Shakespeare’s Roman Plays and Their Background

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I ROMAN PLAYS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY — 1. APPIUS AND VIRGINIA. THE TRANSLATION OF OCTAVIA — 2. THE FRENCH SENECANS — 3. ENGLISH FOLLOWERS OF THE FRENCH SCHOOL. “THE WOUNDS OF CIVIL WAR”

CHAPTER II SHAKESPEARE’S TREATMENT OF HISTORY

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 Henry VIII., which moreover is but partially his handiwork.

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.

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 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.

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.

What are the main points in which respectively they diverge or coincide?

(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 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 Henry IV., 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 motifs 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 Henry V., 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 differentia of a drama, whether ancient or modern, it is undoubtedly defective.

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 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 raison d’être. 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.

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 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, e.g. 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.

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 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.

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 Richard III. 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.

(2) Yet these little variations may remind us that after all they were not produced under quite the same presuppositions as plays like Hamlet and Othello, or even King Lear and Macbeth. In a sense they remain Histories, as truly histories as any of their English analogues. The political vicissitudes and public catastrophes do not indeed contribute the chief elements of 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 Lear, where the legend offered no tangible history on which the imagination could take hold; it is only partially so in Macbeth, 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.

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 Lear the dramatist has no scruple about altering the traditional close; even in Macbeth 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. 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 Antony and Cleopatra, owing to the undramatic nature of the historic material, an excessive number of brief scenes “in which the dramatis personae 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 Coriolanus, “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[72] than the close of Shakespeare’s play.” In Julius Caesar 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 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.

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 cachet is only 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 Timon and Troilus and Cressida, 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 Julius Caesar 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.

These are minutiae 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 King John 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 King John, 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 Antony and Cleopatra. 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 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 Coriolanus. 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.[73] Julius Caesar 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.

Thus Shakespeare in his picture of Rome and Romans, does not give the notes that mark off Roman from every other civilisation, but rather 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:

Ben Jonson in Sejanus and Catiline 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 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.

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.

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 Hamburg Dramaturgy, 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 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.

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 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 Mary Stuart or the Maid of Orleans or Wallenstein be without them? And with Victor Hugo this emancipation from authority is pushed to even greater lengths. Plays like Le Roi s’amuse or Marion de Lorme might recall the vagaries of early Elizabethan experiments like Greene’s James IV., 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 mémoire.

Now, some of the extreme examples suggest a two-fold objection to Lessing’s account as a quite satisfactory explanation of the species.

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?

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 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.

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 Philip van Artevelde “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 (e.g. in the interview of Mary and Knox taken almost verbatim from Knox’s History of the Reformation), 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 Harold, he writes to Lord Lytton: “After old-world records like the Bayeux Tapestry and the Roman de Rou, Edward Freeman’s History of the Norman Conquest 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 Queen Mary and Becket 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.

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.

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 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 naïf 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 Julius Caesar, or Nicanor in Coriolanus, or Silius in Antony and Cleopatra 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.[74] 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 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.

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 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 Troilus and Cressida, 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 Lives 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 his Chronicle, i.e. 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,

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 Henry VI. 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.

In Plutarch, however, Shakespeare levied toll on no petty vassal like the compilers of the Chronicles, or innovating conqueror like the author of Tamburlaine, 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.

CHAPTER III ANCESTRY OF SHAKESPEARE’S ROMAN PLAYS — 1. PLUTARCH [75] — 2. AMYOT [93] — 3. NORTH

Plutarch, born at Chaeronea in Boeotia, about 45 or 50 a.d., 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.

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.

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 a.d., 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 Isis and Osiris may be one of the fruits of this expedition.

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:

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 departed or went, but, We departed; item not I said (or quoth I) but We said; 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.[76]

Such courtesy conciliates good will, and he was subsequently sent ‘on public business’ to Rome. This must have been before 90 a.d., 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 a.d., 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 Moralia; 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 a.d.

But though Plutarch loved travel and sight-seeing, and though he was 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.”[77] 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.[78] 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:

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 mouth, Mine and Thine; 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.[79]

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 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:

And then there is the confident expectation of immortality to mitigate the present pang of severance.

