[193] Besides the plays discussed in the Introduction as having a possible place in the lineage of Shakespeare’s, others were produced on the Continent, which in that respect are quite negligible but which serve to prove the widespread interest in the subject. Thus in 1560 Hans Sachs in Germany composed, in seven acts, one of his homespun, well-meant dramas that were intended to edify spectator or reader. Thus in 1583 Cinthio in Italy treated the same theme, and it has been conjectured, by Klein, that his Cleopatra was known to Shakespeare. Certainly Shakespeare makes use of Cinthio’s novels, but the particulars signalised by Klein, that are common to the English and to the Italian tragedy, which latter I have not been able to procure, are, to use Klein’s own term, merely “external,” and are to be explained, in so far as they are valid at all, which Moeller (Kleopatra in der Tragödien-Literatur) disputes, by reference to Plutarch. An additional one which Moeller suggests without attaching much weight to it, is even less plausible than he supposes. He points out that Octavius’ emissary, who in Plutarch is called Thyrsus, in Cinthio becomes Tireo, as in Shakespeare he similarly becomes Thyreus; but he notes that this is also the name that Shakespeare would get from North. As a matter of fact, however, in the 1623 folio of Antony and Cleopatra and in subsequent editions till the time of Theobald, this personage, for some reason or other as yet undiscovered, is styled Thidias; so the alleged coincidence is not so much unimportant as fallacious. A third tragedy, Montreuil’s Cléopatre, which like Cinthio’s is inaccessible to me, was published in France in 1595; but to judge from Moeller’s analysis and the list of dramatis personae, it has no contact with Shakespeare’s.
[194] obstructed.
[195] Antony had already been worshipped as that deity.
[196] 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 Antony and Cleopatra 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?
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.
[197] 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.
[198] 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.e. Antony’s) infranchised bondmen that revolted from him and yelded unto Caesar”; so Caesar is invited to retaliate on one of his own adherents.
[199] 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:
[201] This may be said even if we accept Professor Ferrero’s arguments that Antony’s infatuation for Cleopatra was invented or exaggerated by opponents, and that their relation was to a great extent invented or prescribed by their ambitions. Antony would still be the profligate man of genius, captivated by Asiatic ideals and careless of the interests of Rome. His policy at the close would still, by Professor Ferrero’s own admission, be traceable to the ascendancy which Cleopatra had established over him. And the picture of contemporary conditions would still retain a large measure of truth.
[202] Even in Othello the conspicuous place is reserved for the Moor, and in him it is jealousy as much as love that is depicted.
[203] If the ideas were in Shakespeare’s mind that Professor Zielinski of St. Petersburg attributes to him (Marginalien Philologus, 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 Cain and objection to making “Lucifer talk like the Bishop of London, which would not be in the character of the former.”
[204] Observe or await.
[205] 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:
I think the meaning of the second servant’s remark is that when such little contretemps 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.
[207] Scoured.
[208] The Adventures of Harry Richmond.
[209] He learns the truth however before he sends Euphronius as delegate.
[210] 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.” Cf. μὴ προάξειν ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, ἐξ ἧς αὑτῷ θάνατον εὐκλεᾶ μᾶλλον ἢ σωτηρίαν ζητεῖν καὶ νίκην.
[211] A familiar thought with Shakespeare. Compare Anne’s reference to Katherine in Henry VIII.:
This scene is almost certainly Shakespeare’s.
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
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.
[213] No word of this in Plutarch.
[214] 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.”
[215] 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.”
[216] Plutarch in the corresponding passage merely says that she was “apparelled and attired like the goddesse Venus commonly drawen in picture.”
[218] 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.
[219] “L’on fait plus souvent des trahisons par foiblesse que par un dessein formé de trahir.”—La Rochefoucauld.
[220] Boas, Shakespeare and his Predecessors.
[221] This was first suggested in A. Stahr’s Cleopatra. I prefer to give the arguments in my own way.
[222] So in folio: some modern editions alter unnecessarily to“dug.”
[223] i.e. confuted.
[224] 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:
And she says in her defence:
[225] 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.
[226] 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.”
