude of Rome, viewed broadly and -comprehensively, almost disappears when we are confronted with the full -concrete life of the participants in all its picturesque and incisive -details.</p> - -<p>For consider first a little more closely the treatment of the -people. We have seen that in many ways the proceedings which it and -its representatives take against Coriolanus are more defensible in -Shakespeare than in Plutarch: but, on the other hand, they have less -rational grounds for the original insurrection, and are much less -clear-sighted and consequent in choosing the means of redress. They are -comparatively well-meaning and fair, neither bitter nor narrow-minded, -but they are quite inefficient, far from self-reliant, very childish -and helpless. They are conspicuously lacking in political aptitude, -but they make up for it by a certain soundness of feeling. Plutarch’s -plebeians go the right way about protecting themselves from unjust -laws, but they pursue Coriolanus with rancorous chicane even when -his policy has been overturned. Shakespeare’s plebeians seek to -legislate against a natural calamity, but at the crisis they turn quite -justifiably, if a little tardily, on a would-be governor who makes no -secret of his ill-will. Taken as separate units, they may be unwashed -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_526">[Pg 526]</span> -and puzzle-headed, but they are worthy fellows whom misery has driven -desperate, yet whose misery claims compassion, though their desperation -makes them meddle in things too high for them. In the opening scene, -the First Citizen, even when calling for the death of Marcius, does so -merely because he imagines that it is the preliminary to getting cheap food:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>The gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in -thirst for revenge.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 15.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">But even among the maddened and famishing crowd, -Marcius is not without his advocate. The Second Citizen admonishes -them:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Consider you what services he has done for his country?</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 30.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And though these the ringleader discounts on the ground that they were -due not to patriotism, but to personal pride and filial affection, -his apologist, persisting in his defence, points out that he is not -responsible for his inborn tendencies.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>What he cannot help in his nature, you account a vice in him.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 42.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">All this is candid enough: a benevolent neutral could not say more. -These rioters have no thought of libelling their adversary. They deny -neither his claims nor his merits; they only assert that these are -outweighed by his offences. The Second Citizen proceeds in his plea:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">You must in no way say he is covetous;</p> - -<p class="no-indent">and the First rejoins:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations; he hath -faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 43.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">We have seen how Shakespeare adopts from Plutarch -the motive for the plebeians’ initial support of Coriolanus at the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_527">[Pg 527]</span> -election, but he makes it a more striking instance of their fairness, -for he represents them as quite aware and mindful of the reasons on the -other side.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Fourth Citizen.</i> You have deserved nobly of your country, and -you have not deserved nobly.</p> -<p><i>Coriolanus.</i> Your enigma?</p> -<p><i>Fourth Citizen.</i> You have been a scourge to her enemies, you -have been a rod to her friends; you have not indeed loved the common people.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 94.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is all very well for the candidate to turn this -off with a flout, but it is the sober truth. That the despised plebeian -should see both sides of the case shows in him more sanity of judgment -than Coriolanus ever possessed: that he should nevertheless cast his -vote for such an applicant shows more generosity as well. And the -generosity, if also the simplicity, of the electors is likewise made -more pronounced than in Plutarch by their persevering in their course -despite the scorn with which Coriolanus treats them; of which Plutarch -of course knows nothing. Even that they forgive till the tribunes -irritate the wounds and predict more fatal ones from the new weapon -that has been put into such ruthless hands.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Did you perceive</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He did solicit you in free contempt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When he did need your loves, and do you think</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That his contempt shall not be bruising to you,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When he hath power to crush?</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 207.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>All these instances of right feeling and instinctive appreciation of -greatness are in Shakespeare’s picture, while they are either not at -all or in a much less degree in Plutarch’s. And these citizens are -capable of following good leadership as well as bad. They listen to -Menenius, and are “almost persuaded” by his argument, without, as in -Plutarch, making their acceptance of it merely provisional. Under -Cominius they quit themselves, as he says, “like Romans,” and he gives -them the praise:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Breathe you, my friends: well fought.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> vi. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_528">[Pg 528]</span> -Afterwards too he recognises that they are earning their share of the -spoil, even as before they had borne themselves stoutly:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">March on, my fellows:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Make good this ostentation, and you shall</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Divide in all with us.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> vi. 85.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is said to the volunteers who come forward -at Marcius’ summons, an episode for which there is hardly a hint in -Plutarch. There, indeed, we read that he cannot call off the looters -from the treasures of Corioli:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Whereupon taking those that willingly offered -them selves he went out of the cittie:</p> - -<p class="no-indent">which supplies the sentence,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">I, with those that have the spirit, will haste</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To help Cominius.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> v. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But this hint, if hint it were, Shakespeare -uses anew with far stronger and brighter colouring in the incident -of Marcius’ stirring appeal to Cominius’ men and their enthusiastic -response: which is to be found only in the drama:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">If any such be here—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As it were sin to doubt—that love this painting</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wherein you see me smear’d: if any fear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lesser his person than an ill report;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If any think brave death outweighs bad life</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And that his country’s dearer than himself;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let him alone, or so many so minded,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wave thus, to express his disposition,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And follow Marcius.</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">[<i>They all shout and wave their swords, take him</i></div> - <div class="verse indent4"><i>up in their arms, and cast up their caps.</i>]</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> vi. 67.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">If they are handled in the right way, these -citizen soldiers can play their part well. But they need to be -rightly handled, they need to have their feelings stirred. They -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_529">[Pg 529]</span> -have no rational initiative of their own, and cannot do without -inspiration and guidance. For, consider the grounds for their rising. -Shakespeare not only completely suppresses the remarkable secession to -the Mons Sacer, but barely mentions the social grievances that led to -it. The First Citizen says indeed of the patricians:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>[They] make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any -wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing -statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us -not up, they will.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 83.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">But this is a mere passing remark, and no stress -is laid on these, the real causes of the discontent, in comparison with -the dearth, which for the rest seems to end with the Coriolan campaign, -when there is, as Cominius promises, a “common distribution” of the -spoils. Now the dearth is represented as a mere disastrous accident, -for which no one is responsible, and for which there is no remedy save -prayer—or such a foray as presently took place. Menenius expressly says so:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent19">For the dearth,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The gods, not the patricians, made it, and</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your knees to them, not arms, must help.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 74.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is alleged, no doubt, by the mutineers that the -“storehouses are crammed with grain,” but there is no confirmation of -this in the play, and the way in which “honest” Menenius reports the -rumour, and Marcius, who is never less than honest receives it, implies -that it is mere tittle tattle and gossip of the chimney corner.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Marcius.</i><span class="ws7">What’s their seeking?</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Menenius.</i> For corn at their own rates: whereof, they say,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The city is well stored.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Marcius.</i><span class="ws7">Hang ’em!</span>  They say!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They’ll sit by the fire, and presume to know</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What’s done i’ the Capitol; who’s like to rise,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who thrives and who declines; side factions and give out</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Conjectural marriages; making parties strong</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And feebling such as stand not in their liking</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Below their cobbled shoes. They say there’s grain enough!</div> - <div class="verse indent38">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 192.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_530">[Pg 530]</span> -In short their temper is hardly parodied in the modern skit,</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Who fills the butchers’ shops with large blue flies?</p> - -<p class="no-indent">And if they resemble the ignorant fanatics -of later days in the unreasonableness of their complaints, they -resemble them too, as we have seen, in the unreasonableness of -their remedies. If things were as the play implies what help would -lie in constitutional reform? They are no better than the starving -<i>Sansculottes</i> who sought to allay their hunger by snatching new -morsels of the royal prerogative. It really reads like a scene in -Carlyle’s Paris of 1790 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, and not like -any scene in Plutarch’s Rome of 494 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, -when Coriolanus describes the delight of the famine-stricken crowds at -getting their representatives:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">They threw their caps</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As they would hang them on the horns o’ the moon,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shouting their emulation.</div> - <div class="verse indent33">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 216.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Moreover, when left to themselves, or when their sleeping manhood is -not awakened, these plebeians, otherwise than those of Plutarch, have -not even the average of physical courage. They can fight creditably -under the competent management of Cominius, or heroically under the -stimulus of Marcius’ rousing appeal: but if such influences are -lacking, they fail. Menenius says of them:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Though abundantly they lack discretion,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet are they passing cowardly.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 206.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Marcius ironically invites them to the wars by -indicating what would be, and turns out to be, provision for their needs:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The Volsces have much corn: take these rats thither</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To gnaw their garners. Worshipful mutineers,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your valour puts well forth: pray, follow.</div> - <div class="verse indent33">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 253.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_531">[Pg 531]</span> -And the citizens steal away. In truth the low opinion of their mettle -seems justified by events. At Corioli the troops under Cominius do -well, but those in Marcius’ division, perhaps because his treatment -does not call out what is best in them, seem to deserve a part at least -of his imprecations:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">All the contagion of the south light on you,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You shames of Rome! You herd of——. Boils and plagues</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Plaster you o’er, that you may be abhorr’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Further than seen, and one infect another</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That bear the shapes of men, how have you run</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From slaves that apes would beat! Pluto and hell!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All hurt behind! backs red, and faces pale</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With flight and agued fear!</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iv. 30.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Nor do they appear in a better light in the -moment of partial victory, for they at once fall to plunder instead -of following it up and helping their fellows. This touch, of course, -Shakespeare derived from Plutarch.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The most parte of the souldiers beganne -incontinently to spoyle, to carie awaye, and to looke up the bootie -they had wonne. But Martius was marvelous angry with them, and cried -out on them, that it was no time now to looke after spoyle, and to -ronne straggling here and there to enriche them selves, whilest the -other Consul and their fellowe cittizens peradventure were fighting -with their enemies; and howe that leaving the spoyle they should seeke -to winde them selves out of daunger and perill. Howbeit, crie, and saye -to them what he could, very fewe of them would hearken to him.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">But Shakespeare is not content with this. He quite -without warrant describes the articles as worthless, to emphasise the -baseness of the pillagers.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">See here these movers that do prize their hours</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At a crack’d drachma! Cushions, leaden spoons,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Irons of a doit, doublets that hangmen would</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bury with those that wore them, these base slaves,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ere yet the fight be done, pack up.</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> v. 5.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>This strain of baseness appears in another way afterwards, when they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_532">[Pg 532]</span> -yell and hoot at their banished enemy, like a pack of curs at a -retreating mastiff, or when at his threatened return they eat their -words and their deeds.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>First Citizen.</i> For mine own part, When I said, banish him, I -said ’twas pity.</p> -<p><i>Second Citizen.</i> And so did I.</p> -<p><i>Third Citizen.</i> And so did I: and, to say the truth, so did -very many of us....</p> -<p><i>First Citizen.</i> I ever said we were i’ the wrong when we -banished him.</p> -<p><i>Second Citizen.</i> So did we all.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 139 and 155.)</p> -</div> - -<p>What then is Shakespeare’s opinion of the people as a whole? Despite -his sympathy with those of whom it is composed, it is to him a -giant not yet in his teens, with formidable physical strength, with -crude natural impulses to the good and the bad, kindly-natured and -simple-minded, not incapable of fair-dealing and generosity; but rude, -blundering, untaught, and therefore subject to spasms of fury, panic, -and greed, fit for useful service only when it finds the right leader, -but sure to go wrong if abandoned to its own or evil guidance.</p> - -<p>To the danger of evil guidance, however, it is specially exposed, for -it loves flattery and is imposed on by professions of goodwill: so -Shakespeare reserves his severest treatment for those who cajole it, -the demagogues of the Tribunate. No doubt in his tolerant objective way -he concedes even to them a measure of justification. He was bound to do -so, else they would have been outside the pale of dramatic sympathy; -and also the culpability of Coriolanus would have been obscured. So -there is something to be said even for their policy and management. -They are quite right in fearing the results of Coriolanus’ elevation to -the chief place in Rome:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Sicinius.</i><span class="ws5">On the sudden,</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">I warrant him consul.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i><span class="ws5">Then our office may</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">During his power, go sleep.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 237.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_533">[Pg 533]</span> -Their admonitions to the electors are such as the organisers of a party -are not only entitled but bound to give to a constituency:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Could you not have told him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As you were lesson’d, when he had no power,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But was a petty servant to the state,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He was your enemy, ever spake against</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your liberties and the charters that you bear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ the body of the weal: and now, arriving</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A place of potency and sway o’ the state,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If he should still malignantly remain</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fast foe to the plebeii, your voices might</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be curses to yourselves.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 180.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">These forebodings of what is likely to occur are -not only thoroughly justifiable but obvious.</p> - -<p>Then, though their abandonment of the methods of violence and -acceptance of a trial are discounted partly by the perils of open -force, partly by their confidence in and manipulation of a verdict to -their minds, their willingness to substitute the penalty of banishment -for the extreme sentence of death, must stand, as we have seen, to the -credit, if not of their placability, at least of their moderation and -prudence. Moreover, if we could disregard the dangers of war, their -“platform,” as we should now call it, seems approved by its success. -One cannot but sympathise with the satisfaction of Sicinius at the -results of Marcius’ expulsion:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">We hear not of him, neither need we fear him:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His remedies are tame i’ the present peace</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And quietness of the people, which before</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were in wild hurry. Here do we make his friends</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Blush that the world goes well, who rather had,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Though they themselves did suffer by ’t, behold</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dissentious numbers pestering streets, than see</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our tradesmen singing in their shops and going</div> - <div class="verse indent0">About their functions friendly.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 1.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And when the citizens pass with their greetings, -the tribune has a right to say to Menenius: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_534">[Pg 534]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">This is a happier and more comely time</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than when these fellows ran about the streets,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Crying confusion.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 27.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Even Menenius has to give a modified and grudging -approval of the new position of things:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">All’s well: and might have been much better, if</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He could have temporised.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 16.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And when the disastrous news comes in, after the -first outburst of incredulous wrath and terrified impatience, the two -colleagues bear themselves well enough. There is shrewdness and good -sense in Sicinius’ words to the citizens:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Go, masters, get you home: be not dismay’d;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">These are a side that would be glad to have</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This true which they so seem to fear. Go home,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And show no sign of fear.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 149.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When this very natural and probable conjecture -proves false, they both rise to the occasion, or seek to do so, the -cross-grained Sicinius somewhat more effectually than the glib-tongued -Brutus, and show a certain dignity and justness of feeling. Their -remonstrance with and petition to Menenius, if we grant the patriotism -on the one side as well as the other, are not without their cogency:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Nay, pray, be patient: if you refuse your aid</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In this so never-needed help, yet do not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upbraid’s with our distress.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 33.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When Menenius objects that his mission will be -futile, Sicinius’ reply comes near being noble:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Yet your good will</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Must have that thanks from Rome, after the measure</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As you intended well.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 45).</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When Menenius, returning from his fruitless -mission, describes Coriolanus in his unapproachable, inexorable power, -the tribune’s rejoinder is again the true one: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_535">[Pg 535]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Menenius.</i> He wants nothing of a god but eternity and -a heaven to throne in.</p> -<p><i>Sicinius.</i> Yes, mercy, if you report him truly.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iv. 24.)</p> -</div> - -<p>Yet these various traits so little interfere with the general -impression, that perhaps many tolerably careful readers who are -familiar with the play, hardly take them into account. In the total -effect they both seem to us pitiful busybodies, whose ill-earned -influence only leads to disaster; or, as Menenius describes them:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">A pair of tribunes that have rack’d for Rome,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To make coals cheap.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 16.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="space-below1">The first feature we notice in them is their -pride, a vice which they blame in Coriolanus, and with which their -own is expressly contrasted. For his is the haughty, unbending -self-consciousness that is based on the sense of indwelling force, and -has a shrinking disgust for praise. Theirs, on the other hand, revels -in popularity, and their power depends entirely on the support which -that popularity secures them. As Menenius tells them:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>You are ambitious for poor knaves’ caps and legs.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 76.)</p> - -<p>Your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous -single: your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 39.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">They are really consequential and overweening -rather than proud. And magnifying their importance and their office, -they are apt to take too seriously any trifle in which they are -concerned, and to become irritated at any mishap to their own -convenience. Having no standard but themselves by which to measure the -proportion of things, they are fussy over minor points and lose their -tempers over petty troubles. This is the point of Menenius’ banter. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_536">[Pg 536]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between -an orange-wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy -of three pence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a -matter between party and party, if you chanced to be pinched with the -colic, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all -patience; and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy -bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in -their cause is, calling both the parties knaves.</p> - -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 77.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is, they are disposed to treat a molehill -as a mountain, but if they are galled, to break out in indiscriminate and -unjustified abuse. Menenius gives it them home in respect of these foibles:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>You talk of pride: O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes -of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O -that you could!</p> -<p><i>Brutus.</i> What then, sir?</p> -<p><i>Menenius.</i> Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, -proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in Rome.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 41.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is the utterance of an enemy; nevertheless it -is confirmed by their behaviour, and is moreover a prophecy of their -action in regard to Marcius. In the first place their pride has been -insulted by his:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sicinius.</i> Was ever man so proud as is this Marcius?</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Brutus.</i> He has no equal.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sicinius.</i> When we were chosen tribunes of the people,—</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Brutus.</i> Mark’d you his lip and eyes?</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sicinius.</i><span class="ws8">Nay, but his taunts.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Brutus.</i> Being moved, he will not spare to gird the gods—</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sicinius.</i> Bemock the modest moon.</div> - <div class="verse indent36">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 256.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">A man who gibes at the gods, the moon, and above -all the tribunes, is evidently a profane and irreverent fellow who -should be got rid of. And perhaps it is anxiety not only for the public -good but for their own authority that makes them dread their office -may “go sleep,” during his consulship. At any rate the disrespect with -which they have been treated is one main motive of their indignation: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_537">[Pg 537]</span> -“<i>Our</i> Aediles smote, <i>ourselves</i> resisted!” they exclaim in -pardonable horror (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> i. 319).</p> - -<p>Then the means they take to ruin Coriolanus, though not without its -astuteness, and similar enough to what is practised every day in -parliamentary tactics, is altogether base: it is the device of mean, -paltry, inferior natures. They speculate on the defect of their enemy’s -greatness, they reckon on his heroic vehemence and forcefulness to -destroy him, and lay plans to betray his nobility to a passion that -will embroil him with the people. It is as easy, says Sicinius, to -drive him to provocation “as to set dogs on sheep” (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> i. -273). But easy though it is, they are careful to give minute directions -to their gang. Sicinius tells them that any condition proposed to him,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">Would have gall’d his surly nature,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which easily endures not article</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tying him to aught; so putting him to rage,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You should have ta’en the advantage of his choler</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And pass’d him unelected.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 203.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Then, after engineering the disavowal of the -elected candidate, Brutus calculates</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If, as his nature is, he fall in rage</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With their refusal, both observe and answer</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The vantage of his anger.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 266.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And here are his final instructions for the -behaviour of the people at the trial:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Put him to choler straight: he hath been used</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ever to conquer, and to have his worth</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of contradiction: being once chafed, he cannot</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be rein’d again to temperance; then he speaks</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What’s in his heart; and that is there which looks</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To break his neck.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> iii. 25.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>The suggestion for these proceedings comes, as we saw, from Plutarch; -but in this one respect his tribunes are by no means so wily. They -contrive a dilemma in which Coriolanus will have either to humble or to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_538">[Pg 538]</span> -compromise himself; but though they would prefer the latter -alternative, they do nothing to bring it about.</p> - -<p>Yet with all their activity in the matter, they are meanly desirous of -evading responsibility and saving their own skins.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i><span class="ws7">Lay</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">A fault on us, your tribunes; that we labour’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No impediment between, but that you must</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cast your election on him.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Sicinius.</i><span class="ws3">Say you chose him</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">More after our commandment than as guided</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By your own true affections, and that your minds,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pre-occupied with what you rather must do</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than what you should, made you against the grain</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To voice him consul: lay the fault on us.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> iii. 234.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And parallel with this is the crowning vulgarity -of their triumph:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Go, see him out at gates, and follow him,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As he hath follow’d you, with all despite;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Give him deserved vexation.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> iii. 138.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is perhaps the supreme instance of their -headstrong, testy and inconsiderate violence, for, as we shall see, -it embitters the wavering Marcius and drives him to alliance with the -foe. But the same violence has abundantly appeared before. The rest -do all in their power to appease the tumult and procure a hearing for -Sicinius, he uses the opportunity to add fuel to the fire and deserves -Menenius’ rebuke:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">This is the way to kindle, not to quench.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 197.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When Brutus proceeds in the same way, Cominius -interrupts:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">That is the way to lay the city flat;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To bring the roof to the foundation,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And bury all, which yet distinctly ranges,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In heaps and piles of ruin.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 204.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_539">[Pg 539]</span> -Menenius has to admonish them:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With modest warrant.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 274.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And again:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">One word more, one word.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The harm of unscann’d swiftness, will too late</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tie leaden pounds to’s heels.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 311.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">They do yield at last, but clearly the game they -were playing in unreflecting impatience was most hazardous for the -populace itself. Indeed, even when they have accepted more moderate -counsels, the expulsion of Coriolanus seems an act not only of -ingratitude but of recklessness. Their low cunning has attained an -end, good perhaps in itself for the party they represent, but even for -that party of insignificant advantage in view of the wider issues. -Volumnia’s taunt is very much to the point:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent19">Hadst thou foxship</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To banish him that struck more blows for Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than thou hast spoken words?</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> ii. 18.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">For after all, the pressing need in that period -of constant war, as Plutarch and Shakespeare imagine it, was defence -of the whole state, the plebs as well as the senate, against the -foreign enemy, and the danger of an invasion was one of the ordinary -probabilities of the case. Most men who had any sense of proportion -would, in the circumstances, pause before they banished the sword and -soldiership of Rome. No doubt the tribunes were to be excused for not -foreseeing the renegacy of Coriolanus; when it is announced as a fact -Menenius can hardly credit it.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">This is unlikely:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He and Aufidius can no more atone</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than violentest contrariety.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 71.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_540">[Pg 540]</span> -It is less excusable that they should neglect the danger of a new -attack from the Volsces, for though Cominius, as we saw, makes a -similar error, he does so when Marcius is still on the side of the -Romans. Menenius’ exclamation, when the invasion actually takes -place and when the news of it is first brought to Rome, describes a -situation, the possibility or probability of which every public man -should have anticipated.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">’Tis Aufidius,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who, hearing of our Marcius’ banishment,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thrusts forth his horns again into the world:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which were inshell’d when Marcius stood for Rome,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And durst not once peep out.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 42.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This, though of course an understatement, for in -point of fact Aufidius did not wait for Marcius’ banishment, is at -any rate the least that was to be expected. But the tribunes, with a -sanguine and criminal shortsightedness that suggests a distinguished -pair of British politicians in our own day, refuse to admit as -conceivable a fact the likelihood of which the circumstances of the -case and recent experience avouch.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Brutus.</i><span class="ws2">It cannot be</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The Volsces dare break with us.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Menenius.</i><span class="ws5">Cannot be!</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">We have record that very well it can,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And three examples of the like have been</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Within my age.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 47.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Besides, the Volscians were not the only jealous -neighbours the young republic had to guard herself against.</p> - -<p>But their reception of the unwelcome tidings is a new instance of the -ignoble strain in the tribunes’ nature. The first effect they have on -Brutus is to enrage him against the informant: “Go see this rumourer -whipp’d”; and Sicinius seconds the humane direction, but improves on it -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_541">[Pg 541]</span> -that the public may be duly cautioned against telling unpalatable -truths: “Go whip him ’fore the people’s eyes.” Menenius may well -remonstrate:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">Reason with the fellow,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Before you punish him, where he heard this,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lest you shall chance to whip your information,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And beat the messenger who bids beware</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of what is to be dreaded.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 51.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is not merely an illustration of their -habitual touchiness and irritability at whatever thwarts them. -Once more we think of the words of the messenger in <i>Antony and -Cleopatra</i> when he fears to report the worst: “The nature of bad -news infects the teller”; and of Antony’s reply: “When it concerns the -fool and coward.” There is beyond doubt more than a spice of folly -and cowardice in the self-important quidnuncs, with their purblind -temerity and shifty meanness. We are very glad to hear in the end of -Brutus being mishandled by the mob and very sorry that Sicinius goes -free: but at least he has had his dose of alarm and mortification, -and in the future his influence will be gone; which is well. Yet they -are not bad men. They are very like the majority of the citizens of -Great and Greater Britain, and no inconsiderable portion of those -who govern the Empire and its members. They have a certain amount of -principle, shrewdness, and, if the test of misfortune comes, even of -proper feeling. They would have made very worthy aldermen of a small -municipality. But measured against the greatness of Rome, or even of -Coriolanus, they are as gnats to the lion.</p> - -<p>The picture, then, of the people and its elect is not flattering if -we follow it in detail, but a similar examination is hardly more -favourable to the nobles. Of course their behaviour is to a certain -extent accounted for by the peculiarity of their position. Hitherto, -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_542">[Pg 542]</span> -since the expulsion of the kings, the “honoured number” have had -it all their own way in the state, and Shakespeare imputes no blame -to their management, unless it be their excessive arrogance towards -the populace they rule and employ. But now bad times have made that -populace seditious, and they have discovered that, rightly or wrongly, -they must give it a share of the power. Their pride, their traditions, -the consciousness of their faculty for government, pull them one -way, the necessities of the case pull them another. A dominant caste -is placed in a false position when it is forced to capitulate to -assailants for whom it feels an unreasonable contempt and a reasonable -mistrust. When we consider the difficulties of the situation and the -broad results, the patricians, as we saw, come off respectably enough, -and we must give them credit for circumspection, adaptability, and -civic cohesion. But in detail their attitude betrays the uncertainty -and weakness that cannot but ensue in a man or a body of men when -there is a conflict between conviction and expediency, and an attempt -to obey them both. Their scorn of the plebeians, followed by the -very brief effort for their champion and very prompt acquiescence in -his expatriation, makes an unpleasant impression; and this is more -noticeable in the drama than in the biography. Plutarch repeatedly -states that they disagree among themselves, many of them sympathising -with the popular demands and only the younger men favouring the harsh -and reactionary views of Coriolanus.<a id="FNanchor_260" href="#Footnote_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> -This distinction has left no trace in the play except in the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_543">[Pg 543]</span> -stage-direction which represents him as departing into exile escorted -to the gates by his friends, his relatives, and “the young nobility -of Rome”: but otherwise Shakespeare makes no use of it. Coriolanus -is mouthpiece for the ideals not of heedless youth but of all the -aristocracy, though most of them may be more politic than he and not so -frank. Nevertheless his presuppositions are theirs, and therefore they -seem temporisers and poltroons beside their outspoken advocate. Indeed, -through Menenius, they admit they have been to blame:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent15">We loved him; but, like beasts</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who did hoot him out o’ the city.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 121.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Nor do they act very vigorously when destruction threatens Rome. They -do not indeed seek to separate their cause from that of the whole -community and make terms with their former friend for their own class. -Beyond some naturally bitter gibes at the “clusters” and their leaders, -not unaccompanied for the rest by bitter outbursts against themselves, -there is no trace of the dissensions with the people which Plutarch -describes. But they have no thought of organising any attempt at -resistance. True, there are circumstances in Shakespeare that account -for this supineness as it is not explained in his authority. It is -partly due to the feeling that they are in the wrong, which Shakespeare -in a much greater degree than Plutarch attributes to them. As their own -words show:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cominius</i>.<span class="ws3">For his best friends, if they</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Should say, “Be good to Rome,” they charged him even</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As those should do that had deserved his hate,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And therein show’d like enemies.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Menenius.</i><span class="ws5">’Tis true:</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">If he were putting to my house the brand</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That should consume it, I have not the face</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To say, “Beseech you, cease.”</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 111.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_544">[Pg 544]</span> -And again:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If he could burn us all into one coal,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We have deserved it.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 137.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Partly, too, there has been no time for preparation, for, as we -have seen, the invasion is a bolt from the blue, and after it has -first struck there is no convenient truce of thirty days before its -recurrence. Entreaty, says Sicinius, might help</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">More than the instant army we can make;</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 37.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and it is the opinion of all.</p> - -<p>Partly, too, the inertness of Rome is a tribute to the greatness of -the adversary, which is enhanced beyond the hyperboles of Plutarch, and -with which to inspire them the Volscians are irresistible.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He is their god: he leads them like a thing</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Made by some other deity than nature</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That shapes men better: and they follow him,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Against us brats, with no less confidence</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or butchers killing flies.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 90.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But contrition, unpreparedness, despair of -success hardly excuse the palsy of incompetence into which this proud -aristocracy has now fallen. It does not of course sink so low as in -Plutarch. Of the first of the repeated deputations he narrates:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The ambassadours that were sent, were Martius -familliar friendes and acquaintaunce, who looked at the least for a -curteous welcome of him, as of their familliar friende and kynesman. -Howbeit they founde nothing lesse. For at their comming, they were -brought through the campe, to the place where he was set in his -chayer of state, with a marvelous and unspeakable majestie, having -the chiefest men of the Volsces about him: so he commaunded them to -declare openly the cause of their comming. Which they delivered in the -most humble and lowly wordes they possiblie could devise, and with all -modest countenaunce and behaviour agreeable for the same. When they had -done their message; for the injurie they had done him, he aunswered -them very hottely and in great choller.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_545">[Pg 545]</span> -This is evidently the foundation of the interviews with Cominius and -Menenius respectively, and it is worth while noting the points of difference.</p> - -<p>In the first place single individuals are substituted for an -unspecified number. Just in the same way the final deputation -consists of “Virgilia, Volumnia, leading young Marcius, Valeria, -and Attendants,” without any of “all the other Romaine Ladies” that -accompany them in Plutarch. In the last case it is the members and the -friend of Coriolanus’ family, in the previous cases it is his sworn -comrade Cominius and his idolatrous admirer Menenius who make the -appeal: and this at once gives their intercessions more of a personal -and less of a public character. One result of this with which we are -not now concerned, is that the rigour of Coriolanus’ first two answers -is considerably heightened; but at present it is more important to -observe that the impression of a formal embassy is avoided. Cominius -and Menenius strike us less as delegates from the Roman state, than -as private Romans who may suppose that their persuasions will have -special influence with their friend. There is nothing to indicate that -Cominius was official envoy of the republic, and we know that Menenius -went without any authorisation, in compliance with the request made -by Sicinius and Brutus in the street. Shakespeare’s senate is spared -the ignominy of the recurring supplications to which Plutarch’s senate -condescends. If these are not altogether suppressed, the references to -them are very faint and vague.</p> - -<p>And also the suppliants bear themselves more worthily. Menenius is far -from employing “the most humble and lowly wordes” that could possibly -be devised or “the modest countenaunce and behaviour agreeable for the -same.” Cominius indeed tells how at the close of the interview, we may -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_546">[Pg 546]</span> -suppose as a last resort, he “kneeled before” Coriolanus, but there was -no more loss of dignity in his doing so, consul and general though he -had been, than there was afterwards in Volumnia’s doing the same; and -his words as he repeats them do not show any lack of self-respect.</p> - -<p>Still the inactivity, the helplessness, the want of nerve in the Roman -nobles in the hour of need are somewhat pitiful. It was the time to -justify their higher position by higher patriotism, resourcefulness -and courage. They do not make the slightest effort to do so. Remorse -for their desertion of Coriolanus need not have lamed their energies, -since now they would be confronting him not for themselves but for the -state. Even their “instant armies” might do something if commanded -and inspired by devoted captains. At the worst they could lead their -fellow-citizens to an heroic death. One cannot help feeling that if a -Coriolanus, or anyone with a tithe of his spirit, had been among them, -things would have been very different. But while they retain much of -the old caste pride, they have lost much of the old caste efficiency.</p> - -<p>Thus Shakespeare, when he comes to the concrete, views with some -severity both the popular and the senatorial party. They show -themselves virulent and acrimonious in their relations with each -other, yet inconsequent even in their virulence and acrimony: then, -after having respectively enforced and permitted the banishment of -their chief defender, they are ready to succumb to him without a blow -when, it has well been said, he returns not even as an <i>émigré</i> -using foreign aid to restore the privileges of his own order and the -old <i>régime</i>, but as a barbarian bringing the national foe to -exterminate the state and all its members. And we cannot help asking: -Is this an adequate representation of the young republic that was ere -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_547">[Pg 547]</span> -long to become the mistress of the world? We must look steadily at -those general aspects of the story which we have noticed above, as well -as at the doings of the persons and parties amidst which Coriolanus is -set, if we would get the total effect of the play. Then it produces -something of the feeling which prompted Heine’s description of the -ancient Romans:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">They were not great men, but through their -position they were greater than the other children of earth, for they -stood on Rome. Immediately they came down from the Seven Hills, they -were small.... As the Greek is great through the idea of Art, the -Hebrew through the idea of one most holy God; so the Romans are great -through the idea of their eternal Rome; great, wheresoever they have -fought, written or builded in the inspiration of this idea. The greater -Rome grew, the more this idea dilated: the individual lost himself in -it: the great men who remain eminent are borne up by this idea, and it -makes the littleness of the little men more pronounced.<a id="FNanchor_261" href="#Footnote_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a></p> - -<p class="no-indent">The Idea of Rome! It is the triumph of that -which yields the promise and evidence of better things that the final -situation contains. The titanic intolerance of Coriolanus after being -expelled by fear and hatred from within, has threatened destruction -from without, and the threat has been averted. The presumptuous -intolerance of the demagogues, after imperilling the state, has been -discredited by its results, and their authority is destroyed. The Idea -of Rome in the patriotism of Volumnia has led to her self-conquest -and the conquest of her son, and is acclaimed by all alike. Thus we -have borne in upon us a feeling of the majesty and omnipotence of the -Eternal City, and we understand how it not only inspires and informs -the units that compose it, but stands out aloft and apart from its -faulty representatives as a kind of mortal deity that overrules their -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_548">[Pg 548]</span> -doings to its own ends, and against which their cavilling and -opposition are vain. What Menenius says to the rioters applies to all -dissentients:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">You may as well</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Against the Roman state, whose course will on</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of more strong link asunder than can ever</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Appear in your impediment.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 69.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>This, then, is the background against which are grouped with more or -less prominence, as their importance requires, Coriolanus’ family, his -associates, his rival, round the central figure of the hero himself.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_549">[Pg 549]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IV<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE KINSFOLK AND FRIENDS<br /> OF CORIOLANUS</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>Of the subordinate persons, by far the most imposing and influential -is Volumnia, the great-hearted mother, the patrician lady, the Roman -matron. The passion of maternity, whether interpreted as maternal love -or as maternal pride, penetrates her nature to the core, not, however, -to melt but to harden it. In her son’s existence she at first seems -literally wrapped up, and she implies that devotion to him rather than -to her dead husband has kept her from forming new ties:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Thou hast never in thy life</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Show’d thy dear mother any courtesy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Has cluck’d thee to the wars and safely home,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Loaden with honour.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 160.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Marcius is thus the only son of his mother and -she a widow; but these reminiscences show how strictly the tenderness, -and still more the indulgence, usual in such circumstances, have been -banished from that home. In Plutarch the boy seeks a military career -from his irresistible natural bent:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Martius being more inclined to the warres, then -any young gentleman of his time: beganne from his Childehood to -geve him self to handle weapons, and daylie dyd exercise him selfe -therein.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_550">[Pg 550]</span> -In Shakespeare the direction and stimulus are much more directly -attributed to his mother, and it is she who first despatches him to the -field. This she herself expressly states in her admonition to Virgilia:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><i>Volumnia.</i> I pray you, daughter, sing; or express yourself in -a more comfortable sort: if my son were my husband, I should freelier -rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour, than in the embracements -of his bed where he would show most love. When yet he was but -tender-bodied and the only son of my womb, when youth with comeliness -plucked all gaze his way, when for a day of kings’ entreaties a -mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding, I, considering -how honour would become such a person, that it was no better than -picture-like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not stir, was -pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a -cruel war I sent him; from whence he returned, his brows bound with -oak. I tell thee, daughter, I sprang not more in joy at first hearing -he was a man-child than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.</p> - -<p><i>Virgilia.</i> But had he died in the business, madam; how then?</p> - -<p><i>Volumnia.</i> Then his good report -should have been my son; I therein would have found issue. Hear me -profess sincerely: had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none -less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had rather had eleven die -nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.</p> - -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 1.