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 Timaeus. 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 Symposiacs. 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[83] 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:

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 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.”

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:

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.[84]

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 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.

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.

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[85] 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.[86]

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.

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.”[87]

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.

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 régime 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 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 Lives as a whole are assigned, partly on account of the casual reference to contemporary events that some of them contain.

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 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.

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:

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.

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.[88] That in so far is what Courier means when he says that Plutarch writes in the style of a sophistes; but it was inseparable from his composite culture and academic training, and it does not interfere with his sincerity and directness.

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 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 Moralia. He may dilate on the worship of Isis and Osiris, or The Face appearing within the Roundle of the Moone; he may discuss Whether creatures be more wise, they of the land or those of the water; What signifieth this word Ei engraven over the Dore of Appolloes Temple in the City of Delphi, 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 Unseemly and Naughty Bashfulnesse, or Brotherly Love, or Tranquillitie and Contentment of Mind, or the Pluralitie of Friends, or the question Whether this common Mot be well said ‘Live Hidden.’ 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 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.

It is an easy step from the famous Moralia to the still more famous Parallel Lives. “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 bourgeois, 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.”[89]

Proceeding in this way it is not to be expected that Plutarch should compose his Lives 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.

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 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. 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 Parallel Lives.” 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 Lycurgus, is illustrated throughout the Parallel Lives.” 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, Praecepta gerendae Reipublicae, a title which Philemon Holland paraphrases in stricter accordance with the contents, Instructions for them that manage Affaires of State. 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 Henry V. 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 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:

One who already knows the times of Marius and Sulla will obtain a vast amount of instruction from his several Lives 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 Life 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 Lives 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.

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.”[90]

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 Parallel Lives. At the beginning of the Life of Pericles he says:

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. And this is the reason why methought I should continew still to write on the lives of noble men.

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, “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 Parallel Lives—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.”

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 ana and picturesque incidents on the one hand, and by his deference for political history and civil society on the other.

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 Life of Alexander he uses words which very truly describe his own method, words which Boswell[91] was afterwards to quote in justification of his own similar procedure.

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 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.[92]

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 naïf 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 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.

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.

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 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.

A book like the Parallel Lives 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 mise-en-scène 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 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.

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 patois 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 lecteurs royaux 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 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 Aethiopica 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 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.”[94] 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 Lives, which Amyot presented to his royal patron and had executed at his command.

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 Lives 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 nothing to do with them.”[95] 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.”

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 XI. to XVII. of Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca Historica, only the two last of which had hitherto been known at all. His treatment of this discovery is characteristic,[96] 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 Historic Library has neither the allurement of a Greek romance nor the edification of Plutarch’s Lives; and in this version, which for the rest is said to be poor, Amyot for once appealed to the popular interest in vain.

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 Theagenes and Chariclea, there appeared anonymously a rendering, probably made at an earlier date, of the Daphnis and Chloe, 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 Parallel Lives. 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.

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 Lives appeared in 1565 and a third in 1567, and all the time he was pushing on a version of Plutarch’s Moralia. 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 Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas by heart.[97] 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 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.

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 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.”[98]

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 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.

Of spontaneous and initiative power he had but little. He cannot stand alone. For Henry II. he wrote a Projet de l’Eloquence Royal, 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 (estrangement pesant et traisnassier). 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.

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 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 Zunftgelehrter. 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.

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:[99] 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 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:

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.[100]

And again:

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.[101]

“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.”[102] 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, since he is French, and Seneca.”[103] But it is to the former that he seems to give the palm.

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.[104]

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.

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.[105]

But Montaigne did not stand alone in his admiration. He himself, as we 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, e.g. a number of Italians had co-operated in a Latin version of the Lives, published at Rome by Campani, and this was followed by several partial translations in French.[106] But the latter were immediately superseded, and even the former had its authority shaken, by Amyot’s achievement.

This was due partly to its greater intelligence and faithfulness, partly to its excellent style.