[227] Jowett’s Plato, Vol. ii., pages 42-43.
[228] Ibid, pages 56-57.
[229] Le plus grand miracle de l’amour, c’est de guérir de la coquetterie.—La Rochefoucauld.
[230] 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.
[231] E.g., by Delius. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in seinem Verhältness zum Coriolanus des Plutarch (Jahrbuch der D.-Sh. Gesellschaft, xi. 1876).
[232] In some respects Shakespeare’s details remind me more of Livy than either of Plutarch or Camden; 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.”
(II. 32.) Cf.
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 Romane Historie written by Titus Livius of Padua. His version, as it is difficult to procure, may be quoted in full:
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.
[233] Introduction to the Clarendon Press Edition.
[234] Strictly speaking, from the Tower to Winchester for trial.
[235] Shakespeare, in the Führende Geister Series.
[236] Rather more than the most. It is special pleading to interpret Raleigh’s arguments against the Act for sewing Hemp and the Statute of Tillage 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.
[237] William Shakespeare, a critical study.
[238] In point of fact “gloom and bitterness” can be less justly attributed to Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus than to any of the later tragedies, and less justly to Coriolanus than to Antony and Cleopatra; but Dr. Brandes treats Troilus and Cressida as coming between them, and if that position could be vindicated for it, the phrase would be defensible.
[239] Coriolanus. Rugby Edition.
[240] In the conclusion of his essay on the Date and Occasion of the Tempest. Universal Review, 1889.
[241] Notes on Plays of Shakespere, 1818.
[242] By Ettore Pais. Storia di Roma. Vol. I.
[243] See Théâtre d’Alexandre Hardy, ed. Stengel.
[244] See M. Rigal’s admirable treatise on Hardy.
[245] 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.
[246]
See footnote 2 on previous page.
{TN: this reference is to Footnote 244.}
[247] S’entre-défier.
[248] E.g. by Viehoff, in his interesting essay, Shakespeare’s Coriolan (Jahrbuch der D.-Sh. Gesellschaft, Bd. iv. 1869), which has been used in the following paragraphs.
[249] A good many of the parallels and contrasts noted in this chapter are to be found in the excellent paper by Delius already cited.
[251] wreaked, avenged.
[252] This seems preferable to the reading of the Cambridge Editors
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.
[253] Here again Plutarch has furnished an emendation: Folio, Calues.
[254] By Büttner, Zu Coriolan und seiner Quelle (Jhrbch. der D.-Sh. Gesellschaft, Bd. xli. 1905).
[255] 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.
[256] Shakespeare, following North (“Martius accepted the gift of his horse”) makes it, instead of a horse, Cominius’ own horse, which would be a violation of antique usage. See Büttner as above.
[257] Unworked, untilled, from manoeuvrer.
[258] Coriolanus. (The Students’ Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press.) Volumnia indeed refers to “children” in her petition (v. iii. 118), but this seems merely a reminiscence of Plutarch’s language, for everywhere else young Marcius is treated as an only child.
[259] Placuit igitur oratorem ad plebem mitti Menenium Agrippam, facundum virum et, quod inde oriundus erat, plebi carum. (ii. 32 Weissenborn & Müller’s edition.)
[260] 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.”
[261] Reisebilder, 2ter Theil; “Italien, Reise nach Genua,” Cap. xxiv.
[262] There is no authority for taking this most characteristic utterance from Volumnia and assigning it to “a patrician” as some editions do.
[268] 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.
[269] 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.
[272] Notice the inept rendering.
[275] Approve or agree.
[276] I have modernised the punctuation, and extended the contractions throughout, but wherever there is any possibility of misinterpretation I have noted it.
[277] aīo.
[278] adiret.
[279] cernēs.
[280] Insinit.
[281] uterque.
[282] aūt.
[283] together with.
[284] A mistranslation of the Greek phrase, μετὰ τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν, from which it must come. The Latin is correct and unmistakable.
[285] But.
[286] Greek αἰτίαν, Latin noxam crimenque.
[287] Latin: cumque incertus belli sit eventus.
[288] Yet.
[289] Yet.
[290] An unusual word in French. Compare the impetrare of the Latin.