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">He is the object of her love because he is to -be the ideal which she adores. She trains him to all the excellence -she understands, and would have him a captain of Rome’s armies and a -force in the state. She has to the full the sentiment of <i>noblesse -oblige</i>, and is inspired by the same feeling which in Plutarch moves -Marcius to bid the patricians show that</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="no-indent">they dyd not so muche passe the people in -power and riches as they dyd exceede them in true nobilitie and -valliantnes.</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">She is full of the virtues and prejudices of her -class, and, with the self-consciousness of an aristocrat, looks from -the plebs only for the obedience and approval due to their betters. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_551">[Pg 551]</span> -They are quite unqualified for self-government or for the criticism of -those above them. In comparison with the noble Coriolanus, the people, -whom she calls the rabble, are “cats” (<span class="smcap">iv.</span> -ii. 34). Naturally she is tenacious of the supremacy of her order, and -would fain see it make good its threatened privileges. She remonstrates -with her son for his contumacy:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">I am in this,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And you will rather show our general louts</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How you can frown than spend a fawn upon ’em,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For the inheritance of their loves and safeguard</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of what that want might ruin.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 64.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Her dream has been that Marcius shall be consul -to establish once more the power of the patricians. When he enters in -his great triumph from Corioli, she exclaims in expectation of that result:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent23">I have lived</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To see inherited my very wishes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the buildings of my fancy: only</div> - <div class="verse indent0">There’s one thing wanting, which I doubt not but</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our Rome will cast upon thee.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 214.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Yet she has one feeling that outweighs both her -maternal and her aristocratic instincts, and that is devotion to her -country. This is the first and last and noblest thing in her. It is -the basis and mainspring of the training of her son; she wishes him to -serve the fatherland. It is the basis and mainspring of her patrician -partisanship; she honestly believes that the nobles alone are fit to -steer Rome to safety and honour. And to it she is willing to sacrifice -the two other grand interests of her life. When the call comes she is -ready for Rome, with its mechanics and tribunes as well as its senators -and patricians, to persuade her son to the step that will certainly -imperil and probably destroy him. It is public spirit of no ordinary -kind that makes such a nature disregard the dearest ties of family and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_552">[Pg 552]</span> -caste, and all personal motives of love and vengeance, to intercede for -the city as a whole. But she puts her country first, and her words show -that she never even questions the sacredness of its claim:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Thou know’st, great son,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The end of war’s uncertain, but this certain,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose repetition will be dogg’d with curses;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose chronicle thus writ: “The man was noble,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But with his last attempt he wiped it out:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Destroy’d his country, and his name remains</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To the ensuing age abhorr’d.”</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 140.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">She feels, as well she may, that she is basing -her plea on eternal right, and is willing to stake her success on the -irresistible truth of her argument.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">Say my request’s unjust,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And spurn me back: but if it be not so,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou art not honest.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 164.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Such a woman is made to be the mother of heroes. It is no wonder that -she has bred that colossal <i>Übermensch</i>, her son. But she has the -defects of her qualities. Her devotion is narrow in its intensity, -and in normal circumstances spares little recognition or tolerance -for those beyond its pale. Her contempt for the plebeians is open and -unrestrained. She was wont, says Coriolanus,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">To call them woollen vassals, things created</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In congregations, to yawn, be still and wonder,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When one but of my ordinance stood up</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To speak of peace or war.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 9.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Even when trying to pacify her son, she cannot -bridle her own resentment. When he recklessly cries of his opponents: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_553">[Pg 553]</span> -“Let them hang!” she instinctively approves: “Ay, and burn -too.”<a id="FNanchor_262" href="#Footnote_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a> -The energy of her love of glory has nothing sentimental about it, -but often becomes savage and sanguinary. She gloats over her robust -imaginings of the fight:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Methinks I hear hither your husband’s drum,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">See him pluck Aufidius down by the hair,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As children from a bear, the Volsces shunning him:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">“Come on, you cowards! you were got in fear,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Though you were born in Rome”: his bloody brow</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With his mail’d hand then wiping, forth he goes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like to a harvest-man that’s tasked to mow</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or all or lose his hire.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Virgilia.</i> His bloody brow! O Jupiter, no blood!</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Volumnia.</i> Away, you fool! it more becomes a man</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than gilt his trophy: the breasts of Hecuba,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When she did suckle Hector, look’d not lovelier</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At Grecian sword, contemning.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 32.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And when she has heard the actual news, she -triumphantly exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O, he is wounded; I thank the gods for’t.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 133.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">As Kreyssig points out, even great-hearted -mothers, proud of their warrior sons, do not often like to dwell -so realistically on havoc and slaughter and blood. But tenderness -and humanity are alien to her nature. When Valeria narrates -how young Marcius tore in pieces the butterfly, she interrupts -with obvious satisfaction: “One on’s father’s moods” -(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 72). At her hearth Coriolanus would -not be taught much kindliness for Volscians or plebeians or any other of -the lower animals. Indeed, her own relations with her son depend on his -reverence rather than on his fondness. In the two collisions of their -wills he resists all her entreaties and endearments, but yields in a -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_554">[Pg 554]</span> -moment to her anger and indignation. She beseeches him to submit to the -judgment of the people—all in vain till she loses patience:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">At thy choice, then:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To beg of thee, it is my more dishonour</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than thou of them. Come all to ruin: let</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at death</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 123.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">At this his efforts to propitiate her are almost amusing:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">Pray, be content:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mother, I am going to the market-place:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Chide me no more. I’ll mountebank their loves,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of all the trades in Rome. Look, I am going.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 130.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Similarly, at the end, all argument and complaint, -all pressure on the affections of Coriolanus are without avail, till -she turns upon him with a violence for which, as in the previous case, -Shakespeare found no authority in Plutarch:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Come, let us go:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This fellow had a Volscian to his mother;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His wife is in Corioli, and his child</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I am hush’d until our city be afire,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And then I’ll speak a little.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 177.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And the great warrior and rebel cannot bear her rebuke.</p> - -<p>These are instances both of the degree and the manner in which -Volumnia’s forceful character influences her son. Indeed it is easy to -see that for good and evil he is what she has made him. She is entitled -to say:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent15">Thou art my warrior:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I holp to frame thee.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 62.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And though elsewhere she puts it,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck’dst from me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But owe thy pride thyself;</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> ii. 129.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_555">[Pg 555]</span> -the impartial onlooker cannot make the distinction. He is bone of her -bone and blood of her blood; and all her master impulses reappear in -him, though not so happily commingled or in such beneficent proportion. -The joint operation is different and in some respects opposite, but -there is hardly a feature in him that cannot be traced to its origin in -Volumnia, whether by heredity or education. This is just what we might -expect. Modern conjecture points to the mother rather than the father -as the source of will-power and character in the offspring; and in the -up-bringing of the boy Volumnia has had it all her own way. Plutarch, -as we saw, in his simple fashion, notices this as a disadvantage: and -though we may be sure that Plutarch’s insinuation of laxity could never -be breathed against Shakespeare’s Volumnia, still she could not give -her son more width and flexibility than her own narrow and rigid ideals -enjoined. Moreover, her limitations when transferred to the larger -sphere of his public efforts, would cramp and congest his powers, and -displace his interests.</p> - -<p>Nor was there any other agency to divide the young man’s allegiance to -his mother or to counteract or temper her authority. Generally the most -powerful rivals of home influence are the companionship of friends, -and the love that founds a new home in marriage. But both of these -are either wanting in Coriolanus’ life, or serve only to deepen the -impressions made on him by Volumnia.</p> - -<p>If, for example, we consider the relation of friendship, we cannot -but notice that Shakespeare gives him no intimate of his own years. A -French tragedian would infallibly have placed by his side the figure of -a confidant. Shakespeare was dispensed from the necessity by the freer -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_556">[Pg 556]</span> -usage of the Elizabethan stage and was at liberty to follow out the -hints which he found in Plutarch. Marcius was</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="no-indent">churlishe, uncivill, and altogether unfit for any -mans conversation.... They could not be acquainted with him, as one -cittizen useth to be with another in the cittie. His behaviour was so -unpleasaunt to them, by reason of a certaine insolent and sterne manner -he had, which bicause it was to lordly, was disliked.</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">So in Shakespeare he has no personal relations -with any of the younger generation, even their resort to him as their -congenial leader surviving, as has already been pointed out, only in -the desiccated phrase of a stage direction; and his only associates -are old or elderly men like Titus Lartius, the Consul Cominius, and -Menenius Agrippa. What sort of antidote could they supply against -his mother’s intolerant virtue? As Shakespeare conceives them, they -respectively follow in Marcius’ wake, or are powerless to change and -check his course, or even urge him forward.</p> - -<p>Take Lartius, whom Shakespeare has drawn in a few rapid and vigorous -strokes. He is old and stiff, but ready if need be to lean on one -crutch and fight with the other, prompt to take a sporting wager, and, -when he wins, eager to remit the stake in his admiration for the noble -youngster, to whom with all his years he grants priority, whom on his -supposed death he laments as an irreplaceable jewel, whom he hails as -the living force that dwells within the trappings of their armament. -Clearly from this cheery old fighting man, with his reverential -enthusiasm for Marcius’ fighting powers in voice, looks and blows, we -need not expect much correction of Marcius’ restiveness at the civic curb.</p> - -<p>Cominius would seem more likely to prove a fitting Mentor, for to his -love and esteem he adds discretion. In Shakespeare, though he “has -years upon him,” he is the avowed friend and comrade-in-arms of the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_557">[Pg 557]</span> -younger man; the brave and prudent general, “neither foolish in his -stands, nor cowardly in retire”; who, perhaps from seniority, holds the -position to which the other might aspire, but who confidently appeals -to his promise of service. For their mutual affection is untouched by -jealousy, and Cominius not only extols his heroism in the camp, but is -his warmest advocate in the Senate. He resents the citizens’ fickleness -and the tribunes’ trickery at the election as unworthy of Rome as well -as insulting to her hero, and is indignant at the attempt to arrest -Coriolanus; but he abhors civil brawls, and, just as in the field so in -the city, he bows to “odds beyond arithmetic,” and considers that</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Manhood is call’d foolery, when it stands</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Against a falling fabric.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 246.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So he counsels Marcius’ withdrawal from the -hostile mob, and afterwards dispassionately states the three courses -open to him, with some hesitation sanctioning the method of compromise -if the hothead can bring himself to give it fair play. When his doubts -prove true, he interposes first with a remonstrance to his friend, and -then with a solemn appeal to the people; and though in neither case is -he allowed to finish, his efforts do not flag. He wishes to accompany -the exile for a month, and maintain a correspondence with him and have -everything in readiness for his recall. And if, when the invasion takes -place, he rails at those who have brought about the calamity, that -does not hinder him from his vain but zealous attempt at intercession. -Altogether a sagacious, loyal, generous, but somewhat ineffective -character, who wins our respect rather for what he essays than for what -he achieves; for he brings nothing to a successful issue. With the best -will in the world, which he has, and with more freedom from class -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_558">[Pg 558]</span> -prejudice than can in point of fact be attributed to him, such an one -could do little to tame or bridle his friend.</p> - -<p>There remains Menenius, with his much more strongly marked character, -and with the fuller opportunities that a close intimacy could procure. -Were Marcius and he of the same flesh and blood, their affection could -hardly be greater. When debating with himself whether to try his -mediation, this thought encourages the old man: “He call’d me father” -(<span class="allsmcap">v.</span> i. 3). He tells the Volscian sentinel:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>You shall perceive that a Jack guardant cannot office me -from my son Coriolanus.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 67.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And when they meet, he hails him:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>The glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy particular -prosperity, and love thee no worse than thy old father Menenius does! - O, my son, my son!</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 72.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Nor are these statements idle brags; they are -borne out by Coriolanus’ own words when he dismisses him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">For I loved thee,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Take this along; I writ it for thy sake, [<i>Gives a letter</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And would have sent it.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 95.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And again he tells Aufidius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">This last old man,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whom with a crack’d heart I have sent to Rome,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Loved me above the measure of a father;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nay, godded me, indeed.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 8.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But the last expression may give an explanation -both of the young man’s condescension to fondness and of the -unprofitableness of Menenius’ influence. He is too much dazzled by the -glories of his splendid adoptive son. His enthusiasm knows no bounds. -No lover is more enraptured at receiving a <i>billet doux</i> from his -mistress, than is the old man when the youth on whom he dotes, deigns -to write to him. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_559">[Pg 559]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>A letter for me! it gives me an estate of seven years’ health; in -which time I will make a lip at the physician; the most sovereign -prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of -no better report than a horse-drench.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 125.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">He may occasionally interpose a mild hint of -remonstrance against Marcius’ vehemence, but it is solely on the ground -of expediency, not at all on the ground of principle; and on the whole -he belongs to that not very edifying class of devotees who can say of a -friend,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Whate’er he does seems well done to me.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Of which he himself is not altogether unaware. He -tells the Volscian sentinel:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">I tell thee, fellow,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy general is my lover: I have been</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The book of his good acts, whence men have read</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His fame unparallel’d, haply amplified:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For I have ever verified my friends,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of whom he’s chief, with all the size that verity</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Would without lapsing suffer: nay, sometimes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have tumbled past the throw; and in his praise</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have almost stamp’d the leasing.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 13.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>This attitude, then, accounts for Coriolanus’ predilection for the old -senator, and also reduces the value of the relation as an educative -agency. Youthful recklessness will meet with no inconvenient thwarting, -<i>i.e.</i> with no salutary rebuke, from such an adorer. But of course -in the blindest friendship there is always the unconscious influence -and criticism of the admirer’s own walk and conversation. And at first -sight it might seem that this influence and criticism Menenius was well -fitted to supply. He, too, like Volumnia, puts Rome before all other -considerations, as is shown not only by his undertaking the mission to -the Volscian camp, but by his action all through the drama. He is ever -willing to play the part of mediator. Now we find him soothing -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_560">[Pg 560]</span> -the people, now we find him soothing Coriolanus. When the banishment -is an accomplished fact, he endeavours to mitigate the outbursts of -Volumnia; and Sicinius bears witness:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O, he is grown most kind of late.</div> - <div class="verse indent19">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 11.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">During all the tumult of the election and the -<i>émeute</i> he keeps his head and his heart; for he is inspired by -the right civic feeling that there must be no civil war.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Proceed by process;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lest parties, as he is beloved, break out,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And sack great Rome with Romans.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 314.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And with this patriotism, partly as its result, he -combines singular moderation, at least in principle and thought, if not -in language. He is always ready to commend and accept compromises. He -says to the tribune,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Be that you seem, truly your country’s friend,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And temperately proceed to what you would</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thus violently redress.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 218.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">On the other hand, when Marcius draws he -sees the mistake and interposes: “Down with that sword” -(<span class="smcap">iii.</span> i. 226); and only when the tribunes persist -in their attack does he himself resort to force, which, however, he -is glad to abandon at the first opportunity. And this moderation -comes the more easily to him that he has a real kindliness even for -the plebeians. It is assuredly no small compliment that at the very -height of the popular violence this patrician and senator, the known -and avowed friend of Coriolanus, should be chosen by the tribunes -themselves as their own delegate:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent15">Noble Menenius,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be you then as the people’s officer.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 329.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This confirms the testimony given him by the First Citizen in the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_561">[Pg 561]</span> -opening scene: “He’s one honest enough” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 54); and the -Second Citizen describes him as</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Worthy Menenius Agrippa; one that hath always loved the people.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 52.)</p> -</div> -<p class="no-indent">He has indeed a sympathy with them, that shows -itself in the russet and kersey of his speech. The haughty Coriolanus -despises the household words of the common folk, and cites them only -to ridicule them, but Menenius’ phrases of their own accord run to the -homespun and proverbial. He addresses the obtrusive citizen: “You, the -great toe of this assembly” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 159). -The dissension at Rome is a rent that “must be patch’d with cloth of -any colour” (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> i. 252). Coriolanus’ rough -words he excuses on the ground that he is</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">ill school’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In bolted language: meal and bran together</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He throws without distinction.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> i. 321.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He figures the relentlessness of the returned -exile as “yon coign o’ the Capitol, yon corner-stone” (<span -class="allsmcap">v.</span> iv. 1), and is at no loss for illustrations -of the change that has come over the outcast:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>There is a differency between a grub and a butterfly, yet -your butterfly was a grub.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iv. 11.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And with similes for Coriolanus’ present temper he -positively overflows:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>He no more remembers his mother now than an eight-year-old horse. -The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iv. 16.)</p> -<p>There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iv. 29.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">All his thoughts clothe themselves in the pat, -familiar image, and this is no doubt a great help to him in persuading -his auditors, for which he has an undeniable talent. His famous -apologue, besides being a masterpiece in its kind, worthy of La -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_562">[Pg 562]</span> -Fontaine at his best, completely answers its immediate purpose; and in -the later scene he is able to lull the storm that Coriolanus and the -tribunes have raised, and obtain from the infuriated demagogues what -are in some sort favourable terms. But he is assisted in this by his -genuine joviality and <i>bonhomie</i>. He is one of those people who -permit themselves a little indulgence that we hardly blame, for it is -only one side of their pervasive good nature. Menenius is in truth -something of a belly-god and wine-bibber. When he hears news of Marcius -he promptly decides how to celebrate the occasion:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I will make my very house reel to-night;</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 121.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and he has already confessed that he is known to be</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="no-indent">one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop -of allaying Tiber in’t; ... one that converses more with the buttock of -the night than with the forehead of the morning.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 52 and 56.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is almost comic to hear him consoling -Volumnia on her son’s banishment when she moves off to lament “in -anger, Juno-like,” with an invitation: “You’ll sup with me?” (<span -class="smcap">iv.</span> ii. 49). And wholly comic is his explanation -of Cominius’ rebuff by Coriolanus, an explanation suggested no doubt by -subjective considerations:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He was not taken well; he had not dined:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The veins unfill’d, our blood is cold, and then</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We pout upon the morning, are unapt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">These pipes and these conveyances of the blood</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than in our priest-like fasts; therefore I’ll watch him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Till he be dieted to my request,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And then I’ll set upon him.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 50.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But the worthy <i>bon-vivant</i> is thoroughly in -earnest, and in the crisis of his altercation with the sentinel harks -back to this key of the position, as he supposes it to be:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Has he dined, canst thou tell? for I would not speak with -him till after dinner.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 36.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_563">[Pg 563]</span> -All these, however, are very human weaknesses, that sort well with -the geniality of the man, and, just because they are very human -weaknesses, might have a wholesome rather than a prejudicial effect on -the overstrained tensity of Marcius. So far then, despite the excessive -and uncritical in Menenius’ love, his patriotism, his moderation, his -popular bent, commended by his persuasive tongue and companionable -ways, might tend to supplement the defects and transcend the -limitations of Volumnia’s training. But Menenius has other qualities -akin to, or associated with, those that we have discussed, which would -have a more questionable and not less decisive influence. He admits -that he is</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 53.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">That is, he neglects the wise counsel, “Hear -the other side,” and jumps to his conclusion at once. This is quite -in keeping with the partiality that makes him magnify the virtues of -his friends, and with his assumption that, since his own intercession -has failed, that of Volumnia can have no effect. He prejudges, in -other words he is prejudiced. We do not have any instance of this in -his acts, but we have many in his unconsidered sayings, that, as he -imagines, are to have no consequence beyond the moment.</p> - -<p>Then he goes on to confess that he has the reputation of being “hasty -and tinder-like upon too trivial motion” (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> i. 55), which -means that he loses patience and fires up without adequate ground; and -of this too we have ample evidence. He is wonderfully forbearing and -longsuffering if matters of any moment are at stake, but if he has -gained his point, or if there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose, -he rails and mocks in Coriolanus’ own peculiar vein. Thus, when he has -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_564">[Pg 564]</span> -convinced the mob, he feels free to make the ringleader his butt. -When the tribunes profess to “know him,” that is, to understand his -character, he overwhelms them with peppery banter. When the news of -Coriolanus’ invasion arrives, in unrestrained indignation he upbraids -the people and their blind guides with their imbecility. But it will -be observed that no harm ever comes by any of these ebullitions. They -have no after-effects. If something has to be done, no one could be -more sagacious and conciliatory than Menenius. Dr. Johnson said of him, -perhaps more in exercise of his right as a sturdy old Tory to twit -those in high places, than in deliberate appreciation of the facts: -“Shakespeare wanted a buffoon and he went to the Senate House for -that with which the Senate House would certainly have supplied him.” -Similarly, in the play Brutus is rash enough to answer him back:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber -for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 90.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">But Menenius deserves neither taunt. It was no -parliamentary wag or social lampooner whom the Senate entrusted with -the task of addressing the rioters, or who persuaded the triumphant -tribunes to a compromise. The charges nevertheless have a foundation in -so far that Menenius, partly in jest, partly in irritation, gives his -tongue rein unless he sees reason to curb it, and allows his choleric -impulses full expression. These random ejaculations are taken at their -proper value by himself and others. As he says:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 58.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">He is obviously one of those estimable and -deservedly popular people whose deliberate views are just and -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_565">[Pg 565]</span> -penetrating, and who are gifted with the power of commending them, -but who are none the less liked because they do not always think it -necessary to have themselves in hand, but let themselves go on the full -career of their own half-jocular, half-serious likes and dislikes, when -for the moment they are free from graver responsibilities.</p> - -<p>Now this of itself was no very good example for Coriolanus. He -adopts Menenius’ headlong frankness, but without Menenius’ tacit -presupposition of good-humoured hyperbole. He utters what he thinks but -he does not spend his malice in his breath. His friend would do nothing -to teach him restraint and reserve, but would rather, if he influenced -him at all, influence him to surcharge his invectives and double-barb -his flouts.</p> - -<p>But not only so. These instinctive likes and dislikes, which the old -patrician could not but feel but which he never allowed to interfere -with his practical policy, were the guiding principles of his less -cautious friend. It must be admitted that there is no abuse of the -citizens or their officers to which Coriolanus gives vent, but can be -paralleled with something as strong from the mouth of Menenius. This -worthy senior who hath always loved the people, turns from the tribunes -with the insult:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>God-den to your worships: more of your conversation would -infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 103.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">In this mood he asks them in regard to Coriolanus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Your multiplying spawn how can he flatter—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That’s thousand to one good one?</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 82.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He has to the full the aristocratic loathing for -the uncleanly populace:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">You are they</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That made the air unwholesome, when you cast</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your stinking greasy caps in hooting at</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Coriolanus’ exile.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vi. 129.)</div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You are the musty chaff: and you are smelt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Above the moon.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i. 31.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_566">[Pg 566]</span> -These are his authentic innate prejudices that he controls and -represses by the help of his reason and his patriotism, when the -emergency requires: but they are there; and he would be no more careful -to restrain them in his familiar circle than a squatter at his club -feels called upon to restrain his opinions about the Labour Party, -though he may be very proud of Australia, and a very kindly master, -and though he would neither publish them in an election address nor -perhaps justify them in his serious moments to himself. And this, we -may suppose, was the sort of conversation Marcius would hear as a lad -from his old friend. There would be little in it to modify the pride -and prejudice he derived from his mother.</p> - -<p>And lastly, coming to the other possible corrective, would his wife -be likely to soften the asperities of temper and opinion that were -his by nature and by second nature? At first we might say Yes. She -takes comparatively little pleasure in the brilliance of his career -and is more concerned for his life than for his glory. When Volumnia -recalls how she sent him forth as a lad to win honour, Virgilia’s heart -pictures his possible death, and how would that have been compensated? -For she loves in the first place not the hero but the husband, and her -love makes her timorous. She has none of her mother-in-law’s assurance -that his prowess is without match and beyond comparison. When “wondrous -things” are told of him how characteristic are their respective comments:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Virgilia.</i> The gods grant them true!</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Volumnia.</i> True! pow, wow.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 154.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">How differently they feel about his contest with -his rival:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Virgilia.</i> Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Volumnia.</i> He’ll beat Aufidius’ head below his knee</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And tread upon his neck.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 48.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_567">[Pg 567]</span> -So she shrinks from the thoughts of blood and wounds over which -Volumnia gloats, and trembles at the dangers of the campaign. Devoured -by suspense, she is in no mood to meet the ordinary social claims -on her rank and sex, but shuts herself up within her four walls, -and wears out the time over household tasks. Her seclusion, and the -attempts to withdraw her from it, must not be misunderstood. They -have sometimes been taken as pictures of domestic narrow-mindedness -on the one hand, and callous frivolity on the other. But frivolity is -unthinkable in Volumnia; we may be sure she would never advise or do -anything unbefitting the Roman matron. And it is quite opposed to the -impression Valeria produces; we may be sure she would never suggest it. -In Plutarch’s story it is she who proposes and urges the deputation of -women to Coriolanus, and though Shakespeare, to suit his own purpose, -transfers by implication the credit of this to Volumnia, Plutarch’s -statement was enough to prevent him from transforming the true -authoress of the idea into the fashionable gadabout that some critics -have alleged her to be. On the contrary, with him she calls forth the -most purely poetical passage in the whole play, and she does so by the -vestal dignity and severity of her character. Coriolanus greets her in -the camp:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The noble sister of Publicola,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That’s curdied by the frost of purest snow</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And hangs on Dian’s temple: dear Valeria!</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 65.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The woman to whom this splendid compliment is paid -by one who never speaks otherwise than he thinks, is assuredly no more -obnoxious than Volumnia herself to the charge of levity. They are both -great high-hearted Roman ladies who do not let their private or public -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_568">[Pg 568]</span> -solicitudes interfere with their customary social routine, and Valeria -visits her friend to cheer her in her anxiety, as she would have her, -in turn, visit and comfort their common acquaintance. But Virgilia is -cast in a gentler mould; though neither is she lacking in character, -spirit and magnanimity. Of course she is not an aggressive woman, and -she feels that the home is the place for her. She speaks seldom, and -when she does her words are few. It is typical that she greets her -husband when he returns a victor with no articulate welcome, but with -her more eloquent tears. He addresses her in half humorous, half tender -reproach:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent15">My gracious silence, hail!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wouldst thou have laugh’d had I come coffin’d home,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That weep’st to see me triumph?</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> i. 192.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">A wonderful touch that comes from a wonderful -insight. It may well be asked, as it has been asked, how Shakespeare -<i>knew</i> that Virgilia’s heart was too full for words.</p> - -<p>But with all this, she shows abundant resolution, readiness and -patriotism. She is adamant to the commands of her imperious -mother-in-law and the entreaties of her insistent friend when they urge -her to break her self-imposed retirement. She, too, has her rebuke for -the insolent tribunes. Above all, she, too, plays her part in turning -Coriolanus from his revenge. In that scene, after her wont, she does -not say much, less than two lines in all, that serve to contain the -simple greeting and the quick answer to her husband’s warning that he -no longer sees things as he did:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The sorrow that delivers us thus changed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Makes you think so.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 39.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But who shall say that</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">those dove’s eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which can make gods forsworn,</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 27.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_569">[Pg 569]</span> -did not shed their influence on his mother’s demand, and help him -to break his vindictive vow. Remember, too, that the sacrifice this -implied would mean more to her than to Volumnia, for though she -likewise can dedicate what she holds dearest on the altar of her -country, her affections, her home, Marcius as an individual, bulk more -largely in her life.</p> - -<p>And if she loves him, we see how fondly he loves her. More than once or -twice he alludes to his happiness as bridegroom, husband, and father. -When she appears before him, his ejaculations and the tenderness of his -appeal,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Best of my flesh,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forgive my tyranny,</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 42.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">speak volumes in a mouth like his for the keenness -of his affection. To express the bliss that he feels in the salute of -reunion, this hero-lover can find analogues only in his banishment and -his vengeance:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">O, a kiss</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I carried from thee, dear: and my true lip</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hath virgin’d it e’er since.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 44.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>This woman, then, with her love and sweetness, that strike such -responsive chords in the rude breast of her lord, is apparently well -fitted to smooth the harshness of his dealings with his fellow-men: and -this would seem all the more likely since her gentleness is not of that -flabby kind that cannot hold or bind, but is strengthened by firmness -of will and largeness of feeling.</p> - -<p>All the same, she exerts no influence whatever before the very end on -her husband’s public life or even on his general character, because -she has no interest in or aptitude for concerns of his busy, practical -career. She has chosen her own orbit in her home, and her love has no -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_570">[Pg 570]</span> -desire to step beyond. We have seen that, according to Plutarch, -Volumnia was entrusted with the selection of her son’s wife. This -Shakespeare omits, perhaps as incongruous with the spontaneousness of -the relation between his wedded lovers, but it may have left a trace -in the position he assigns to Virgilia. The mother-in-law has and -claims the leading place; and, as Kreyssig remarks, with a woman of -the daughter-in-law’s steady inflexibility, collisions more proper for -comedy than for tragedy must inevitably ensue, unless there were a -strict delimitation of spheres. Volumnia continues to be prompter and -guide in all matters political. She has all the outward precedence. -On his return from Corioli, her son gives her the prior reverence and -salutation, and, only as it were by her permission, turns to his wife. -When the deputation of ladies appears in his presence before Rome, -he seems for a moment to be surprised out of his decorum, and his -first words of passionate greeting are for Virgilia; but he presently -recovers, and, with a certain accent of reproof, turns on himself:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">You gods! I prate,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the most noble mother of the world</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Leave unsaluted: sink, my knee, i’ the earth:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of thy deep duty more impression show</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than that of common sons.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 48.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Evidently, his love for his wife, intense though -it be, is a thing apart, a sanctuary of his most inmost feeling, and is -quite out of relation with the affairs of the jostling world. In them -his mother has supreme sway, and Virgilia’s unobtrusive graciousness -does not exercise even an indirect influence on his ingrained -principles and prejudices. She is no makeweight against the potent -authority of Volumnia.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_571">[Pg 571]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER V<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE GREATNESS OF CORIOLANUS. AUFIDIUS</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>In the atmosphere then of Volumnia’s predominance we are to imagine -young Marcius growing up from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood -to youth, environed by all the most inspiring and most exclusive -traditions of an old Roman family of the bluest blood. After the -expulsion of the Tarquins, we must suppose that there was no more -distinguished <i>gens</i> than his. The tribune Brutus gives the long -bead-roll of his ancestry, the glories of which, as has already been -shown, are even exaggerated in his statement through Shakespeare’s -having made a little mistake in regard to Plutarch’s account, and -having included representatives of later among those of former -generations. But Volumnia is not the mother to let him rest on the -achievements of his predecessors; he must make them his own by -equalling or excelling them. He begins as a boy, and already in his -maiden fight his exploits rouse admiration. Plutarch describes the -circumstance:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The first time he went to the warres, being but a -strippling, was when Tarquine surnamed the prowde ... dyd come to Rome -with all the ayde of the Latines, and many other people of Italie.... -In this battell, wherein were many hotte and sharpe encounters of -either partie, Martius valliantly fought in the sight of the Dictator; -and a Romaine souldier being throwen to the ground even hard by -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_572">[Pg 572]</span> -him, Martius straight bestrid him, and slue the enemie with -his owne handes that had overthrowen the Romaine. Hereupon, -after the battell was wonne, the Dictator dyd not forget so -noble an acte, and therefore first of all he crowned Martius -with a garland of oken boughs.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This furnishes Cominius with the prologue to his -eulogy:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent25">At sixteen years,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Beyond the mark of others: our then dictator,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When with his Amazonian chin he drove</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The bristled lips before him: he bestrid</div> - <div class="verse indent0">An o’erpress’d Roman and i’ the consul’s view</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Slew three opposers: Tarquin’s self he met</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And struck him on his knee: in that day’s feats,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When he might act the woman in the scene,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He proved the best man i’ the field, and for his meed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Was brow-bound with the oak.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> ii. 91.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But it will be noticed that in Shakespeare’s -version Marcius’ prowess is enhanced: not one opponent but three fall -before him; he confronts the arch-enemy himself, and has the best of -it. Similarly his derring-do at Corioli is raised to the superhuman. -Plutarch’s statement, as he feels, makes demands, but it is moderate -compared with Shakespeare’s.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Martius being in the throng emong the enemies, -thrust him selfe into the gates of the cittie, and entred the same -emong them that fled, without that any one of them durst at the first -turne their face upon him, or els offer to slaye him. But he looking -about him and seeing he was entred the cittie with very fewe men -to helpe him, and perceyving he was envirouned by his enemies that -gathered round about to set apon him: dyd things then as it is written, -wonderfull and incredible: ... By this meanes, Lartius that was gotten -out, had some leysure to bring the Romaines with more safetie into the -cittie.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Here he is accompanied at least by a few, among -whom, it is implied, the valiant Lartius is one, and Lartius having -extricated himself, comes back with reinforcements to help him. But in -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_573">[Pg 573]</span> -Shakespeare he is from beginning to end without assistance, and his -boast, “Alone I did it,” is the literal truth. The first soldier says, -discreetly passing over the disobedience of the men:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Following the fliers at the very heels,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With them he enters; who, upon the sudden,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Clapp’d to their gates: he is himself alone</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To answer all the city.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iv. 49.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And Cominius reports:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Alone he enter’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The mortal gate of the city, which he painted</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With shunless destiny; aidless came off.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> ii. 114.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But he is not merely, though he is conspicuously, -a soldier. He is also a general who once and again gives proof of -his strategic skill. Nor do his qualifications stop here. He has the -forethought and insight of a statesman, at any rate in matters of -foreign and military policy. He has anticipated the attack of the -Volsces with which the play begins, as we learn from the remark of the -First Senator:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Marcius, ’tis true that you have lately told us;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The Volsces are in arms.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 231.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So after their disaster at Corioli, he estimates -the situation aright, when even Cominius is mistaken, and conjectures -that the enemy is only waiting an opportunity for renewing the war:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So then the Volsces stand but as at first,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon’s again.</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 4.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And this, as we presently learn, is quite correct.</p> - -<p>Even in political statesmanship, the department in which he is supposed -to be specially to seek, he has a sagacity and penetration that show -him the centre of the problem. This does not necessarily mean that -his solution is the true one; and still less does it mean that he is -wise in proclaiming his views when and where he does so: but the views -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_574">[Pg 574]</span> -themselves are certainly deep-reaching and acute, and such as would win -approval from some of the greatest builders of states, the Richelieus, -the Fredericks, the Bismarcks. He is quite right in denying that his -invectives against the policy of concession are due to “choler”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Choler!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By Jove, ’twould be my mind!</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 84.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His objections are in truth no outbreaks of -momentary exasperation, though that may have added pungency to their -expression, but mature and sober convictions, that have a worth and -weight of their own. As we might expect; for Shakespeare derives almost -all of them from Plutarch; and Plutarch, who had thought about these -things, puts several of his favourite ideas in Coriolanus’ mouth, even -while condemning Coriolanus’ bigotry and harshness; and while, for -dramatic fitness, suppressing the qualifications and provisos that he -himself thought essential.</p> - -<p>To Marcius the root of the matter is to be found in the fact that the -Roman Republic is not a democracy but an aristocracy, and in this -respect he contrasts it with some of the Greek communities.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Therefore sayed he, they that gave counsell, and -persuaded that the corne should be geven out to the common people -<i>gratis</i>, as they used to doe in citties of Graece, where -the people had more absolute power; dyd but only nourishe their -disobedience, which would breake out in the ende, to the utter ruine -and overthrowe of the whole state.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare’s transcription is, but for the -interpolated interruption, fairly close:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The corn o’ the storehouse gratis, as ’twas used</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sometime in Greece,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Menenius.</i> Well, well, no more of that.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> Though there the people had more absolute power,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I say, they nourished disobedience, fed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The ruin of the state.</div> - <div class="verse indent35">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 113.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_575">[Pg 575]</span> -That being so, he regards it as a kind of treason to the constitution -to pay court to the plebs, or let it have a share of the government.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">He sayed they nourished against them selves, the -naughty seede and cockle of insolencie and sedition, which had bene -sowed and scattered abroade emongest the people, whom they should have -cut of, if they had bene wise, and have prevented their greatnes.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This is only a little more explicit in Shakespeare:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent25">I say again,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In soothing them, we nourish ’gainst our senate</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which we ourselves have plough’d for, sow’d, and scatter’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By mingling them with us, the honour’d number,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which they have given to beggars.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 68.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">For, and this is one of Shakespeare’s additions, -if they have any share at all, being the majority they will swamp the -votes of the superior order.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">You are plebeians,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If they be senators; and they are no less,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When, both your voices blended, the great’st taste</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Most palates theirs.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 101.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And their magistrate, strong in the support he -receives, dictates his ignorant will to the experience and wisdom of -the senate.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">[They should] not to their owne destruction to -have suffered the people, to stablishe a magistrate for them selves, -of so great power and authoritie, as that man had, to whom they had -graunted it. Who was also to be feared, bicause he obtained what he -would, and dyd nothing but what he listed, neither passed for any -obedience to the Consuls, but lived in all libertie acknowledging no -superieur to commaund him, saving the only heades and authors of their -faction, whom he called his magistrates: ... [The Tribuneshippe] most -manifestly is the embasing of the Consulshippe.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This arraignment of the populace and its elect as -mischief-makers whenever they try to rule and interfere with competent -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_576">[Pg 576]</span> -authority, goes to Shakespeare’s heart, and he makes the passage much -more nervous and vivid; but the idea is the same.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O good but most unwise patricians! why,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You grave but reckless senators, have you thus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Given Hydra here to choose an officer,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That with his peremptory “shall,” being but</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The horn and noise of the monster’s, wants not spirit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And make your channel his.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 91.)</div> - </div> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent19">By Jove himself!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It makes the consuls base.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 107.