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,[107] would suggest that he had the root of the matter in him, and there is evidence that expert opinion in his own days was favourable to his claims.[108]

At the time when he was translating the Lives 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:

After I had already finished the greater part of the work, the Lives of Plutarch 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.[109]

Cruserius, again, in his prefatory Epistle to the Reader, 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.

If indeed (he writes) I must not here say that I by myself have both more faithfully and more elegantly interpreted Plutarch’s Lives, 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.[110]

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.”[111] 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.[112] But his Epistle proceeds: “To whom (i.e. 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.”[113] And this praise of Amyot’s style leads us to the next point.

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.

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.

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 Rome, and felt it a benefit to submit to such discipline the artless bonhomie 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.

It is for these excellencies among others, “pour la naifeté et purété du language en quoi il surpasse touts aultres,”[114] 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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,”[115] often gives place to periphrasis, and of the “philosophistorique” small trace remains. Montaigne praises him because he has contrived “to expound so thorny and crabbed[116] 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.

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 le bon Plutarque of the French people, whereas he was certainly not that.” Thus it is beyond dispute that the impression produced is in some respects misleading.

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 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 Sophistes 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.

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.”

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 Lives. Both of them lovers of virtue, he points out, for example, that both had a 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.

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.

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 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 Mob in the Plebs Romana, so he authorises Corneille and Racine and even Mademoiselle Scudéry to portray under ancient names the human nature they saw in France.”

And this tendency was carried further in Amyot’s English translator.

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 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.

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 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.

This was his maiden effort, The Diall of Princes, 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 have abandoned his literary pursuits, for in 1568, when he received this civic courtesy, he issued a new edition of the Diall, corrected and enlarged; and he followed it up in 1570 with a version of Doni’s Morale Filosofia.

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 Lives and his first edition of the Morals.[117] 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 Lives, not only unabridged but augmented (for biographies of Hannibal and Scipio are added from the versions of Charles de l’Escluse),[118] is a task of years rather than of months.

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 Lives, 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.

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.

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 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.[119] 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.”

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 sat on the Commission of Peace; he made three translations, one of which rendered possible Shakespeare’s Roman Plays.”[120]

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.

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.

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 El Libro Aureo de Marco Aurelio, Emperador y eloquentissimo Orator, but afterwards, when issued in an expanded form, was rechristened, Marco Aurelio con el Relox de Principes. It has however little to do with the real Marcus Aurelius, and the famous Meditations furnish only a small ingredient to the work. It is in some ways an imitation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, 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 Moralia. 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 Diall of Princes in full, and even adds another treatise of Guevara’s, The Favored Courtier, as fourth book to his second edition.

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 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.”

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 Euphues, in purpose, in plan, in its letters and disquisitions, its episodes and persons, is largely based on the Diall. 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 Relox de Principes, but the French Orloge des princes; 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 Diall, and even in the Lives, 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.

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 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 Morale Filosofia, 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.[121]

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 Diall the narrative is almost in abeyance, and the pages are filled with long-drawn arguments and admonitions. In the Fables 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.

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 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 Moral Treatises he already knew something, if only in the adulterated concoctions of Guevara, but the Lives 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 Philosopher and Historiographer, 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.

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 Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. 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 Midsummer-Night’s Dream, which probably borrowed from the life of Theseus, as well as in the Merchant of Venice, with its reference to “Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia”; though it did not inspire a complete play till Julius Caesar. 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 this some think to have been the particular authority for Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus.[122] 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.

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.

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.e. 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.

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 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:

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.

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.

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, 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. revais, retourne) vaincu par toy seule,” by “I see 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 not goe, and that they would forsake them.”[123]

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.

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 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[124] 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.”

The flow of the English is not so easy and transparent.

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.”

