Part 19 (1/2)
The two aspects are shown here with the exaggeration proper in dramatic characters Neither the phrase 'a strumpet's fool,' nor the assertion 'the nobleness of life is to do thus,' answers to the total effect of the play But the truths they exaggerate are equally essential; and the commoner mistake in criticism is to understate the second It is plain that the love of Antony and Cleopatra is destructive; that in sos; that, while they are sitting in their paradise like Gods, its walls move inward and crush the critics; it is in the play; and any one familiar with Shakespeare would expect beforehand to find it there But then to forget because of it the other side, to deny the nah the lovers had utterly nore a great part of its effect upon us For we sympathise with them in their passion; we feel in it the infinity there is inin their victory; and when they have vanished we say,
the odds is gone, And there is nothing left reh we hear nothing from Shakespeare of the cruelty of Plutarch's Antony, or of the misery caused by his boundless profusion, we do not feel the hero of the tragedy to be a man of the noblest type, like Brutus, Hamlet, or Othello He seeks power merely for himself, and uses it for his own pleasure He is in soard his e exactly as if it were one in private life, we resent his treated to leave afor the hero and heroine should be too much chilled Yet, for all this, we syreatly drawn to hiard him as a noble nature half spoiled by his tienerous, expansive nature, quite free fronanimity, even of entire devotion Antony is unreserved, naturally straightforward, we may almost say simple He can adainst hiood-humour He is courteous (to Lepidus, for exah he can be exceedingly dignified, he seeh sympathetic plainness, which is one cause of the attachment of his soldiers He has none of the faults of the brooder, the sentimentalist, or the man of principle; his nature tends to splendid action and lusty enjoyment But he is neither a ination, the te appetites, feasts his senses on the glow and richness of life, flings himself into its mirth and revelry, yet feels the poetry in all this, and is able also to put it by and be more than content with the hardshi+ps of adventure Such a ht a crown by a murder like Macbeth's, or, like Brutus, have killed on principle the man who loved him, or have lost the world for a Cressida
Beside this strain of poetry he has a keen intellect, a swift perception of the lie of things, anda course to suit them In _Julius Caesar_ he shows this after the assassination, when he appears as a dexterous politician as well as a warm-hearted friend He admires what is fine, and can fully appreciate the nobility of Brutus; but he is sure that Brutus's ideas are moonshi+ne, that (as he says in our play) Brutus is hty friend, as inco in the world, has perished, he sees no reason why the inheritance should not be his own Full of sorrow, he yet uses his sorrow like an artist to work on others, and greets his success with the glee of a successful adventurer In the earlier play he proves himself a master of eloquence, and especially of pathos; and he does so again in the later With a feords about his fall he draws tears from his followers and even from the caustic humorist Enobarbus Like Richard II, he sees his own fall with the eyes of a poet, but a poetShakespeare, who could never have written Antony's marvellous speech about the sunset clouds But we listen to Antony, as we do not to Richard, with entire sympathy, partly because he is never uns for sy soldiers, an able politician, a most persuasive orator, Antony nevertheless was not born to rule the world He enjoys being a great man, but he has not the love of rule for rule's sake
Power for him is chiefly a e that he needs a huge power; but half the world, even a third of it, would suffice He will not pocket wrongs, but he shows not the slightest wish to get rid of his fellow Triu subordinate to Julius Caesar By wooverned; from the effect of Cleopatra's taunts we can see that he had been governed by Fulvia Nor has he either the patience or the steadfastness of a born ruler He contends fitfully, and is prone to take the step that is easiest at the moment This is the reason why he consents to marry Octavia It seems the shortest way out of an aard situation He does not intend even to try to be true to her He will not think of the distant consequences
A nificant people love it, would have ainst his enchants himself to leave Cleopatra only because he knows he will return In every moment of his absence, whether he wake or sleep, a sirenhim back to her; and to this music, however he may be occupied, the soul within his soul leans and listens The joy of life had always culminated for him in the love of women: he could say 'no' to none of them: of Octavia herself he speaks like a poet When he lorifies, his whole being