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The result must be division and altercation with -all the resulting anarchy.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The state [of the cittie] as it standeth, is not -now as it was wont to be, but becommeth dismembred in two factions, -which mainteines allwayes civill dissention and discorde betwene us, -and will never suffer us againe to be united into one bodie.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Here, too, with some variation in the wording -Shakespeare keeps close to the sense.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">My soul aches</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To know, when two authorities are up,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Neither supreme, how soon confusion</div> - <div class="verse indent0">May enter ’twixt the gap of both, and take</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The one by the other.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 108.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The grand mistake was the distribution of corn, -for, as Plutarch puts it very clearly:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">They will not thincke it is done in recompense of -their service past, sithence they know well enough they have so ofte -refused to goe to the warres, when they were commaunded: neither for -their mutinies when they went with us, whereby they have rebelled and -forsaken their countrie: neither for their accusations which their -flatterers have preferred unto them, and they have receyved, and made -good against the Senate: but they will rather judge we geve and graunt -them this, as abasing our selves, and standing in feare of them, and -glad to flatter them every waye.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_577">[Pg 577]</span> -These weighty arguments, which Coriolanus is quite entitled to call -his “reasons,” for reasons they are, are substantially reproduced in -Shakespeare:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent23">They know the corn</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Was not our recompense, resting well assured</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They ne’er did service for’t: being press’d to the war,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Even when the navel of the state was touched,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They would not thread the gates. This kind of service</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Did not deserve corn gratis. Being i’ the war,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Most valour, spoke not for them: the accusation</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which they have often made against the senate,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All cause unborn, could never be the motive</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of our so frank donation. Well, what then?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How shall this bisson multitude digest</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The senate’s courtesy? Let deeds express</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What’s like to be their words: “We did request it;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We are the greater poll, and in true fear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They gave us our demands.” Thus we debase</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The nature of our seats and make the rabble</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Call our cares fears: which will in time</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Break ope the locks o’ the senate, and bring in</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The crows to peck the eagles.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 120.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">That seems convincing enough. Their refusal -of military service shows that the citizens merited no leniency -from the state, the charge that the patricians were hoarding stores -was universally known to be baseless, so the malcontents can only -infer that the senate gave the largesse in fright, and find in this -encouragement for their usurpations. And in the meantime, while -doubt exists as to the real centre of authority, the effect must -be vacillation in the policy of the republic and neglect of the -most urgent measures. This was a consideration that came home to -Shakespeare, who never forgot the weakness and misery of his own -country when it was torn by civil strife, so he calls urgent attention -to it at the close. This is the only portion of the speech that is -quite original so far as the thought is concerned. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_578">[Pg 578]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">This double worship,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where one part does disdain with cause, the other</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Insult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cannot conclude but by the yea and no</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of general ignorance,—it must omit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Real necessities, and give way the while</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To unstable slightness: purpose so barr’d, it follows,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nothing is done to purpose.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 142.)</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">Your dishonour</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mangles true judgment and bereaves the state</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of that integrity which should become’t,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not having the power to do the good it would,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For the ill which doth control’t.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 157.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">All this contains a measure of truth that is valid -in all times; from the point of view of the aristocratic republican -it is absolutely true. Coriolanus’ diagnosis of the case is minutely -correct and every one of his prognostics is fulfilled. The plebs -does proceed with its encroachments; the power of Rome is strangely -weakened as the immediate result of the struggle; the foreign policy is -short-sighted and unwise; the pressing need of defence is overlooked. -Of course the answer is that his uncompromising suggestions might -have led to a worse revolution, and that in the long run a great deal -more was gained than lost: but the important point to note is that -his views are certainly arguable, that much could be said for them, -that at the very least they assert one aspect of the real facts, and -are as far as possible from being the mere tirades of a brainless -aristocratic swashbuckler. As already pointed out they give just the -sort of estimate that some of the wisest statesmen who have ever lived -would have formed of the situation. It is quite conceivable that his -proposals if carried through with vigour and ruthlessness would have -settled things satisfactorily at least for the moment. So besides -his pre-eminence in war and generalship and his foresight in foreign -affairs, we may claim for Coriolanus not indeed political tact but -political grip.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_579">[Pg 579]</span> -And to these qualifications of physical prowess and intellectual force -he adds others of a more distinctively moral description.</p> - -<p>Among these the most obvious is his extreme truthfulness. He has no -idea of equivocation or even of reticence. Menenius says of him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">His heart’s his mouth:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 257.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Nor is his veracity confined to words; he is -honest and genuine to the core of his nature and will not stoop to a -gesture that belies his feeling:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">I will not do’</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And by my body’s action teach my mind</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A most inherent baseness.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> ii. 120.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And following on this is his innate loyalty. -Nothing revolts him like a breach of that obligation, and in the crises -of his career it is the accusation of treason that rouses him to a -frenzy. Thus, after his imprudent speech, Sicinius cries:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As traitors do.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 162.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And Coriolanus bursts out:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou wretch, despite o’erwhelm thee.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is the same word that scatters his prudent -resolutions in the trial scene:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Sicinius.</i><span class="ws3">You are a traitor to the people.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> How! traitor!</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Menenius.</i><span class="ws5">Nay, temperately; your promise.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> The fires i’ the lowest hell fold-in the people!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Call me their traitor! Thou injurious tribune!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In thy hands clutch’d as many millions, in</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say</div> - <div class="verse indent0">“Thou liest” unto thee with a voice as free</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As I do pray the gods.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> iii. 66.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_580">[Pg 580]</span> -And similarly when Aufidius calls him traitor, he repeats the -word “Traitor! how now!” in a wrath that is for the moment almost -speechless, till it overflows in a torrent of reckless abuse. It is -part of the tragic irony of the play that with his ingrained horror of -such an offence, he should yet in very truth let himself be hurried -into treason against his country. For all his instincts are on the -side of faith and troth and obligation. When he wishes to express his -hostility to Aufidius he can think of no better comparison than this:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ll fight with none but thee; for I do hate thee</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Worse than a promise-breaker.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> viii. 1.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">One result of this is that he has a simple -reverence for all prescriptive ties, which suffuses his stern nature -with a certain tinge of kindly humanity. His piety to his mother comes -of course from Plutarch; but his tenderness for his wife and delight -in his son, lightly but strongly marked, are Shakespearean traits. So -is the intimacy with Menenius, which greatly removes the impression of -“churlishness” and “solitariness” that Plutarch’s portrait conveys; and -his self-effacement in obedience to the powers that be and to the word -that he has pledged, appears in his willing acceptance of a subordinate -rank. The tribunes wonder that</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">His insolence can brook to be commanded</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Under Cominius;</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 266.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and attribute it to base calculation in keeping -with their own natures; but to this view Shakespeare’s story gives no -support. The real explanation is simpler: it is his former promise and -he is constant (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 241).</p> - -<p>Even more pleasant is the famous instance of his respect for the claims -of hospitality. This episode is obtained from Plutarch, but in several -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_581">[Pg 581]</span> -respects it is completely altered. After describing how Coriolanus -declined all special reward, the original narrative proceeds:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">“Only this grace (sayed he) I crave, and beseeche -you to graunt me. Among the Volsces there is an olde friende and hoste -of mine, an honest wealthie man and now a prisoner, who living before -in great wealthe in his owne countrie, liveth now a poore prisoner in -the handes of his enemies: and yet notwithstanding all this his miserie -and misfortune, it would do me great pleasure if I could save him -from this one daunger: to keepe him from being solde as a slave.” The -souldiers hearing Martius wordes, made a marvelous great showte among -them.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Compare this with the scene in Shakespeare:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> The gods begin to mock me. I, that now</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Refused most princely gifts, am bound to beg</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of my lord general.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cominius.</i> Take’t; ’tis yours. What is’t?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> I sometime lay here in Corioli</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At a poor man’s house: he used me kindly:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He cried to me; I saw him prisoner;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But then Aufidius was within my view,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And wrath o’erwhelmed my pity: I request you</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To give my poor host freedom.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cominius.</i> O well begg’d!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were he the butcher of my son, he should</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be free as is the wind. Deliver him, Titus.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Lartius.</i> Marcius, his name?</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> By Jupiter! forgot.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I am weary; yea, my memory is tired.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have we no wine here?</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 79.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The postponement of pity to wrath is a new -characteristic detail which shows how these gentler impulses in -Coriolanus must yield to his ruling passions. On the other hand his -host is transformed from a rich to a poor man, and thus his humanity -acquires a wider range, and we see how it can extend beyond his own -class if only there is a personal claim on it. Above all there is the -new illuminating touch of the lapse of memory. Sometimes this has been -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_582">[Pg 582]</span> -taken as betraying the indifference of the aristocrat for an inferior -whose name he does not think it worth while to remember. Surely not. -Coriolanus is experiencing the collapse that follows his superhuman -exertions, the exhaustion of body and mind when one cannot think of the -most familiar words: but he rallies his strength for a last effort, -and is just able to intercede for his humble guest-friend ere he -succumbs.</p> - -<p>And this last passage brings before us another of his magnanimous -qualities. He has refused most princely gifts. No one can accuse him of -covetousness. His patrician bigotry aims at power and leadership, not -at material perquisites. After the double battle, won almost entirely -by his instrumentality, when Cominius offers him the tenth, he makes -the generous answer:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">I thank you, general;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But cannot make my heart consent to take</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A bribe to pay my sword: I do refuse it.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 36.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He deserves the encomium of the consul:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Our spoils he kick’d at,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And look’d upon things precious as they were</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The common muck of the world: he covets less</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than misery itself would give; rewards</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His deeds with doing them, and is content</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To spend the time to end it.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> ii. 128.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He “rewards his deeds with doing them,” without -thought of ulterior profit or of anything beyond the worthy occupation -of the moment. This leads to the next point, his cult of honour; and -it must be confessed that he conceives it in a very lofty and noble -way. His view of it reminds one of Arthur’s saying in Tennyson’s -<i>Idylls</i>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">For the deed’s sake my knighthood do the deed,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not to be noised of.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Honour, of course, is not the highest possible -principle. It implies a certain quest for recognition, and in so far -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_583">[Pg 583]</span> -has a personal and even selfish aspect. But in the right kind of honour -the recognition is sought, in the first place, for real excellences -that, in the second place, are determined only by competent judges, in -some cases only by the individual’s own conscience. In both respects -Coriolanus bears examination.</p> - -<p>Of course, when there is any pursuit of honour at all, it is almost -impossible to exclude some admixture of rivalry and emulation: for -the desire of recognition, if only by oneself, carries with it the -desire of being recognised as having achieved the very best: and -rivalry and emulation must to that extent have an egoistic direction. -Coriolanus has these feelings to the full, and often gives them extreme -expression in regard to his one possible competitor Aufidius. He calls -him “the man of my soul’s hate” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> -v. 11); and tells him: “I have ever followed thee with hate” -(<span class="smcap">iv.</span> v. 104). Aufidius has equal animosity -against Coriolanus. His correspondent, to give an idea of his rival’s -unpopularity with his townsmen, writes of</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent13">Marcius your old enemy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who is of Rome worse hated than of you.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 12.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Lartius reports how the Volscian has said,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">That of all things upon the earth, he hated</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your person most.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Marcius, hearing he is at Antium, sums up for both:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I wish I had a cause to seek him there,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To oppose his hatred fully.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 19.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">As Tullus sums up on his side:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">We hate alike;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor</div> - <div class="verse indent0">More than thy fame and envy.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> viii. 2.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Still, it is precisely in his relations with -Aufidius, and in comparison with Aufidius’ passions and purposes, that -Coriolanus’ finer conception of honour becomes apparent. The true -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_584">[Pg 584]</span> -warrior values these encounters for themselves, and has a rapture in -them second to none that he knows. He exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Were half to half the world by the ears, and he</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon my party, I’ld revolt, to make</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Only my wars with him: he is a lion</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That I am proud to hunt.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 237·)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This has sometimes been regarded as a hint in -advance of Marcius’ readiness to desert the national cause. But -that seems to be taking <i>au pied de la lettre</i> one of those -conversational audacities that much discreeter men than he often permit -themselves. It is rather an exaggerated expression of his delight in -the contest, and an ironical comment on his later abandonment of it for -the sake of revenge. At any rate even if the worst interpretation be -put on it, it suggests a more respectable motive for desertion than the -parallel outburst of Aufidius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I would I were a Roman; for I cannot,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Being a Volsce, be that I am.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> x. 4.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">For Coriolanus would change sides in order to -confront the severest test, Aufidius would do so in order not to be -of the defeated party. There is a meanness and bitterness in Tullus -from which his rival is wholly free. All through, Marcius shows -the generosity of conscious heroism. He is very handsome in his -acknowledgment of Aufidius’ merits:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent19">They have a leader,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to’t.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I sin in envying his nobility,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And were I anything but what I am,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I would wish me only he.</div> - <div class="verse indent19">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 232.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In their trials of valour he takes no advantage, -but rather makes a point, first of facing his foe though he himself is -wearied and wounded, and, second, of rousing him to put forth all his -strength.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The blood I drop is rather physical</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than dangerous to me: to Aufidius thus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I will appear, and fight.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> v. 19.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_585">[Pg 585]</span> -Then, when they meet, he dissembles his hurts, and cries:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">Within these three hours, Tullus,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Alone I fought in your Corioli walls,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And made what work I pleased: <i>’tis not my blood</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wherein thou seest me mask’d: for thy revenge</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wrench up thy power to the highest.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> viii. 7.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">They are pledged to slay each other or be slain. -Tullus has told the senators:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If we and Caius Marcius chance to meet,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">’Tis sworn between us we shall ever strike</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Till one can do no more.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 34.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And to this he adds boasts of his own, which -Coriolanus omits. Nevertheless, though his professions are the loudest, -Aufidius makes good neither pledge nor boasts, but lets himself be -driven back despite the assistance of his friends. And then, just as he -would rather be a successful Roman than a defeated Volsce, his thoughts -turn to getting the better of his victor by whatever means; he cannot -take his beating in a sportsmanlike way, and thus shows finally how -hollow is the honour after which he strives. Whether intentionally or -not, Lartius’ report gives a true description of his feeling:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">He would pawn his fortunes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To hopeless restitution, so he might</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be call’d your vanquisher.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 15.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">“Be call’d”; as though the vain ascription of -superiority were all that he desired. But in truth he has already made -the same confession in so many words, with the more damaging admission -that he now feels as though he no longer cared by what foul play such -ascription is won.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">By the elements,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If e’er again I meet him beard to beard,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He’s mine, or I am his: mine emulation</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hath not that honour in’t it had: for where</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I thought to crush him in an equal force,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">True sword to sword, I’ll potch at him some way</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or wrath or craft may get him.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> x. 10.) - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_586">[Pg 586]</span></div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent21">My valour’s poison’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With only suffering stain by him: for him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall fly out of itself: nor sleep, nor sanctuary,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Being naked, sick, nor fane nor Capitol,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifice,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their rotten privilege and custom ’gainst</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My hate to Marcius: where I find him, were it</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At home, upon my brother’s guard, even there,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Against the hospitable canon, would I</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wash my fierce hand in’s blood.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> x. 17.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">On this passage Coleridge comments:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">I have such deep faith in Shakespeare’s -heart-lore, that I take for granted that this is in nature, and not -as a mere anomaly; although I cannot in myself discover any germ -of possible feeling, which could wax and unfold itself into such a -sentiment as this.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">It seems strange that Coleridge should say this, -for it is proved by not a few examples that baffled emulation may -issue in an envy which knows few restraints. Perhaps it was the avowal -rather than the temper which struck him as verging on the unnatural or -abnormal. Those who deliberately adopt such an attitude do not usually -admit it to themselves, still less to their victims, and least of all -to a third party. Which may admonish us that Aufidius’ threats were -not deliberate, but mere frantic outcries wrung from him in rage and -mortification. Yet they spring from authentic impulses in his heart, -and though they may for a time be hidden by his superficial chivalry, -they will spread and thrive if the conditions favour their growth. When -they have overrun his nature and choked the wholesome grain, he will -not point to them so openly and will name them by other names. But they -are the same and differ from what they were only as the thorny thicket -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_587">[Pg 587]</span> -differs from its parent seeds. They have always been there and it -is well that we should be aware of their presence from the first. -Coleridge concludes his criticism: “However I perceive that in this -speech is meant to be contained a prevention of the shock at the -after-change in Aufidius’ character.” In short, it is not to be taken -as his definite programme from which he inconsistently deviates when -the opportunity is offered at Antium for carrying it out, but as the -involuntary presentiment, which the revealing power of anguish awakens -in his soul, of the crimes he is capable of committing for his master -passion, a presentiment that in the end is realised almost to the letter.</p> - -<p>And in the fulfilment, as in the anticipation, he has an eye merely -to the results, and seeks only to obtain the first place for himself -whether he deserve it or no. When Coriolanus consents to the peace with -Rome, Aufidius soliloquises:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy honour</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At difference in thee: out of that I’ll work</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Myself a former fortune.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 200.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is the adventitious superiority and the -judgment by appearances that always appeal to him. Listen to the -interchange of confidences between his accomplice and himself:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Third Conspirator.</i> The people will remain uncertain whilst</div> - <div class="verse indent0">’Twixt you there’s difference; but the fall of either</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Makes the survivor heir of all.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Aufidius.</i><span class="ws6">I know it:</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And my pretext to strike at him admits</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A good construction.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> vi. 17.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He will be heir of all, and his action will -admit a good construction; that is enough for him. It only remains to -keep another construction from being suggested; and he approves the -conspirator’s advice:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent13">When he lies along,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">After your way his tale pronounced shall bury</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His reasons with his body.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> vi. 57.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_588">[Pg 588]</span> -It has sometimes been questioned whether such a man would give his -fugitive rival a welcome which at the first and for some time seems so -magnanimous, and if he did, whether the magnanimity was sincere. But -Aufidius, though he is above all a lover of pre-eminence at whatever -cost and therefore cannot for long stand the ordeal of being surpassed, -is not without a soldier’s generosity; and moreover, the course which -he was moved to adopt (and this is a more important consideration) -would be one congenial to his meretricious love of ostentation and -display. There is no rôle more soothing to worsted vanity and at the -same time more likely to gain it the admiration it prizes, than that -of patron to a formerly successful and now unfortunate rival. In the -reflected glory, the benefactor seems to acquire the merits of the -other in addition to a magnificence all his own. This, we may assume, -was in part the motive of Aufidius; as appears from his own words, in -which he shows himself well aware of his own generous behaviour:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">He came unto my hearth;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Presented to my knife his throat: I took him;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Made him joint-servant with me; gave him way</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In all his own desires; nay, let him choose</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Out of my files, his projects to accomplish,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My best and freshest men; served his designments</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In mine own person; holp to reap the fame</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which he did end all his; and <i>took some pride</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>To do myself this wrong</i>; till, at the last,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I seem’d his follower, not partner, and</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He waged me with his countenance, as if</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I had been mercenary.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> vi. 30.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The hasty flash of generosity, the hope of winning -new credit, would soon be extinguished or transmuted by such persistent -success, superiority and pride. And Coriolanus’ popularity with the -troops at the expense of his Volscian colleague, would be bitter to the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_589">[Pg 589]</span> -most high-minded benefactor. It is brought out to us by his question to -his lieutenant in the camp near Rome: “Do they still fly to the Roman?” -(<span class="smcap">iv.</span> vii. 1). Evidently the soldiers of -Antium flock to the banners of this foreigner rather than to those of -their own countrymen. The suggestion for this is furnished by Plutarch, -but with Shakespeare a sting is added. In the <i>Life</i> Tullus stays -behind as reserve with half the army to guard against any inroad, -while Coriolanus acts on the offensive and captures a number of towns. -Thereupon,</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="no-indent">the other Volsces that were -appointed to remaine in garrison for defence of theur countrie, hearing -this good newes, would tary no lenger at home, but armed them selves, -and ranne to Martius campe, saying they dyd acknowledge no other -captaine but him.</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is much less wounding to Aufidius that his men -should wish to exchange inaction for the excitement of war, than that -he should witness their resort to his rival who is, in name, only his -equal in command. Indeed his lieutenant in the play regrets that he did -not do precisely what he did do according to Plutarch.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">I wish, sir,—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I mean for your particular,—you had not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Join’d in commission with him; but either</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Had borne the action of yourself, or else</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To him had left it solely.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> vii. 12.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus Shakespeare gives Tullus a stronger motive, -and in so far a better policy for his treason. On the other hand he -bases it more exclusively on personal envy. For in Plutarch the truce -of thirty days which Coriolanus grants Rome is the original occasion -of the movement against him, in which other Volscians besides Aufidius -share; and this movement culminates only after he has conceded peace on -conditions which even Plutarch considers unfair to his employers. But -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_590">[Pg 590]</span> -in the play, as we have seen, the truce is omitted, and Tullus has -determined on the destruction of his supplanter even at a time when he -confidently expects that Rome cannot save herself:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">When, Caius, Rome is thine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou art poor’st of all: then shortly art thou mine.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> vii. 56.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus the last shred of public spirit is torn away -from his selfish ambition and spite.</p> - -<p>In contrast with all this lust for precedence and vainglorious egotism, -we cannot but feel that Marcius is striving for the reality of honour -and is eager to fulfil the conditions on which honour is due.</p> - -<p>And connected with this is another point which we might regard as the -natural and inevitable consequence, but which Shakespeare only inferred -and did not obtain from Plutarch, who gives no indication of it. This -is Marcius’ indifference to or rather detestation of all professed -praise. His distaste for eulogy does not of course lead him to reject -a distinction and acknowledgment like the surname of <i>Coriolanus</i> -that he is conscious of having deserved. On the contrary he prizes -it and clings to it, and among the circumstances that overthrow his -self-control in the final scene, the fact that Aufidius withholds from -him this appellation has a chief place.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Aufidius.</i><span class="ws8">Marcius!</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i><span class="ws10">Marcius!</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Aufidius.</i> Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius; dost thou think</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ll grace thee with that robbery, thy stol’n name</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Coriolanus in Corioli?</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Just in the same way, his aversion from mercantile -profit does not lead him to refuse a gift from a friend when he feels -that he has earned that friend’s approval. So when Cominius bestows on -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_591">[Pg 591]</span> -him the charger, and bids the host hail him with his new title, he -answers graciously enough if a little awkwardly:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I will go wash;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And when my face is fair, you shall perceive</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whether I blush or no: howbeit I thank you.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I mean to stride your steed, and at all times</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To undercrest your good addition</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To the fairness of my power.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 68.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But except on such semi-official occasions, which -he is obliged to recognise, any sort of commendation abashes him -and puts him out. Even Lartius’ burst of admiration he immediately -checks:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent11">Pray now, no more: my mother,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who has a charter to extol her blood,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When she does praise me, grieves me.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 13.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When Cominius persists, he would fain cut him short:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I have some wounds upon me, and they smart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To hear themselves remember’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 28.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When the host spontaneously breaks out in -acclamation, he feels it is over much, and is more irritated than -pleased:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">May these same instruments, which you profane,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Never sound more! When drums and trumpets shall</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ the field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Made all of false-faced soothing!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When steel grows soft as the parasite’s silk,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Let him be made a coverture for the wars!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No more, I say! For that I have not wash’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My nose that bled, or foil’d some debile wretch,—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which, without note, here’s many else have done,—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You shout me forth</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In acclamations hyperbolical;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As if I loved my little should be dieted</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In praises sauced with lies.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 42.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So, too, with the welcome of the crowd at his homecoming:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">No more of this; it does offend my heart;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pray now, no more.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> i. 185.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_592">[Pg 592]</span> -Where the formal, and therefore up to a certain point, conventional -panegyrics have to be pronounced in the senate, he is honestly ill at -ease and would rather go away. To the senator who seeks to stay him, he -answers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent19">Your honour’s pardon:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I had rather have my wounds to heal again</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than hear say how I got them.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> ii. 72.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And he adds, as he actually leaves his seat:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I had rather have one scratch my head i’ the sun</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When the alarum were struck, than idly sit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To hear my nothings monster’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> ii. 79.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He can dispense with the admiration of others, -because he seeks “the perfect witness” of his own approval, and abhors -any extravagant applause because he measures his actions by the -standard of absolute desert. In other words, both his self-respect -and his ideal of attainment are abnormally, one might say morbidly, -developed. And this explains both his humility and his self-assertion. -Volumnia tells him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To imitate the graces of the gods.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 149.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">If that is the goal, how far must even the -mightiest fall short of it, and how much must he resent the adulation -of his prowess as the highest to be attained. On the contrary he “waxes -like the sea,” sets himself to advance</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">From well to better, daily self surpassed;</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and every glory he achieves is, as Shakespeare -read in Plutarch, less a wage that he has earned than a pledge that he -must redeem. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_593">[Pg 593]</span></p> - -<p class="blockquot">It is daylie seene, that honour and reputation -lighting on young men before their time, and before they have no great -corage by nature, the desire to winne more, dieth straight in them, -which easely happeneth, the same having no deepe roote in them before. -Where contrariwise, the first honour that valliant mindes doe come -unto, doth quicken up their appetite, hasting them forward as with -force of winde, to enterprise things of highe deserving praise. For -they esteeme, not to receave reward for service done, but rather take -it for a remembraunce and encoragement, to make them doe better in time -to come: and be ashamed also to cast their honour at their heeles, not -seeking to increase it still by like deserte of worthie valliant dedes. -This desire being bred in Martius, he strained still to passe him selfe -in manlines: and being desirous to shewe a daylie increase of his -valliantnes, his noble service dyd still advaunce his fame.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">But, on the other hand, though he, as not having -attained, presses forward to the mark of his high calling, he has but -to spend a glance on his fellows, and being an honest man he must -perceive that his performance quite eclipses theirs. When the citizen -asks him what has brought him to stand for the consulship, his reply -is from the heart: “Mine own desert” (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> -iii. 71). He feels poignantly the indignity of having to ask for what -seems to him his due, and this partly explains the reluctance, which -Shakespeare invents for him, to face a popular election.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Better it is to die, better to starve,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than crave the hire which first we do deserve.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> iii. 120.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In bitter self-irony he belies the disinterestedness of his exploits, -and libels them as mere contrivances to win favour:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Your voices: for your voices I have fought;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Watch’d for your voices; for your voices bear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have seen and heard of; for your voices have</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Done many things, some less, some more.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> iii. 133.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His fault lies in an opposite direction. His sense -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_594">[Pg 594]</span> -of dignity and self-esteem makes him inflexible to any concession that -would seem to disparage himself and the truth.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">His nature is too noble for the world:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He would not flatter Neptune for his trident.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or Jove for’s power to thunder.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 255.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>And he is entitled to this consciousness of his worth, for it is not -merely individual. It collects in a focus the most valued traits of -various social fellowships that are greater and wider than himself. He -is—he has been taught to consider himself and to become—the peculiar -representative of the great family of the great aristocracy of the -great city of Rome. If he transcends the dimensions of ordinary human -power and human error, this consideration enables us to see how he has -come to do so, and brings him back to our ordinary human sympathies. -These are the three concentric orbits in which his universe revolves, -the three well-heads that feed the current of his life. They give -impetus to his love of honour and volume to his pride.</p> - -<p>His civic patriotism he lives to abjure, but at first it is eager and -intense. It is this feeling that is affronted by the retreat of his -townsmen before Corioli and that boils over in curses and abuse: he -is wroth with them because they are “shames of Rome.” The climax to -his appeal for volunteers is to ask if any thinks “that his country’s -dearer than himself” (<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> vi. 72): and -in the moment of triumph he classes himself unreservedly among all his -comrades who have been actuated by his own and the only right motive, -love for the <i>patria</i>.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">I have done</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What you have done; that’s what I can: induced</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As you have been; that’s for my country:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He that hath but effected his good will</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hath overta’en my act.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ix. 15.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_595">[Pg 595]</span> -He cherishes a transcendent idea of the state, and is wounded to the -heart that its members fall short of it.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I would they were barbarians—as they are,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Though in Rome litter’d—not Romans—as they are not,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Though calved i’ the porch o’ the Capitol.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 238.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>And he is similarly, but more closely bound up in his own order. -The nobles, the patricians, the senate, are to him the core of the -commonwealth, the very Rome of Rome. They are, as he says, “the -fundamental part of state” (<span class="smcap">iii.</span> i. 151). His first thought -on his return from the campaign is to pay his due respects to their -dignity:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Ere in my own house I do shade my head,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The good patricians must be visited.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> i. 211.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He is scandalised by the insolence of the plebs in -revolting against such authority:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">What’s the matter,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That in these several places of the city</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You cry against the noble senate, who,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Under the gods, keep you in awe?</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 188.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His gorge rises at the thought of a representative -of the people imposing his mandate on so august a body.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">They choose their magistrate,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And such a one as he, who puts his “shall,”</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His popular “shall” against a graver bench</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than ever frown’d in Greece.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 104.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He hates any innovation that is likely</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">To break the heart of generosity</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And make bold power look pale.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 215.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">For to him the power that is vested in the -generous, that is, the high-born classes, is a sacred thing.</p> - -<p>But the domestic tie is the closest of all. The whole story brings -out its compulsive pressure and no particular passages are needed to -illustrate it. Yet in some passages we are made to realise with special -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_596">[Pg 596]</span> -vividness how it binds and entwines him, as in that exclamation when he -sees the deputation of women approaching:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">My wife comes foremost; then the honour’d mould</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The grandchild to her blood.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 22.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is as son, husband and father that the depths -of Coriolanus’ nature can be reached. In his greetings to his wife, in -his prayers for his boy, we have glimpses of his inward heart; but of -course this family feeling is concentrated on his mother who, as it -were, sums up his ancestry to him, and who, by her personal qualities -and her parental authority, fills his soul with a kind of religious -reverence. We have seen how she has fashioned him, how she commands -and awes him. When she inclines her head as she appears before him, he -already feels that it is incongruous and absurd:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent17">My mother bows:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As if Olympus to a molehill should</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In supplication nod.</div> - <div class="verse indent21">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 29.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">When she kneels, it is prodigious, incredible; he -cannot believe his eyes:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">What is this?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your knees to me? to your corrected son?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Strike the proud cedars ’gainst the fiery sun:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Murdering impossibility, to make</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What cannot be, slight work.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 56.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Not only then is Coriolanus in other respects a singularly noble -personality, but even his pride is certainly not devoid of ethical -content when it embodies the consciousness of the city republic, the -governing estate, the organised family, with all their claims and -obligations. These are the constituent elements that have supplied -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_597">[Pg 597]</span> -matter for his self-esteem, and all of them are formative, and capable, -as we saw, of producing such a lofty, though limited moral character -as that of Volumnia. Yet it is precisely to them, or at least to the -way in which they are mingled in his pride, that Coriolanus’ faults and -misfortunes may be traced.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_598">[Pg 598]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VI<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">THE DISASTERS OF CORIOLANUS<br /> AND THEIR CAUSES</span></h3> -</div> - -<p>Feeling for his country, feeling for his caste, feeling for his family -thus form the triple groundwork of Coriolanus’ nobleness, but they fail -to uphold it in the storm of temptation. As furnishing the foundations -of conduct they have dangers and defects, inherent in themselves, or -incident to their combination, and these it is to which the guilt and -ruin of Coriolanus are due.</p> - -<p>These drawbacks may be illustrated under three heads. They are unfit -completely to transfigure egoism, for they have all an egoistic aspect, -and are indeed merely extended forms of selfishness. They are primarily -the products of nature, instinct, passion; and may exist without being -raised to the rank of rational principles and without having their -just scope delimited and defined. And, lastly, for that reason their -relative importance may be mistaken, and one that is the stronger -natural impulse may usurp the place of one that is of more binding -moral authority.</p> - -<p>It has often been pointed out, and sometimes as a matter of complaint, -that family affection is very restricted in its range and may conflict -with the larger interests of mankind. It produces an intense unity -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_599">[Pg 599]</span> -within the one household, but it is apt to be jealous, repellent, -aggressive as regards other households and their members. Further, -in so far as it is <i>my</i> parents, <i>my</i> brothers, <i>my</i> -children, whose welfare I promote, the ground of preference has nothing -to do with impartial equity: it is determined by the nearness of the -persons to <i>me</i>, by <i>my</i> fondness for them, by my looking on -them as appurtenances of <i>mine</i>; in short it is selfish. And those -who maintain the sacredness of the family give this no absolute denial, -but reply, first, that in the long run the true interests of one -family, rightly understood, do not conflict with the true interests of -other families, of the state, or the rest of mankind; and, second, that -even before the true interests are rightly grasped, the family relation -forms at least a stage in the process by which the individual learns to -enlarge his self-interest, a preliminary stage but an inevitable stage, -and still for the vast majority of men the stage of most practical -importance. Many a one is ready to give up his personal pleasure or -advantage for those of his own house, who would be deaf to all more -general appeals. Thus the family so widens self-love as to include in -it some other people, but in one of its aspects it nevertheless depends -on self-love.</p> - -<p>And the same thing holds good of the enlarged kindred that we call an -aristocracy. The nobility of blood forms a sort of family on a large -scale, a family of caste, an amplified household united by common -pursuits, privileges, education and ideals, and often further blended -by frequent intermarriage. The aristocrat finds himself born into this -artificial, which is in some respects almost like a natural fraternity; -and his ethos to his order, ethos though it be, is largely the ethos of -the individual who recognises his own reflection in his fellow nobles.</p> - -<p>Nor is it otherwise with the state, especially, we may say, the antique -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_600">[Pg 600]</span> -city state, where often the aristocracy really was the native nucleus, -and which in the greatest expansion of which it was capable, did not -exceed the dimensions of a modern municipality. The patriotism of the -citizens had the fervour of domestic piety, their disputes had the -bitterness of family quarrels. In the community its sons exulted and -lived and moved and had their being: it was theirs and they were its, -in opposition to the alien states, the states of other people, to which -they were apt to be indifferent or hostile.</p> - -<p>Now it is evident that all these principles in the case of a man with -a strong consciousness of his own worth and superlative self-respect, -might give substance and validity to his egoism, but would rather -encourage than counteract it. And so with Coriolanus. His independent, -individual, isolated sufficiency passes all bounds. He derives -sustenance for it from the three layers of atmosphere that envelope -him, but he thinks he can if necessary dispense with these external -aids. In so far as he can separate the people in his mind from the -whole body politic of Rome, he excludes them from his sympathy, or even -his tolerance, and glories in his ostentation of antagonism. Take his -speech about the popular demonstration:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">They said they were an-hungry, sigh’d forth proverbs,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Corn for the rich men only: with these shreds</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They vented their complainings.</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 209.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In reference to this Archbishop Trench has a very -true remark. He points out that where there is a marked and conscious -division of ranks,</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="no-indent">[proverbs] may go nearly or quite out of use among -the so-called upper classes. No gentleman, says Lord Chesterfield, -“ever uses a proverb.” And with how true a touch of nature, Shakespeare -makes Coriolanus, the man who with all his greatness, is entirely -devoid of all sympathy with the people, to utter his scorn of them in -scorn of their proverbs and of their frequent employment of them.