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 on a time for quelquefois,[125] or the fishermen for quelques pescheurs,[126] or alone by herself for apart. We even pass over the lack of connectedness when they (i.e. the persons informed) in great number[127] becomes the quite indefinite a number of people, and the omission of the friendly nudge, so to speak, as you can imagine, comme lon peult penser. But to miss the point of the phrase pour voir l’esbatement, to see the sport, and translate it see the fishing, and then clumsily insert the same phrase immediately afterwards where it is not wanted and does not occur; to change the order of the fishe and the hooke and entangle the connection where it was quite clear, to change s’esmerveiller to wondred, the infinitive to the indicative past, and thus cloud the sense; to substitute the ambiguous and prolix When he had hong the fish on his hooke, for the concise and sufficient cela fait—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.

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 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:

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 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.”

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.

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,[128] 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.[129] 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.”[130]

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, 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.

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.

But this account stirs North’s sympathy, and he puts in little touches that show his interest and compassion.

There was besides, a certain pittie that made mens harts to yerne, when they saw the poore doggs, beasts and cattell ronne up and doune, bleating, mowing, and howling out aloude after their masters in token of sorowe, whan they did imbarke. Amongst them there goeth a straunge 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 this poor curre landed, his breath fayled him, and dyed instantly.[131]

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:

qui prit la hardiesse de s’approcher de Marcus Papyrius, et luy passa tout doulcement[132] 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.

North is not content with such reserve.

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 rappe on his pate with his staffe, that the bloude ran about his eares. This barbarous beaste was in such a rage with the blowe that he drue out his sworde and slewe him.[133]

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:

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.

This is how North recasts and embellishes the last sentence:

The people did trafficke and frequent together, without feare or daunger, and visited one another, making great cheere: 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.[134]

But illustrations might be multiplied through pages. Enough have been 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.

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.[135]

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 market-place they forget something of the Agora and the Forum. Perhaps this was inevitable, since they were come to stay.

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.

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.

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 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.[136]

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:

But his relations with Plutarch are very different—different enough to justify or almost to justify the words of Jean Paul when in his Titan 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[137] 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.

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 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.”

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.

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 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.

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 Antony and Cleopatra 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 Coriolanus, 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 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. Julius Caesar, 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 Lives 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.

In so far therefore Julius Caesar gives the norm of Shakespeare’s procedure; and with it, for this as well as on chronological grounds, we begin.

JULIUS CAESAR — CHAPTER I

Although Julius Caesar 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.

(1) In a miscellany of poems on the death of Elizabeth, printed in 1603, and entitled Sorrowes Joy, the lines occur:

It looks as though the suggestion for the idea and many of the words had come from Calpurnia’s remonstrance,

Another apparent loan belongs to the same year. In 1603 Drayton rewrote his poem of Mortimeriados under the title of The Barons’ Wars, altering and adding many passages. One of the insertions runs:

Compare Antony’s verdict on Brutus:

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.e. after Shakespeare’s death, makes a still closer approach to Shakespeare’s language.

(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 Diary, Drayton, Webster and others were engaged on a tragedy on the same subject called Caesar’s Fall. 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 Julius Caesar had been produced in the same year or shortly before.

(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 Mirror of Martyrs there is the quatrain:

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 Life of Brutus, 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 Life of Caesar, 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. [141] Thus it seems fairly certain that a knowledge of Shakespeare’s play is presupposed by the Mirror of Martyrs, which was printed in 1601.

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.

After that the data are less definite. A Warning for Fair Women, printed in 1599, contains the lines:

It is difficult not to bring these into connection with Antony’s words:

And again:

But in this Shakespeare may have been the debtor not the creditor: and other coincidences like the “Et tu, Brute,” in Acolastus his Afterwit[142] (1600) may be due to the use of common or current authorities. One little detail has been used as an argument that the play was later than 1600. Cassius says:

Here obviously the word we should have expected is infernal not eternal. It has been conjectured[143] 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 infernal, the inference is that Julius Caesar 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 Julius Caesar 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’ Palladis Tamia in 1598 and before Weever’s Mirror of Martyrs in 1601.

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 Julius Caesar most resembles in style Henry V., written between March and September 1599, as the above allusion to Essex’ expedition shows,[144] and Hamlet, 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 Hamlet accord better with the tone of the tragedy. Thus the chorus says of Henry’s triumph:

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?