She intoxicates his senses Her wiles, her taunts, her furies and hter and tears, bewitch him all alike She loves what he loves, and she surpasses him She can drink him to his bed, out-jest his practical jokes, out-act the best actress who ever anificence She is his play-fellow, and yet a great queen Angling in the river, playing billiards, flourishi+ng the sword he used at Philippi, hopping forty paces in a public street, she remains an enchantress Her spirit is made of wind and flame, and the poet in him worshi+ps her no less than the man He is under no illusion about her, knows all her faults, sees through her wiles, believes her capable of betraying him It makes no difference She is his heart's desire made perfect To love her is what he was born for What have the Gods in heaven to say against it? To iine her; to die is to rejoin her To deny that this is love is the ives her every ato himself of the historic fact, portrays, on Antony's return to her, the suddenness and the depth of his descent In spite of his own knowledge, the protests of his captains, the entreaties even of a private soldier, he fights by sea simply and solely because she wishes it Then in mid-battle, when she flies, he deserts navy and army and his faithful thousands and follows her 'I never saw an action of such shame,' cries Scarus; and we feel the dishonour of the hero keenly Then Shakespeare begins to raise hi sense of sha lion Then the mere sally before the final defeat--a sally disnified into a battle, in which Antony displays to us, and hilory of his soldiershi+p And, throughout, the h his desperation endear him to us How beautiful is his affection for his followers and even for his servants, and the devotion they return! How noble his reception of the news that Enobarbus has deserted hinificant the refusal of Eros either to kill him or survive him! How pathetic and even sublier is born and dies in an hour One tear, one kiss, outweighs his ruin He believes she has sold him to his enemy, yet he kills hi, he learns that she has deceived hiht of reproach crosses his mind: he simply asks to be carried to her He knoell that she is not capable of dying because he dies, but that does not sting hiain a th to speak, it is to advise her for the days to come Shakespeare borrowed from Plutarch the final speech of Antony It is fine, but it is notonly to his own hero:
I a; only I here importune death awhile, until Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips;
or the first words he utters when he hears of Cleopatra's death:
Unar day's task is done, And we must sleep
If he meant the task of statesman and warrior, that is not what his words reat--
No rest but the grave for the pilgririment of an hour for Cleopatra, if it were not palpably absurd, would seem an insult If only one could hear her own remarks upon it! But I had to choose between this absurdity and the plan of giving her the whole hour; and to that plan there was one fatal objection She has been described (by Ten Brink) as a courtesan of genius So brief a description ets, nor, if we read aright, do we forget, that she is a great queen Still the phrase is excellent; only a public lecture is no occasion for the full analysis and illustration of the character it describes
Shakespeare has paid Cleopatra a unique compliment The hero dies in the fourth Act, and the whole of the fifth is devoted to the heroine[5] In that Act she becoic character, but, it appears to me, not till then This, no doubt, is a heresy; but as I cannot help holding it, and as it is connected with the remarks already made on the first half of the play, I will state it roup with Hao if he were not decidedly their inferior in one particular quality They are inexhaustible You feel that, if they were alive and you spent your whole life with them, their infinite variety could never be staled by custom; they would continue every day to surprise, perplex, and delight you Shakespeare has bestowed on each of theenius He has given it most fully to Hamlet, to whom none of the chambers of experience is shut, and perhaps more of it to Cleopatra than to Falstaff Nevertheless, if we ask whether Cleopatra, in the first four Acts, is a tragic figure like Hamlet, we surely cannot answer 'yes' Naturally it does not follow that she is a coure like Falstaff This would be absurd; for, even if she were ridiculous like Falstaff, she is not ridiculous to herself; she is no humorist And yet there is a certain likeness She shares a weakness with Falstaff--vanity; and when she displays it, as she does quite naively (for instance, in the second intervieith the Messenger), she does becoh like Falstaff she is irresistible and carries us away no less than the people around her, we are secretly aware, in the ht, that her empire is built on sand And finally, as his love for the Prince gives dignity and pathos to Falstaff in his overthrow, so what raises Cleopatra at last into pure tragedy is, in part, that which some critics have denied her, her love for Antony
Many unpleasant things can be said of Cleopatra; and the more that are said the more wonderful she appears The exercise of sexual attraction is the element of her life; and she has developed nature into a consummate art When she cannot exert it on the present lover she i, she remembers with pride and joy the dead; and the past which the furious Antony holds up to her as a picture of shalory She cannot see an a to bewitch him Her mind is saturated with this element If she is dark, it is because the sun himself has been aines his touch as a lover's She eain Antony's first kiss in the other world