</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_601">[Pg 601]</span> -He has indeed no sense of their homely wisdom or their homely virtues. -He has no common charity for them, and his attitude to them if they -venture to assert themselves, is that of a less human slaveholder to -refractory slaves.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And let me use my sword, I’ld make a quarry</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With thousands of these quarter’d slaves, as high</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As I could pick my lance.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> i. 201.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">After such counsel, we feel that the exclamation -of Sicinius is not without its warrant:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Where is this viper</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That would depopulate the city, and</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be every man himself?</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> i. 263.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">His self-centred confidence and egotism culminates -in his retort to his sentence:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You common cry of curs? whose breath I hate</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As the dead carcasses of unburied men</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That do corrupt my air, I banish you.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> iii. 120.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But it is characteristic of this spirit which -really makes a man a law to himself and the measure of things, that -though by all his training and prejudices inclined to the traditional -and conservative in politics, yet, if use-and-wont presses hard against -his own pride, he shows himself an innovator of the most uncompromising -kind. He objects once and again to the prescriptive forms of election, -and at last breaks out:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Custom calls me to ’t!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What custom wills, in all things should we do ’t,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The dust on antique time would lie unswept</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And mountainous error be too highly heapt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For truth to o’er-peer.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> iii. 124.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here he blossoms out as the reddest of radicals, -though a radical of the Napoleonic type.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_602">[Pg 602]</span> -But, further, his feeling for family, class and country is -pre-eminently feeling. It belongs to those natural tendencies that -almost seem to come to us by heredity and environment, and have -analogies with the instincts of animals. It is, at least in the form -it assumes with him, not to be ranked among the moral convictions -which can stand the examination of conscience and reason, and in the -production of which conscience and reason have co-operated. It is -rather an innate impulse, a headlong passion, and resembles a blind -physical force of which he can give no account. His understanding is -without right of entry into this part of his life. We have seen, no -doubt, that his presuppositions once granted he can form a very acute -estimate of the situation. But he never uses his judgment either -in examining his presuppositions or in discovering the treatment -that the situation requires. He has not the width of outlook or the -self-criticism that enable Menenius and Cominius, and even the ordinary -senators, to see the relative importance of the principles for which -they contend, and prefer any compromise to laying the city flat and -sacking great Rome with Romans. He has not the astuteness of Volumnia, -who perceives that strategy is to be used in government as in war and -bids him stoop to conquer:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I have a heart as little apt as yours,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But yet a brain that leads my use of anger</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To better vantage.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> ii. 29.)</div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If it be honour in your wars to seem</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The same you are not, which, for your best ends,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That it shall hold companionship in peace</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With honour, as in war, since that to both</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It stands in like request?</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> ii. 46.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Both in regard to end and means, he listens to the -counsels not of his reason but of his passion and hot blood. As how -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_603">[Pg 603]</span> -could he do otherwise? It is passion not reason that oversways his -nature, determining everything in him from these first fundamental -principles to the most transitory mood. More particularly, that -tyrannous self-respect of his, the personal flame in which all his -interests, domestic, aristocratic, national, are fused, is his central -passion, and one that gives more heat than light. Sometimes, indeed, -it kindles him to great things. When the Volscian army abandons the -shelter of Corioli he feels it an insult to his country, therefore to -himself; and the outrage to his <i>amour propre</i> incites him to do wonders.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">They fear us not, but issue forth their city.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With hearts more proof than shields. Advance, brave Titus:</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>They do disdain us much beyond our thoughts,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Which makes me sweat with wrath</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent34">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iv. 23.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But again, it may make it impossible for him to -take the right path. When asked to show some outward submission to the -people, he answers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">To the market place!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You have put me now to such a part which never</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I shall discharge to the life.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> ii. 104.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He was justified in objecting to methods of -dissimulation and flattery, but, if only he had been reasonable, a -middle course would not have been hard to find, which should safeguard -his self-respect while pacifying the populace. It is because his -self-respect is of passion not of reason, that he is so unconciliatory, -and therefore almost as culpable as if he were guilty of the opposite -fault. Plutarch, indeed, thinks he is more so. In his comparison between -him and Alcibiades, he is in this matter more lenient to the latter:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">He is lesse to be blamed, that seeketh to please -and gratifie his common people; then he that despiseth and disdaineth -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_604">[Pg 604]</span> -them, and therefore offereth them wrong and injurie, bicause he would -not seeme to flatter them, to winne the more authoritie. For as it is -an evill thing to flatter the common people to winne credit; even so -it is besides dishonesty, and injustice also, to atteine to credit -and authoritie, for one to make him selfe terrible to the people, by -offering them wrong and violence.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This passage has inspired the criticism of the -officer of the Capitol; who, however, impartially holds the scales.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>If he did not care whether he had their love -or no, he waved indifferently ’twixt doing them neither good nor harm: -but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can render -it him; and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their -opposite. Now, to seem to affect the malice and displeasure of the people -is as bad as that which he dislikes, to flatter them for their love.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> ii. 18.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">With this temper it is natural that the arrogance -of success, lack of nous, and want of adaptability—which is often -merely another form of self-will—should bring about his ruin; and it is -these three characteristics, or a modicum of them, to which Aufidius in -point of fact attributes his banishment.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">First he was</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A noble servant to them; but he could not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Carry his honours even: whether ’twas pride,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which out of daily fortune ever taints</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The happy man; whether defect of judgement,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To fail in the disposing of those chances</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which he was lord of; or whether nature,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not to be other than one thing, not moving</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Even with the same austerity and garb</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As he controll’d the war; but one of these—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As he hath spices of them all, not all,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For I dare so far free him—made him fear’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So hated, and so banish’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> vii. 35.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>But, lastly, not only are the three objective ethical principles that -give Coriolanus his moral equipment, inadequate in so far as their -range is largely selfish and their origin largely natural; he misplaces -the order in which they should come. In the case of Volumnia, despite -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_605">[Pg 605]</span> -all her maternal preference and patrician prejudice, Rome is the grand -consideration, as her deeds unequivocally prove. Nor is she singular; -she is only the most conspicuous example among others of her caste. -Cominius, too, postpones the family to the state:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">I do love</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My country’s good with a respect more tender,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">More holy and profound, than mine own life,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My dear wife’s estimate, her womb’s increase,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And treasure of my loins.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> iii. 111.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And this is more or less the attitude of the -rest. But Coriolanus reverses the sequence, and gives his chief homage -precisely to the most restricted and elementary, the most primitive -and instinctive principle of the three. He loves Rome indeed, fights -for her, grieves for her shames, and glories in her triumphs; but he -loves the nobility more, and would by wholesale massacre secure their -supremacy. He loves the nobility indeed, but when they, no doubt for -the common good, suffer him to be expelled from Rome, they become to -him the “dastard nobles”; and he makes hardly any account of his old -henchman and intimate Menenius, and none at all of his old comrade and -general Cominius. But he loves his family as himself, and though he -strives to root out its claims from his heart, the attempt is vain. He -may exclaim:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Out, affection!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All bond and privilege of nature, break!</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 24.)</div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">I’ll never</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As if a man were author of himself</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And knew no other kin.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 34.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But it is mere histrionic make-believe and -pretence: at the first words of Virgilia he cries:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Like a dull actor now,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have forgot my part, and I am out,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Even to a full disgrace.</div> - <div class="verse indent25">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 40.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_606">[Pg 606]</span> -How could this man, whose personal pride and family pride are -so interwoven, whose self-love and whose virtues are so much an -inheritance of his line, ever hope to sever himself from what makes up -his very being? The home instincts must triumph.</p> - -<p>It is well that they should, and this is the redeeming touch that -cancels much of the guilt of apostasy which brands the close of his -career. But all the same we feel that his self-surrender to the -obligations of the family is a less noble thing than his mother’s -self-surrender to the obligations of the state. Of course, in a way, -family and class must with all come before the whole community. Men, -that is, are bound to be more interested in those of their own circle -and their own set than in their fellow-citizens with whom they have -less relation. That gives a very good ground for a man’s constant -unremitting occupation with his nearest and dearest. But, nevertheless, -when the call comes, it is the wider community that has the more -imperative claim.</p> - -<p>And it is easy to see that Volumnia, though at the supreme moment -she shows that she herself has the right feeling for the relation, -is responsible for the inverted order in the conception of her son. -Her contempt for the masses, her exaltation of the patricians, her -high-handed insistence on the family authority were almost bound to be -exaggerated in a child growing up under her influence and subjected -to no corrective views. And she must have added to the dangers of her -tuition by dangling before his eyes the ideal personal honour as the -grand prize of life. He wins it and lets it slip again and again, and -when he grasps it at last, it is rent and mangled in his hands. There -is something typical in the episode of his son and the butterfly, as -Valeria narrates it: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_607">[Pg 607]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it, he -let it go again; and after it again; and over and over he comes, and up -again; catched it again; or whether his fall enraged him, or how ’twas, -he did so set his teeth and tear it: Ο, I warrant, how he mammocked it!</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 65.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Young Marcius is described as the facsimile and -“epitome” of his father, and Volumnia is well pleased with this example -of the family bent. She must not disclaim her share in the preparation, -when the father enacts the apologue in the larger theatre of life.</p> - -<p>And she is even responsible for some of the mistaken courses that -directly lead to the disaster.</p> - -<p>For Coriolanus, with all his blind sides and rough corners, might still -be the faithful and honoured champion of Rome if he were left to follow -his own predestined and congenial path as military leader. In the field -he can rouse the courage of the citizens and fire their enthusiasm, -while on his part, when he wins their recognition and devotion, he -lays aside some of his asperity to them, and is even gracious in his -awkward, convincing way. They forget their hatred, he forgets his -scorn. And to him as warrior the whole population, not only the portion -of it that has the franchise, is ready to do honour. The description -which the chagrined tribune gives of his triumphal progress through -the streets shows with what cordial pride all ranks were eager to pay -him homage. There is no reason why he should not continue to discharge -in this his proper sphere the functions that none could discharge so -well. His political weight is from the first small. Despite his urgent -dissuasion he has been powerless to prevent the distribution of corn -or the concession of the tribunate. And when he does not intrude into -this outlying domain, where he effects nothing, he seems to go his own -way peaceably enough, occupied mainly in watching for the common good -the movements of Aufidius and the Volscians; so that, so far as his -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_608">[Pg 608]</span> -antipathy to the people is concerned, his bark is worse than his bite. -That is the point of the similes that Brutus and Menenius exchange -about him when Menenius has compared the plebs to a wolf and Coriolanus -to a lamb. Says the tribune:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He’s a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And the senator answers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He’s a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> i. 12.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But thrust him into a position that involves -political authority, and all will be changed. It will be impossible -for him to confine himself to harmless growls; the bear will have the -people in his hug, and they are not to blame if they take to their -weapons. In short the antagonism, which before was, so to speak, -academic and led to nothing, must become a matter of life and death. -Now it must not be overlooked that it is in obedience to his mother’s -ambitions and in opposition to his own better judgment that Coriolanus -stands for the consulship. Of course, in a way, it is the natural -goal of his career. Even Menenius is so blinded by the glamour of the -situation that he interposes no prudent warning. Nevertheless, if he -had only exercised his accustomed shrewdness he would have seen the -mischievousness of such a course; for in a remark to the tribune he -sums up admirably the perils it involves:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">He loves your people;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But tie him not to be their bedfellow;</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> ii. 68.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">yet for all that, Menenius is the candidate’s -most active electioneering agent. When his sagacity so neglects its -own suggestions, it is perhaps not wonderful that Volumnia’s narrower -intellect should ignore everything but her visions of glory for herself -and her son. And yet she might have laid to heart his sincere remonstrance: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_609">[Pg 609]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">Know, good mother,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I had rather been their servant in my way,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than sway with them in theirs.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> i. 218.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">She cannot be acquitted of driving him into the -false position.</p> - -<p>And she is equally responsible for the fiasco and disaster in which his -attempted submission ends. Observe that this is not the only course he -might have adopted. Cominius, entering in the middle of the discussion, -suggests two others:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I have been i’ the market-place; and, sir, ’tis fit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You make strong party, or defend yourself</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By calmness or by absence.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> ii. 93.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The first expedient of making strong party and -resorting to force is out of the question, both because, as Cominius -has already pointed out, it is practically hopeless in face of the -odds, and because, as he and others have also pointed out, even if -successful it would ruin the state. The second expedient of calmness -and conciliation is the one that Volumnia and Menenius in their -pertinacious craving to see Coriolanus consul, strongly advocate; and -in the abstract it is the right one. But it suffers from a drawback -which makes it worse than hopeless, and which Cominius has the -foresight to recognise. “Only fair speech,” says Menenius, and Cominius -rejoins very doubtfully:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">I <i>think</i> ’t will serve, <i>if</i> he</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Can thereto frame his spirit.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> ii. 95.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">That is just the point; and one wonders how anyone -who knew Coriolanus could expect of him so impossible a feat. There -remains the expedient of absence, which Cominius, from the third place -he assigns to it, himself seems to prefer. And in the circumstances it -is obviously the best. If only the accused had withdrawn for a time, he -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_610">[Pg 610]</span> -would soon have been recalled. It is inconceivable that when the new -expedition of the Volscians, which he alone foresaw, broke into Roman -territory, the state would not at once have had recourse to the great -commander. Nor would there have been much difficulty in doing so, -since he would merely have betaken himself to voluntary retirement; -and even had he been exiled in default, the mutual exasperation on -both sides, which the last collision was to produce, would have been -avoided. But again it is Volumnia’s overbearing self-will that imposes -on him the pernicious choice. And though, as I have said, this proposal -is ideally the best, for in such cases management and compromise are -legitimate enough and may be laudable, it is not only the worst in -the present instance, but she gives it a turn that must have made it -peculiarly revolting to her son. In her covetousness for the consular -dignity she recommends such hypocrisy, trickery and base cringing as the -self-respect of no honest man, much less of a Coriolanus, could tolerate:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">I prithee now, my son,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And thus far having stretch’d it—here be with them—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy knee bussing the stones—for in such business</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant</div> - <div class="verse indent0">More learned than the ears—waving thy head,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now humble as the ripest mulberry</div> - <div class="verse indent0">that will not hold the handling: or say to them,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Were fit for thee to use as they to claim,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In asking their good loves, but thou wilt frame</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As thou hast power and person.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> ii. 72.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The amicable policy need not have been painted -in such colours as these. It is inevitable that Coriolanus, already -inclined to regard it as a degradation, should after these words -construe it in the most humiliating-sense: -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_611">[Pg 611]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent25">Well, I must do’t:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Away, my disposition, and possess me</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which quired with my drum, into a pipe</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That babies lulls asleep! The smile of knaves</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The glasses of my sight! a beggar’s tongue</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Make motion through my lips, and my arm’d knees,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who bow’d but in the stirrup, bend like his</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That hath received an alms.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> ii. 110.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">What wonder that his conclusion is to reject -such tactics lest they should dishonour his integrity and degrade his -soul? His mother’s anger indeed makes him abandon this decision, but -his instincts are right. It is a part that of course he could not -play under any circumstances, but she has done nothing to show it in -its more honourable aspect, and everything to confirm and increase -his feeling of its vileness. His sourness and recalcitrance at being -false to himself makes him boil over the more fiercely at the first -provocation, and all is lost.</p> - -<p>It is sometimes said that defeat and the desire for vengeance teach -him the lessons which his mother had inculcated in vain, and that -henceforth he shows himself a master of dissimulation, flattery, and -deception. In proof of this it is usual to cite, in the first place, -the farewell scene, when he breathes no word to Cominius, Menenius, -Virgilia, or Volumnia of his intention to join the Volscians and return -to overthrow Rome. But was any such intention as yet in his mind? In -Plutarch he has adopted no definite plan before he sets out. After -telling how he comforts his family, the biography proceeds:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">He went immediatly to the gate of the cittie, -accompanied with a great number of Patricians that brought him thither, -from whence he went on his waye with three or foure of his friendes -only, taking nothing with him, nor requesting any thing of any man. So -he remained a fewe dayes in the countrie at his houses, turmoyled with -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_612">[Pg 612]</span> -sundry sortes and kynde of thoughtes, suche as the fyer of his choller -dyd sturre up. In the ende, seeing he could resolve no waye, to take a -profitable or honorable course, but only was pricked forward still to -be revenged of the Romaines, he thought to raise up some great warres -against them, by their neerest neighbours.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Of course it is quite true, and it has been one -purpose of this essay to show, that Shakespeare often completely -recasts Plutarch. But it is also true that, when he does not expressly -do so, he often keeps Plutarch’s statements in his mind, even when, as -in the case of the voting by tribes, he does not cite them. It counts -for something then, that in the <i>Life</i>, Coriolanus on leaving -Rome has no fixed purpose of seeking foreign help. And if we turn to -the parting scene in the tragedy, and let it make its own impression, -without reading into it suggestions from subsequent occurrences, I -think we feel not so much that he is still undecided as that the idea -has not yet entered into his head. We seem to hear the very accent of -sincerity in his repetition of the maxims that erewhile he learned from -his mother’s own lips, and that he clinches with the reminder:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">You were used to load me</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With precepts that would make invincible</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The heart that conn’d them.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> i. 9.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Surely it is a real attempt at consolation, when -he interrupts her maledictions on the plebeians who have banished him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">What, what, what!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I shall be loved, when I am lack’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> i. 14.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He seems to hint at seeking out new adventures and -a new career in new regions beyond the reach of Rome, when he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">My mother, you wot well</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My hazards still have been your solace: and</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Believe’t not lightly—though I go alone,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Makes fear’d and talk’d of more than seen—your son</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will or exceed the common or be caught</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With cautelous baits and practice.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> i. 27.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_613">[Pg 613]</span> -It was not cautelous baits and practice that he would have to fear, -but the open violence of Aufidius if he already thought of going to -Antium, and the simile of the lonely dragon more talked of than seen -would be abundantly inappropriate if it referred to his reappearance -at the head of the Volscian forces: but the expressions would be quite -apt if he meant to make his name redoubtable by his single prowess in -strange places amidst the risks of an errant life. It is in professed -anticipation of this that he rejects the companionship which Cominius -offers:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the wars’ surfeits, to go rove with one</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That’s yet unbruised.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> i. 45.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Are these utterances mere pretence? And have not -his last farewells the genuine note of cordiality and good will? If -we could imagine that he would bring himself to address those whom he -afterwards called the “dastard nobles” as “my friends of noble touch,” -it would still be impossible to believe him guilty of cold-hearted -deceit to Virgilia and Volumnia.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My friends of noble touch, when I am forth</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bid me farewell, and smile. I pray you, come.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">While I remain above the ground, you shall</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hear from me still, and never of me aught</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But what is like me formerly.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> i. 48.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It would not be like the former champion of Rome -to return as its assailant; but we may take it that at this moment he -is expecting to carve his way to glory in a different world and perhaps -eventually be recalled to his country, but in any case to proceed -merely on the old lines in so far as that is possible, and meanwhile -to be reported of, as Menenius continues, “worthily as any ear can hear.”</p> - -<p>If, then, he is speaking honestly in this scene, how are we to account -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_614">[Pg 614]</span> -for his change of purpose when we next meet him a renegade in Antium? -No explanation was needed in Plutarch, for the circumstances were not -quite the same. There he had only not resolved to join the enemy; here -he apparently has resolved to do something else. In the <i>Life</i> -after leaving the city he merely comes to a decision, in the play he -reverses the decision he has formed. So some statement is needed of -the cause for the alteration of his plans, and at first sight there -seems to be none. Yet there is a hint and a fairly emphatic one, -though it has not been worked out; a hint, moreover, which is the more -significant that it is one of Shakespeare’s interpolations.</p> - -<p>When the sentence of banishment is pronounced and Coriolanus has -retired to his house, there follows a passage which has no parallel or -foundation in Plutarch. It is the one already referred to in another -connection in which Sicinius gives his mean and malicious order to the -people:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Go, see him out at gates, and follow him,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As he hath follow’d you, with all despite:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Give him deserved vexation.</div> - <div class="verse indent23">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> iii. 138.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">And the citizens promptly agree:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Come, come; let’s see him out at gates; come.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iII.</span> iii. 141.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is at the very close of the Third Act, and -the Fourth Act begins in “Rome, before a gate of the city” with the -scene of leave-taking discussed above. We naturally expect that it will -be interrupted by the popular demonstrations which the tribunes have -contrived, especially as these exist only in Shakespeare’s imagination; -but it passes off without any hint of them. Only patrician persons -appear by whom Coriolanus is beloved and who are beloved by him: and no -hostile murmur jars on the solemnity of their grief. But that does not -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_615">[Pg 615]</span> -mean that it may not do so even now. He is not yet beyond the walls, -and towards the close bids his friends: “Bring me out at gate”; which, -we assume, they do forthwith. There is still time for the plebeians to -execute their masters’ orders, and though we witness nothing of the -kind, there is no reason to believe that they failed to do so. It is -easy to conjecture why Shakespeare thought it unnecessary to present -this incident to eye and ear. It would have disturbed the quiet dignity -of the parting interview; it would have repeated at a lower pitch, -without the accompaniment of suspense, and therefore with the risk of -monotony and flatness, the tumultuary <i>motif</i> of preceding scenes. -But Shakespeare’s variations from his authority are not idle, and we -cannot suppose that the tribune’s direction, though we do not actually -see it carried out, was a meaningless tag. There is room enough in the -economy of the play for its fulfilment beyond the stage. We may imagine -that just as Coriolanus’ friends proceed to “bring him out at gate” -the insulting irruption takes place; and in the next scene, “a street -near the gate,” we find the tribunes, the work done, dismissing their agents:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Bid them all home; he’s gone, and we’ll no further.</div> - <div class="verse indent33">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> ii. i.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It seems probable that this last indignity, a -hurt to his pride more galling than any refusal of office or sentence -of banishment, drives Coriolanus to his fury of vindictiveness; and -that the failure of the nobles to protect him from the outrage has in -his eyes confounded them with his more ignoble enemies. Indeed, he -almost says as much in his speech to Aufidius. In that speech, as we -have seen, Shakespeare adheres more closely to North than in any other -continuous passage in the play, and the greatest variation occurs in a -line that would apply with peculiar aptness to the purely Shakespearian -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_616">[Pg 616]</span> -episode of the last affront, and that sets forth the main cause of the -exile’s resentment. In Plutarch, after saying that only the surname of -Coriolanus remains to him, he continues:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">The rest the envie and crueltie of the people of -Rome have taken from me, by the sufferance of the dastardly nobilitie -and magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let me be -banished by the people.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">This becomes:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The cruelty and envy of the people,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Permitted by our dastard nobles, who</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have all forsook me, hath devour’d the rest:</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>And suffer’d me by the voice of slaves to be</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whoop’d out of Rome</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> v. 80.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Considering all these things there seems to be no -evidence in Marcius’ parting professions of acquired duplicity.</p> - -<p>But, again, it is said that for his revenge he condescends to fawn upon -Aufidius and the Volscians. This is not very plausible. His speech of -greeting certainly shows no servile propitiation, and according to -Tullus it is conspicuously absent in his subsequent behaviour:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">He bears himself more proudlier,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Even to my person, than I thought he would</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When first I did embrace him: yet his nature</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In that’s no changeling; and I must excuse</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What cannot be amended.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> vii. 8.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And elsewhere Tullus complains that his guest -has “waged him with his countenance.” The only ground for saying that -he paid court to the Volsces is alleged in Tullus’ speech that just -precedes this accusation of haughtiness to himself:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">He water’d his new plants with dews of flattery,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Seducing so my friends; and, to this end,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He bow’d his nature, never known before</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But to be rough, unswayable and free.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> vi. 23.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But the speaker is an enemy, and an enemy who has -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_617">[Pg 617]</span> -to account for the disagreeable circumstance that his own adherents -have gone over to his rival, and who, moreover, at the time is looking -for a plea that “admits of good construction.” There is nothing that -we see or hear of Coriolanus elsewhere that supports the charge. We -are told, indeed, that the Volscians throng to him and do him homage. -The very magnates of Antium, Aufidius included, treat him like a demi-god:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Why, he is so made on here within, as if he were son and heir to -Mars; set at upper end o’ the table: no question asked by any of the -senators, but they stand bald before him: our general himself makes a -mistress of him; sanctifies himself with ’s hand and turns up the white -o’ the eye to his discourse.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> v. 203.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Recruits throng to his standard and the army -worships him. The Lieutenant tells Aufidius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I do not know what witchcraft’s in him, but</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your soldiers use him as the grace ’fore meat,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their talk at table, and their thanks at end.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> vii. 2.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Doubtless this enthusiasm would have its effect -on Marcius. Eagerness of service, coupled with confidence in himself, -has before now warmed him to graciousness, and in his own despite wrung -from him inspiring compliments. When at Cominius’ camp before Corioli -the volunteers crowded round him, waved their swords, and took him up -in their arms, he was almost hyperbolical in his praises:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O, me alone! make you a sword of me?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If these shows be not outward, which of you</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But is four Volsces? none of you but is</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Able to bear against the great Aufidius</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A shield as hard as his.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> vi. 76.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">So we may well believe that his soldierly spirit -would respond promptly and lavishly when the Volscians rallied round -him. But such appreciation, however his outstripped competitor might -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_618">[Pg 618]</span> -interpret it, would have nothing in common with the arts of the -sycophant and the time-server; nor is there anything else in -Coriolanus’ conduct that explains or confirms ever so slightly the -charge of the interested and envious Aufidius.</p> - -<p>On the contrary he remains true, and even too true, to his original -nature. It is the outrage on his self-respect that drives him to the -Volscians, and his self-respect still gives the law to his life, and -would forbid all petty vices, though it enjoins heroic crime. A man -like this could not be expected to palliate or overlook the profanation -of his cherished dignity. The passion of pride at his ear, he sets -himself to rupture all weaker ties of passion or instinct. And yet he -himself is half aware of his mistake, and he has to fortify himself in -his obstinate perversity. This is shown in two ways: first, he has a -smothered sense of the inadequacy of his justification; and, second, he -cannot with all his efforts be quite consistent in his revenge.</p> - -<p>Of his repressed feeling that the offence does not excuse the -retaliation, we have repeated confessions on his part, all the more -striking that they are involuntary and perhaps unconscious. Thus, just -after he has sought out the enemy of his country, he soliloquises:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unseparable, shall within this hour,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On a dissension of a doit, break out</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To bitterest enmity: so, fellest foes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To take the one the other, by some chance,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And interjoin their issues. So with me:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My birth-place hate I, and my love’s upon</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This enemy town.</div> - <div class="verse indent32">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> iv. 12.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_619">[Pg 619]</span> -Here he acknowledges that his change of sides has the most trivial -occasion. Friends fall out on a dissension of a doit while foes are -reconciled for some trick not worth an egg; and he applies this -principle to his own case: “So with me.” After all he has infinitely -more in common with the Romans than he can ever have in common with the -Volscians, infinitely more reason for hating this enemy town than he -can ever have for hating his own birth-place.</p> - -<p>Or again, when on the point of dismissing Menenius, he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">That we have been familiar</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison, rather</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than pity note how much.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 91.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He admits, then, that his wilful oblivion is -“ingrate,” and realises that pity would consider the old relations.</p> - -<p>Or, once more, almost at the close, when he feels himself in danger of -yielding to the voice of nature, he utters the truculent prayer:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Let it be virtuous to be obstinate;</div> - <div class="verse indent19">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 26.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">which implies that he knew it was not.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, with all his doggedness, he cannot be quite -consequent in his rancour. He may lead her foes against his “thankless -country” as he calls it, but he has a lurking kindliness even for the -Rome he thinks he detests. As we learn from Aufidius’ speech:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Although it seems,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And so he thinks, and is no less apparent</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To the vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And shows good husbandry for the Volscian state,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fights dragon-like, and does achieve as soon</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As draw his sword; yet he hath left undone</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That which shall break his neck or hazard mine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whene’er we come to our account.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> vii. 19.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is no doubt suggested by the incident of the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_620">[Pg 620]</span> -thirty days’ truce, of which Plutarch makes so much and which -Shakespeare totally suppresses. But the vague reference becomes all -the more pregnant, when we are to understand that Coriolanus has at -unawares and against his purpose granted some little concessions to the -victims of his wrath. That Aufidius’ statement has some foundation, is -made probable by the words of the First Antium Lord, who is no enemy to -Marcius, but reproaches Tullus with his murder and reverently bewails -his death:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">What faults he made before the last, I think,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Might have found easy fines.</div> - <div class="verse indent27">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> vi. 64.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Faults, then, from the Volscian point of view he has committed in the -opinion of a sympathetic and impartial onlooker: which means that as a -Roman he has shown forbearance.</p> - -<p>So much for the toll that he pays to his patriotism; but neither can -he quite uproot the old associations with his class. He may denounce -the “dastard nobles,” but he does concede something to Menenius, the -patrician whose aristocratic prejudices are most akin to his own:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent15">Their latest refuge</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Was to send him; for whose old love I have,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Though I show’d sourly to him, once more offer’d</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The first conditions, which they did refuse</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And cannot now accept: to grace him only</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That thought he could do more, <i>a very little</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>I have yielded to</i>.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 11.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And, coming to the chief in his trinity of -interests, he may seek to break all bond and privilege of nature and -refuse to be such a gosling to obey instinct, but the natural instinct -of the family is too strong for him; before it his resolution crumbles -to pieces, though he foresees the result.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent15">O mother, mother!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The gods look down, and this unnatural scene</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O! - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_621">[Pg 621]</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">You have won a happy victory to Rome;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But for your son,—believe it, O, believe it,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Most dangerously you have with him prevail’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If not most mortal to him.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 182.)</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Still this collapse of Coriolanus’ purpose means nothing more than -the victory of his strongest impulse. There is no acknowledgment -of offence, there is no renovation of character, there is not even -submission to the highest force within his experience. Our admiration -of his surrender is not unmixed. It is a moving spectacle to see a -man, despite all the solicitations of wrath and revenge, of interest -and fear, obedient to what is on the whole so salutary an influence -as domestic affection. But loyalty to this will not of itself avail -to safeguard anyone from criminal entanglements, or to equip him for -beneficent public action, or to change the current of his life. It -may mean the triumph of a natural tendency that happens to be good -over other natural tendencies that happen to be bad, but it does not -mean acceptance of duty as duty, or anxiety to satisfy the claims -that different duties impose. Hence Coriolanus, to the very end, -leaves unredeemed his inherited obligations to Rome, while he leaves -unfulfilled his voluntary pledges to his allies. Even in Plutarch’s -narrative Shakespeare’s insight is not required to detect this -underlying thought, but in the <i>Comparison</i>, which there is proof -that Shakespeare had studied, it is set forth so clearly that he who -runs may read.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">He made the Volsces (of whome he was generall) to -lose the oportunity of noble victory. Where in deede he should (if he -had done as he ought) have withdrawen his armie with their counsaill -and consent, that had reposed so great affiance in him, in making him -their generall: if he had made that accompt of them, as their good will -towards him did in duety binde him. Or else, if he did not care for the -Volsces in the enterprise of this warre, but had only procured it of -intent to be revenged, and afterwards to leave it of, when his anger -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_622">[Pg 622]</span> -was blowen over; yet he had no reason for the love of his mother to -pardone his contrie; but rather he should in pardoning his contrie have -spared his mother, bicause his mother and wife were members of the -bodie of his contrie and cittie, which he did besiege. For in that he -uncurteously rejected all publike petitions ... to gratifie only the -request of his mother in his departure; that was no acte so much to -honour his mother with, as to dishonour his contrie by, the which was -preserved for the pitie and intercession of a woman, and not for the -love of it selfe, as if it had not bene worthie of it. And so was this -departure a grace, to say truly, very odious and cruell, and deserved -no thanks of either partie, to him that did it. For he withdrew his -army, not at the request of the Romaines, against whom he made warre: -nor with their consent, at whose charge the warre was made.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">That Shakespeare, with his patriotism and equity, -perceived the double flaw in Coriolanus’ act of grace can hardly be -doubted. He was the last man to put the household above the national -gods, or to glorify breach of contract if only it were sanctioned by -domestic tenderness. In point of fact, he does not acquit his hero on -either count.</p> - -<p>On the one hand, if Coriolanus remits the extreme penalty, he neither -forgets nor forgives, and has no thought of return to the offending -city or resumption of the old ties. Scarcely has he granted the ladies -their boon, when he addresses Aufidius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">For my part</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ll not to Rome, I’ll back with you.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 197.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And his speech to the senators of Antium shows no -revival of former loyalties:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Hail, lords! I am return’d your soldier,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No more infected with my country’s love</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than when I parted hence, but still subsisting</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Under your great command. You are to know</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That prosperously I have attempted and</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With bloody passage led your wars even to</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The gates of Rome. Our spoils we have brought home</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Do more than counterpoise a full third part</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The charges of the action. We have made peace</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With no less honour to the Antiates</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than shame to the Romans.</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> vi. 71.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_623">[Pg 623]</span> -The insolent announcement of the invasion carried to the gates of the -capital, of the plunder that substantially exceeds the cost, of the -humiliating terms imposed on his countrymen, is ample proof that in -Coriolanus there is no recrudescence of patriotism.</p> - -<p>Yet, despite his words, he has been false to the Volscians. However -base were his motives, Aufidius speaks the truth when he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">Perfidiously</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He has betray’d your business, and given up,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For certain drops of salt, your city Rome,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I say “your city,” to his wife and mother;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Breaking his oath and resolution like</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A twist of rotten silk, never admitting</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Counsel o’ the war.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> vi. 91.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">It is the opinion of the First Lord, despite his -impartiality and his sympathy with Marcius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent21">There to end</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where he was to begin, and give away</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The benefit of our levies, answering us</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With our own charge; making a treaty where</div> - <div class="verse indent0">There was a yielding,—this admits no excuse,</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> vi. 65.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus both his native and his adopted country have -reason to complain. He remains a traitor to the one, while yet he -breaks faith with the other.</p> - -<p>Of course, in theory there was a middle course possible, which would -have served the best interests of the two states equally. He might have -used his influence to establish a lasting and intimate alliance; and -this was the policy that Volumnia outlined in her plea:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">If it were so that our request did tend</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To save the Romans, thereby to destroy</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As poisonous to your honour: no; our suit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is, that you reconcile them: while the Volsces</div> - <div class="verse indent0">May say, “This mercy we have show’d”; the Romans,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">“This we received”; and each in either side</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Give the all-hail to thee, and cry “Be blest</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For making up this peace!”</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii. 132.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_624">[Pg 624]</span> -But such an all-hail was not for Coriolanus to win. It is one of the -charges which Plutarch brings against him in the <i>Comparison</i>, -that he neglected the opportunity.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">By this dede of his he tooke not away the enmity -that was betwene both people.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">But how could he, when he had no special desire -for the well-being of either, and when his heart was unchanged? His -family affection has got the better of his narrower egoism, but even -after sacrificing a portion of his revenge, he remains essentially -the man he was, and is no more capable of pursuing a judicious and -conciliatory policy now for the good of the whole and his own good, -than of old in the market-place of Rome.</p> - -<p>For to the end he is imprudent, headstrong, and violent as ever. He -sees quite clearly that his compliance with his mother’s prayer must be -dangerous, if not mortal, to him. Dangerous it is, mortal it need not -be. With a little more self-restraint and circumspection, a little less -aggressiveness and truculence, he might still preserve both his life -and his authority. It is his unchastened spirit, not the questionable -treaty, that is the direct cause of his death. Indeed, in a sense, -the treaty had nothing to do with it. In Shakespeare, though not in -Plutarch, Tullus, as we have seen, when he still anticipated the -capture of Rome, determined to make away with his rival so soon as that -should take place; and from what we know of Coriolanus’ character, and -Tullus’ comprehension of it<a id="FNanchor_263" href="#Footnote_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a> -and general astuteness in management, we feel sure that the scheme was -bound to succeed, if Coriolanus persisted in his old ways. Even as -things have turned out, Marcius has all the odds in his favour. His -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_625">[Pg 625]</span> -triumphal entry into Antium is a repetition of his triumphal entry -into Rome. When, according to the stage direction, “Drums and trumpets -sound, with great shouts of the People,” the malcontents turn to -Aufidius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent5"><i>First Conspirator.</i> Your native town you enter’d like a post,</div> - <div class="verse indent3">And had no welcomes home; but he returns,</div> - <div class="verse indent3">Splitting the air with noise.</div> - <div class="verse indent5"><i>Second Conspirator.</i><span class="ws3">And patient fools,</span></div> - <div class="verse indent3">Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear</div> - <div class="verse indent3">With giving him the glory.</div> - <div class="verse indent36">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> vi. 50.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">That is, the admiration of the populace, -constrained by his prowess, is the same sort of obstacle to these -factionaries as it formerly was to the tribunes; and with that, and -his great services as well, he commands the situation. He needs only a -minimum of skill and moderation to carry all before him. So the problem -of his antagonists is the same in both cases: namely, to neutralise -these advantages by rousing his passion, and provoking him to show his -pride, his recklessness, his uncompromising rigour. In both cases he -falls into the trap, and converts the popular goodwill to hatred by -defiantly harping on the injuries he has inflicted on his admirers. -He is the unregenerate “superman” to the last. The suppression of his -victorious surname, the taunts of “traitor” and “boy,” drive him mad. -He lets himself be transported to a bravado that must shake from sleep -all the latent hostility of the Volscians.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Too great for what contains it. Boy! O slave!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pardon me, lords, ’tis the first time that ever</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I was forc’d to scold. Your judgements, my grave lords,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Must give this cur the lie: and his own notion—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who wears my stripes impress’d upon him; that</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Must bear my beating to his grave—shall join</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To thrust the lie unto him.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>First Lord.</i> Peace, both, and hear me speak. - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_626">[Pg 626]</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Coriolanus.</i> Cut me to pieces, Volsces; men and lads,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Stain all your edges on me. Boy! false hound!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioli;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Alone I did it. Boy!</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">The patient fools, whose children he had slain, -are not patient now, and no longer tear their throats in acclaiming his -glory. Their cries, “Tear him to pieces,” “He killed my son,” and the -like, give the conspirators the cue, and Aufidius is presently standing -on his body.</p> - -<p>It is not, then, as a martyr to retrieved patriotism that Coriolanus -perishes, but as the victim of his own passion. In truth, the victory -he won over himself under the influence of his mother, though real, is -very incomplete. His piety to the hearth saves him from the superlative -infamy of destroying his country, which is something, and even a good -deal; but it is not everything; and beyond that it has no result, -public or personal. On the contrary, Coriolanus’ isolated and but -partly justified act of clemency receives its comment from the motives -that induced it, the troth-breach that accompanied it, and the rage -in which he passed away. If, like his son with the butterfly, he did -grasp honour at the close, it was disfigured by his rude handling. -But at least he never belies his own great though mixed nature, and -it is fitting that his death, needless but heroic, should have its -cause in his nature and be such as his nature would select. Indeed, -it is both his nemesis and his guerdon. For he would not be a Roman, -he could not be a Volsce; what part could he have played in the years -to come? Perhaps Shakespeare read in Philemon Holland’s rendering the -alternative account that Livy gives of the final scene. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_627">[Pg 627]</span></p> - -<p class="blockquot">I find in Fabius, a most ancient writer, that -he lived untill he was an old man: who repeateth this of him: -that oftentimes in his latter daies he used to utter this speech: -<i>A heavie case and most wretched, for an aged man to live</i> -<i>banisht</i>.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">At all events some such feeling as his regrets -in this variant tradition suggest, makes us prefer the version that -Plutarch followed and that Shakespeare adapted. Coriolanus deserves to -be spared the woes that the future has in store. As it is, he falls -in the fulness of his power, inspired by great memories to greater -audacity, and, no doubt, elated at the thought of challenging and -outbraving death, when death is sure to win.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_628">[Pg 628]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">APPENDIX A<br /> -<span class="h_subtitle">NEAREST PARALLELS BETWEEN GARNIER’S -<i>CORNELIE</i>,<br /> IN THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH VERSIONS,<br /> -AND <i>JULIUS CAESAR</i></span></h2> -</div> - -<p>It should be remembered that it is not on these particular equivalents, -mostly very loose, that those who uphold the theory of connection -between the two plays rely, but on the general drift of the corresponding -scenes which in this respect strikingly resemble each other and in no -way produce the same impression as the narrative of Plutarch.</p> - -<table class="no-wrap" border="0" cellspacing="4" summary=" " cellpadding="4" > - <tbody><tr> - <td class="tdc"><big><i>French.</i></big></td> - <td class="tdc"><big><i>English.</i></big></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Cassie.</i> Miserable Cité, tu<br /> - armes contre toy</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>Cassius.</i> Accursed Rome,<br /> - that arm’st against thy selfe</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">La fureur d’un Tyran pour<br />le faire ton Roy:</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">A Tyrants rage, and mak’st a<br /> wretch thy King:</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Tu armes tes enfans, injurieuse<br />Romme,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">For one mans pleasure<br />(O injurious Rome!)</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Encontre tes enfans, pour le<br />plaisir d’un homme:</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">Thy chyldren gainst thy<br />chyldren arm’d:</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Et ne te souvient plus<br /> - <i>d’avoir faict autrefois</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>And thinkst not of the</i><br /> - <i>riuers of theyr bloode,</i></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Tant ruisseler de sang four<br /> - n’avoir point de Rois,</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>That earst were shed to<br /> - saue thy libertie,</i></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl bt"><i>Pour n’estre point esclave,<br /> - et ne porter flechie</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2 bt"><i>Because thou euer hatedst<br /> - Monarchie</i>.<a id="FNanchor_264" href="#Footnote_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a>...</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Au sendee d’un seul, le joug<br /> - de Monarchie</i>.<a id="FNanchor_265" href="#Footnote_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a> - (line 1065.)</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl bt">... Quoy Brute? et nous faut-il<br />trop craignant le danger,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2 bt">But, Brutus, shall wee<br />dissolutelie sitte</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Laisser si laschement sous un<br />Prince ranger?</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">And see the tyrant line<br />to tyranize? - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_629">[Pg 629]</span></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Faut-il que tant de gens morts<br /> - pour nostre franchise</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">Or shall <i>theyr ghosts, that<br /> - dide to doe us good</i>,</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Se plaignent aux tombeaux de<br /> - nostre couardise?</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>Plaine in their Tombes of<br /> - our base cowardise</i>....</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl bt">Et que les <i>peres vieux voisent<br />disant de nous</i>,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2 bt"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl bb">“<i>Ceux-là ont mieux aimé, tant<br /> - ils ont le coeur mous,</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2 bb">“<i>See where they goe that haue<br /> - theyr race forgot!</i></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Honteusement servir en<br /> - dementant leur race,</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>And rather chuse, (unarm’d)<br /> - to serue with shame,</i></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl bb"><i>Qu’armez pour le païs mourir<br />dessus la - place.</i>”<a id="FNanchor_266" href="#Footnote_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a> (line 1101.)</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2 bb"><i>Then, (arm’d), to saue their<br />freedom and their - fame!</i>”<a id="FNanchor_267" href="#Footnote_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Brute.</i> Je jure par le Ciel,<br /> - thrône des Immortels,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>Brutus.</i> I swear by heauen,<br /> - th’ Immortals highest throne.</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Par leurs images saincts, leurs<br /> - temples, leurs autels,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">Their temples, Altars, and<br />theyr Images,</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">De ne souffrir, vray Brute,<br /> - aucun maistre entreprendre</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">To see (for one) that Brutus<br />suffer not</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Sur nostre liberte, si je la<br />puis defendre.</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">His ancient liberty to be<br />represt.</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">J’ai Cesar en la guerre<br />ardentement suyvi,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">I freely marcht with Caesar<br />in hys warrs,</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Pour maintenir son droit,<br />non pour vivre asservi ...</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">Not to be subject, but to ayde<br />his right, ...</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">... Il verra que Decime<br />a jusques aujourdhuy</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">But he shall see, that Brutus<br />thys day beares</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Porté pour luy l’estoc qu’il<br />trouvera sur luy.</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">The self-same Armes to be<br />aueng’d on hym....</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">... <i>Je l’aime cherement,<br /> - je l’aime, mais le droit</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>I loue, I loue him deerely</i>.<br />But the loue</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Qu’on doit à son païs,<br /> - qu’à sa naissance on doit,</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>That men theyr Country and<br /> - theyr birth-right beare,</i></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Tout autre amour - surmonte.</i><a id="FNanchor_268" href="#Footnote_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a>...<br /> - (line 1109.)</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>Exceeds all - loues.</i><a id="FNanchor_269" href="#Footnote_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a>...</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl bt"><i>Cassie.</i> Tandisque Cassie<br />aura goutte de sang</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2 bt"><i>Cassius</i>.... Know, while Cassius<br /> - hath one drop of blood</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">En son corps animeux,<br />il voudra vivre franc,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">To feede this worthles<br />body that you see,</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Il fuira le servage ostant<br />la tyrannie,</i></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">What reck I death, to doe<br />so many good? - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_630">[Pg 630]</span></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Ou l’ame de son corps il<br /> - chassera bannie.</i><a id="FNanchor_270" href="#Footnote_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>In spite of Caesar,<br />Cassius will be - free.</i><a id="FNanchor_271" href="#Footnote_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Brute.</i> Toute ame genereuse<br />indocile a servir</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>Brutus.</i> A generous or<br />true enobled spirit</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Deteste les Tyrans.</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">Detests to learne what tasts<br />of seruitude.</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Cassie.</i> Je ne puis m’asservir,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>Cassius.</i> Brutus, I cannot<br /> - serue nor see Rome yok’d:</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Ny voir que Rome serve, et<br />plustost la mort dure </td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">No, let me rather die a<br />thousand deaths....</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">M’enferre mille fois, que vivant<br />je l’endure....</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"> </td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">O chose trop indigne!<br /><i>Un homme effeminé</i> ...</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">O base indignitie!<br /><i>A beardles - youth</i><a id="FNanchor_272" href="#Footnote_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a> ...</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"><i>Commande a l’Univers, la terre<br /> - tient en bride</i>,<a id="FNanchor_273" href="#Footnote_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"><i>Commaunds the world, and<br /> - brideleth all the earth</i>,<a id="FNanchor_274" href="#Footnote_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Et maistre donne loy au<br />peuple Romulide,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">And like a prince controls<br />the Romulists;</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Aux enfants du dieu Mars....</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">Braue Roman Souldiers,<br />sterne-borne sons of Mars....</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">O Brute, O Servilie,<br />Qu’ores vous nous laissez<br /> - une race avilie!</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">O Brutus, speake! O say, Servilius!<br /> - Why cry you aime,<a id="FNanchor_275" href="#Footnote_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a> - <br />and see us used thus?</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Brute est vivant, il sçait,<br />il voit, il est present,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">But Brutus liues, and sees,<br />and knowes, and feeles,</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Que sa chere patrie on<br />va tyrannisant:</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">That there is one that curbs<br />their Countries weale.</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Et comme s’il n’estoit qu’une<br /> - vaine semblance De Brut son<br />ayeul, non sa vraye semence,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">Yet (as he were the semblance,<br /> - not the sonne, Of noble Brutus,<br />his great Grandfather);</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">S’il n’avoit bras ny mains,<br />sens ny coeur, pour oser,</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">As if he wanted hands,<br />sence, sight or hart,</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Simulacre inutile, aux<br /> Tyrans s’opposer:</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">He doth, deuiseth, sees,<br />nor dareth ought,</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl">Il ne fait rien de Brute, et<br /> - et d’heure en heure augmente</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">That may extirpe or raze<br />these tyrannies:</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl_top">Par trop de laschetéla<br /> - force violente. (line 1201.)</td> - <td class="tdl_ws2">Nor ought doth Brutus that to<br />Brute belongs, But still<br /> - increaseth by his negligence<br />His owne disgrace and<br /> - Caesars violence.</td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"></td> - </tr><tr> - <td class="tdl"></td> - <td class="tdl_ws2"></td> - </tr> - </tbody> -</table> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_631">[Pg 631]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">APPENDIX B</h2> -</div> - -<p class="neg-indent">THE VERBAL RELATIONS OF THE VARIOUS VERSIONS OF -PLUTARCH ILLUSTRATED BY MEANS OF VOLUMNIA’S SPEECH</p> - -<p>This passage, though it does not show the successive modifications of -the text quite so fully and strikingly as some others, is the most -interesting in so far as it is the longest in which Shakespeare closely -follows the lead of the original.</p> - -<p>The Latin version of the Renaissance is placed first, both because in -definite form it is chronologically the earliest, and because for the -reasons already given it cannot be held to have had much influence on -Amyot, North and Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>It is of course impossible to reconstruct the Greek text that Amyot -put together for himself. I have taken that of the edition of 1599, -published half a dozen years after his death, as a fair approximation. -The chief variations from the Latin are given in spaced type.</p> - -<p>In the extract from Amyot the chief variations from the Greek are -printed in Italics; the few phrases or words in which the influence of -the Latin may be suspected are underlined.</p> - -<p>In the extract from North the chief variations from the French are -printed in Italics.</p> - -<p class="space-below2">In the extract from Shakespeare, it is, as we -might expect, more convenient to reverse the process and italicise what -he has taken over. -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_632">[Pg 632]</span></p> - -<p class="neg-indent"><span class="smcap">The Version<a id="FNanchor_276" href="#Footnote_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a> -of the elder Guarini, styled Guarinus Veronensis, in the Edition of -the</span> <i>Vitae Parallelae</i> <span class="smcap">issued by -Udalricus Gallus in 1470</span> (?)</p> - -<p>Tum pueros ac Vergiliam unacum reliquis secum mulieribus ducens castra -Volscorum adiit. Earum miseranda facies hosti reverentiam injecit -atque silentium. Hic Martius in suggesto inter Volscorum proceres -sedens, ubi eas adventare mulieres vidit, admiratione confectus est, -imprimis venientem uxorem noscitans immoto et obstinato persistere -animo<a id="FNanchor_277" href="#Footnote_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a> -voluit: verum consternatus affectu et ad ipsarum confusus -intuitum haud tulit ut se sedentem adirent,<a id="FNanchor_278" href="#Footnote_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a> -ac pernici devotas gradu obviam prodiit. Et matre primo diutissimeque -salutata, inde uxore ac filiis, nullo jam pacto frenare lacrimas -poterat. Ut vero dulces incepti sunt amplexus, virum parentis amore -perinde ac secundo fluminis cursu deferri cerneres.<a id="FNanchor_279" href="#Footnote_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a> -Caeterum cum inchoantem jam verba matrem intelligeret, acceptis -Volscorum primoribus Volumniam talia orantem audivit. “Etsi fili -taceamus, ipse, tum veste, tum miseri corporis apparatu, cernis qualem -domesticae rei conditionem tuum nobis confecerit exilium. Existima -vero quam caeteris longe mulieribus infeliciores accessimus, quibus -dulcissimum aspectum fecit fortuna terribilem: te mihi filium, huic -vero maritum, patriae muros obsidentem aspicimus. Et quod caeteris -calamitatis et malorum solet esse solacium, deos orare, quam procul -nobis ablatum est: non enim et patriae victoriam et tibi salutem -implorare fas est: quaeque atrociora quispiam nobis impraecaretur -hostis, ea nostris insunt<a id="FNanchor_280" href="#Footnote_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a> -praecibus. Uxorem enim ac liberos aut patria aut te orbari necesse est. -Ego vero, dum haec viventi mihi bellum dijudicet, haud morabor, teque -nisi positis inimicitiis ad pacem atque concordiam conciliavero; ita ut -utrique<a id="FNanchor_281" href="#Footnote_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a> -potius beneficum quam alteri perniciosum te reddas. Hoc tibi persuade -sicque conformatus et paratus accede, ut non ante hostiles patriae -manus conferas quam caesam calcaveris parentem. Nec enim ea mihi -expectanda dies est qua filium aut in triumpho tractum a civibus aut de -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_633">[Pg 633]</span> -patria triumphantem aspiciam. Quod si pro conservanda patria profligari -a te Volscos exorarem, grave fili iniquumque tibi fateor imminere -consilium; namque necque cives perdere bonum est, necque tuos commissos -fidei perdere justum. Nunc malorum finem imploramus simulque populis -utrisque salutem. Quae res maximam Volscis gloriam comparabit: quod -cum ingentia nobis bona et victores quidem tribuerint, non minus -jocundam ipsi pacem et amicitiam sint consecuturi: quae si effecta -fuerint, tu tantorum profecto dux eris et causa bonorum: sin ea infecta -permanserint, utrique noxam in te solum crimenque rejicient. Cumque -incertus belli sit eventus, hoc certi secum affert: ut siquidem vincas -immanissimus patriae vastator appellandus sis, sin victus succumbas, -ob tuam videberis iracundiam benefactoribus et amicis ingentium origo -malorum extitisse.” Haec dum oraret Volumnia, nullum respondens -verbum Martius intentis excipiebat auribus. Ut vero desierat, cum is -diuturnum teneret silentium, rursus Volumnia; “Quid siles,” inquit. -“Nate, num irae receptarumque injuriarum memoriae omnia concedere -satius arbitraris an depraecanti talia matri largiri pulcherrimum -munificentiae genus non est? Magnine interesse viri putas acceptorum -meminisse malorum? Suscepta autem a parentibus beneficia eorum cultui -ac venerationi reddere num excelso potius ac bono dignissimum viro -munus censes? Caeterum gratiam habere tuerique magisquam tu debuit -nemo, cum tamen per acerbissimam adeo ingratitudinem eas. Et cum -permagnas jam patriae paenas exegeris acceperisque, nullas adhuc matri -grates retulisti. Erat vero aequissimum atque sanctissimum ut abs te -vel nulla ingruenti necessitate tam honesta tamque justa postulans -impetrarem. Quid cum in meam te verbis sententiam deflectere nequeam, -extremae jam parco spei?” Haec affata cum uxore simul ac liberis -pedibus advoluta procumbit. Tum conclamans Martius, “Qualia mihi” ait -“factitasti mater”; et jacentem sustulit: et pressa dextera inquit; -“Vicisti patriae quidem prosperam, nimis atque nimis perniciosam -autem<a id="FNanchor_282" href="#Footnote_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a> -mihi victoriam. Abs te tantum superatus abscedam.”</p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Plutarch’s Greek in the Edition of 1599</span></p> - -<p>Ἐκ τούτου, τά τε παιδία καὶ τὴν Οὐεργιλίαν ἀναστήσασα μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων -γυναικῶν, ἐβάδιζεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν Οὐολούσκων. ἡ δ’ ὄψις αὐτῶν -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_634">[Pg 634]</span> -τότε οἰκτρὰν καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐνεποίησεν αἰδὼ καὶ σιωπήν. ἔτυχε -δ’ ὁ Μάρκιος ἐπὶ βήματος καθεζόμενος μετὰ τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν. ὡς οὖν -εἶδε προσιούσας τὰς γυναῖκας, ἐθαύμασεν· ἐπιγνοὺς δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα -πρώτην βαδίζουσαν, ἐβούλετο μὲν ἐμμένειν τοῖς ἀτρέπτοις ἐκείνοις -καὶ ἀπαραιτήτοις λογισμοῖς· γενόμενος δὲ τοῦ πάθους ἐλάττων καὶ -συνταραχθεὶς πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, οὐκ ἔτλη καθεζομένῳ προσελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ -<b>καταβὰς</b> θᾶττον ἢ βάδην, καὶ ἀπαντήσας, πρώτην μὲν ἠσπάσατο τὴν -μητέρα, καὶ πλεῖστον χρόνον, ἔτι δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὰ τέκνα, μήτε -δακρύων ἔτι, <b>μήτε τοῦ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι</b> φειδόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ -ὑπὸ ῥεύματος φέρεσθαι τοῦ πάθους ἑαυτὸν ἐνδεδωκώς. <b>ἐπεὶ δὲ τούτων -ἄδην εἶχε</b>, καὶ τὴν μητέρα βουλομένην ἤδη λόγων ἄρχειν ἤσθετο, -τοὺς τῶν Οὐολούσκων προβούλους παραστησάμενος, ἤκουσε τῆς Οὐολουμνίας -τοιαῦτα λεγούσης, “Ὁρᾶς μὲν, ὦ παῖ, κᾳν αὐταὶ μὴ λέγωμεν, ἐσθῆτι καὶ -μορφῇ τῶν ἀθλίων σωμάτων τεκμαιρόμενος, οἵαν οἰκουρίαν ἡμῖν ἡ σὴ φυγὴ -περιποίησε. λόγισαι δὲ νῦν ὡς ἀτυχέσταται πασῶν ἀφίγμεθα γυναικῶν, αἷς -τὸ ἥδιστον θέαμα, φοβερώτατον ἡ τύχη πεποίηκεν, ἐμοὶ μὲν υἱὸν, ταύτῃ δ’ -ἄνδρα τοῖς τῆς πατρίδος τείχεσιν ἰδεῖν ἀντικαθήμενον. ὃ δ’ ἔστι τοῖς -ἄλλοις ἀτυχίας πάσης καὶ κακοπραγίας παραμύθιον, εὔχεσθαι θεοῖς, ἡμῖν -ἀπορώτατον γέγονεν. οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε καὶ τῇ πατρίδι νίκην ἅμα καὶ σοὶ -σωτηρίαν αἰτεῖσθαι παρὰ τῶν θεῶν, ἀλλ’ ἅ τις ἄν ἡμῖν καταράσαιτο τῶν -ἐχθρῶν, ταῦτα ταῖς ἡμετέραις ἔνεστιν εὐχαῖς. ἀνάγκη γὰρ ἢ τῆς πατρίδος -ἢ σου στέρεσθαι γυναικὶ σῇ καὶ τέκνοις. ἐγὼ δ’ οὐ περιμένω ταύτην μοι -διαιτῆσαι τὴν τύχην ζώσῃ τὸν πόλεμον· ἀλλ’ εἰ μή σε πείσαιμι φιλίαν -καὶ ὁμόνοιαν διαφορὰς καὶ κακῶν θέμενον, ἀμφοτέρων γενέσθαι εὐεργέτην -μᾶλλον, ἢ λυμεῶνα τῶν ἑτέρων, οὕτω διανοοῦ καὶ παρασκεύαζε σεαυτὸν, ὡς -τῇ πατρίδι μὴ προσμίξαι δυνάμενος πρὶν ἢ νεκρὰν ὑπερβῆναι τὴν τεκούσαν. -οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνην με δεῖ τὴν ἡμέραν ἀναμένειν ἐν ᾗ τὸν υἱὸν ἐπόψομαι -θριαμβευόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολίτων, ἢ θριαμβεύοντα κατὰ τῆς πατρίδος. -εἰ μὲν οὖν ἀξιῶ σε τὴν πατρίδα σῶσαι Οὐολούσκους ἀπολέσαντα, χαλεπή -σοι καὶ δυσδιαίτητος, ὦ παῖ, πρόκειται σκέψις, οὔτε γὰρ διαφθεῖραι -τοὺς πολίτας καλὸν, οὔτε τοὺς πεπιστευκότας προδοῦναι δίκαιον. νῦν δ’ -ἀπαλλαγὴν κακῶν αἰτιούμεθα, σωτήριον μὲν ἀμφοτέροις ὁμοίως, ἔνδοξον δὲ -καὶ καλὴν μᾶλλον Οὐολούσκοις, ὅτι τῷ κρατεῖν δόξουσι διδόναι τὰ μέγιστα -τῶν ἀγαθῶν, <b>οὐχ ἧττον λαμβάνοντες</b>, εἰρήνην καὶ φιλίαν, ὧν -μάλιστα μὲν αἴτιος ἔσῃ γινομένων, μὴ γινομένων δὲ, μόνος αἰτίαν ἕξεις -παρ’ ἀμφοτέροις. ἄδηλος δ’ ὠν ὁ πόλεμος τοῦτ’ ἔχει πρόδηλον, ὅτι σοὶ -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_635">[Pg 635]</span> -νικῶντι μὲν, ἀλάστορι τῆς πατρίδος εἶναι περιέστιν· ἡττώμενος δὲ, -δόξεις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς εὐεργέταις ἀνδράσι καὶ φίλοις τῶν μεγίστων συμφορῶν -αἴτιος γεγονέναι.” ταῦτα τῆς Οὐολουμνίας λεγούσης ὁ Μάρκιος ἠκροάτο -μηδὲν ἀποκρινόμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ παυσαμένης, εἱστήκει σιωπῶν πολὺν -χρόνον, αὖθις ἡ Οὐολουμνία, “Τί σιγᾷς (εἶπεν) ὦ παῖ, πότερον ὀργῇ καὶ -μνησικακίᾳ πάντα συγχωρεῖν καλόν; οὐ καλὸν δὲ μητρὶ χαρίσασθαι δεομένῃ -περὶ τηλικούτων; ἢ τὸ μεμνῆσθαι πεπονθότα κακῶς ἀνδρὶ μεγάλῳ προσήκει, -τὸ δ’ εὐεργεσίας αἷς εὐεργετοῦνται παῖδες ὑπὸ τῶν τεκόντων σέβεσθαι καὶ -τιμᾷν, οὐκ ἀνδρὸς ἔργον ἐστὶ μεγάλου καὶ ἀγαθοῦ; καὶ μὴν οὐδενὶ μᾶλλον -ἔπρεπε τηρεῖν χάριν ὡς σοι, <b>πικρῶς οὕτως ἀχαριστίαν ἐπεξίοντι</b>. -καίτοι παρὰ τῆς πατρίδος ἤδη μεγάλας δίκας ἀπείληφας, τῇ μητρὶ δ’ -οὐδεμίαν χάριν ἀποδέδωκας. ἦν μὲν οὖν ὁσιώτατον ἄνευ τινος ἀνάγκης -τυχεῖν με παρὰ σοῦ δεομένην οὕτω καλῶν καὶ δικαίων· μὴ πείθουσα δὲ τί -φείδομαι τῆς ἐσχάτης ἐλπίδος;” καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰποῦσα προσπίπτει τοῖς ποσὶν -αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἅμα καὶ τῶν τέκνων. ὁ δὲ Μάρκιος ἀναβοήσας, -“Οἷα εἴργασαί με, ὦ μᾶτερ;” ἐξανίστησιν αὐτὴν, καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν πιέσας -σφόδρα, “Νενίκηκας (εἶπεν) εὐτυχῆ μὲν τῇ πατρίδι νίκην, ἐμοὶ δ’ -ὀλέθριον· ἄπειμι γὰρ ὑπὸ σοῦ μόνης ἡττώμενος.”</p> - -<p class="f120 space-above2"><span class="smcap">Amyot’s Version.</span></p> - -<p><i>Elle prit sa belle fille</i> et ses enfans quand et<a id="FNanchor_283" href="#Footnote_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a> -elle, et avec toutes les autres Dames Romaines s’en alla droit au camp -des Volsques, lesquelz eurent eulx-mesmes une compassion meslee de -reverence quand ils la veirent <i>de maniere qu’il n’y eut personne -d’eulx qui luy ozast rien dire</i>. Or estoit lors Martius assis en son -tribunal, <i>avec les marques de souverain Capitaine</i>,<a id="FNanchor_284" href="#Footnote_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a> -et <i>de tout loing</i> qu’il apperceut venir des femmes, s’esmerveilla -que ce pouvoit estre; mais peu apres recognoissant sa femme, qui -marchoit la premiere, il voulut <i>du commencement</i> perseverer en -son obstinee et inflexible <i>rigueur</i>; mais à la fin, vaincu de -l’affection naturelle, estant tout esmeu de les voir, il <i>ne peut</i> -avoir le <i>coeur si dur</i> que de les attendre en son siege, -ains<a id="FNanchor_285" href="#Footnote_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a> -en descendant plus viste que le pas, leur alla au devant, et baisa sa mere -la premiere, et la teint assez longuement embrassee, puis sa femme et -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_636">[Pg 636]</span> -ses petits enfants, ne se pouvant plus tenir que les <i>chauldes</i> -larmes ne luy vinssent <i>aux yeux</i>, ny se garder de leur faire -caresses, ains se laissant aller à l’affection <i>du sang</i> ne -plus ne moins qu’à <i>la force</i> d’un impetueux torrent. Mais -apres qu’il leur eut assez faict <i>d’aimable recueil</i>, et qu’il -apperceut que sa mere Volumnia vouloit commencer a luy parler, il -appella les principaux du conseil des Volsques pour <i>ouyr ce qu’elle -proposeroit</i>, puis elle parla en ceste maniere: “Tu peux assez -cognoistre de toy mesme, mon filz, encore que nous ne t’en dissions -rien, à voir noz accoustremens, et l’estat auquel sont noz pauvres -corps, quelle a esté nostre vie en la maison depuis tu en es dehors; -mais considere encore maintenant combien plus <i>mal heureuses</i> -et plus infortunees nous sommes icy venues que toutes les femmes du -monde, attendu que ce qui est à toutes les autres le plus doulx a voir, -la fortune nous l’a rendu le plus effroyable, faisant voir à moy mon -filz, et à celle-ci, son mary, assiegeant les murailles de son propre -païs; tellement que ce qui est à toutes autres le <i>souverain</i> -renconfort en leurs adversitez, de <i>prier</i> et invoquer les Dieux -à leur secours, c’est ce qui nous met en plus grande perplexité, -pource que nous ne leur sçaurions demander en noz prieres victoire a -nostre païs et preservation de ta vie tout ensemble, ains toutes les -plus griefves maledictions que sçauroit imaginer contre nous un ennemy -sont <i>necessairement</i> encloses en noz oraisons, pource qu’il -est force à ta femme et à tes enfans qu’ilz soyent privez de l’un de -deux, ou de toy, ou de leurs païs: car quant a moy, je ne suis pas -deliberee d’attendre que la fortune, moy vivante, decide <i>l’issue -de ceste guerre</i>: car si je ne te puis persuader que tu vueilles -plus tost bien faire à toutes les deux parties, que d’en <i>ruiner</i> -et destruire l’une, en preferant amitie et concorde aux miseres et -calamitez de la guerre, je veux bien que tu saches et le tienes pour -asseuré que tu n’iras jamais assaillir ny combattre ton païs que -premierement tu ne passes par dessus le corps de celle qui t’a mis -en ce monde, et ne doy point differer jusques à voir le jour, ou que -mon filz <i>prisonnier</i> soit mené en triumphe par ses citoyens, -ou que luy mesme triumphe de son païs. Or si ainsi estoit que je te -requisse de sauver ton païs en destruisant les Volsques, ce te serait -certainement une deliberation trop mal-aisee à resoudre; car comme il -n’est point licite de ruiner son païs, aussi n’est-il point juste de -trahir ceulx qui se sont fiez en toy. Mais ce que je te demande est une -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_637">[Pg 637]</span> -delivrance de maulx, laquelle est egalement <i>profitable</i> et -salutaire à l’un et à l’autre peuple, mais plus honorable aux Volsques, -pource qu’il semblera qu’ayans la victoire en main, ils nous auront de -grace donné deux souverains biens, la paix et l’amitié, encore qu’ilz -n’en prennent pas moins pour eulx, duquel tu seras principal autheur, -s’il se fait; et, s’il ne se fait, tu en auras seul le <i>reproche -et le blasme</i><a id="FNanchor_286" href="#Footnote_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a> -total envers l’une et l’autre des parties: ainsi <i>estant l’issue de -la guerre</i> incertaine,<a id="FNanchor_287" href="#Footnote_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a> -cela neantmoins est bien tout certain que, si tu en demoures -vaincueur, il t’en restera <i>ce profit</i>, que tu en seras estimé -la <i>peste</i> et la ruine de ton païs: et si tu es vaincu, on dira -que pour un <i>appetit de venger tes propres injures</i> tu auras esté -cause de tres griefves calamitez à ceulx qui t’avoient humainement et -amiablement recueilly.” Martius escouta ces paroles de Volumnia sa -mere sans l’interrompre, et apres qu’elle eut acheve de dire demoura -longtemps tout <i>picqué</i> sans luy respondre. Parquoy elle reprit -la parole et recommencea à luy dire: “Que ne me respons-tu, mon filz? -Estimes-tu qu’il soit licite de conceder tout à son ire et à son -appetit de vengeance, et non honeste de condescendre et <i>incliner</i> -aux prieres de sa mere en si grandes choses? Et <i>cuides-tu</i> qu’il -soit convenable a un grand personnage, se souvenir des torts qu’on luy -a faits et <i>des injures passees</i>, et que ce ne soit point acte -d’homme de bien et de grand cueur, <i>recognoistre</i> les bienfaicts -que reçoyvent les enfans de leurs peres et meres, en leur portant -honneur et reverence? Si<a id="FNanchor_288" href="#Footnote_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> -n’y a il homme en ce monde qui deust mieux observer tous les poincts de -gratitude que toy, veu que tu poursuis si asprement une ingratitude: -et si<a id="FNanchor_289" href="#Footnote_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a> -y a davantage, que tu as ja fait payer a ton païs de grandes -amendes pour les torts que l’on t’y a faits, et n’as encore fait aucune -recognoissance a ta mere; pourtant seroit-il plus honeste que sans -autre contrainte j’<i>impetrasse</i><a id="FNanchor_290" href="#Footnote_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a> -de toy une requeste si juste et si raisonnable. Mais puis que <i>par -raison</i> je ne le te puis persuader, à quel besoing espargne-je plus, -et <i>differe-je</i> la derniere esperance.” En disant ces paroles -elle se jetta elle mesme, avec sa femme et ses enfans, a ses pieds. Ce -que Martius <i>ne pouvant supporter</i>, la releva tout aussi tost en -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_638">[Pg 638]</span> -s’escriant: “O mere, que m’as tu faict?” et un luy serrant -estroittement la main droite: “Ha,” dit il, “Mere, tu as vaincu une -victoire heureuse pour ton païs mais bien <i>malheureuse</i> et -mortelle pour ton filz, car je m’en revois<a id="FNanchor_291" href="#Footnote_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a> -vaincu par toy seule.”</p> - -<p class="f120 space-above2"><span class="smcap">North’s Version.</span></p> - -<p>She tooke her daughter in lawe, and Martius children with her, and -being accompanied with all the other Romaine ladies, they went <i>in -troupe</i> together unto the Volsces camp: whome when they sawe, they -of them selves did both pitie and reverence her, and there was not a -man amonge them that once durst say a worde unto her. Nowe was Martius -set then in his chayer of state, with all the honours of a generall, -and when he had spied the women coming a farre of, he marveled what -the matter ment: but afterwardes knowing his wife which came formest, -he determined at the first to persist in his obstinate and inflexible -rancker. But overcomen in the ende with naturall affection, and being -altogether altered to see them; his harte <i>would not serve him</i> to -tarie their comming to his chayer, but comming down in hast, he went to -meete them, and first he kissed his mother, and imbraced her a pretie -while, then his wife and litle children. And <i>Nature so wrought with -him</i>, that the<a id="FNanchor_292" href="#Footnote_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a> -teares fell from his eyes, and he coulde not keepe him selfe from -making much of them, but yeelded to the affection of his bloode as -if he had bene <i>violently</i> caried with the furie of a most -swift running streame. After he had thus lovingly received them, and -perceiving that his mother Volumnia would beginne to speake to him, -he called the chiefest of the counsell of the Volsces to heare what -she would say. Then she spake in this sorte: “If we held our peace, -(my sonne) and <i>determined not to speake</i>, the state of our poor -bodies, and <i>present</i> sight of our rayment, would easely bewray to -thee what life we have led at home, since thy exile and abode abroad. -But thinke nowe with thy selfe, how much more unfortunatly,<a id="FNanchor_293" href="#Footnote_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a> -then all the women livinge we are come hether, considering that the sight -which should be most pleasaunt to all other to beholde, <i>spitefull</i> -fortune hath made most fearefull to us: making my selfe to see my -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_639">[Pg 639]</span> -sonne, and my daughter here, her husband, besieging the walles of his -native countrie. So as that which is thonly comforte to all other in -their adversitie and <i>miserie</i>, to pray unto the goddes and to -call to them for aide; is the <i>onely</i> thinge which <i>plongeth</i> -us into most deepe perplexitie. For we can not (alas) together pray, -both for victorie, for our countrie, and for safetie of thy life -also: but a <i>worlde</i> of grievous curses, <i>yea more then any -mortall</i> enemie can heape uppon us, are forcibly wrapt up in our -prayers. For the <i>bitter soppe of most hard choyce</i> is offered thy -wife and children, to forgoe the one of the two: either to lose the -<i>persone</i> of thy selfe, or the <i>nurse</i> of<a id="FNanchor_294" href="#Footnote_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a> -their native contrie. For my selfe (my sonne) I am determined not to tarie, -till fortune in my life time do make an ende of this warre. For if I cannot -persuade thee, rather to doe good unto both parties than to overthrowe -and destroye the one, preferring love and <i>nature</i> before the -<i>malice</i> and calamitie of warres: <i>thou shalt</i> see, my sonne, -and trust unto it,<a id="FNanchor_295" href="#Footnote_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a> -thou shalt no soner marche forward to assault thy countrie, but thy -foote shall treade upon thy mothers <i>wombe</i>, that brought thee -first into this world. And I maye not deferre to see the daye, either -that my sonne be led prisoner in triumphe by his <i>naturall</i> -country men, or that he him selfe doe triumphe <i>of them</i>, and -of his <i>naturall</i> countrie. For if it were so, that my request -tended to save thy countrie, in destroying the Volsces: <i>I must -confesse</i>, thou wouldest hardly and <i>doubtfully</i> resolve -on that. For as to destroye thy naturall countrie it is altogether -<i>unmete</i> and unlawfull; so were it not just, and <i>lesse -honorable</i>, to betraye those that put their trust in thee. But my -only demaunde consisteth to make a <i>gayle</i><a id="FNanchor_296" href="#Footnote_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a> -deliverie of all evills, which delivereth equall benefit and safety -both to the one and the other, but most honorable for the Volsces. For -it shall appeare, that having victorie in their hands, they have of -speciall favour graunted us singular graces; peace, and amitie, albeit -them selves have no lesse parte of both, then we. Of which <i>good</i>, -if so it came to passe, thy selfe is thonly authour, <i>and so hast -thou thonly honour</i>. But if it faile, <i>and fall out contrarie</i>: -thy selfe alone <i>deservedly</i> shall carie the <i>shameful</i> -reproche and burden of either partie. So, though the ende of warre be -uncertaine, yet this notwithstanding is most certaine: that if it be thy -chaunce to conquer, this benefit shalt thou <i>reape</i> of <i>thy goodly -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_640">[Pg 640]</span> -conquest</i>, to be chronicled the plague and destroyer of thy -countrie. And if fortune also overthrowe thee, then the worlde will -saye, that through desire to revenge thy private injuries, thou hast -<i>for ever</i> undone thy good friendes, who dyd most lovingly and -curteously receyve thee.” Martius gave good eare unto his mothers -wordes, without interrupting <i>her speache at all</i>: and after she -had sayed <i>what she would</i>, he held his peace a prety while,<a id="FNanchor_297" href="#Footnote_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a> -and annswered not a worde. Hereupon she beganne again to speake unto -him, and sayed: “My sonne, why doest thou not aunswer me? Doest thou -think it good altogether to geve place unto thy choller and desire of -revenge, and thinkest thou it not honestie for thee to graunt<a id="FNanchor_298" href="#Footnote_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a> -thy mothers request in so weighty a cause? doest thou take it honorable -for a noble man, to remember the wrongs and injuries done him: and -doest not in like case thinke it an honest noble man’s parte, to be -thankefull for the goodnes that parents doe shewe to their children, -acknowledging the duety and reverence <i>they ought to beare unto -them</i>?<a id="FNanchor_299" href="#Footnote_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a> -No man living is more bounde to shewe him selfe thankefull -in all partes and respects then thy selfe: who so unnaturally sheweth -all ingratitude.<a id="FNanchor_300" href="#Footnote_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a> -Moreover (my sonne) thou hast sorely taken of thy countrie, exacting -grievous payments apon them, in revenge of the injuries offered thee: -besides, thou hast not hitherto shewed thy poore mother any -curtesie.<a id="FNanchor_301" href="#Footnote_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a> -And therefore it is <i>not only</i> honest, <i>but due unto me</i>, -that without compulsion I should obtaine my so just and reasonable -request of thee. But since by reason I cannot persuade thee to it, to -what purpose do I deferre<a id="FNanchor_302" href="#Footnote_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a> -my last hope?” And with these wordes her selfe, his wife and children -fell downe upon their knees before him. Martius seeing that could -refraine no longer but <i>went straight</i> and lifte her up, crying -out: “Oh mother, what have you done to me?” And holding her hard by the -right hand, “Oh mother,” sayed he, “You have wonne a happy victorie for -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_641">[Pg 641]</span> -your countrie, but mortall and unhappy for your sonne: for I -see<a id="FNanchor_303" href="#Footnote_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a> -myself vanquished by you alone.”</p> - -<p class="f120 space-above2"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare’s Version.</span></p> - -<p>The narrative which ushers in the speech is of course left to the -actors. It is interesting, however, to observe that Shakespeare varies -from his authorities in making Coriolanus embrace not his mother but -his wife in the first instance. He inserts too the conversation, that, -at first merely personal, leads up to the grand question. Then Volumnia -proceeds with her speech. It is impossible to note all the minute -changes that Shakespeare makes. The Italics in the following reprint -represent most generously what he has borrowed, for even in the clauses -and phrases indicated as loans there is abundant evidence of his own -irrepressible dramatic and poetic originality.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Vol. Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>And state of bodies would bewray what life</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>How more unfortunate than all living women</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Are we come hither: since that thy sight</i>, which should</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Constrains them weep and shake with fear and sorrow;</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Making the mother, wife</i>, and child to see</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>The son, the husband</i>, and the father tearing</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His country’s bowels out. <i>And to poor we</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Thine enmity’s most capital: thou barr’st us</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>That all but we enjoy; for how can we,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Alas, how can we for our country pray</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whereto we are bound, <i>together with thy victory</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whereto we are bound? <i>alack, or we must lose</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our comfort in the country. We must find</div> - <div class="verse indent0">An evident calamity, though we had</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our wish, which side should win: for <i>either thou</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Must</i>, as a foreign recreant, <i>be led</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">With manacles thorough our streets, or <i>else</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Triumphantly tread on thy country’s ruin</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And bear the palm for having bravely shed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thy wife and children’s blood. <i>For myself, son,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>I purpose not to wait on fortune till</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>These wars determine: if I cannot persuade thee</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Rather to show a noble grace to both parts</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>March to assault thy country than to tread</i>—</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_642">[Pg 642]</span> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Trust to’t thou shalt not—on thy mother’s womb,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>That brought thee to this world.</i></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Vir.</i><span class="ws10">Ay, and mine,</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">That brought you forth this boy, to keep your name</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Living to time.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Young Mar.</i> A’ shall not tread on me;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’ll run away till I am bigger, but then I’ll fight.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cor.</i> Not of a woman’s tenderness to be,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Requires nor child nor woman’s face to see.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I have sat too long. [<i>Rising.</i></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Vol.</i><span class="ws5">Nay, go not from us thus,</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>If it were so that our request did tend</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>To save the Romans, thereby to destroy</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As poisonous of your honour: no; <i>our suit</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Is, that you reconcile them: while the Volsces</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>May say “This mercy we have show’d”; the Romans,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>“This we received”; and each in either side</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Give the all-hail to thee; and cry “Be blest</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>For making up this peace!</i>” Thou know’st, great son,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>The end of war’s uncertain, but this certain</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose repetition will be dogg’d with curses;</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whose chronicle thus writ</i>: “The man was noble,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But with his last attempt he wiped it out;</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Destroy’d his country</i>, and his name remains</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To the ensuing age abhorr’d.” Speak to me, son:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To imitate the graces of the gods;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o’ the air,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Think’st thou it honourable for a noble man</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Still to remember wrongs?</i> Daughter, speak you:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">He cares not for your weeping. Speak thou, boy:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Perhaps thy childishness will move him more</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than can our reasons. <i>There’s no man in the world</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>More bound to’s mother</i>; yet here he lets me prate</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like one i’ the stocks. <i>Thou hast never in thy life</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Show’d thy dear mother any courtesy</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Has cluck’d thee to the wars and safely home,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Loaden with honour. <i>Say my request’s unjust,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>And spurn me back: but if it be not so,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Thou art not honest</i>; and the gods will plague thee,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That thou restrain’st from me the duty which</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To a mother’s part belongs. He turns away:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Down, ladies; let us shame him with our knees.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To his surname Coriolanus ’longs more pride</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than pity to our prayers. Down: an end;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This is the last: so we will home to Rome,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And die among our neighbours. Nay, behold’s:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This boy, that cannot tell what he would have, - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_643">[Pg 643]</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">But kneels and holds up hands for fellowship,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Does reason our petition with more strength</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Than thou hast to deny’t. Come, let us go:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This fellow had a Volscian to his mother;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His wife is in Corioli and his child</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I am hush’d until our city be afire,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And then I’ll speak a little.</div> - <div class="verse indent12">[<i>He holds her by the hand, silent.</i></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Cor.<span class="ws6">O mother, mother!</span></i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>What have you done?</i> Behold, the heavens do ope,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The gods look down, and this unnatural scene</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O!</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>You have won a happy victory to Rome;</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>But, for your son</i>,—believe it, O, believe it,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Most dangerously you have with him prevail’d,</i></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>If not most mortal to him.</i> But, let it come.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_644">[Pg 644]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">APPENDIX C</h2> -</div> - -<p class="f120">SHAKESPEARE’S ALLEGED INDEBTEDNESS TO APPIAN IN <i>JULIUS CAESAR</i></p> - -<p>Plutarch gives little more than the situation and the <i>motif</i> for -Antony’s oration. He has two accounts of the incident.</p> - -<div class="blockquot space-below2"> -<p>(<i>a</i>) When Caesars body was brought into the Market Place, -Antonius making his funeral oration in praise of the dead according -to the ancient custom of Rome, and perceiving that his wordes moved -the common people to compassion; he framed his eloquence to make their -harts yerne the more, and taking Caesars gowne all bloudy in his hand, -he layed it open to the sight of them all, shewing what a number of -cuts and holes it had upon it. Therewithall the people fell presently -into such a rage and mutinie, that there was no more order kept amongs -the common people.</p> -<p class="author">(<i>Marcus Brutus.</i>)</p> - -<p class="space-above1">(<i>b</i>) When Caesars body was brought to -the place where it should be buried, he made a funeral oration in -commendacion of Caesar, according to the auncient custom of praising -noble men at their funerals. When he saw that the people were very -glad and desirous to heare Caesar spoken of, and his praises uttered: -he mingled his oration with lamentable wordes, and by amplifying of -matters did greatly move their harts and affections unto pitie and -compassion. In fine to conclude his oration, he unfolded before the -whole assembly the bloudy garments of the dead, thrust through in many -places with their swords, and called the malefactors, cruell and cursed -murtherers. With these words he put the people into ... a fury.</p> -<p class="author">(<i>Marcus Antonius.</i>)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Shakespeare certainly did not get -much of the stuff for Antony’s speech from these notices.</p> - -<p>Appian, on the other hand, gives a much fuller report, which was quite -accessible to ordinary readers, for Appian had been published in 1578 -by Henrie Bynniman.<a id="FNanchor_304" href="#Footnote_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_645">[Pg 645]</span> -The English version of the most important passages runs thus:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Antony marking how they were affected, did not let it slippe, but -toke upon him to make Caesars funeral sermon, as Consul, of a Consul, -friend of a friend, and kinsman, of a kinsman (for Antony was partly -his kinsman) and to use craft againe. And thus he said: “I do not -thinke it meete (O citizens) that the buriall praise of suche a man, -should rather be done by me, than by the whole country. For what you -have altogither for the loue of hys vertue giuen him by decree, aswell -the Senate as the people, I thinke your voice, and not Antonies, oughte -to expresse it.”</p> - -<p>This he uttered with sad and heauy cheare, and wyth a framed -voice, declared euerything, chiefly upon the decree, whereby he was -made a God, holy and inuiolate, father of the country, benefactor -and gouernor, and suche a one, as neuer in al things they entituled -other man to the like. At euery of these words Antonie directed his -countenance and hands to Caesars body, and with vehemencie of words -opened the fact. At euery title he gaue an addition, with briefe -speach, mixte with pitie and indignation. And when the decree named him -father of the country, then he saide: “This is the testimony of our -duety.”</p> - -<p>And at these wordes, <i>holy</i>, <i>inuiolate</i> and -<i>untouched</i>, and <i>the refuge of all other</i>, he said: “None -other made refuge of hym. But he, this holy and untouched, is kylled, -not takyng honoure by violences whiche he neuer desired, and then be we -verye thrall that bestowe them on the unworthy, neuer suing for them. -But you doe purge your selves (O Citizens) of this unkindnesse, in that -you nowe do use suche honoure towarde hym being dead.”</p> - -<p>Then rehearsing the othe, that all shoulde keepe Caesar and Caesars -body, and if any one wente about to betraye hym, that they were -accursed that would not defende him: at this he extolled hys voice, and -helde up his handes to the Capitoll, saying:</p> - -<p>“O Jupiter, Countries defendour, and you other Gods, I am ready to -reuenge, as I sware and made execration, and when it seemes good to my -companions to allowe the decrees, I desire them to aide me.”</p> - -<p>At these plaine speeches spoken agaynst the Senate, an uproare being -made, Antony waxed colde, and recanted hys wordes. “It seemeth, (O -Citizens),” saide hee, “that the things done haue not bin the worke -of men but of Gods, and that we ought to haue more consideration of -the present, than of the past, bycause the thyngs to come, maye bring -us to greater danger than these we haue, if we shall returne to oure -olde [dissentions], and waste the reste of the noble men that be in -the Cittie. Therefore let us send thys holy one to the number of the -blessed, and sing to him his due hymne and mourning verse.”</p> - -<p>When he had saide thus, he pulled up his gowne lyke a man beside -hymselfe, and gyrded it, that he might the better stirre his handes: -he stoode ouer the Litter, as from a Tabernacle, looking into it and -opening it, and firste sang his Himne, as to a God in heauen. And to -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_646">[Pg 646]</span> -confirme he was a God, he held up his hands, and with a swift voice he -rehearsed the warres, the fights, the victories, the nations that he -had subdued to his countrey, and the great booties that he had sent, -making euery one to be a maruell. Then with a continuall crie,</p> - -<p class="blockquot">“This is the only unconquered of all that euer -came to hands with hym. Thou (quoth he) alone diddest reuenge thy -countrey being iniured, 300 years, and those fierce nations that only -inuaded Rome, and only burned it, thou broughtest them on their knees.”</p> - -<p>And when he had made these and many other inuocations, he tourned -hys voice from triumphe to mourning matter, and began to lament and -mone him as a friend that had bin uniustly used, and did desire that -he might giue hys soule for Caesars. Then falling into moste vehement -affections, uncouered Caesars body, holding up his vesture with a -speare, cut with the woundes, and redde with the bloude of the chiefe -Ruler, by the which the people lyke a Quire, did sing lamentation -unto him, and with this passion were againe repleate with ire. And -after these speeches, other lamentations wyth voice after the Country -custome, were sung of the Quires, and they rehearsed again his acts and -his hap.</p> - -<p>Then made he Caesar hymselfe to speake as it were in a lamentable -sort, to howe many of his enimies he hadde done good by name, and -of the killers themselves to say as in an admiration, “Did I saue -them that haue killed me?” This the people could not abide, calling -to remembraunce, that all the kyllers (only Decimus except) were of -Pompey’s faction, and subdued by hym, to whom, in stead of punishment, -he had giuen promotion of offices, gouernments of prouinces and armies, -and thought Decimus worthy to be made his heyre and son by adoption, -and yet conspired his death.<a id="FNanchor_305" href="#Footnote_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a></p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Now, this is not very like the oration in the -play. It may be analysed and summarised as follows:</p> - -<p>Antony begins by praising the deceased as a consul a consul, a friend a -friend, a kinsman a kinsman. He recites the public honours awarded to -Caesar as a better testimony than his private opinion, and accompanies -the enumeration with provocative comment. He touches on Caesar’s -sacrosanct character and the unmerited honours bestowed on those who -slew him, but acquits the citizens of unkindness on the ground of their -presence at the funeral. He avows his own readiness for revenge, and -thus censures the policy of the Senate, but admits that that policy may -be for the public interest. He intones a hymn in honour of the deified -Caesar; reviews his wars, battles, victories, the provinces annexed -and the spoils transmitted to Rome, and glances at the subjugation of -the Gauls as the payment of an ancient score. He uncovers the body of -Caesar and displays the pierced and blood-stained garment to the wrath<span class="pagenum" id="Page_647">[Pg 647]</span> -of the populace. He puts words in the mouth of the dead, and makes him -cite the names of those whom he had benefited and preserved that they -should destroy him. And the people brook no more.