She lives for feeling Her feelings are, so to speak, sacred, and pain must not come near her She has tried numberless experiments to discover the easiest way to die Her body is exquisitely sensitive, and her eerates them so much, and exhibits them so continually for effect, that soned They are all-important, and everybody must attend to them She announces to her women that she is pale, or sick and sullen; they must lead her to her cha and supple as a leopard, can drink down a master of revelry, can raise her lover's helpless heavy body froround into her toith the aid only of to apart sunk in shame, she must be supported into his presence, she cannot stand, her head droops, she will die (it is the opinion of Eros) unless he coed her rage, she bids her women bear her away; she faints; at least she would faint, but that she reer about Octavia Enobarbus has seen her die twenty ti to Ros are violent, and, unless for a purpose, she does not dreahs and tears are winds and waters, storive Charer up and down by the hair, strikes him and draws her knife on him, she resembles (if I dare say it) Doll Tearsheet sublimated She is a mother; but the threat of Octavius to destroy her children if she takes her own life passes by her like the wind (a point where Shakespeare contradicts Plutarch) She ruins a great uish of spirit that appears in his language to his servants is beyond her; she has to ask Enobarbus what he means Can we feel sure that she would not have sacrificed hi so? It is not even certain that she did not attempt it Antony himself believes that she did--that the fleet went over to Octavius by her orders That she and her people deny the charge proves nothing The best we can say is that, if it were true, Shakespeare would havealso to survive her lover Her first thought, to follow hireat for her She would live on if she could, and would cheat her victor too of the best part of her fortune The thing that drives her to die is the certainty that she will be carried to Rorace his triu is that the knowledge of all this makes hardly more difference to us than it did to Antony It seeht, that her lover should be her slave; that her women should adore her and die with her; that Enobarbus, who foresahat er, should talk of her with rapture and feel no bitterness against her; that Dolabella, after a minute's conversation, should betray to her his master's intention and enable her to frustrate it And when Octavius shows hi hirace to his species Why?
It is not that we consider him bound to fall in love with her Enobarbus did not; Dolabella did not; we ourselves do not The feeling she inspires was felt then, and is felt now, by women no less than men, and would have been shared by Octavia herself Doubtless she wrought ic on the senses, but she had not extraordinary beauty, like Helen's, such beauty as seems divine[7] Plutarch says so The man rote the sonnets to the dark lady would have known it for hie, and tells us of her wrinkles and the waning of her lip But Enobarbus, in his very mockery, calls her a wonderful piece of work Dolabella interrupts her with the cry, 'Most sovereign creature,' and we echo it And yet Octavius, face to face with her and listening to her voice, can think only how best to trap her and drag her to public dishonour in the streets of Roive him only for his words when he sees her dead:
She looks like sleep, As she would catch another Antony In her strong toil of grace
And the words, I confess, sound to me more like Shakespeare's than his
That which hs at definition, but she herself cae surpassed in poetry, if at all, only by the final speech of Othello), she cries,
I aive to baser life
The fire and air which at death break fro her life, and still convert into engines of enchants for which she is condemned I can refer only to one She loves Antony We should marvel at her less and love her h to follow hiely to doubt that she loved hih it was also meant to work on Dolabella) came from her heart Only the spirit of fire and air within her refuses to be trah the obstacles of fortune and even through the resistance of her love and grief; and would lead her undaunted to fresh life and the conquest of neorlds It is this which race' unbreakable; speaks in her brows' bent and every tone and es which in another would ust or amuse us; and, in the final scenes of her life, flames into such brilliance that atch her entranced as she struggles for freedom, and thrilled with triuoes to meet her lover in the splendour that crowned and robed her long ago, when her barge burnt on the water like a burnished throne, and she floated to Cydnus on the enamoured stream to take hih we close the book in a triuled, as we look back on the story, with a sadness so peculiar, allow has faded, Cleopatra's ecstasy comes to appear, I would not say factitious, but an effort strained and prodigious as well as glorious, not, like Othello's last speech, the final expression of character, of thoughts and emotions which have dominated a whole life?
Perhaps this is so, but there is so that sounds paradoxical: we are saddened by the very fact that the catastrophe saddens us so little; it pains us that we should feel so much triumph and pleasure In _Roh in a sense we accept the deaths of hero and heroine, we feel a keen sorrow