</p> - -<p>Thus Appian’s Antony differs from Shakespeare’s Antony in his -attitude to his audience, in the arrangement of his material, and to -a considerable extent in the material itself. Nevertheless, in some -of the details the speeches correspond. It is quite possible that -Shakespeare, while retaining Plutarch’s general scheme, may have -filled it in with suggestions from Appian. The evidence is not very -convincing, but the conjecture is greatly strengthened by the apparent -loans from the same quarter in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, which would -show that he was acquainted with the English translation. -<a href="#Page_648">See Appendix D</a>.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_648">[Pg 648]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">APPENDIX D</h2> -</div> - -<p class="f120">SHAKESPEARE’S LOANS FROM APPIAN IN<br /> -<i>ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA</i></p> - -<p>I do not think there can be any serious doubt about Shakespeare’s -having consulted the 1578 translation of the <i>Bella Civilia</i> for -this play, at any rate for the parts dealing with Sextus Pompeius. -The most important passage is the one (<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="smcap">iii.</span> -v. 19) which records Antony’s indignation at Pompey’s death. Now of -that death there is no mention at all in the <i>Marcus Antonius</i> -of Plutarch; and even in the <i>Octavius Caesar Augustus</i> by Simon -Goulard, which was included in the 1583 edition of Amyot and in the -1603 edition of North, it is expressly attributed to Antony. Here is -Goulard’s statement:<a id="FNanchor_306" href="#Footnote_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a></p> - -<p class="blockquot">Whilst Antonius made war with the Parthians, or -rather infortunately they made war with him to his great confusion, his -lieutenant Titius found the means to lay hands upon Sextus Pompeius; -that was fled into the ile of Samos, and then forty years old: whom he -put to death by Antonius’ commandment.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">Appian at least leaves it an open question -whether Antony was responsible or not, and thus gives his apologist an -opportunity:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Titius commaunded hys (<i>i.e.</i> Pompey’s) army to sweare to -Antony, and put hym to death at Mileto, when he hadde lyved to the age -of fortye yeares, eyther for that he remembered late displeasure and -forgot olde good turnes, or for that he had such commaundemente of Antony.</p> - -<p><i>There bee that saye that Plancus, and not Antony did commaunde -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_649">[Pg 649]</span> -hym to dye, whyche beeyng president of Syria had Antonyes signet, and -in greate causes wrote letters in hys name.</i> Some thynke it was -done wyth Antonyes knowledge, he fearyng the name of Pompey, or for -Cleopatra, who fauoured Pompey the Great.</p> - -<p><i>Some thynke that Plancus dyd it of hymselfe</i> for these causes, -and also that Pompey shoulde gyve no cause of dissention between Caesar -and Antony, or for that Cleopatra would turn hyr favour to Pompey.</p> - -<p class="author space-below2">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> cxiv.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">I do not think indeed that there is any indication -that Shakespeare had read, or at all events been in any way impressed -by, Goulard’s <i>Augustus</i>: no wonder, for compared with the genuine -<i>Lives</i>, it is a dull performance. The only other passages with -which a connection might be traced, do no more than give hints that -are better given in Appian. Thus Sextus Pompeius’ vein of chivalry, -of which there is hardly a suggestion in Plutarch’s brief notices, -is illustrated in Goulard by his behaviour to the fugitives from the -proscription.</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Pompeius had sent certain ships to keep upon the -coast of Italy, and pinnaces everywhere, to the end to receive all -them that fled on that side; giving them double recompence that saved -a proscript, and honourable offices to men that had been consuls and -escaped, comforting and entertaining the others with a most singular -courtesy.</p> - -<p class="no-indent">But Appian says all this too in greater detail, -and adds the significant touch:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>So was he moste profitable to hys afflicted Countrey, and -wanne greate glory to hymselfe, <i>not inferioure to that he -hadde of hys father</i>.</p> - -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xxxvi.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Note particularly this reference to his father’s -reputation, for which there is no parallel in Plutarch or Goulard; and -compare</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">Our slippery people</div> - <div class="verse indent1">... begin to throw</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pompey the Great, and all his dignities</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon his son.</div> - <div class="verse indent14">(<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="allsmcap">I.</span> ii. 192.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Rich in his father’s honour.</div> - <div class="verse indent10">(<i>Ib.</i> <span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 50.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Again, Goulard, talking of the last struggle, says:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">After certain encounters, where Pompey ever had -the better, insomuch as Lepidus was suspected to lean on that side, -Caesar resolved to commit all to the hazard of a latter battle.</p> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_650">[Pg 650]</span> -The insinuation in regard to Lepidus might be taken as the foundation -for Shakespeare’s statement, which has no sanction in Plutarch, that -Caesar</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">accuses him of letters he had formerly wrote to Pompey.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="allsmcap">III.</span> v. 10.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But it seems a closer echo of a remark of Appian’s -about some transactions shortly after Philippi:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Lepidus was accused to favour Pompey’s part.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> iii.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">There are, moreover, several touches in -Shakespeare’s sketch, that he could no more get from Goulard than -from Plutarch, but that are to be found in Appian. Thus there is -Pompey’s association with the party of the “good Brutus” and the -enthusiasm he expresses for “beauteous freedom” (<i>A. and C.</i> -<span class="smcap">ii.</span> vi. 13 and 17). Compare passages -like the following in Appian:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Sextus Pompey, the seconde son of Pompey the Great being -lefte of that faction, was sette up of Brutus friends.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> i.)</p> - -<p>Pompey’s friends hearing of this, did marvellously rejoyce, -crying now to be time to restore their Countrey’s libertie.</p> -<p class="author space-below1">(<span class="allsmcap">III.</span> lxxxii.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thus, too, Shakespeare refers to Pompey’s -command of “the empire of the sea” (<i>A. and C.</i> -<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 191), which, if Plutarch were his -authority, would be an unjustifiable exaggeration. Yet it exactly -corresponds to the facts of the case as Appian repeatedly states them, -and perhaps one of Binniman’s expressions suggested the very phrase.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Pompey <i>being Lorde of the Sea</i> ... caused famine -in the cittie all victuall beyng kepte away.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> xv.)</p> - -<p>The Citie in the meane time was in great penurie, their -provision of corne beyng stopped by Pompey.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> xviii.)</p> - -<p>In the meane time the cytie was oppressed with famine, for neyther -durst the Merchauntes bring any corn from the East bicause of Pompeis -beeing in Sicelie, nor from the Weast of Corsica and Sardinia, where -Pompeis ships also lay: nor from Africa, where the navies of the other -conspiratours kepte their stations. Being in this distresse, they -(<i>i.e.</i> the people) alleaged that the discorde of the rulers was -the cause, and therefore required that peace might be made with Pompey, -unto the whiche when Caesar woulde not agree, Antonie thought warre was -needefull for necessitie.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> lxvii.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Then there are the frequent references of -Antony (<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 192, -<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 148), of the messenger -(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iv. 38, <span class="allsmcap">i.</span> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_651">[Pg 651]</span> -iv. 52), of Pompey himself (<span class="smcap">ii.</span> i. 9), -to Pompey’s popularity and the rush of recruits to his standard. -Neither Goulard nor Plutarch makes mention of these points, but Appian -does often, and most emphatically in the following passage:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Out of Italy all things were not quiet, for Pompey by resorte of -condemned Citizens, and auntient possessioners was greatly increased, -both in mighte, and estimation: for they that feared their life, or -were spoyled of their goodes, or lyked not the present state, fledde -all to hym. And this disagreemente of Lucius augmented his credite: -beside a repayre of yong men, desirous of gayne and seruice, not caring -under whome they went, because they were all Romanes, sought unto -him. And among other, hys cause seemed most just. He was waxed rich -by booties of the Sea, and he hadde good store of Shyppes, with their -furniture.... Wherefore me thynke, that if he had then inuaded Italy, -he might easily have gotte it, which being afflicted with famine and -discord loked for him. But Pompey of ignorance had rather defend his -owne, than inuade others, till so he was ouercome also.</p> -<p class="author space-below1">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> xxv.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">It should be noted too that Menas, to whom Appian -always gives his full formal name of Menodorus, not only as in Plutarch -proposes to make away with the Triumvirs after the compact, but as in -the play (<span class="smcap">ii</span>, vi. 84 and 109) and not as in -Plutarch, disapproves the cessation of hostilities.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>All other persuaded Pompey earnestly to peace, only -Menodorus wrote from Sardinia that he should make open -<i>warre, or dryve off</i>,<a id="FNanchor_307" href="#Footnote_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a> -whyles the dearth continued, <i>that he might make peace with</i> the -better conditions.</p> -<p class="author space-below1">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> lxxi.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">I have not noticed any other points of -importance in which there is an apparent connection between the -drama and the <i>Roman History</i>: unless indeed Antony’s passing -compunction for Fulvia’s death may be so regarded.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>Newes came that Antonies wyfe was dead, who coulde not bear his -unkyndenesse, leavyng her sicke, & not bidding hyr farewell. Hir -death was thought very commodius for them both. For Fulvia was an -unquiet woman, & for ielousie of Cleopatra, raysed suche a mortall -warre. Yet the matter vexed Antony bicause he was compted the occasion -of her death.</p> -<p class="author space-below1">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> lix.)</p> -</div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here, however, the motive of Antony’s regret -differs from that which Shakespeare attributes to him; and on the whole -the references to Fulvia in the play deviate even more from Appian’s -account than from Plutarch’s. So far as I am in a position to judge, -Shakespeare derived all his other historical data, as well as the -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_652">[Pg 652]</span> -general scheme into which he fitted these trifling loans, from -Plutarch’s <i>Life</i>, and can be considered a debtor to Appian only -in the points that are illustrated in my previous extracts.</p> - -<p>But there are two qualifications I should like to make to this -statement.</p> - -<p>In the first place, I have not seen the 1578 version of Appian, the -passages I have quoted being merely transcripts made by my direction. I -have had only the original text to work upon, and it is possible that -the Tudor Translation might offer verbal coincidences that of course -would not suggest themselves to me.</p> - -<p>In the second place, the book is not merely a translation of Appian. -The descriptive title runs: “An auncient historie and exquisite -chronicle of the Romanes warres, both civile and foren ... with a -continuation ... from the death of Sextus Pompeius to the overthrow of -Antonie and Cleopatra.”</p> - -<p>Appian’s History of the Civil Wars, as now extant, concludes at the -death of Sextus Pompeius. The Tudor translator’s continuation till -the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra may be responsible for some of the -later deviations from Plutarch, which I have described as independent -modifications of Shakespeare’s. The matter is worth looking into.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, from my collation I draw two conclusions, the first -definitive, the second provisional:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>(1) That Shakespeare laid Appian under contribution to fill -in the details of his picture.</p> - -<p>(2) That he borrowed from him, that is, from his English -translator, only for the episode of Sextus Pompeius.</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_653">[Pg 653]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">APPENDIX E</h2> -</div> - -<p class="f120 space-below1">CLEOPATRA’S <i>ONE WORD</i></p> - -<p>Professor Th. Zielinski of St. Petersburg suggests a peculiar -interpretation of this passage in his <i>Marginalien</i> -(<i>Philologus</i>, N.F., Band xviii. 1905). He starts from the -assertion that Shakespeare had in his mind Ovid’s <i>Epistle from -Dido</i> (<i>Heroid.</i> vii.) when he composed the parting scene -between Antony and Cleopatra. This statement is neither self-evident -nor initially probable. Shakespeare was no doubt acquainted with -portions of Ovid both in the original and in translation, but there is -not much indication that his knowledge extended to the <i>Heroides</i>. -Mr. Churton Collins, indeed, in his plea for Shakespeare’s familiarity -with Latin, calls attention to the well-known pair of quotations -from these poems, the one in <i>3 Henry VI.</i>, the other in the -<i>Taming of the Shrew</i>. But though Mr. Collins makes good his -general contention, he hardly strengthens it with these examples: for -Shakespeare’s share in both plays is so uncertain that no definite -inference can be drawn from them. Apart from these more than doubtful -instances, there seems to be no reference in Shakespeare to the -<i>Heroides</i>, either in the Latin of Ovid or in the English of -Turberville; and it would be strange to find one cropping up here.</p> - -<p>But Professor Zielinski gives his arguments, and one of them is -certainly plausible. He quotes:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">What says the married woman? You may go:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Would she had never given you leave to come;</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="allsmcap">I.</span> iii. 20.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">and compares</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Sed iubet ire deus.” Vellem vetuisset adire.</div> - <div class="verse indent24">(<i>Her.</i> <span class="allsmcap">VII.</span> 37.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_654">[Pg 654]</span> -There is a coincidence, but it is not very close, and scarcely implies -imitation. Moreover, it becomes even less striking in the English -version; which, after all, Shakespeare is more likely to have known, if -he knew the poem at all:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">But God doth force thee flee; would God had kept away</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Such guilefull guests, and Troians had in Carthage made no - stay.<a id="FNanchor_308" href="#Footnote_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a></div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Professor Zielinski’s next argument is singularly -unconvincing. He says: “The situation (<i>i.e.</i> in the Epistle -and in the Play) is parallel even in details, as everyone will tell -himself: moreover the poet himself confesses it:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll hand in hand,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dido and her Æneas shall want troops</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And all the haunt be ours.”</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> xiv. 51.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">But in the first place this has reference not to -the separation but to the reunion: and in the second place, of the -reunion there is no word in the Epistle. I cannot therefore see how -Shakespeare’s lines can be taken as a confession of indebtedness to -Ovid. But these analogies, real or imaginary, lead up to Professor -Zielinski’s main point. He quotes as what he calls the “Motiv des -Kindes” and considers the distinctive feature of Ovid’s treatment, -Dido’s reproach:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Forsitan et gravidam Didon, scelerate, relinquas,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Parsque tui lateat corpore clausa meo. (line 131.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">He admits that it is not easy to find this “Motiv” -in the play, but argues that Shakespeare was always very reticent in -such regards. Then he proceeds: “Hier nun war Kleopatra tatsächlich -schwanger, als Antonius sie verliess: Plutarch setzt es c. 36 voraus, -und Shakespeare wird es gewusst haben, da er Act III. die Kinder -erwähnt. Sollte er in der grossen Abschieds-scene das dankbare Motiv -haben entgehen lassen? Sehn wir zu. Kleopatra spielt die nervöse, ihr -ist bald gut, bald schlecht: ‘schnür mich auf ... nein, lass es sein.’ -Ihre ungerechten Vorwürfe bringen den Antonius endlich auf; er will -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_655">[Pg 655]</span> -gehn. Sie hält ihn zurück: <i>courteous lord, one word</i>. Wir -erwarten eine wichtige Erklärung; was wird das ‘eine Wort’ sein?</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sir, you and I must part—but that’s not it:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sir, you and I have loved—but there’s not it;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That you know well: something it is I would—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O, <i>my oblivion is a very Antony</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And I am all forgotten.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Es ist für den klassischen Philologen erheiternd -und tröstlich, die Commentare zum hervorgehoben verse zu lesen: -dieselben Torheiten, wie bei uns, wenn einer das erklären muss, -was er selber nicht versteht. Man wollte sogar <i>oblivion</i> -hinausconjiciren: andere befehlen es = <i>memory</i> zu nehmen. Was -wird dadurch gewonnen? Ich verlange das versprochene ‘eine wort.’—‘Ja, -das hat sie eben vergessen’—Ich danke. Nein, sie hat es ausgesprochen: -ihr ‘Vergessen’ war in der Tat ‘ein echter Antonius,’ wenn auch ein -ganz kleiner. Und als der Freund die Anspielung nicht versteht—<i>I -should take you for idleness itself</i>—fährt sie bitter fort:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent21">’Tis sweating labour</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>To bear such idleness so near the heart</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As Cleopatra <i>this</i>.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">(das <i>this</i> mit discret hinweisender -Geberde).... Es wäre Mangel an Zartgefühl, mehr zu verlangen.—Und -wirklich, besser als die Erklärer hat ein Dichter den Dichter -verstanden; ich meine Puschkin, der in einer Stelle seiner lieblichen -‘Nixe’ (Rusalka) die oben ausgeschriebenen Worte der Kleopatra offenbar -nachahmen wollte:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Fürst.</i> Leb’ wohl.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Mädchen.</i> Nein, wart ... ich muss dir etwas sagen ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Weiss nimmer was.</div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Fürst.</i><span class="ws3">So denke nach!</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2"><i>Mädchen.</i><span class="ws8">Für dich</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wär ich bereit.... Nein das ist’s nicht.... So wart doch.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ich kann’s nicht glauben, dass du mich auf ewig</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Verlassen willst.... Nein, das ist’s immer nicht....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Jetzt hab’ ich’s: heut war’s, dass zum ersten Mal</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dein kind sich unter’m Herzen mir bewegte.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This is very ingenious, and the parallel from -Puschkin is very interesting. What makes one doubtful is that from -first to last Shakespeare slurs over the motherhood of Cleopatra, to -which the other tragedians of the time give great prominence. On the -whole he obliterates even those references that Plutarch makes to this -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_656">[Pg 656]</span> -aspect of his heroine, and it would therefore be odd if he went out -of his way to invent an allusion which does not fit in with the rest -of the picture, and which is without consequence and very obscure. If -one were forced to conjecture the “missing word,” it would be more -plausible to suppose that she both wishes and hesitates to suggest -marriage with Antony. At the close, her exclamation:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent23">Husband, I come:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Now to that name my courage prove my title!</div> - <div class="verse indent28">(<span class="allsmcap">V.</span> ii. 290.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">shows that she recognises the dignity of the -sanction. At the outset, she feels the falsity of her position, as -we see from her reference to “the married woman”; and in Plutarch -Shakespeare had read the complaint of her partisans, that “Cleopatra, -being borne a Queene of so many thousands of men, is onely named -Antonius Leman.” In Rome the marriage is assumed to be quite probable; -and in this very scene Antony, after announcing the removal of the -grand impediment by Fulvia’s death, has just professed his unalterable -devotion to his Queen. Why should there not be a marriage, unless he -regards her merely as a mistress; and why should she not propose it, -except that she fears to meet with this rebuff? The “sweating labour” -she bears would thus be her unsanctioned love and its disgrace.</p> - -<p>This, however, is not put forward as a serious interpretation, but -only as a theory quite as possible as Professor Zielinski’s. The most -obvious and the most satisfactory way is to suppose, as probably almost -every reader does and has done, that she is merely making pretexts -to postpone the separation. And there is surely no great difficulty -about the phrase: “My oblivion is a very Antony.” Here too the obvious -explanation is the most convincing: “My forgetfulness is as great as -Antony’s own.”</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_657">[Pg 657]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">APPENDIX F</h2> -</div> - -<p class="f120 space-below2">THE “INEXPLICABLE” PASSAGE<br /> -IN <i>CORIOLANUS</i></p> - -<p>Coleridge, in his <i>Notes on Shakespeare</i> (1818, Section IV.), -calls attention to the difficulty of Aufidius’ speech to his lieutenant:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">All places yield to him ere he sits down;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the nobility of Rome are his:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The senators and patricians love him too:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The tribunes are no soldiers; and their people</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will be as rash in the repeal, as hasty</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To expel him thence. I think he’ll be to Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By sovereignty of nature. First he was</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A noble servant to them; but he could not</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Carry his honours even: whether ’twas pride,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which out of daily fortune ever taints</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The happy man; whether defect of judgement,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To fail in the disposing of those chances</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which he was lord of; or whether nature,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not to be other than one thing, not moving</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Even with the same austerity and garb</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As he controll’d the war; but one of these—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As he hath spices of them all, not all,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For I dare so far free him—made him fear’d,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So hated, and so banish’d, but he has a merit,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To choke it in the utterance. So our virtues</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lie in the interpretation of the time;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And power, unto itself most commendable,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To extol what it hath done.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Come, let’s away. When, Caius, Rome is thine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thou art poor’st of all: then shortly art thou mine.</div> - <div class="verse indent30">(<span class="allsmcap">IV.</span> vii. 28.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Here there are puzzling expressions in detail, but -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_658">[Pg 658]</span> -they have on the whole been satisfactorily explained, and it is not to -them that Coleridge refers.<a id="FNanchor_309" href="#Footnote_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a> -He says: “I have always thought this in itself so beautiful speech the -least explicable from the mood and full intention of the speaker of any -in the whole works of Shakespeare.” It strikes one indeed as a series -of disconnected jottings that have as little to do with each other as -with the situation and attitude of Aufidius. First he gives reason for -expecting the capture of Rome; then he enumerates defects in Coriolanus -that have led to his banishment with a supplementary acknowledgment -of his merits; next he makes general reflections on the relation of -virtue to the construction put upon it, and on the danger that lies in -conspicuous power: thereafter he points out that things are brought to -nought by themselves or their likes; and finally he predicts that when -Rome is taken, he will get the better of his rival.</p> - -<p>Is there here a mere congeries of thoughts as one chance suggestion -leads to another with which it happens to be casually associated; or -does one thread of continuous meaning run through the whole? I would -venture to maintain the latter opinion with more confidence than I do, -if Coleridge had not been so emphatic.</p> - -<p>In the first place we have to remember what goes before. The report -of the Lieutenant confirms the jealousy of Aufidius, who is further -embittered by the hint that he is losing credit, but reflects that he -can bring weighty charges against Coriolanus, and concludes:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent23">He hath left undone</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That which shall break his neck or hazard mine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whene’er we come to our account.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Thereupon the Lieutenant meaningly rejoins:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sir, I beseech you, think you he’ll carry Rome?</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>It is a contingency to be reckoned with, for clearly if Rome falls, any -previous mistakes or complaisances alleged against the conqueror will -find ready pardon. So Aufidius discusses the matter in the light of -these two main considerations: (1) that he must get rid of his rival, -and (2) that his rival may do the state a crowning service. He admits -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_659">[Pg 659]</span> -that Coriolanus, what with his own efficiency, what with the -friendliness of one class in Rome and the helplessness of the -remainder, is likely to achieve the grand exploit. How then will -Aufidius’ chances stand? Formerly Marcius deserved as well of his own -country when he had overthrown Corioli, yet that did not secure him. -What qualities in himself discounted his services to Rome and may -again discount his services to Antium? Pride of prosperity, disregard -of his opportunities, his unaccommodating peremptory behaviour—all -of these faults which in point of fact afterwards contributed to his -death—brought about his banishment, though truly he had merit enough -to make men overlook such trifles. This shows how worth depends on the -way it is taken, and how ability, even when of the sterling kind that -wins its own approval, may find the throne of its public recognition -to be, more properly, its certain grave. Thus likes counteract likes; -the greater the popularity, the greater the reaction; the greater the -superiority, the more certainly it will balk itself. So, and this is -the conclusion of the whole matter, even when Marcius has won Rome by a -greater conquest than when he won Corioli, the result will be the same. -His proud, imprudent and overbearing conduct will obscure his high -deserts. These will be construed only by public opinion, and the very -prowess in which he delights will rouse an adulation, which, when he is -no longer required, will swing round to its opposite. So his success -will correct itself. His very triumph over Rome will be guarantee for -Aufidius’ triumph over him.</p> - -<p>If this amplified paraphrase give the meaning, that meaning is coherent -enough and is quite suitable to the mood and attitude of the speaker.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_660">[Pg 660]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">INDEX</h2> -</div> - -<ul class="index no-wrap"> -<li class="isub1">Acciaiuoli, additional lives to Plutarch, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Agrippa (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_346">346</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Alexander (Sir William) [Earl of Stirling],</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Julius Caesar</i> compared with Garnier, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Julius Caesar</i> and Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Alexas (Lord), (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_348">348</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ammonius (the Philosopher), <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Amyot (Jacques), <a href="#Page_119">119-141</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">birth, etc., <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">translation of Heliodorus, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">of Diodorus Siculus, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">and Longus, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">tutor to Dukes of Orleans and Anjou, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Grand Almoner of France, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Bishop of Auxerre, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Commander of Order of Holy Ghost, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">various disasters, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Projet de l’Eloquence Royal</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">modifications of Plutarch, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="smcap">Antony and Cleopatra</span>, <a href="#Page_300">300-453</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">date of composition, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">and Appian, <a href="#Page_648">648-652</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Antony and Cleopatra (the two characters), <a href="#Page_439">439-453</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Apius and Virginia</i>, <a href="#Page_2">2-10</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Appian and <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_648">648-652</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">and <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_644">644-647</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Appian’s Chronicle, translated by Bynniman, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_644">644</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Sextus Pompeius</i>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Aufidius (Tullus), [in <i>Coriolanus</i>], <a href="#Page_501">501</a>, <a href="#Page_584">584</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">B. (R.), <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Baker, <i>Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_267">267</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Bernage (S.), on <i>Julius Caesar</i> and <i>Cornélie</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Berners (Lord), part translation, Guevara (Antonio de),</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Marco Aurelio con el Relox de Principes</i>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Bidpai, Fables of, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Blignières (Auguste de), <i>Essai on Amyot</i>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Blount (Edward), a printer, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Boas (F. S.), <i>Shakespeare and his Predecessors</i>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Boner (Hieronymus), version of Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Boswell (James), quotation from Plutarch, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Bower (Richard), ? author of a <i>New Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia</i>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Bradley (A. C.), on the Roman Plays, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Julius Caesar</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Shakesperian atmosphere after <i>Othello</i> and <i>Lear</i>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_312">312</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Brandes (Dr. George), <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Tieck’s Dramas (in <i>Romantic School in Germany</i>), <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_464">464</a> and <a href="#Page_466">466</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Brandl (Professor Alois), <i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Brandon (Samuel), <i>Vertuous Octavia</i>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>. - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_661">[Pg 661]</span></li> -<li class="isub1">Brontë (Charlotte), on <i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_468">468</a>, <a href="#Page_472">472</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Brooke (Lord), <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>—destroyed tragedy on, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Buchanan (George), <i>Baptistes</i> and <i>Jephthes</i>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Butler (Professor), on <i>Appius and Virginia</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Büttner, <i>Zu Coriolan und seiner Quelle</i>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Caesar’s Fall</i>, a play by Drayton, Webster and others, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Calvin (John), prose of, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Camden (William), <i>Remaines</i>, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Caractacus, Elizabethan Plays on, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Carlyle (Thomas), on the Historical Plays, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Casca (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Cassius (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>César</i>, by Jacques Grévin, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>César</i>, by Grévin and Muretus, compared, <a href="#Page_30">30-33</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Chalmers (Alexander), on <i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Chapman (George), French plays, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Bussy d’Ambois</i>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>The Conspiracie</i> and <i>The Tragedie of Charles, Duke of Byron</i>, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Charmian (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_347">347</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Chaucer (Geoffrey), on Brutus and Cassius, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Legend of Good Women</i>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Chenier (Marie-Joseph), <i>Brutus et Cassius, Les Derniers Romains</i>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Cicero (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Cinthio (Giovanni Battista Giroldi), play on <i>Cleopatra</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Cleopatra (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_413">413-438</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">relations between Antony and Cleopatra, <a href="#Page_439">439-453</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">“One Word,” <a href="#Page_653">653-656</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Cleopatra</i>, by Samuel Daniel, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Brutus (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, - <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, - <a href="#Page_338">338</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_473">473</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Aufidius (in <i>Coriolanus</i>), <a href="#Page_486">486</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">“Inexplicable” passage in <i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_657">657-659</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Collins (John Churton), <i>Studies in Shakespeare</i>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Shakespeare’s Latinity, <a href="#Page_653">653</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Collischonn (G.A.O.), Introduction to Grévin’s <i>Caesar</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">and Muretus’ <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">coincidences between Grévin and Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Cominius (in <i>Coriolanus</i>), <a href="#Page_498">498</a>, <a href="#Page_556">556</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Complaint of Rosamond</i>, by Samuel Daniel, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">parallelisms with <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> and <i>Rape of Lucrece</i>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Confrères de la Passion, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="smcap">Coriolanus</span>, <a href="#Page_454">454-627</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">date of composition, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">“Inexplicable” passage in, <a href="#Page_657">657-659</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Cornelia</i>, by Thomas Kyd, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Cornélie</i>, compared with Muretus, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Cory, translation of Leo, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Courier (P. L.), on Plutarch, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Cruserius, Latin version of Plutarch, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Cymbeline</i>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Daniel (Samuel), <i>Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_451">451</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Dante, on Brutus and Cassius, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Decius (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Defence of Ryme</i>, by Samuel Daniel, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">de l’Escluse (Charles), additional lives to Plutarch, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Delia</i>, by Samuel Daniel, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Delius (Nicolaus), Shakespeare and Plutarch, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Coriolanus, <a href="#Page_456">456</a>, <a href="#Page_487">487</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Coriolanus and Plutarch, <a href="#Page_493">493</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Demogeot, on Amyot, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">De Quincey (Thomas), on Plutarch, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Diall of Princes</i>, by Thomas North, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Digges (Leonard), on the Roman Plays, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Dodsley (Robert), Old English Plays, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Dolabella (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_346">346</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Doni (Antonio Francesco), <i>Morale Filosofia</i> - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_662">[Pg 662]</span></li> -<li class="isub3">(same as Bidpai’s Fables), <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Dowden (Professor Edward), <i>Shakespeare’s Mind and Art</i>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Drayton (Michael), <i>Mortimeriados</i> or <i>The Barons’ War</i>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Dryden (John), on Plutarch, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Life of Plutarch</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>All for Love</i> or <i>The World Well Lost</i>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Eccerinis</i>, by Mussato, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Eedes (Dr.), lost Latin play, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">English and Roman plays compared, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Enobarbus (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_349">349-359</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Eros (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_366">366</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Fabula Praetexta</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Faguet (Émile), on <i>Cornélie</i>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Famous Victories of Henry V.</i>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Farmer (John S.), reproduction of <i>Appius and Virginia</i>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Favorinus (the Philosopher), <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Fénelon (François de Salignac de la Mothe), on Amyot, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ferrero (Professor Guglielmo), on <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Cleopatra, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_414">414</a> and <a href="#Page_452">452</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Filelfo, Latin version of Plutarch, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Florus (Mestrius) [friend of Plutarch], <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">French Senecans, <a href="#Page_19">19-44</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Fulvia (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_396">396</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Furness (Frances Howard), <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Charmian, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_347">347</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Garnett (Dr. Richard), <i>Date and Occasion of The Tempest</i>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Garnier (R.), <i>Cornélie</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Drama about Portia, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Marc Antoine</i>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Antonius</i>, English translation by Countess of Pembroke, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">parallels between <i>Cornélie</i> and <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_628">628-630</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Gassner (H.), edition of Kyd’s <i>Cornelia</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Geddes (Dr.), a lost Latin play, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Gellius (Aulus), on Plutarch, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Genée (Rudolph), Shakespeare’s <i>Leben und Werke</i>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Gervinus (Georg Gottfried), <i>Shakespeare Commentaries</i>,</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Plutarch’s Antony, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Coriolanus, <a href="#Page_471">471</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Goethe, on “love,” <a href="#Page_446">446</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Gorboduc</i>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Goulard (Simon), <i>Octavius Caesar Augustus</i>, <a href="#Page_648">648</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Greene (Robert), <i>James IV.</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Grévin (Jacques), <i>César</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Grosart (Dr. Alexander), edition of Daniel’s <i>Cleopatra</i> quoted from, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Guevara (Antoniode), <i>The Favored Courtier</i>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>El Libro Aureo de Marco Aurelio, otherwise</i></li> -<li class="isub5"><i>Emperador y eloquentissimo Orator</i>,</li> -<li class="isub5">called <i>Marco Aurelio con el Relox de Principes</i></li> -<li class="isub5">or <i>The Diall of Princes</i>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a> and <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Halliwell-Phillips (J. O.), Weever’s <i>Mirror of Martyrs</i>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Hamlet, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Hardy (Alexandre), <i>Coriolan</i>, <a href="#Page_475">475</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Hazlitt (W. Carew), <i>notes</i> <a href="#Page_4">4</a> and <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Heine (Heinrich), on Cleopatra, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Rome, <a href="#Page_547">547</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Henry V.</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Heywood (Thomas), <i>Rape of Lucrece</i>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Holden (Rev. Dr. H. A.), on Plutarch, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Amyot, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Holland (Philemon), translation of Pliny, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_456">456</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Livy on Coriolanus, <a href="#Page_626">626</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Hudson (Dr. Henry Norman),</li> -<li class="isub5"><i>Shakespeare, his Life, Art and Characters</i>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Hughes (Thomas), <i>Misfortunes of Arthur</i>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Hugo (Victor), Historical Plays, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>. - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_663">[Pg 663]</span></li> -<li class="isub1">Ingram (Professor), on “endings” (of verses), <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Iras (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Jacobs (Joseph), <i>Fables of Bidpai</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Jaggard (the Younger), a printer, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Jodelle (Étienne), <i>Cleopatra Captive</i>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_322">322</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Cleopatra</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_435">435</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Johnson (Dr. Samuel), <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_480">480</a>, <a href="#Page_482">482</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Menenius Agrippa, <a href="#Page_564">564</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Jonson (Ben), <i>Catiline</i>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Sejanus</i> and <i>Catiline</i>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Discoveries</i> and <i>Staple of News</i>,</li> -<li class="isub5">on <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a> and <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Epicoene</i>, note <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Jowett (Benjamin), <i>Plato</i>, Vol. I., <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Plato</i>, Vol. II., <a href="#Page_446">446</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="smcap">Julius Caesar</span>, date of composition, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Plutarch, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">the lives of Brutus, Caesar and Antony, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">should it be named Marcus Brutus, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Julius Caesar</i> is himself analogous to the</li> -<li class="isub5">King in the English Historical Plays, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Julius Caesar, character in other plays, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Julius Caesar and Appian, <a href="#Page_644">644-647</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Julius Caesar</i> and Garnier’s <i>Cornélie</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">parallels between, <a href="#Page_628">628-630</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Julius Caesar</i>, by Muretus, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Junius Brutus (in <i>Coriolanus</i>), <a href="#Page_499">499</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Kahnt (Paul), <i>Gedankenkreis ...</i></li> -<li class="isub5"><i>in Jodelle’s und Garnier’s Tragödien</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Karsteg (Prof. von), in <i>Harry Richmond</i>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>King John</i>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>King Lear</i>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Klein, on Cinthio’s <i>Cleopatra</i> and <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Kreyssig (Friedrich Alexo Theodor), on Octavius, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Volumnia, <a href="#Page_553">553</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Virgilia, <a href="#Page_570">570</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Kyd (Thomas), translation of <i>Cornélie</i></li> -<li class="isub5">(under name <i>Cornelia</i>), <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</li> -<li class="isub5">Boas’ edition, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lamprias, brother of Plutarch, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Landman (Dr. Friedrich), on <i>Euphues</i>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lanson, on Amyot, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">La Rochefoucauld (François, VI. Duc de), <i>notes</i> <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_424">424</a> and <a href="#Page_451">451</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lartius (in <i>Coriolanus</i>), <a href="#Page_513">513</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Le Duc (Viollet), <i>Ancien Théatre François</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lee (Sidney), Shakespeare and Camden, <a href="#Page_457">457</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lepidus (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_297">297</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lepidus (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim), <i>Hamburg Dramaturgy</i> on the Roman Plays, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ligarius (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">“light” endings, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lily (John), <i>Euphues</i> and <i>The Diall of Princes</i>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lloyd (Watkiss), on <i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lodge (Thomas), <i>The Wounds of Civill War</i>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>A Looking Glass for London and England</i>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">translator of Josephus and Lucius Annaeus Seneca, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lord Alexas, <i>see</i> Alexas.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lotze, on Historical Plays, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">“Love,” in three plays, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Luce (Alice), edition of Countess of Pembroke’s</li> -<li class="isub5">translation of R. Garnier’s <i>Antonius</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lucilius (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lucina, Elizabethan plays on, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Lucretia, Elizabethan plays on, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Macbeth</i>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, and <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Malone (Edmund), date of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">date of <i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">“Mansions” (another name for “scenes”), <a href="#Page_476">476</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Marcius (in <i>Coriolanus</i>), <a href="#Page_497">497</a>, <a href="#Page_549">549</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Marcus Aurelius, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Mark Antony - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_664">[Pg 664]</span></li> -<li class="isub5">(in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_289">289-298</a>.</li> -<li class="isub5">(in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_390">390-412</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Marlowe (Christopher), <i>Edward II.</i>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Tamburlaine</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_62">62</a>,</li> -<li class="isub3">and Shakespeare, <i>Henry VI.</i>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Massinissa, Elizabethan plays on, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Mecaenas (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Menas (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Menecrates (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_376">376</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Menenius Agrippa (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_558">558</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Meres (Francis), list of plays, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Palladis Tamia</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Messala (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Méziriac (Bachet de), on Amyot, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Misfortunes of Arthur</i>, by Thomas Hughes, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">“Mixed” plays, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Moeller, <i>Kleopatra in der Tragödien-Literatur</i>, <i>note</i>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Montaigne (Michael, Lord of), on Muretus, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Amyot, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Montreuil, <i>Cleopatre</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Muretus, <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Mussato, <i>Eccerinis</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Nashe (Thomas), use of word “lurched,” <a href="#Page_460">460</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Nicholson (S.), <i>Acolastus his Afterwit</i>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">North (Sir Thomas), <a href="#Page_141">141-167</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">birth and education, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Diall of Princes</i>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Doni’s <i>Morale Filosofia</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">command at Ely, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">dignities and pensions, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">his style in translating Plutarch, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">? as to the Greek text, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Nuce (Thomas), English version of <i>Octavia</i>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Octavia</i>, ? by Seneca, <a href="#Page_10">10-19</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Octavia (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_362">362-366</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Octavius (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Octavius (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_373">373</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Othello</i>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ovid, <i>Epistle of Dido</i>, <a href="#Page_653">653</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Pais (Ettore), on story of Coriolanus, <a href="#Page_474">474</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Pembroke (Countess of),</li> -<li class="isub3">translation of Garnier’s <i>Antonius</i>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Mornay’s <i>Discourse on Life and Death</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Philotas</i>, by Samuel Daniel, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Pindarus (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Plays named after <i>two</i> persons, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Plutarch and Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_92">92</a> etc., <a href="#Page_95">95-119</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">ancestry and education, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Isis and Osiris</i>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Moralia</i>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">marriage, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">priest of Apollo, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Archon of Chaeronea, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">? a consul, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">? governor of Greece, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">and Plato, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Neo-Platonism, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">his philosophy, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Praecepta gerendae Reipublicae</i>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">Latin version of his <i>Lives</i>, published at Rome by Campani, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">other translations, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">editions of North’s version, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">various versions and Volumnia’s speech, <a href="#Page_631">631-643</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Portia (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_271">271-274</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Preston (Thomas), <i>King Cambyses</i>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Proculeius (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_346">346</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Puschkin, parallel with Cleopatra’s “One Word,” <a href="#Page_655">655</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Quarterly Review</i> (1861), on Plutarch, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Rabelais (François), prose of, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Racine (Jean), on Amyot, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Richard III.</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Rigal (Eugène), on Alexandre Hardy, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Roman and English plays compared, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ronsard (Pierre de) Roman plays by the School of, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Grévin’s <i>César</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>. - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_665">[Pg 665]</span></li> -<li class="isub1">Rousseau (Jean Jacques), on Plutarch, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ruhnken, edition of Muretus, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ruskin (John), on Virgilia, <a href="#Page_497">497</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Rusticus (Arulenus), friend of Plutarch, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sachs (Hans), play on Cleopatra, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">St. Évremond, on Plutarch, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Scarus (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_359">359</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Schiller, historical plays of, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Schweighäuser (Johann), version of Appian quoted, <a href="#Page_645">645</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Scott (Sir Walter), on Dryden’s <i>All for Love</i>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Seneca, ? author of <i>Octavia</i>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Senecio (Sosius), friend of Plutarch, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Serapion, a poet, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Sextus of Chaeronea, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Sextus Pompeius (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Shakespeare (William),</li> -<li class="isub3">Roman plays influenced by Senecan pieces, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>,</li> -<li class="isub3">and Thomas Kyd, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Midsummer-Night’s Dream</i> and</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Merchant of Venice</i> show traces of North’s Plutarch, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">various editions of North’s Plutarch, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, and North, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Sicinius Vellutus (in <i>Coriolanus</i>), <a href="#Page_499">499</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Sidgwick (Henry), on <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Silius (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_345">345</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Skelton (John), <i>Garland of Laurel</i>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Sonnets—Daniel’s <i>Delia</i>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">sorrows in the, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Stahr (A.), on Cleopatra, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Stengel, <i>Théatre d’Alexandre Hardy</i>, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Stirling (Earl of), <i>see</i> Alexander (Sir William).</li> -<li class="isub1">Stokes (Henry Paine),</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Chronological Order of Shakespeare’s Plays</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Stone (Boswell), <i>Shakespeare’s Holinshed</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Strato (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Swinburne (Algernon Charles), Trilogy on Mary Stuart, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Taylor (Sir Henry), <i>Philip van Artevelde</i>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ten Brink (Bernhard), on Cleopatra, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Tennyson, <i>Harold</i>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Thyreus (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_346">346</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Timaeus</i>, treatise on the, by Plutarch, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Timon</i>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Timon, brother of Plutarch, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Titinius (in <i>Julius Caesar</i>), <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Titus Andronicus</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Titus Lartius (in <i>Coriolanus</i>), <a href="#Page_498">498</a>, <a href="#Page_556">556</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Trench (Richard Chenevix), Archbishop of Dublin, on Plutarch, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Shakespeare and Plutarch, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on <i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_600">600</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Tullus Aufidius, <i>see</i> Aufidius (Tullus).</li> -<li class="isub1">Turberville (George), translation of Ovid, <a href="#Page_654">654</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Vaugelas (Claude Favre de), on Amyot, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ventidius (in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), <a href="#Page_345">345</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Verity (A. W.), edition of <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">edition of <i>Coriolanus</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_497">497</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Viehoff, on <i>Shakespeare’s Coriolan</i>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Virgilia (in <i>Coriolanus</i>), <a href="#Page_497">497</a>, <a href="#Page_566">566</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Voltaire (François Marie Arouet de), on Brutus, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Volumnia (in <i>Coriolanus</i>), <a href="#Page_494">494</a>, <a href="#Page_549">549</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">her speech and various versions of Plutarch, <a href="#Page_631">631-643</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Warburton (William), a reading in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Ward (Prof. A. W.),</li> -<li class="isub3">on Countess of Pembroke’s version of Garnier’s <i>Antonius</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Lodge’s <i>The Wounds of Civill War</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1"><i>Warning to Fair Women</i>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">“weak” endings, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Weever (John), <i>Mirror of Martyrs</i>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>. - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_666">[Pg 666]</span></li> -<li class="isub1">Whitelaw, date of <i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Wordsworth (William), on Plutarch, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Wright (W. Aldis), edition of <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</li> -<li class="isub1">Wyndham (the Right Honble. George), on Plutarch, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Amyot’s Plutarch’s <i>Morals</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Xylander, Latin version of Plutarch, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Zielinski (Professor Thaddäus),</li> -<li class="isub3"><i>Marginalia Philologus</i></li> -<li class="isub3">on <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <i>note</i> <a href="#Page_347">347</a>;</li> -<li class="isub3">on Cleopatra’s “One Word,” <a href="#Page_653">653</a>.</li> -</ul> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<p class="f120 space-above2 space-below2">GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS<br /> -BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<p class="center">BY</p> -<p class="f120">A. C. BRADLEY, LL.D., <span class="smcap">Litt.D.</span></p> -<p class="center space-below1"><i>Formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford</i></p> -<hr class="r10" /> -<p class="f200"><b>Shakespearean Tragedy</b></p> - -<p class="f110">LECTURES ON HAMLET, OTHELLO,<br /> -KING LEAR, MACBETH</p> - -<p class="center">8<i>vo.</i> 10<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>“Mr. Bradley’s book, as the Americans would say, is a -‘real live book,’ and ought to find a place side by side with the -volumes of Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Swinburne, among the best and -most illuminative specimens of English dramatic criticism.”—Mr. -<span class="smcap">W. L. Courtney</span> in the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>.</p> - -<p>“An admirable piece of work. To call it the most luminous piece of -Shakespearean criticism that has ever been written would be to pretend -to an impossible familiarity with the whole gigantic literature of -the subject. Let me only say, then, that no such minutely searching -and patiently convincing studies of Shakespeare are known to me.”—Mr. -<span class="smcap">William Archer</span> in the <i>Daily Chronicle</i>.</p> - -<p>“Professor Bradley realises to the full the depth and the delicacy -and the darkness of his subject; and realising this, he contrives to -say some very admirable things about it.”—Mr. <span class="smcap">G. K. -Chesterton</span> in the <i>Daily News</i>.</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<p class="f200"><b>Oxford Lectures on Poetry</b></p> -<p class="center">8<i>vo.</i> 10<i>s.</i> <i>net</i>.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>“A remarkable achievement.... It is probable that -this volume will attain a permanence for which -critical literature generally cannot hope. Very -many of the things that are said here are finally -said; they exhaust their subject. Of one thing -we are certain—that there is no work in English -devoted to the interpretation of poetic experience -which can claim the delicacy and sureness of Mr. -Bradley’s.”—<i>Athenæum.</i></p> - -<p>“This is not a book to be written about in a hasty -review of a thousand words. It is one to be perused -and appreciated at leisure—to be returned to again -and again, partly because of its supreme interest, -partly because it provokes, as all good books should -do, a certain antagonism, partly because it is itself -the product of a careful, scholarly mind, basing -conclusions on a scrupulous perusal of documents and -authorities.... The whole book is so full of good -things that it is impossible to make any adequate -selection. In an age which is not supposed to be -very much interested in literary criticism, a book -like Mr. Bradley’s is of no little significance and -importance.”—<i>Daily Telegraph.</i></p> -</div> - -<p class="f120 space-above2">LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<p class="f200"><b>A History of English Poetry.</b></p> - -<p class="f120">By <span class="smcap">W. J. Courthope</span>, -C.B., M.A., D.Litt., LL.D.,</p> -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="no-indent"> formerly Professor of Poetry in the University -of Oxford; Fellow of the British Academy; Fellow of the Royal Society -of Literature; Hon. Fellow of New College, Oxford. 6 vols. 8vo. 10s. -net each.</p> - -<p>Vol. I. The Middle Ages; Influence of the Roman Empire; The -Encyclopædic Education of the Church; The Feudal System.</p> - -<p>Vol. II. The Renaissance and the Reformation; Influence of the Court -and the Universities.</p> - -<p>Vol. III. The Intellectual Conflict of the Seventeenth Century; -Decadent Influence of the Feudal Monarchy; Growth of the National -Genius.</p> - -<p>Vol. IV. Development and Decline of the Poetical Drama; Influence of -the Court and the People.</p> - -<p>Vol. V. The Constitutional Compromise of the Eighteenth Century; -Effects of the Classical Renaissance; its Zenith and Decline; The Early -Romantic Renaissance.</p> - -<p>Vol. VI. The Romantic Movement in English Poetry; Effects of the -French Revolution.</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<p class="f200"><b>A History of English Prosody</b></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="no-indent">from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day. By -<span class="smcap">George Saintsbury</span>, M.A. Oxon., Hon. LL.D. -Aberd., Hon. D.Litt. Dresd., Professor of Rhetoric -and English Literature in the University of -Edinburgh. 3 vols. 8vo.</p> - -<p>Vol. I. From the Origins to Spenser. 10s. net.</p> - -<p>Vol. II. From Shakespeare to Crabbe. 15s. net.</p> - -<p>Vol. III. Conclusion. [<i>Spring, 1910.</i></p> -</div> - -<p class="f120 space-above2">LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="footnotes"> -<p class="f150"><b>Footnotes:</b></p> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> -Quotations taken, with a few obvious emendations, from Mr. -Farmer’s reproduction in the Tudor Facsimile Texts.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> -The hurt of impurity, not of death.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> -Altered unnecessarily to <i>out after</i> by Mr. Carew Hazlitt in his -edition of Dodsley’s <i>Old English Plays</i>. Appius’ words imply that -the two principles pass from his life, and the spectators are asked to -imagine that they actually see the process.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> -Text, <i>Mansipula</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> -Altered by Hazlitt to “brave.” It probably means “embrace.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> -A horse that does not see where it is going.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> -In original, <i>he</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> -Heed.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> -Make me detestable.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> -Professor Butler, to whom I am indebted for other emendations of -the passage, which is very corrupt in the printed text, suggests -<i>Palladis</i>, which gives a meaning, <i>the Virgin goddess</i>, and -saves the metre. But I am not sure that R. B. had any bigoted objection -to false quantities.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> -<i>I.e.</i> “whoever.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> -Fall, causative; “the tears she copiously shed.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> -Charybdis.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> -Original, <i>was</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> -So Hazlitt; in the original <i>Adrice</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> -In the original, <i>Lacefaer</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> -It is from this that I quote. I have not been able to see -either the first edition or the reprint for the Spenser Society.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> -Exchanged.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> -Has small consideration.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> -Mad.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> -Statues.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p> -<a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Tu quoque terris altera Juno</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Soror Augusti</div> - <div class="verse indent0">coniunxque graves vince dolores. (Line 224, ed. Peiper & Richter).</div> -</div></div></div> -<p class="no-indent">This is now assigned to the chorus.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Perage imperata: mitte qui Plauti mihi</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sillaeque caesi referat abscissum caput. - <span class="ws2">(Line 449.)</span></div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Quin destinamus proximum thalamis diem? - <span class="ws2">(Line 604.)</span></div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> -Guiding to ruin.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Tellure rupta Tartaro gressum extuli</div> - <div class="verse indent0">stygiam cruenta praeferens dextra facem</div> - <div class="verse indent0">thalamis scelestis. - <span class="ws5">(Line 605.)</span></div> - </div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Licet extruat marmoribus atque auro tegat</div> - <div class="verse indent0">superbus aulam, limen armatae ducis</div> - <div class="verse indent0">servent cohortes, mittat immensas opes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">exhaustus orbis, supplices dextram petant</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Parthi cruentam, regna divitias ferant:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">veniet dies tempusque quo reddat suis</div> - <div class="verse indent0">animam nocentem sceleribus jugulum hostibus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">desertus ac destructus et cunctis egens. - <span class="ws5">(Line 636.)</span></div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> -Destruction of fair buildings.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Mox tecta flammis concidant urbis meis,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">ignes ruinae noxium populum premant</div> - <div class="verse indent0">turpisque egestas saeva cum luctu fames. - <span class="ws5">(Line 847.)</span></div> - </div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> -At once.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sed iam spes est nulla salutis:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">fratris cerno miseranda ratem,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">hac en cuius vecta carina</div> - <div class="verse indent0">quondam genetrix</div> - <div class="verse indent0">nunc et thalamis expulsa soror</div> - <div class="verse indent0">miseranda vehar. - <span class="ws5">(Line 926.)</span></div> - </div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> -Altars.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> -Than.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Lenes aurae zephyrique leves</div> - <div class="verse indent0">tectam quondam nube aetheria</div> - <div class="verse indent0">qui vixistis raptam saevae</div> - <div class="verse indent0">virginis aris Iphigeniam,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">hanc quoque tristi procul a poena</div> - <div class="verse indent0">portate precor templa ad Triviae.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Urbe est nostra mitior Aulis</div> - <div class="verse indent0">et Maurorum <b>{note}</b> barbara tellus;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">hospitis illic caede litatur</div> - <div class="verse indent0">numen superum,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">civis gaudet Roma cruore. - <span class="ws5">(Line 1002.)</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><b>{note}</b> Better reading, Taurorum.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> -The original author has a right to complain:</p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Intravit hostis hei mihi captam domum</div> - <div class="verse indent0">dolisque novercae principis factus gener</div> - <div class="verse indent0">idemque natus iuvenis infandi ingeni</div> - <div class="verse indent0">scelerum capacis dira cui genetrix facem</div> - <div class="verse indent0">accendit et te iunxit invitam metu. - <span class="ws5">(Line 155.)</span></div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> -“Jodelle’s und Garnier’s Dramen sind reicher an Sentenzen als die -Seneca’s, Jodelle hat mehr als doppelt so viel.” <i>Gedankenkreis ... -in Jodelle’s und Garnier’s Tragödien</i>, by Paul Kahnt, who gives the -results of his calculations in an interesting table.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Numerent triumphos, cum volent, alii suos,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Seque <b>{note}</b> subactis nominent provinciis.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Plus est vocari Caesarem; quisquis novos</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Aliunde titulos quaerit, is jam detrahit:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Numerare ductu vis meo victas plagas?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Percurrito omnes.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><b>{note}</b> Insert <i>ex</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">quemque noluerat parem,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tulit priorem.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">[39]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Coelum petendum est: terra jam vilet mihi....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Jam vel mihi, vel patriae vixi satis....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hostes perempti, civibus leges datae,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Digestus annus, redditus sacris nitor,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Compostus orbis, cogitari nec queunt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Majora cuiquam, nec minora a me geri....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cum vita partes muneris functa est sui,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mors propera nunquam, sera nonnunquam venit.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">[40]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Nihilne te virtus tuorum commovet,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nomenque Bruti? nihil <b>{note}</b> gementis patriae,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pressae a tyranno, opemque poscentis tuam</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Conditio dura? nil libelli supplices,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Queis Brutum abesse civitatis vindicem</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cives queruntur? Haec parum si te movent,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tua jam, vir ut sis, te satis conjux monet,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fidem cruore quae tibi obstrinxit suam.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Testata sic se avunculi prolem tui.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><b>{note}</b> Certainly read <i>nil</i>.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="label">[41]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">At vero non rex iste, sed dictator est.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dum res sit una, quid aliud nomen juvat?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At nomen illud refugit, et oblatas sibi</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rejicit coronas. Fingere hoc et ludere est.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nam cur Tribunos igitur amovit loco?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At mihi et honores et semel vitam dedit.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Plus patria illis omnibus apud me potest.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui se tyranno in patriam gratum exhibet,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dum vult inepte gratus esse, ingratus est.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="label">[42]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Phoebus renascens subditos cives jugo,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Servosque vidit: liberos videat cadens.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="label">[43]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent5">Jam saepe dixi, id esse consilium mihi,</div> - <div class="verse indent5">Salvis perimere civibus tyrannida.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cass.</i> Perimatur ergo ab infimis radicibus,</div> - <div class="verse indent5">Ne quando posthac caesa rursum pullulet.</div> - <div class="verse indent1"><i>Bru.</i> Latet sub uno tota radix corpore.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cass.</i> Itan’ videtur? amplius nil proloquar.</div> - <div class="verse indent5">Tibi pareatur; te sequimur omnes ducem.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="label">[44]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent5">Quid? Somniis me credere tuis postulas?</div> - <div class="verse indent1"><i>Cal.</i> Non: sed timori ut non nihil tribuas meo.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Caes.</i> At iste solis nititur somniis timor.</div> - <div class="verse indent1"><i>Cal.</i> Finge esse vanum: tribuito aliquid conjugi.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="label">[45]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Magnanime Caesar, quod tibi verbum excidit?</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="label">[46]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">O statum deterrimum,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Si Caesar orbem, Caesarem mulier regit!...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quid, Caesar, animi patribus credis fore,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Si te jubente convocatos jusseris</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Abire nunc, redire, cum Calpurniae</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Meliora sese objecerint insomnia?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Vade potius constanter, et nomen cape</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Parthis timendum; aut, hoc minus si te juvat,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Prodito saltem, atque ipse patres mittito:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ne negligi se, aut ludibrio haberi putent.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="label">[47]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Sed tamen quando semel</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Vel cadere praestat, quam metu longo premi;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Non si tracentis vocibus vatum avocer,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Non si ipse voce propria praesens Deus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Moneat pericli, atque hic manendum suadeat,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Me continebo.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="label">[48]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>Brut.</i> Spirate cives! Caesar interfectus est....</div> - <div class="verse indent6">In curia, quam oppresserat, oppressus jacet.</div> - <div class="verse indent1"><i>Cass.</i> En, Roma, gladium adhuc tepentem sanguine;</div> - <div class="verse indent6">En dignitatis vindicem dextram tuae.</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Impurus ille, qui furore nefario,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Rabieque caeca, te et tuos vexaverat,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Hac, hac manu, atque hoc, hocce gladio, quem vides,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Consauciatus, et omnibus membris lacer</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Undam cruoris, et animum evomuit simul.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="label">[49]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Desinite flere: lacrymae miseros decent.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui me furenti, (vera praemoneo Indiges)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sunt animo adorti, non inultum illud ferent.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Heres meae virtutis, ut sceptri mei,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nepos sororis, arbitratu pro suo</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Poenos reposcet.</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="label">[50]</a> -I am quite unable to agree with Herr Collischonn’s view that Muret’s -play is more republican in sentiment than that of Grévin. In both -there is some discrepancy and contradiction, but with Muret, Caesar is -a more prominent figure than Brutus, taking part in three scenes, if -we include his intervention after death, while Brutus appears only in -two, and to my mind Caesar makes fully as sympathetic an impression. -On the other hand, the alleged monarchic bias of Grévin’s work cannot -be considered very pronounced, when, as M. Faguet mentions in his -<i>Tragédie française au XVIͤ Siècle</i>, “it was reprinted in the -time of Ravaillac with a preface violently hostile to the principle -of monarchy.” But see Herr Collischonn’s excellent introduction to -his <i>Grevin’s Tragödie “Caesar,” Ausgaben und Abhandlungen, etc., -LII</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="label">[51]</a> -See Ruhnken’s edition of Muretus. For the text I have -generally but not always used Collischonn’s reprint.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="label">[52]</a> -<i>Ancien Théatre François</i>, Tome <span class="smcap">iv.</span> -ed Viollet Le Duc.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="label">[53]</a> -As he puts it, rather comically to modern ears:</p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">‘Avant que ce soleil qui vient ores de naistre,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ayant tracé son jour, <i>chez sa tante se plonge</i>.’</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="label">[54]</a> -Enumerated by Collischonn in his excellent edition, see -above. He has, however, overlooked the one I give.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="label">[55]</a> -<i>Tragédie Française au XVIͤ Siècle.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="label">[56]</a> -<i>Garnier’s Tragédies</i>, ed. Foerster.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="label">[57]</a> -Works of Sir William Alexander, Glasgow, 1872. -<i>Julius Caesar</i>, II. i.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="label">[58]</a> -<i>Apologie for Poetrie</i>, Arber’s reprint.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="label">[59]</a> -There is an edition of this by Miss Alice Luce, <i>Literarhistorische -Forschungen</i>, 1897, but I am told it is out of print, and at -any rate I have been unable to procure it. The extracts I give are -transcripts from the British Museum copy, which is indexed thus: -<i>Discourse of Life and Death written in French by P. Mornay. Antonius -a tragedie, written also in French by R. Garnier. Both done in English -by the Countesse of Pembroke, 1592</i>. This edition has generally been -overlooked by historians of the drama, from Professor Ward to Professor -Schelling (probably because it is associated with Mornay’s tract), -and, as a rule, the translation of Garnier is said to have been first -published in 1595. That and the subsequent editions bear a different -title from the neglected first; the <i>Tragedie of Antonie</i>, instead -of <i>Antonius</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="label">[60]</a> -That is, in the original version. Subsequently Daniel threw a later -narrative passage describing Cleopatra’s parting from Caesarion and -Rodon into scenic form, introduced it here, and followed it up with a -discussion between Caesar and his advisers. This seems to be one of -his attempts to impart more dramatic animation to his play, and it -does so. But as dramatic animation is not what we are looking for, the -improvement is doubtful.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="label">[61]</a> -Dr. Grosart’s Edition.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="label">[62]</a> -Kyd, ed. Boas. The <i>Cornelia</i> has also been edited by H. Gassner; -but this edition, despite some considerable effort, I have been unable -to procure.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="label">[63]</a> -The last point is mentioned by Mr. Furness (Variorum -Edition), who cites others, of which one occurs in Plutarch and the -rest seem to me untenable or unimportant.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="label">[64]</a> -<a href="#Page_628">See Appendix A</a>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="label">[65]</a> -<i>Étude sur Garnier</i>, 1880.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="label">[66]</a> -I quote from Dodsley’s <i>Old English Plays</i>, ed. Hazlitt.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="label">[67]</a> -Professor Ward calls attention to the stage direction(Act <span class="smcap">iii.</span>): -“Enter Sylla in triumph in his chair triumphant -of gold, drawn by four Moors; before the chariot, his colours, his -crest, his captains, his prisoners; ... bearing crowns of gold and -manacled.” This, he points out, seems a reminiscence of the similar -situation in <i>Tamburlaine II.</i>, Act iv. sc. 3.: “Enter Tamberlaine -drawn in his chariot by the Kings of Trebizon and Soria, with bits in -their mouths, reins in his left hand, and in his right hand a whip with -which he scourgeth them.” From this Professor Ward infers that Lodge’s -play belongs approximately to the same date as Marlowe’s, possibly to -1587. It may be so, but there are some reasons for placing it later. -The mixture of rhyme and prose instead of the exclusive use of blank -verse would suggest that the influence of <i>Tamburlaine</i> was not -very immediate. It has some points of contact with the <i>Looking -Glass</i> which Lodge wrote along with Greene. It has the same didactic -bent, though the purpose is political rather than moral, for the -<i>Wounds of Civill War</i> enforces on its very title page the lesson -that Elizabethans had so much at heart, the need of harmony in the -State. Like the <i>Looking Glass</i> it deals rather with an historic -transaction than with individual adventures, for it summarises the -whole disastrous period of the conflict between Marius and Sulla. And -like the <i>Looking Glass</i> it visualises this by scenes taken alike -from dignified and low life, the latter even more out of place than -the episodes of the Nineveh citizens and peasants in the joint work. -In so far one is tempted to put the two together about 1591. And there -is one detail that perhaps favours this view—the introduction of -the Gaul with his bad English and worse French. In Greene’s <i>James -IV.</i> (c. 1590) the assassin hired to murder Queen Dorothea is also a -Frenchman who speaks broken English, and in that play such a personage -is quite in keeping, violating the probabilities neither of time nor of -place. It is, therefore, much more probable that, if he proved popular, -Lodge would reproduce the same character inappropriately to catch the -applause of the groundlings, than that Lodge should light on the first -invention when that invention was quite unsuitable, and that Greene -should afterwards borrow it and give it a fit setting. In the latter -case we can only account for the absurdity by supposing that Lodge -carried much further the anachronism in <i>Cornelia</i> of “the fierce -and fiery-humour’d French.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="label">[68]</a> -Floor.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="label">[69]</a> -Probably: “Qui est lá?” the misprint of <i>i</i> for <i>l</i> -is common.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="label">[70]</a> -Pink eyes.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="label">[71]</a> -It is in the Dyce Collection in South Kensington and is inaccessible -to me. It is described as claiming sympathy for Antony’s neglected wife.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="label">[72]</a> -<i>I.e.</i> more tragic in the technical sense. Of course Mr. Bradley -is quite aware that as it stands <i>Coriolanus</i> is “a much nobler -play.” It is right to add that he expresses no opinion whether the -actual close of Shakespeare’s play “was due simply to his unwillingness -to contradict his historical authority on a point of such magnitude.” -At any rate, I am convinced that in his eyes that was a sufficient ground.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="label">[73]</a> -Of course Shakespeare could not be expected to anticipate -the later theories and researches that go to prove that the political -power of plebs and tribunate has been considerably antedated.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="label">[74]</a> -Even the intervention of the Bastard in <i>King John</i> was -guaranteed by the old play and was doubtless considered authentic by -Shakespeare.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="label">[75]</a> -See Plutarch’s works <i>passim</i>, especially North’s version of -the <i>Lives</i> reprinted in the <i>Tudor Translations</i>, and -the <i>Morals</i> translated by Philemon Holland (1603). See also -Archbishop Trench’s <i>Lectures on Plutarch</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="label">[76]</a> -<i>Instructions for them, etc.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="label">[77]</a> -<i>Life of Demosthenes.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="label">[78]</a> -<i>Love.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="label">[79]</a> -<i>Love.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="label">[80]</a> -= Coax.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="label">[81]</a> -Dolls.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="label">[82]</a> -<i>Epistle to Wife.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="label">[83]</a> -<i>Noctes Atticae</i>, <span class="allsmcap">i.</span> xxvi.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="label">[84]</a> -<i>Cato Major.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="label">[85]</a> -Polypes.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="label">[86]</a> -<i>That a man cannot live pleasantly, etc.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="label">[87]</a> -<i>Instructions for them, etc.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote_alt"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="label">[88]</a> -Even in the narrative passages one is conscious that the -descriptions have been worked up. Take, <i>e.g.</i> the following -passage from the <i>Life of Marius</i>:—</p> - -<p>Ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλοὺς τῶν Ἀμβρώνων οἰ Ῥωμαῖοι διαφθείραντες ἀνεχώρησαν ὀπίσω -καὶ σκότος ἐπέσχεν, οὐχ ὥσπερ εὐτυχήματι τοσούτῳ τὸν στρατὸν ἐδέξαντο -παιᾶνες ἐπινίκιοι καὶ πότοι κατὰ σκηνὰς καὶ φιλοφροσύναι περὶ δεῖπνα, -καὶ, τὸ πάντων ἥδιστον ἀνδράσιν εὐτυχῶς μεμαχημένοις, ὕπνος ἤπιος, -ἀλλ’ ἐκείνην μάλιστα τὴν νύκτα φοβερὰν καὶ ταραχώδη διήγαγον. Ἦν μὲν -γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἀχαράκωτον τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ ἀτείχιστον, ἀπελείποντο δὲ -τῶν βαρβάρων ἔτι πολλαὶ μυριάδες ἀήττητοι καὶ σνμμεμιγμένων τούτοις, -ὅσοι διαπεφεύγεσαν, τῶν Ἀμβρώνων ὀδυρμὸς ἦν διὰ νυκτὸς, οὐ κλαυθμοῖς -ούδὲ στεναγμοῖς ἀνθρώπων ἐοικῶς, ἀλλὰ θηρομιγής τις ὠρυγὴ καὶ βρύχημα -μεμιγμένον ἀπειλαῖς καὶ θρήνοις ἀναπεμπόμενον ἐκ πλήθους τοσούτου τά -τε πέριξ ὄρη καὶ τὰ κοῖλα τοῦ ποταμοῦ περιεφώνει. Καὶ κατεῖχε φρικώδης -ἦχος τὸ πεδίον.</p> - -<p class="author">(XX. Döhner’s Edition.)</p> - -<p class="space-above2">Or take this from the <i>Life of Sulla</i>:—</p> - -<p>Τὴν δὲ κραυγὴν καὶ ἀλαλαγμὸν οὐκ ἔστεγεν ὁ ἀὴρ ἐθνῶν τοσούτων ἅμα -καθισταμένων εἰς τάξιν. Ἤν δὲ ἅμα καὶ τὸ κομπῶδες καὶ σοβαρὸν αὐτῶν -τῆς πολυτελείας οὐκ ἀργὸν οὐδὲ ἄχρηστον εἰς ἔκπληξιν, ἀλλ’ αἵ τε -μαρμαρυγαὶ τῶν ὅπλων ἠσκημένων χρνσῷ τε καὶ ἀργύρῳ διαπρεπῶς αἵ -τε βαφαὶ τῶν Μηδικῶν καὶ Σκυθικῶν χιτώνων ἀναμεμιγμέναι χαλκῷ καὶ -σιδήρῳ λάμποντι πυροειδῆ καὶ φοβερὰν ἐν τῷ σαλεύεσθαι καὶ διαφέρεσθαι -προσέβαλλον ὄψιν, ὤστε τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ὑπὸ τὸν χάρακα συστέλλειν ἑαυτοὺς -καὶ τὸν Σύλλαν μηδενὶ λόγῳ τὸ θάμβος αὐτῶν ἀφελεῖν δυνάμενον βιάζεσθαί -τε ἀποδιδράσκοντας οὐ βονλόμενον ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν καὶ φέρειν βαρέως -ἐφυβρίζοντας ὁρῶντα κομπασμῷ καὶ γέλωτι τοὺς βαρβάρους.</p> - -<p class="author">(XVI. Döhner’s Edition.)</p> - -<p>This is very different from the unstudied charm of Herodotus. Even in -North’s translation, though something of the cunning has been lost in -the selection and manipulation of the words, it is easy to see that the -pictures are elaborate both in their general effect and their details.</p> - -<p>Now the Romaines, after they had overcome the most parte of the -Ambrons, retyring backe by reason the night had overtaken them, did -not (as they were wont after they had geven such an overthrow) sing -songes of victory and triumphe, nor make good chere in their tentes -one with an other, and least of all sleepe: (which is the best and -sweetest refreshing for men that have fought happely), but contrarily -they watched all that night with great feare and trouble, bicause their -campe was not trenched and fortified, and bicause they knewe also that -there remained almost innumerable thowsandes of barbarous people, that -had not yet fought: besides also that the Ambrons that had fled and -scaped from the overthrow, did howle out all night with lowd cries, -which were nothing like men’s lamentacions and sighes, but rather like -wild beastes bellowing and roaringe. So that the bellowinge of such a -great multitude of beastly people, mingled together with threates and -waylinges, made the mountains thereabouts and the running river to -rebounde againe of the sounde and ecco of their cries marvellously: -by reason whereof, all the valley that lay between both, thundered to -heare the horrible and fearfull trembling.</p> - -<p>The ayer was even cut a sunder as it were with the violence of the -noyse and cries of so many sundry nations, which altogether did put -them selves in battell ray. The sumptuousness of their furniture -moreover, was not altogether superfluous and unprofitable, but served -greatly to feare the beholders. For the glistering of their harnesse, -so richly trimmed and set forth with gold and silver, the cullers of -their arming coates upon their curaces, after the facion of the Medes -and Scythians, mingled with the bright glistering steele and shining -copper, gave such a showe as they went and removed to and fro, that -made a light as clere as if all had bene on a very fire, a fearfull -thing to looke upon. In so much as the Romaines durst not so much as -once goe out of the trenches of their campe, nor Sylla with all his -perswasion coulde take away this great conceived feare from them: -wherefore, (and bicause also he would not compell them to goe forth in -this feare) he was driven not to stirre, but close to abide, (though -it grieved him greatly) to see the barbarous people so proudly and -villanously laugh him and his men to scorne.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="label">[89]</a> -There are so many good things, despite all the inevitable mistakes, in -Dryden’s <i>Life of Plutarch</i>, that one half regrets that Professor -Ker’s plan did not allow him to include at least part of it in his -admirable selection. Thus, in excuse for omitting the catalogue of -Plutarch’s lost works, which had been given in full in the Paris -edition: “But it is a small comfort to the merchant to pursue his bill -of freight when he is certain his ship is cast away; moved by the like -reason, I have omitted that ungrateful task.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="label">[90]</a> -De Quincey says: “Nor do I believe Wordsworth would much have lamented -on his own account if all books had perished, except the entire body -of English poetry and Plutarch’s Lives.... I do not mean to insinuate -that Wordsworth was at all in the dark about the inaccuracy or want of -authentic weight attaching to Plutarch as historian, but his business -with Plutarch was not for <i>purposes of research</i>; he was satisfied -with his <i>fine moral effects</i>.” So too one of Plutarch’s latest -editors, Mr. Holden, says in a similar sense: “Plutarch has no idea of -historic criticism.... He thought far less of finding out and relating -what actually occurred than of edifying his readers and promoting virtue.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="label">[91]</a> -<i>Johnson’s Life</i>, ed. B. Hill, i. 31.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="label">[92]</a> -<i>Life of Alexander.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="label">[93]</a> -See De Blignières’ <i>Essai sur Amyot</i>, and Amyot’s -translations <i>passim</i>, with the prefatory epistles.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="label">[94]</a> -<span class="smcap">ii.</span> viii., <i>De l’affection des -pères aux enfants</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="label">[95]</a> -Froude, <i>Council of Trent</i>, chap. xii.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="label">[96]</a> -See M. de Job’s remarks in Petit de Julleville’s -<i>Littérature Française</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="label">[97]</a> -Twelve volumes!</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="label">[98]</a> -Vive Dieu! vous ne m’auriés sceu rien mander qui me fust plus agréable -que la nouvelle du plaisir de lecture qui vous a prins. Plutarque me -soubrit toujours d’une fresche nouveauté; l’aymer c’est m’aymer, car il -a esté longtemps l’instituteur de mon bas age: ma bonne mère à laquelle -je doibs tout, et qui avoit une affection si grande de veiller à mes -bons deportmens, et ne vouloit pas (ce disoit-elle) voir en son filz -un illustre ignorant, me mist ce livre entre les mains, encores que -je ne feusse à peine plus un enfant de mamelle. Il m’a esté comme ma -conscience et il m’a dicté à l’oreille beaucoup de bonnes honestetés -et maximes excellentes pour ma conduite, et pour le gouvernment de mes -affaires.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="label">[99]</a> -As he himself states in the <i>Proesme of Théagène et Chariclée</i>. -He has occupied himself with this only, “aux heures extraordinaires, -pour adoucir le travail d’autres meilleures et plus fructueuses -traductions,” so as to be made “plus vif à la consideration des choses -d’importance.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="label">[100]</a> -Je me puis plus malaysement desfaire de Plutarque; il est si universel -et si plein, qu’à toutes occasions, et quelque subject extravagant -que vous ayez prins, il s’ingère à vostre besongne, et vous tend une -main liberale et inespuisable de richesses et d’embellissements. Il -m’en faict despit, d’estre si fort exposé au pillage de ceulx qui le -hantent: je ne le puis si peu raccointer, que je n’en tire cuisse ou -aile (iii. 5).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="label">[101]</a> -Mais, surtout, je lui sçais bon gré d’avoir sceu trier et choisir un -livre si digne et si à propos, pour en faire présent à son pais. Nous -aultres ignorants estions perdus, si ce livre ne nous eust relevé du -bourbier: sa mercy nous osons à cette heure et parler et escrire; les -dames en regentent les maistres d’eschole; c’est notre bresviaire (ii. 4).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="label">[102]</a> -Je n’ay dressé commerce avecques aulcun livre solide sinon Plutarque et -Senecque, où je puyse comme les Danaïdes remplissant et versant sans -cesse (i. 25).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="label">[103]</a> -Les livres qui m’y servent, c’est Plutarque depuis qu’il est françois, -et Seneque (ii. iv.). Of course Montaigne knew some Greek and read it -more or less. He has even his own opinion about Plutarch’s style -(<a href="#Page_104">see page 104</a>), and M. Faguet conjectures: -“It is quite conceivable that Montaigne compared the translation with -the text, and that it is a piece of mere affectation when he says he -knows nothing of the Greek.” But doubtless he read the French much more -habitually and easily.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="label">[104]</a> -Seneque est plein de poinctes et saillies, Plutarque de choses; -celuy là vous eschauffe plus et vous esmeut, cettuy ci vous contente -davantage et vous paye mieulx; il nous guide, l’aultre nous poulse (ii. 10).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="label">[105]</a> -Il y a dans Plutarque beaucoup de discours estendus très dignes d’estre -sceus, car, à mon gré, c’est le maistre ouvrier de telle besongne; -mais il y en a mille qu’il n’a que touchez simplement; et guigne -seulement du doigt par où nous irons, s’il nous plaist; et se contente -quelquefois de ne donner qu’une attaincte dans le plus vif d’un propos. -Il les fault arracher de la, et mettre en place marchande.... Cela -mesme de luy voir trier une legere action en la vie d’un homme, ou un -mot qui semble ne porter cela, c’est un discours (i. 25).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="label">[106]</a> -There were also translations in Italian, Spanish, and German; but -none of them had anything like the literary importance of Amyot’s, -and they were made from the Latin, not from the Greek. Of Hieronymus -Boner, for instance, who published his <i>Plutarch, Von dem Leben der -allerdurchlauchtigsten Griechen und Romern</i> (1st edition, Augsburg, -1534), it is misleading to say that he “anticipated” Amyot. Merzdorf -writes of Boner’s versions of Greek authors generally (<i>Allgemeine -Deutsche Biographie</i>) that he “turned them into German not from the -original Greek but from Latin translations. Moreover, one must not -expect from him any exact rendering, but rather a kind of paraphrase -which he accommodates to the circumstances of the time.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="label">[107]</a> -See his preface, towards the close.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="label">[108]</a> -In later days, too, Mr. Holden, who has busied himself with Plutarch, -says “Amyot’s version is more scholarlike and correct than those of -Langhorne or Dryden and others.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="label">[109]</a> -Cum jam majorem operis partem absolvissem, prodierunt Vitae Plutarchi -gallicâ linguâ ab Amyoto conscriptae. Quem cum praeclaram ei libro -operam impendisse ex iis qui linguae ejus sunt periti (quod mihi non -datum est) et usum multis ac bonis codicibus audirem; amicorum adjutus -... officio, nonnullos, de quibus dubitabam, locos correxi; in haud -paucis mea conjectura est illius interpretis suffragio comprobata (Ed. -1560). Xylander’s friends must have given him yeoman’s help, for he -frequently discusses Amyot’s readings, generally adopting them; and -for the whole life of Cato, he even goes so far as to avow: “Amyoti -versionem secutus sum, Graecis non satis integris.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="label">[110]</a> -Ego quidem si dicere hîc non valeam, vitas me Plutarchi, quas -plurimi sumpserunt antehac Itali Latine reddendas parum feliciter, -me explicavisse unum et verius et mundius; hoc certe dicere queo -liquide et recte, esse arbitratum me hoc effecisse (<i>Epistola ad -Lectorem</i>, 1561, edition 1599).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="label">[111]</a> -Interea cum jam polivissem atque emendassem vitas meas Plutarchi, -ostendit mihi Bruxellae, ubi agebam illustrissimi principis mei -legatus, secretarius regius editas elegantissime ab Amioto linguâ -gallicâ vitas Plutarchi, quae exierant tamen in publicum sex menses -antequam eas viderem. Hujus viri mihi eruditio et diligentia aliquid -lucis nonnullis in locis attulit. Cui ego hoc testimonium dabo: non -posse fieri, ut quisquam hoc tempore Plutarchum tam vertat ornate -linguâ Latina quam vertit ille suâ (<i>Ib.</i>).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="label">[112]</a> -Amyot’s own attitude is very similar. He cites the Latin versions in -proof of the hardness of the original, and challenges a comparison of -them with his own.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="label">[113]</a> -Interea cum jam polivissem atque emendassem vitas meas Plutarchi, -ostendit mihi Bruxellae, ubi agebam illustrissimi principis mei -legatus, secretarius regius editas elegantissime ab Amioto linguâ -gallicâ vitas Plutarchi, quae exierant tamen in publicum sex menses -antequam eas viderem. Hujus viri mihi eruditio et diligentia aliquid -lucis nonnullis in locis attulit. Cui ego hoc testimonium dabo: non -posse fieri, ut quisquam hoc tempore Plutarchum tam vertat ornate -linguâ Latina quam vertit ille suâ (<i>Ib.</i>).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="label">[114]</a> -ii. 4.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="label">[115]</a> -Mr. Holden.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="label">[116]</a> -Espineux et ferré (ii. iv.). Perhaps <i>ferré</i> should be rendered -<i>difficult</i> rather than <i>crabbed</i>. But even <i>thorny and -difficult</i> are hardly words that one would apply to Plutarch. -Montaigne’s meaning may perhaps be illustrated by the criticism of -Paley: “Plutarch’s Greek is not like Lucian’s, fluent and easy, nor -even clear.” He uses many words not in the ordinary Greek vocabulary; -and he too often constructs long sentences, the thread of which -separately as well as the connection cannot be traced without close -attention. Hence he is unattractive as a writer.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="label">[117]</a> -I do not know what authority Mr. Wyndham has for his statement that -Amyot’s version of the <i>Morals</i> “fell comparatively dead.” It is, -of course, much less read nowadays, but at the time it ran through -three editions in less than four years (1572, 1574, 1575), and for the -next half century there are frequent reprints.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="label">[118]</a> -These, translated from the Latin collection of 1470, to which they -had been contributed by Acciaiuoli, were included in Amyot’s third -edition.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="label">[119]</a> -That is, if we multiply them by eight.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="label">[120]</a> -Most of the facts of the foregoing sketch are taken from the articles -on the Norths in the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>, which, -however, must not be considered responsible for the inferences.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="label">[121]</a> -A charming reprint was edited by Mr. Joseph Jacobs in 1888.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote_alt"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="label">[122]</a> -The whole question about the editions which Shakespeare read is a -complicated one. Two things are pretty certain: (1) He must have used -the first edition for <i>Midsummer-Night’s Dream</i>, which was in -all likelihood composed before 1595, when the second appeared. (2) He -must have used the first or second for <i>Julius Caesar</i>, which was -composed before 1603, when the third appeared. It is more difficult -to speak positively in regard to <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> and -<i>Coriolanus</i>. It has been argued that the former cannot have been -derived from the first two editions, because in them Menas’ remark to -Sextus Pompeius runs:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">“Shall I cut the gables of the ankers, and make -thee Lord not only of Sicile and Sardinia, but of the whole Empire of -Rome besides?”</p> - -<p>In the third edition this is altered to <i>cables</i>, and this is the -form that occurs in Shakespeare:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">“Let me cut the cable;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And, when we are put off, fall to their throats:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All there is thine.”</div> - <div class="verse indent18">(<i>A. and C.</i> <span class="allsmcap">II.</span> vii. 77.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>But this change is a very slight one that Shakespeare might easily -make for himself on the same motives that induced the editor of -the <i>Lives</i> to make it. And though attempts have been made to -prove that the fourth edition was used for <i>Coriolanus</i>, there -are great difficulties in accepting so late a date for that play, -and one phrase rather points to one of the first two editions (see -Introduction to <i>Coriolanus</i>). If this is really so, it affects -the case of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> too, for it would be odd to -find Shakespeare using the first or second edition for the latter play, -and the third for the earlier one. Still, such things do occur, and I -think there is a tendency in those who discuss this point to confine -Shakespeare over rigidly to one edition. In the twentieth century it -is possible to find men reading or re-reading a book in the first copy -that comes to hand without first looking up the date on the title page. -Was this practice unknown in Shakespeare’s day?</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="label">[123]</a> -Themistocles.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="label">[124]</a> -Greek Βασιλεῦσιν. Does the <i>habitans</i> come from the -1470 Latin version? A later emendation is ἁλιεῦσιν.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="label">[125]</a> -Yet in these three cases, where North is certainly behind Amyot as a -narrator, he is more faithful to the Greek. This is the sort of thing -that makes one ask whether he was not really in closer contact with -the original than he professes to have been. One remembers his similar -modesty in regard to the <i>Diall</i>, which, nominally from the -French, really made use of the Spanish as well.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="label">[126]</a> -Yet in these three cases, where North is certainly behind Amyot as a -narrator, he is more faithful to the Greek. This is the sort of thing -that makes one ask whether he was not really in closer contact with -the original than he professes to have been. One remembers his similar -modesty in regard to the <i>Diall</i>, which, nominally from the -French, really made use of the Spanish as well.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="label">[127]</a> -Yet in these three cases, where North is certainly behind Amyot as a -narrator, he is more faithful to the Greek. This is the sort of thing -that makes one ask whether he was not really in closer contact with -the original than he professes to have been. One remembers his similar -modesty in regard to the <i>Diall</i>, which, nominally from the -French, really made use of the Spanish as well.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="label">[128]</a> -Amyot probably and North certainly has mistaken the sense. After -washing and shrouding the body “ἄλλο δε oὐδὲν ἔχων ἀλλὰ περισκοπῶν”; -but having nothing else to carry out the funeral rites with, such as -pine wood, spices, etc., but looking about on the beach, he found, etc.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="label">[129]</a> -A misunderstanding on North’s part where Amyot translates the Greek -quite adequately. The rendering should be “a poor naked body and -moreover an incomplete one,” <i>i.e.</i> with the head wanting.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="label">[130]</a> -<i>Pompeius.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="label">[131]</a> -<i>Themistocles.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="label">[132]</a> -Represents πράως. Amyot leaves out ἤψατο τοῦ γενελου, <i>caught the -chin</i>: <i>si grand</i>, and <i>estant irrité</i>, are added.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="label">[133]</a> -<i>Furius Camillus.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="label">[134]</a> -<i>Numa Pompilius.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="label">[135]</a> -<i>Quarterly Review</i>, 1861.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="label">[136]</a> -The relations of the various versions—Greek, Latin, French, and -English—are illustrated by means of this speech in Appendix B.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="label">[137]</a> -Childish simplicity does not strike one as a correct -description of Plutarch’s method.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="label">[138]</a> -Pointed out by Mr. Stokes, <i>Chronological Order, etc.</i> Might -not some of the expressions come, however, from Virgil’s list of the -portents that accompanied Caesar’s death? Compare especially “nec diri -toties <i>arsere cometae</i>” (<i>G.</i> i. 488).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="label">[139]</a> -Collier’s Shakespeare.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="label">[140]</a> -Mr. Halliwell-Phillips’ discovery.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="label">[141]</a> -“Brutus and his confederates came into the market place to speake unto -the people, who gave them such audience, that it seemed they neither -greatly reproved, nor allowed the fact: for by their great silence they -showed that they were sorry for Caesar’s death and also that they did -reverence Brutus.” <i>Julius Caesar.</i></p> - -<p>“When the people saw him in the pulpit, although they were a multitude -of rakehells of alle sortes, and had a good will to make some sturre, -yet being ashamed to doe it for the reverence they bare unto Brutus, -they kept silence to heare what he would say. When Brutus began to -speak they gave him quiet audience; howbeit immediately after, they -shewed that they were not all contented with the murther. For when -another called Cinna would have spoken and began to accuse Caesar; they -fell into a great uprore among them, and marvelously reviled him.” -<i>M. Brutus.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="label">[142]</a> -By S. Nicholson.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="label">[143]</a> -By Mr. Wright, <i>Clarendon Press Edition</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="label">[144]</a> -<i>Henry V.</i> <span class="allsmcap">v.</span> prologue 30.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="label">[145]</a> -Calpùrnia speaks of the appearance of comets at the death of princes, -but merely in a general way, not as a presage then to be observed: and -there is no mention in the play of disasters in the sun or eclipses of -the moon. Near the end of the <i>Life of Caesar</i>, Plutarch records -the first two portents, and his language suggests the idea of a solar, -which, for variety’s sake, might easily be changed to a lunar eclipse. -“The great comet which seven nightes together was seene very bright -after Caesar’s death, the eight night after was never seene more. Also -the <i>brightnes of the sunne was darkened</i>, the which all that -yeare through was very pale, and shined not out, whereby it gave but -small heate.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="label">[146]</a> -By Mr. Verity, <i>Julius Caesar</i>, 198.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="label">[147]</a> -The late Mr. H. Sidgwick, “Julius Caesar and Coriolanus,” -in <i>Esays and Addresses</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="label">[148]</a> -Mr. Churton Collins, <i>Studies in Shakespeare</i>. See -also Mr. Boswell Stone, <i>Shakespere’s Holinshed</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="label">[149]</a> -<a href="#Page_644">See Appendix C</a>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="label">[150]</a> -See Introduction, <a href="#Page_60">pages 60-61</a>, and -<a href="#Page_628">Appendix A</a>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="label">[151]</a> -<a href="#Page_98">See page 98</a>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="label">[152]</a> -Possibly he may have found a suggestion for this in Plutarch’s -expression that at the Lupercalia, Caesar was “apparelled in a -triumphant manner” (<i>Julius Caesar</i>); or, more definitely -“apparelled in his triumphing robe” (<i>Marcus Antonius</i>).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="label">[153]</a> -In the <i>Julius Caesar</i> it is at an interview with the Senate in -the market place that Caesar, in his vexation, bares his neck to the -blow, and afterwards pleads his infirmity in excuse; and nothing of -the kind is recorded in connection with the offer of the crown at the -Lupercalia. In the <i>Marcus Antonius</i> the undignified exhibition, -as Plutarch regards it, is referred to the Lupercalia, and the previous -incident is not mentioned.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154" class="label">[154]</a> -<i>Julius Caesar.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155" class="label">[155]</a> -<i>Marcus Antonius.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156" class="label">[156]</a> -In the <i>Lives</i> Faonius or Phaonius, properly -Favonius, a follower of Cato. (<i>Marcus Brutus.</i>)</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157" class="label">[157]</a> -Cassius says at the end of the long opening scene of the series: “It -is after midnight” (Act <span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 163). In -the last scene of the group, Cinna, on his way to Caesar’s funeral, is -murdered by the rioters apparently just after they have left Antony.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_158" href="#FNanchor_158" class="label">[158]</a> -<i>Julius Caesar.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_159" href="#FNanchor_159" class="label">[159]</a> -Genée, <i>Shakespeare’s Leben und Werke</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote_alt"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_160" href="#FNanchor_160" class="label">[160]</a> -On this passage Coleridge has the note: “This seemingly -strange assertion of Brutus is unhappily verified in the present day. -What is an immense army, in which the lust of plunder has quenched -all the duties of the citizen, other than a horde of robbers, or -differenced only as fiends from ordinarily reprobate men? Caesar -supported, and was supported by, such as these;—and even so Buonaparte -in our days.” On this interpretation Brutus’ charge would come to -nothing more than this, that Caesar had employed large armies. I -believe there is a more definite reference to one passage or possibly -two in the <i>Marcus Antonius</i>.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p>“(<i>a</i>) Caesar’s friends that governed under him, were cause why -they hated Caesar’s government ... by reason of the great insolencies -and outragious parts that were committed: amongst whom Antonius, that -was of greatest power, and that also committed greatest faultes, -deserved most blame. But Caesar, notwithstanding, when he returned from -the warres of Spayne, made no reckoning of the complaints that were put -up against him: but contrarily, bicause he found him a hardy man, and a -valliant Captaine, he employed him in his chiefest affayres.</p> - -<p>“(<i>b</i>) Now it greved men much, to see that Caesar should be out -of Italy following of his enemies, to end this great warre, with such -great perill and daunger: and that others in the meane time abusing -his name and authoritie, should commit such insolent and outragious -parts unto their citizens. This me thinkes was the cause that made the -conspiracie against Caesar increase more and more, and layed the reynes -of the brydle uppon the souldiers neckes, whereby they durst boldlier -commit many extorsions, cruelties, and robberies.”</p> - -<p>Plutarch is speaking of Antony in particular, but surely this is the -sort of thing that was in Shakespeare’s mind.</p> -</div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_161" href="#FNanchor_161" class="label">[161]</a> -Coleridge’s exact words, in continuation of the passage already -discussed may be quoted. “How too could Brutus say that he found no -personal cause, none in Caesar’s past conduct as a man? Had he not -passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not -placed his Gauls in the Senate?—Shakespeare, it may be said, has not -brought these things forward.—True;—and this is just the cause of my -perplexity. What character did Shakespeare mean his Brutus to be?”</p> - -<p>The verbal answer to this is of course that <i>personal cause</i> -refers not to Caesar but to Brutus, and means that Brutus has no -private grievance; but the substance of Coleridge’s objection remains -unaffected, for Brutus proceeds to take Caesar’s character up to the -present time under his protection.</p> - -<p>It may be noted, however, that Plutarch says nothing about the Gauls. -If Shakespeare had known of it, it would probably have seemed to him -no worse than the presence of the Bretons, “those overweening rags of -France,” as Richard III. calls them, in the army of the patriotic and -virtuous Richmond.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_162" href="#FNanchor_162" class="label">[162]</a> -See Professor Dowden, <i>Shakespeare’s Mind and Art</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_163" href="#FNanchor_163" class="label">[163]</a> -<i>Julius Caesar.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_164" href="#FNanchor_164" class="label">[164]</a> -<i>Marcus Brutus.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_165" href="#FNanchor_165" class="label">[165]</a> -Reputation.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_166" href="#FNanchor_166" class="label">[166]</a> -<i>The comparison of Dion with Brutus.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_167" href="#FNanchor_167" class="label">[167]</a> -All this is so obvious that it can hardly be overlooked, yet overlooked -it has been, though it has frequently been pointed out. In his not -very sympathetic discussion of this play, Dr. Brandes makes the truly -astounding statement: “As Shakespeare conceives the situation, the -Republic which Caesar overthrew, might have continued to exist but for -him, and it was a criminal act on his part to destroy it.... ‘If we try -to conceive to ourselves’ wrote Mommsen in 1857, ’a London with the -slave population of New Orleans, with the police of Constantinople, -with the non-industrial character of modern Rome, and agitated by -politics after the fashion of the Paris of 1848, we shall acquire an -approximate idea of the republican glory, the departure of which Cicero -and his associates in their sulky letters deplore.’ Compare with this -picture Shakespeare’s conception of an ambitious Caesar striving to -introduce monarchy into a well-ordered republican state” (Brandes, -<i>William Shakespeare</i>). Of course Shakespeare had not read Mommsen -or any of Mommsen’s documents, save Plutarch; and if he had, neither -he nor any one else of his age, was capable of Mommsen’s critical and -constructive research. But considering the <i>data</i> that Plutarch -delivered him he shows marvellous power in getting to the gist of the -matter. I think we rise with a clearer idea, after reading him than -after reading Plutarch, of the hopelessness and vanity of opposing the -changes that Caesar represented, of the effeteness of the republican -system (“Let him be Caesar!” cries the citizen in his strange -recognition of Brutus’ achievement), of the chaos that imperialism -alone could reduce to rule. If Shakespeare’s picture of Rome is that -of “a well-ordered republican state,” one wonders what the picture of -a republic in decay would be. And where does Dr. Brandes find that -Shakespeare viewed Caesar’s enterprise as a criminal act?</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_168" href="#FNanchor_168" class="label">[168]</a> -<i>Julius Caesar.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_169" href="#FNanchor_169" class="label">[169]</a> -<i>Ibid.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_170" href="#FNanchor_170" class="label">[170]</a> -<i>Shakespeare, His Life, Art and Characters.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_171" href="#FNanchor_171" class="label">[171]</a> -<i>Shakespeare Commentaries.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_172" href="#FNanchor_172" class="label">[172]</a> -<i>Julius Caesar.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_173" href="#FNanchor_173" class="label">[173]</a> -Marcus Brutus.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_174" href="#FNanchor_174" class="label">[174]</a> -Of course the substitution of the third for the second or first person -is very noticeable all through this play, and may have been due to an -idea on Shakespeare’s part that such a mode of utterance suited the -classical and Roman majesty of the theme. But this rather confirms -than refutes the argument of the text, for the usage is exceptionally -conspicuous in regard to Caesar, in whom the majesty of Rome is summed up.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_175" href="#FNanchor_175" class="label">[175]</a> -Compare the argument in the <i>Phaedo</i>, with its conclusion: “Then -there may be reason in saying that a man should wait and not take his -own life till God summons him.” Jowett’s <i>Plato</i>, Vol. I.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_176" href="#FNanchor_176" class="label">[176]</a> -Voltaire decorously invents a secret marriage!</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_177" href="#FNanchor_177" class="label">[177]</a> -<i>The comparison of Dion with Brutus.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_178" href="#FNanchor_178" class="label">[178]</a> -<i>i.e.</i> in reference to.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_179" href="#FNanchor_179" class="label">[179]</a> -It will be noticed that in this episode Shakespeare has altered -Plutarch’s narrative in two respects. In the first place Cassius did -give money to the amount of “the thirde part of his totall summe.” -This is not very important, as in the play he disclaims having ever -refused it. But in the second place Brutus was neither so scrupulous -nor so unsuccessful in raising supplies, but had used them in a -quite practical way, that Captain Mahan would thoroughly approve, in -developing his sea power: “all that he could rappe and rend ... he had -bestowed it in making so great a number of shippes that by meanes of -them they should keepe all the sea at their commaundement.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote_alt"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_180" href="#FNanchor_180" class="label">[180]</a> -Two objections have been made to this scene, or, rather to the whole -act. The first, in Mr. Bradley’s words that it has a “tendency to -drag” (<i>Shakespearian Tragedy</i>), is put more uncompromisingly -by Mr. Baker (<i>Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist</i>); -“[Shakespeare] produced in <i>Julius Caesar</i> a fourth act probably -not entirely successful even in his own day”; and afterwards he -refers to it as “ineffective to-day.” In view of Digges’ testimony, -it is difficult to see how Mr. Baker can say that it was not entirely -successful in Shakespeare’s day. As to the impression it makes now, one -must largely depend on one’s own feeling and experience. Certainly I -myself have never been conscious that it dragged or was ineffective, -nor have I noted that it failed to stir the audience. I have never been -present at a first-rate performance, but I have seen it creditably -presented in Germany, England and Australia; and on every occasion it -seemed to me that the quarrel scene was the most popularly successful -in the play. This statement is, I believe, strictly accurate, for -having Digges’ lines in my mind I was on the watch to see whether -the taste of the Elizabethan coincided with the taste of a later generation.</p> - -<p>The second criticism is that in the economy of the piece it leads to -nothing, “unless,” as Mr. Bradley says, “we may hold that but for the -quarrel and reconciliation, Cassius would not have allowed Brutus -to overcome his objection to the fatal policy of offering battle at -Philippi.” This is quite true, though the proviso is a most important -one. But it does very manifestly connect with what has gone before, -and gives the essence and net result of the story. We could sooner -dispense with the Fifth Act than the Fourth, for the Fifth may with -less injustice be described as an appendix than the Fourth as an -episode. Not only is it less unique in kind, but for the most part it -works out issues that can easily be foreseen and that to some extent -are clearly indicated here. Of course this is not to say that it could -be rejected without mutilating the play, for it works them out far -more impressively than we could do in our own imaginations, even with -Plutarch to help us.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_181" href="#FNanchor_181" class="label">[181]</a> -This explanation is offered with great diffidence, but it is the only -one I can suggest for what is perhaps the most perplexing passage in -the play, not even excepting the soliloquy of Brutus.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_182" href="#FNanchor_182" class="label">[182]</a> -What a strange effect these words are apt to produce on auditor and -reader! “How true!” we say, “The prophecy is fulfilled. This is -happening now.” And then the reflection comes that just because that -is the case there is no prophecy and no truth in the scene; the whole -is being enacted, in sport. We experience a kind of vertigo, in which -we cannot distinguish the real and the illusory and yet are conscious -of both in their highest potence. And this is a characteristic of -all poetry, though it is not always brought so clearly before the -mind. In Shakespeare something of the kind is frequent: compare the -reference to the “squeaking Cleopatra” in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, -which is almost exactly parallel; compare too his favourite device -of the play within the play, when we see the actors of a few minutes -ago, sitting like ourselves as auditors; and thus, on the one hand -their own performance seems comparatively real, but on the other -there is the constant reminder that we are in their position, and the -whole is merely spectacular. Dr. Brandes has some excellent remarks -in this connection on Tieck’s Dramas in his <i>Romantic School in -Germany</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_183" href="#FNanchor_183" class="label">[183]</a> -The trait is taken from Plutarch who, after enumerating the sinister -omens before Philippi, adds: “the which beganne somewhat to alter -Cassius minde from Epicurus opinions.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_184" href="#FNanchor_184" class="label">[184]</a> -Trivial to him, to us full of tragic meaning.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_185" href="#FNanchor_185" class="label">[185]</a> -Plutarch’s account of Caesar’s personal prowess in the battle with -the Nervii, and of the honours decreed him by the Senate, shows why -Shakespeare chose this exploit for special mention: “Had not Caesar -selfe taken his shield on his arme, and flying in amongest the -barbarous people, made a lane through them that fought before him; and -the tenth legion also seeing him in daunger, ronne unto him from the -toppe of the hill, where they stoode in battell,<b>{note}</b> and broken the -ranckes of their enemies; there had not a Romane escaped a live that -day. But taking example of Caesar’s valliantnes, they fought desperatly -beyond their power, and yet could not make the Nervians flie, but they -fought it out to the death, till they were all in manner slaine in -the field.... The Senate understanding it at Rome, ordained that they -shoulde doe sacrifice unto the goddes, and keepe feasts and solemne -processions fifteene dayes together without intermission, having -never made the like ordinaunce at Rome, for any victorie that ever -was obteined. Bicause they saw the daunger had bene marvelous great, -so many nations rising as they did in armes together against him: and -further the love of the people unto him made his victorie much more famous.”</p> - -<p><b>{note}</b> battle order</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_186" href="#FNanchor_186" class="label">[186]</a> -In Plutarch Antony treats Lepidus with studied deference.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_187" href="#FNanchor_187" class="label">[187]</a> -See Bradley, <i>Shakespearian Tragedy</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_188" href="#FNanchor_188" class="label">[188]</a> -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 <i>Epicoene</i>: “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 <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, for instance the stage -direction at the head of Act <span class="smcap">iii.</span>, 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 <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> 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 <i>Epicoene</i> -belongs to 1610, and no one would place <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> so late.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_189" href="#FNanchor_189" class="label">[189]</a> -<i>i.e.</i> Sin’s.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_190" href="#FNanchor_190" class="label">[190]</a> -Bradley, <i>Shakespearian Tragedy</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_191" href="#FNanchor_191" class="label">[191]</a> -<span class="smcap">ii.</span> iv. 44.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_192" href="#FNanchor_192" class="label">[192]</a> -<span class="smcap">iii.</span> ii. 154.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_193" href="#FNanchor_193" class="label">[193]</a> -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 <i>Cleopatra</i> 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 -(<i>Kleopatra in der Tragödien-Literatur</i>) 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 <i>Antony and -Cleopatra</i> 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 <i>Cléopatre</i>, 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 <i>dramatis -personae</i>, it has no contact with Shakespeare’s.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_194" href="#FNanchor_194" class="label">[194]</a> -obstructed.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_195" href="#FNanchor_195" class="label">[195]</a> -Antony had already been worshipped as that deity.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_196" href="#FNanchor_196" class="label">[196]</a> -It is rather strange that Shakespeare, whose “accessories” are -usually relevant, should choose such a subject for the decoration -of Imogen’s room. Mr. Bradley, in a note to his essay on <i>Antony -and Cleopatra</i> says: “Of the ‘good’ heroines, Imogen is the one -who has most of [Cleopatra’s] spirit of fire and air.” This is one -of the things one sees to be true as soon as one reads it: can it be -that their creator has brought them into association through some feeling, -conscious or unconscious, of their kinship in this important respect?</p> - -<p>I regret that Mr. Bradley’s admirable study, which appeared when I -was travelling in the Far East, escaped my notice till a few days ago, -when it was too late to use it for my discussion.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_197" href="#FNanchor_197" class="label">[197]</a> -Of course the division into scenes is not indicated in the Folio, but -a new “place” is obviously required for this conversation. Of course, -too, change of scene did not mean so much on the Elizabethan as on the -modern stage, but it must always have counted for something. Every -allowance made, the above criticism seems to me valid.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_198" href="#FNanchor_198" class="label">[198]</a> -The irony of the proposal, which Plutarch indicates but does not -stress, is entirely lost in Shakespeare. We have already been told -that Hipparchus “was the first of all his (<i>i.e.</i> Antony’s) -infranchised bondmen that revolted from him and yelded unto Caesar”; so -Caesar is invited to retaliate on one of his own adherents.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_199" href="#FNanchor_199" class="label">[199]</a> -It is interesting to note that it had already caught the fancy of -Jodelle, though being more faithful to the text in enumerating only the -kings who were actually present and taking no liberties with the names -and titles, he failed to get all the possible points out of it. Agrippa -says to Octavian:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Le Roy Bocchus, le Roy Cilicien</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Archelaus, Roy Capadocien,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et Philadelphe, et Adalle de Thrace,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et Mithridate, usoyent-ils de menace</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Moindre sus nous que de porter en joye</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nostre despouille et leur guerriere proye,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pour a leurs Dieux joyeusement les pendre</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et maint et maint sacrifice leur rendre?</div> - <div class="verse indent26">Acte <span class="allsmcap">II.</span></div> -</div></div></div> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_200" href="#FNanchor_200" class="label">[200]</a> -<a href="#Page_648">See Appendix D</a>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_201" href="#FNanchor_201" class="label">[201]</a> -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.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_202" href="#FNanchor_202" class="label">[202]</a> -Even in <i>Othello</i> the conspicuous place is reserved for the Moor, -and in him it is jealousy as much as love that is depicted.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_203" href="#FNanchor_203" class="label">[203]</a> -If the ideas were in Shakespeare’s mind that Professor Zielinski of St. -Petersburg attributes to him (<i>Marginalien Philologus</i>, 1905), -the gracelessness of Charmian passes all bounds. “(Die) muntre Zofe -wünscht sich vom Wahrsager allerhand schöne Sachen: ’lass mich an einem -Nachmittag drei Könige heiraten, und sie alle als Wittwe überleben; -lass mich mit fünfzig Jahren ein Kind haben, dem Herodes von Judaea -huldigen soll: lass mich Octavius Caesar heiraten, etc.’ Das ‘Püppchen’ -dachte sich Shakespeare jünger als ihre Herrin: fünfzig würde sie -also—um Christi Geburt. Ist es nun klar, was das für ein Kind ist, -dem Herodes von Judaea huldigen soll.’ Ἐπὰν εὕρητε, ἀπαγγείλατέ μοι, -ὅπως κᾀγὼ ἐλθῶν προσκυνήσω αὐτῷ, sagt er selber, Matth. ii. 18. Und -wem sagt er es? Den Heiligen drei Königen. Sollten es nicht dieselben -sein, die auch in Charmian’s Wunschzettel stehen? Der Einfall ist einer -Mysterie würdig: Gattin der heiligen drei Könige, Mutter Gottes, und -römische Kaiserin dazu.” Worthy of a mystery, perhaps! but more worthy -of a scurrilous lampoon. It might perhaps be pointed out, that, if -fifty years old at the beginning of the Christian era, Charmian could -only be ten at the opening of the play: but this is a small point, and -I think it very likely that Shakespeare intended to rouse some such -associations in the mind of the reader as Professor Zielinski suggests. -Mr. Furness is rather scandalised at the “frivolous irreverence,” but -it fits the part, and where is the harm? One remembers Byron’s defence -of the audacities in <i>Cain</i> and objection to making “Lucifer talk -like the Bishop of London, <i>which would not be in the character of -the former</i>.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_204" href="#FNanchor_204" class="label">[204]</a> -Observe or await.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_205" href="#FNanchor_205" class="label">[205]</a> -I take this much discussed passage to refer to the friction that -inevitably arises in such a gathering. The guests are of such -different disposition or temperament, that especially after their -late misunderstandings they are bound to chafe each other. We have an -example of it. Pompey plays the cordial and tactful host to perfection, -but even he involuntarily harks back to his grievance:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">O, Antony,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You have my father’s house,—But, what? we are friends.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">I think the meaning of the second servant’s remark -is that when such little <i>contretemps</i> occur, as they could not -but do in so ill-assorted a company, Lepidus in his role of peace-maker -interferes to check them, and drowns the difference in a carouse. But -the result is that he befuddles himself.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_206" href="#FNanchor_206" class="label">[206]</a> -<a href="#Page_648">See Appendix D</a>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_207" href="#FNanchor_207" class="label">[207]</a> -Scoured.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_208" href="#FNanchor_208" class="label">[208]</a> -<i>The Adventures of Harry Richmond.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_209" href="#FNanchor_209" class="label">[209]</a> -He learns the truth however before he sends Euphronius as delegate.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_210" href="#FNanchor_210" class="label">[210]</a> -Which latter for the rest may be found in North but not in Plutarch. -“To salve that he had spoken he added this more unto it, that he would -not leade them to battell, where he thought not rather safely to -returne with victorie, then valliantly to dye with honor.” <i>Cf.</i> -μὴ προάξειν ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, ἐξ ἧς αὑτῷ θάνατον εὐκλεᾶ μᾶλλον ἢ σωτηρίαν -ζητεῖν καὶ νίκην.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_211" href="#FNanchor_211" class="label">[211]</a> -A familiar thought with Shakespeare. Compare Anne’s -reference to Katherine in <i>Henry VIII.</i>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent20">O, God’s will! much better</div> - <div class="verse indent0">She ne’er had known pomp: though’t be temporal,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet, if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It from the bearer, ’tis a sufferance panging</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As soul and body’s severing.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> iii. 12.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>This scene is almost certainly Shakespeare’s.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote_alt"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_212" href="#FNanchor_212" class="label">[212]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Dido and her Æneas shall want troops,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And all the haunt be ours.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<span class="allsmcap">iV.</span> xiv. 52.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">We have not got much further in explaining -Shakespeare’s allusion than when Warburton made the Warburtonian -emendation of Sichaeus for Æneas. Shakespeare had probably quite -forgotten Virgil’s</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Illa solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat:</div> - <div class="verse indent1">... atque inimica refugit</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In nemus umbriferum.</div> - <div class="verse indent20">(<i>Æ.</i> vi. 469.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">Perhaps he remembered only that Æneas, ancestor -and representative of the Romans, between his two authorised marriages -with ladies of the “superior” races, intercalated the love-adventure, -which alone seized the popular imagination and which of all the deities -Venus alone approved, with ran African queen.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_213" href="#FNanchor_213" class="label">[213]</a> -No word of this in Plutarch.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_214" href="#FNanchor_214" class="label">[214]</a> -Wrong; even if on numismatic evidence her features be considered to -fall short of and deviate from the Greek ideal. Professor Ferrero -describes her face as “bouffie.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_215" href="#FNanchor_215" class="label">[215]</a> -The sense is: “Her beauty was not so surpassing as to be beyond -comparison with other women’s,” etc. Compare the Greek: “καὶ γὰρ ἦν, ὡς -λέγουσιν, αὐτὸ μὲν καθ’ αὑτὸ, τὸ κάλλος αὐτῆς οὐ πάνυ δυσπαράβλητον, -οὐδ’ οἶον ἐκπλῆξαι τοῦς ἰδόντας.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_216" href="#FNanchor_216" class="label">[216]</a> -Plutarch in the corresponding passage merely says that she was -“apparelled and attired like the goddesse Venus commonly drawen in -picture.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_217" href="#FNanchor_217" class="label">[217]</a> -<a href="#Page_653">See Appendix E</a>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_218" href="#FNanchor_218" class="label">[218]</a> -The love she inspires and feels is of the kind described by La -Rochefoucauld: “L’amour, aussi bien que le feu, ne peut subsister, sans -un mouvement continuel; et il cesse de vivre dès qu’il cesse d’espérer -ou de craindre.” He has another passage that suggests an explanation -of the secret of Cleopatra’s permanent attraction for the volatile -Antony: “La constance en amour est une inconstance perpétuelle, qui -fait que notre coeur s’attache successivement à toutes les qualités -de la personne que nous aimons, donnant tantôt la préférence à l’une, -tantôt à l’autre; de sorte que cette constance n’est qu’une inconstance -arrêtée et renfermée dans un même sujet.” It is curious how often an -English reader of La Rochefoucauld feels impelled to illustrate the -Reflections on Love and Women by reference to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, -but it is very natural. His friend the Duchess of Longueville and -the other great ladies of the Fronde resembled her in their charm, -their wit, their impulsiveness; and when they engaged in the game of -politics, subordinated it like her to their passions and caprices. So -his own experience would familiarise La Rochefoucauld with the type, -which he has merely generalised, and labelled as the only authentic one.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_219" href="#FNanchor_219" class="label">[219]</a> -“L’on fait plus souvent des trahisons par foiblesse que -par un dessein formé de trahir.”—<i>La Rochefoucauld.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_220" href="#FNanchor_220" class="label">[220]</a> -Boas, <i>Shakespeare and his Predecessors</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_221" href="#FNanchor_221" class="label">[221]</a> -This was first suggested in A. Stahr’s <i>Cleopatra</i>. -I prefer to give the arguments in my own way.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_222" href="#FNanchor_222" class="label">[222]</a> -So in folio: some modern editions alter unnecessarily to“dug.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_223" href="#FNanchor_223" class="label">[223]</a> -<i>i.e.</i> confuted.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote_alt"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_224" href="#FNanchor_224" class="label">[224]</a> -It is a rather striking coincidence that Jodelle, too, heightens -Plutarch’s account of the treasures she has retained, and includes -among them the crown jewels and royal robes. Seleucus finishes a -panegyric on her wealth:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Croy, Cesar, croy qu’elle a de tout son or</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et autres biens tout le meilleur caché.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">And she says in her defence:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Hé! si j’avois retenu les joyaux</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et quelque part de mes habits royaux,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">L’aurois-je fait pour moy, las! malheureuse!</div> -</div></div></div> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_225" href="#FNanchor_225" class="label">[225]</a> -I take it as certain that with Thyreus she is for the moment at least -“a boggler,” and then she has already sent her private message to Caesar.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_226" href="#FNanchor_226" class="label">[226]</a> -To me the sense seems to be: Supposing the Antony I have depicted never -existed, still the conception is too great to be merely my own. It must -be an imagination of Nature herself, which she may be unable to embody, -but which shames our puny ideals. In other words, Antony is the “form” -or “type” which Nature aims at even if she does not attain. I see no reason -for changing the “nor” of the first line as it is in the folio to “or.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_227" href="#FNanchor_227" class="label">[227]</a> -Jowett’s <i>Plato</i>, Vol. <span class="smcap">ii.</span>, pages 42-43.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_228" href="#FNanchor_228" class="label">[228]</a> -<i>Ibid</i>, pages 56-57.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_229" href="#FNanchor_229" class="label">[229]</a> -Le plus grand miracle de l’amour, c’est de guérir de la -coquetterie.—<i>La Rochefoucauld.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_230" href="#FNanchor_230" class="label">[230]</a> -Cleopatra was actually married to Antony, as has been proved by -Professor Ferrero. But Plutarch nowhere else mentions the circumstance, -and it contradicts the whole tenor of his narrative.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_231" href="#FNanchor_231" class="label">[231]</a> -<i>E.g.</i>, by Delius. <i>Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in seinem -Verhältness zum Coriolanus des Plutarch</i> (<i>Jahrbuch der D.-Sh. -Gesellschaft</i>, xi. 1876).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote_alt"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_232" href="#FNanchor_232" class="label">[232]</a> -In some respects Shakespeare’s details remind me more -of Livy than either of Plutarch or Camden; <i>e.g., “Inde apparuisse -ventris quoque haud segne ministerium esse, nec magis ali quam alere -eum, reddentem in omnis corporis partes hunc, quo vivimus vigemusque, -divisum pariter in venas maturum confecto cibo sanguinem</i>.”</p> -<p>(<span class="allsmcap">II.</span> 32.) Cf.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent13">I receive the general food at first,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Which you do live upon; ...</div> - <div class="verse indent1">... but, if you do remember,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I send it through the rivers of your blood, ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And through the cranks and offices of man,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The strongest nerves and small inferior veins</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From me receive that natural competency</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whereby they live.</div> - <div class="verse indent29">(<span class="allsmcap">I.</span> i. 135 seq.)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">This certainly is liker Livy than Plutarch; and -besides the chances of Shakespeare having read Livy in the original, -we have to bear in mind that in 1600 Philemon Holland published the -<i>Romane Historie written by Titus Livius of Padua</i>. His version, -as it is difficult to procure, may be quoted in full:</p> - -<p class="blockquot">Whilome (quoth he) when as in mans bodie, all -the parts thereof agreed not, as now they do in one, but each member -had a several interest and meaning, yea, and a speech by it selfe; -so it befel, that all other parts besides the belly, thought much -and repined that by their carefulness, labor, and ministerie, all -was gotten, and yet all little enough to serve it: and the bellie it -selfe lying still in the mids of them, did nothing else but enjoy -the delightsome pleasures brought unto her. Wherupon they mutinied -and conspired altogether in this wise, That neither the hands should -reach and convey food to the mouth, nor the mouth receive it as it -came, ne yet the teeth grind and chew the same. In this mood and fit, -whiles they were minded to famish the poore bellie, behold the other -lims, yea and the whole bodie besides, pined, wasted, and fel into an -extreme consumption. Then was it wel seen, that even the very belly -also did no smal service, but fed the other parts, as it received food -it selfe: seeing that by working and concocting the meat throughlie, -it digesteth and distributeth by the veines into all parts, that fresh -and perfect blood whereby we live, we like, and have our full strength. -Comparing herewith, and making his application, to wit, how like this -intestine, and inward sedition of the bodie, was to the full stomacke -of the Commons, which they had taken and borne against the Senatours, -he turned quite the peoples hearts.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_233" href="#FNanchor_233" class="label">[233]</a> -Introduction to the Clarendon Press Edition.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_234" href="#FNanchor_234" class="label">[234]</a> -Strictly speaking, from the Tower to Winchester for trial.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_235" href="#FNanchor_235" class="label">[235]</a> -<i>Shakespeare</i>, in the <i>Führende Geister</i> Series.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_236" href="#FNanchor_236" class="label">[236]</a> -Rather more than the most. It is special pleading to interpret -Raleigh’s arguments against the <i>Act for sewing Hemp</i> and the -<i>Statute of Tillage</i> in 1601, as directed against cheap corn. His -point was rather that coercive legislation in regard to agriculture -hindered production and was oppressive to poor men. Nor am I aware that -his speeches on these occasions increased his unpopularity,—which, no -doubt, was already great.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_237" href="#FNanchor_237" class="label">[237]</a> -<i>William Shakespeare, a critical study.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_238" href="#FNanchor_238" class="label">[238]</a> -In point of fact “gloom and bitterness” can be less justly attributed -to <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> and <i>Coriolanus</i> than to any of the -later tragedies, and less justly to <i>Coriolanus</i> than to <i>Antony -and Cleopatra</i>; but Dr. Brandes treats <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> -as coming between them, and if that position could be vindicated for -it, the phrase would be defensible.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_239" href="#FNanchor_239" class="label">[239]</a> -<i>Coriolanus.</i> Rugby Edition.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_240" href="#FNanchor_240" class="label">[240]</a> -In the conclusion of his essay on the <i>Date and Occasion -of the Tempest</i>. <i>Universal Review, 1889.</i></p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_241" href="#FNanchor_241" class="label">[241]</a> -<i>Notes on Plays of Shakespere</i>, 1818.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_242" href="#FNanchor_242" class="label">[242]</a> -By Ettore Pais. <i>Storia di Roma.</i> Vol. I.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_243" href="#FNanchor_243" class="label">[243]</a> -See <i>Théâtre d’Alexandre Hardy</i>, ed. Stengel.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_244" href="#FNanchor_244" class="label">[244]</a> -See M. Rigal’s admirable treatise on <i>Hardy</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_245" href="#FNanchor_245" class="label">[245]</a> -Of course these scenes are not marked in the folio, but on the whole there -are good grounds for the division that has been adopted by modern editors.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_246" href="#FNanchor_246" class="label">[246]</a> -See footnote 2 on previous page.<br /> -{TN: this reference is to Footnote 244.}</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_247" href="#FNanchor_247" class="label">[247]</a> -S’entre-défier.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_248" href="#FNanchor_248" class="label">[248]</a> -<i>E.g.</i> by Viehoff, in his interesting essay, <i>Shakespeare’s -Coriolan</i> (<i>Jahrbuch der D.-Sh. Gesellschaft</i>, Bd. iv. 1869), -which has been used in the following paragraphs.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_249" href="#FNanchor_249" class="label">[249]</a> -A good many of the parallels and contrasts noted in this chapter are to -be found in the excellent paper by Delius already cited.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_250" href="#FNanchor_250" class="label">[250]</a> -<a href="#Page_631">See Appendix B</a>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_251" href="#FNanchor_251" class="label">[251]</a> -wreaked, avenged.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote_alt"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_252" href="#FNanchor_252" class="label">[252]</a> -This seems preferable to the reading of the Cambridge Editors</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And [Censorinus,] nobly named so,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Twice being [by the people chosen] censor.</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p class="no-indent">In the first place it is closer to North, and -agrees with Shakespeare’s usual practice of keeping to North’s words -so far as possible. In the second place, it is closer to the Folio -text, involving only the displacement of a comma. In the third place, -it is simpler to suppose that a whole single line has been missed out -than that parts of two have been amputated, and the remainders run -together.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_253" href="#FNanchor_253" class="label">[253]</a> -Here again Plutarch has furnished an emendation: Folio, <i>Calues</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_254" href="#FNanchor_254" class="label">[254]</a> -By Büttner, <i>Zu Coriolan und seiner Quelle</i> -(<i>Jhrbch. der D.-Sh. Gesellschaft</i>, Bd. xli. 1905).</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_255" href="#FNanchor_255" class="label">[255]</a> -πολλῶν χρημάτων καὶ ἵππων γεγονότων αἰχμαλώτων καὶ ἀνθρώπων, ἐκέλευσεν -αὐτὸν ἐξελέσθαι δέκα πάντα πρὸ τοῦ νέμειν τοῖς πολλοῖς. Ἄνευ δὲ ἐκείνων -ἀριστεῖον αὐτῷ κεκοσμημένον ἵππον ἐδωρήσατο.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_256" href="#FNanchor_256" class="label">[256]</a> -Shakespeare, following North (“Martius accepted the gift of <i>his</i> -horse”) makes it, instead of <i>a</i> horse, Cominius’ own horse, which -would be a violation of antique usage. See Büttner as above.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_257" href="#FNanchor_257" class="label">[257]</a> -<i>Unworked, untilled</i>, from <i>manoeuvrer</i>.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_258" href="#FNanchor_258" class="label">[258]</a> -<i>Coriolanus.</i> (The Students’ Shakespeare, Cambridge University -Press.) Volumnia indeed refers to “children” in her petition -(<span class="allsmcap">v.</span> iii. 118), but this seems merely a -reminiscence of Plutarch’s language, for everywhere else young Marcius -is treated as an only child.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_259" href="#FNanchor_259" class="label">[259]</a> -Placuit igitur oratorem ad plebem mitti Menenium Agrippam, -facundum virum et, quod inde oriundus erat, plebi carum. -(<span class="smcap">ii.</span> 32 Weissenborn & Müller’s edition.)</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_260" href="#FNanchor_260" class="label">[260]</a> -See especially the passage that describes his behaviour after he -has been rejected for the consulship: “Coriolanus went home to his -house, full fraighted with spite and malice against the people, being -accompanied with all the lustiest young gentlemen, whose mindes were -nobly bent, as those that came of noble race, and commonly used for -to followe and honour him. But then specially they floct about him, -and kept him companie, to his muche harme; for they dyd but kyndle and -inflame his choller more and more, being sorie with him for the injurie -the people offred him.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_261" href="#FNanchor_261" class="label">[261]</a> -<i>Reisebilder</i>, 2ter Theil; “Italien, Reise nach Genua,” -Cap. xxiv.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_262" href="#FNanchor_262" class="label">[262]</a> -There is no authority for taking this most characteristic -utterance from Volumnia and assigning it to “a patrician” as some -editions do.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_263" href="#FNanchor_263" class="label">[263]</a> -<a href="#Page_657">See Appendix F</a>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_264" href="#FNanchor_264" class="label">[264]</a> </p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What, Rome?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My ancestors did from the streets of Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The Tarquin drive when he was call’d a King.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> i. 51.)</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_265" href="#FNanchor_265" class="label">[265]</a> </p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What, Rome?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My ancestors did from the streets of Rome</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The Tarquin drive when he was call’d a King.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">iI.</span> i. 51.)</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_266" href="#FNanchor_266" class="label">[266]</a> </p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">Age, thou art shamed!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 150.)</div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">Our fathers’ minds are dead</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And we are govern’d by our mothers’ spirits,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 82.)</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_267" href="#FNanchor_267" class="label">[267]</a> </p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">Age, thou art shamed!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 150.)</div> - </div><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">Our fathers’ minds are dead</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And we are govern’d by our mothers’ spirits,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.</div> - <div class="verse indent31">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 82.)</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_268" href="#FNanchor_268" class="label">[268]</a> -If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him -I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that -friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer:—Not -that I loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">iii.</span> ii. 19.)</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_269" href="#FNanchor_269" class="label">[269] </a> -If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him -I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that -friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer:—Not -that I loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more.</p> -<p class="author">(<span class="allsmcap">iii.</span> ii. 19.)</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_270" href="#FNanchor_270" class="label">[270]</a> </p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius ...</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Life being weary of these worldly bars</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Never lacks power to dismiss itself.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 90.)</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_271" href="#FNanchor_271" class="label">[271]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius ...</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Life being weary of these worldly bars</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Never lacks power to dismiss itself.</div> - <div class="verse indent26">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> iii. 90.)</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_272" href="#FNanchor_272" class="label">[272]</a> -Notice the inept rendering.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_273" href="#FNanchor_273" class="label">[273]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">It doth amaze me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A man of such a feeble temper should</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So get the start of the majestic world,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And bear the palm alone.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 128.)</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_274" href="#FNanchor_274" class="label">[274]</a></p> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">It doth amaze me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A man of such a feeble temper should</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So get the start of the majestic world,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And bear the palm alone.</div> - <div class="verse indent22">(<span class="allsmcap">i.</span> ii. 128.)</div> -</div></div></div></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_275" href="#FNanchor_275" class="label">[275]</a> -Approve or agree.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_276" href="#FNanchor_276" class="label">[276]</a> -I have modernised the punctuation, and extended the contractions -throughout, but wherever there is any possibility of misinterpretation -I have noted it.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_277" href="#FNanchor_277" class="label">[277]</a> -aīo.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_278" href="#FNanchor_278" class="label">[278]</a> -adiret.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_279" href="#FNanchor_279" class="label">[279]</a> -cernēs.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_280" href="#FNanchor_280" class="label">[280]</a> -Insinit.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_281" href="#FNanchor_281" class="label">[281]</a> -uterque.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_282" href="#FNanchor_282" class="label">[282]</a> -<i>aūt.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_283" href="#FNanchor_283" class="label">[283]</a> -<i>together with.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_284" href="#FNanchor_284" class="label">[284]</a> -A mistranslation of the Greek phrase, μετὰ τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν, from which -it must come. The Latin is correct and unmistakable.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_285" href="#FNanchor_285" class="label">[285]</a> -But.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_286" href="#FNanchor_286" class="label">[286]</a> -Greek αἰτίαν, Latin noxam crimenque.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_287" href="#FNanchor_287" class="label">[287]</a> -Latin: cumque incertus belli sit eventus.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_288" href="#FNanchor_288" class="label">[288]</a> -Yet.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_289" href="#FNanchor_289" class="label">[289]</a> -Yet.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_290" href="#FNanchor_290" class="label">[290]</a> -An unusual word in French. Compare the <i>impetrare</i> of -the Latin.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_291" href="#FNanchor_291" class="label">[291]</a> -ἄπειμι, revais = retourne.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_292" href="#FNanchor_292" class="label">[292]</a> -No <i>chauldes</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_293" href="#FNanchor_293" class="label">[293]</a> -Adverb for adjective, omission of one duplicate.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_294" href="#FNanchor_294" class="label">[294]</a> -<i>of</i>, appositional.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_295" href="#FNanchor_295" class="label">[295]</a> -Not so clear as the French.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_296" href="#FNanchor_296" class="label">[296]</a> -gaol.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_297" href="#FNanchor_297" class="label">[297]</a> -picqué not translated.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_298" href="#FNanchor_298" class="label">[298]</a> -One of Amyot’s duplicates wanting.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_299" href="#FNanchor_299" class="label">[299]</a> -Important connective particle omitted.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_300" href="#FNanchor_300" class="label">[300]</a> -Quite wrong. The French means: “Since you so bitterly -pursue ingratitude.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_301" href="#FNanchor_301" class="label">[301]</a> -In this sentence North again misses the point of the argument. The -meaning is “And there is this further point as well, that you have -already in a measure requited your wrongs, but never yet shown your -gratitude.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_302" href="#FNanchor_302" class="label">[302]</a> -One of Amyot’s duplicate expressions omitted.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_303" href="#FNanchor_303" class="label">[303]</a> -A pardonable mistranslation of the French; which, however, proves that -in this passage at least North consulted neither the Greek nor the -Latin.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_304" href="#FNanchor_304" class="label">[304]</a> -Under the title: “An auncient Historie and exquisite Chronicle of the -Romanes warres, both Ciuile and Foren. Written in Greeke by the noble -Orator and Historiographer Appian of Alexandria.”</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_305" href="#FNanchor_305" class="label">[305]</a> -In Schweighäuser’s Edition II. cxliii. to cxlvi.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_306" href="#FNanchor_306" class="label">[306]</a> -I quote from <i>Shakespeare’s Plutarch</i> (Prof. Skeat), -the 1603 edition of North being at present inaccessible to me.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_307" href="#FNanchor_307" class="label">[307]</a> -<i>i.e.</i> put off. Greek, βραδύνειν.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_308" href="#FNanchor_308" class="label">[308]</a> -<i>The Heroycall Epistles of the learned poet Publius Ouidius Naso in -English verse: set out and translated by George Turberville, gent</i>, -etc. Transcribed from a copy in the Bodleian, which Malone, who owned -it, conjecturally dated 1569.</p> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="no-indent"> -<a id="Footnote_309" href="#FNanchor_309" class="label">[309]</a> -Of these the most perplexing to me is the distinction Shakespeare -makes between “the nobility” on the one hand, and “the senators -and patricians” on the other. What was in his mind? I fail to find -an explanation even on trying to render his thought in terms of -contemporary arrangements in England. “Peers,” “parliament men,” -and “gentry” would not do.</p></div> -</div> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="transnote bbox space-above2"> -<p class="f120 space-above1">Transcriber’s Notes:</p> -<hr class="r10" /> -<p>The cover image was created by the transcriber, and is in the public domain.</p> -<p>Uncertain or antiquated spellings or ancient words were not corrected.</p> -<p >Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.</p> -</div></div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE'S ROMAN PLAYS AND THEIR BACKGROUND ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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