But the two chief references in Hamlet 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:

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.[145]

Even the quatrain:

is in some sort the ironical development of Antony’s thought:

Owing to Weever’s reference we cannot put Julius Caesar after Hamlet, but it seems to have closer relations with Hamlet than with Henry V. 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.

Thus Ben Jonson in his Discoveries writes of Shakespeare: “His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had been so too! Many 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 wrong in such a way that even the paradox disappears: but the alleged bêtise tickled Ben’s fancy, for he recurs to it to make a point in the Introduction to the Staple of News. 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.”

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,

It has been suggested[146] 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.

So, too, with the versification. The consideration of certain technicalities, such as the weak ending, would place Julius Caesar 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.

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 Hamlets. The same argument has been used in regard to Macbeth.

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 Julius Caesar 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,

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”;[147] that is, for delivery by themselves. In the later plays, on the other hand, it is far more difficult to extract any particular jewel from its setting.

It is pretty certain then that Julius Caesar is the first not only of the Roman Plays, but of the great series of Tragedies. The flame-tipped welter of Titus Andronicus, the poignant radiance of Romeo and Juliet 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 Richard III. 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,

Suffolk, in his self-conceit and self-pity, 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.

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.

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:

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. iv. 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. iv. iii. 45). For to Shakespeare there are no victories like Caesar’s. The false announcement of Hotspur’s success appeals to them for precedent:

We have already noticed the references to his triumphs, his fate, the ironical contrast between the was and the is in Henry V. and Hamlet, 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 Measure for Measure 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

“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?” (iii. ii. 46). In Antony and Cleopatra, 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,

or by the Queen:

But the dominant note is rather of admiration for

Or if the fault that Brutus enforced is brought to view, the very fault becomes a grandiose and superhuman thing:

The subject then was one of widespread interest and had an abiding fascination for Shakespeare himself. After leaving national history in Henry V. 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.”[148] Substituting Plutarch for Holinshed the expression is true in this case too. An occasional phrase like the Et tu, Brute, 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 Civil Wars for Mark Antony’s Oration.[149] 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 Cornélie.[150] 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 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 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.

And even the words of North have in many cases been almost literally transcribed. Says Lucilius when brought before Antony:

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.

(Brutus.)

Compare:

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,[151] has painted the situation with heartfelt sympathy. After describing the wound she gives herself to make trial of her firmness, he proceeds:

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: 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.”

(Marcus Brutus.)

It is hardly necessary to point out how closely Shakespeare follows up the trail.

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.

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:

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.

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.

That is:

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!”

North did not notice where the quotation began; connected feis with fier in place of faire, probably taking it as present not as past; and interpreted discours as principle, which it never meant and never can mean, instead of dissertation. So he translates:

It is possible that North used trust in the first sentence as a preterite equal to trusted, just as he uses lift for lifted. 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.

This last illustration may show us, however, that Shakespeare, even 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.

CHAPTER II SHAKESPEARE’S TRANSMUTATION OF HIS MATERIAL

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 Julius Caesar this is the more noticeable, as it makes use of more sources than one. The main authority is the Life of Brutus, but the Life of Caesar also is employed very freely, and the Life of Antony to some extent. The scope and need for insight in this portion of the task are therefore proportionately great.

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 b.c. But Shakespeare dates it on the 15th February, 44 b.c., at the Lupercalian Festival.[152] 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.[153] 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,”[154] or, more specifically, of the “laurel crown”[155] Antony had offered him.

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 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:

And now we hear him say:

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 (ii. i. 49), his protracted uncertainty since Cassius first sounded him (ii. 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.

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 émeute of the people follow, and the reading of the will preceded the speech. After a while Octavius comes from Apollonia to see about his inheritance.

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.

A lengthy interval elapses between the end of Act iii. and the beginning of Act iv., 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:

“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 b.c., 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

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 b.c., just before the final movement to Philippi, where the battle was fought in October of the same year.

And this scene also is “compounded of many simples.” The dispute which the poet[156] 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

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.

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 b.c., till the victory of his avengers in October, 42 b.c., 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 sequence, while in point of fact, historically, they are not consecutive at all.

In the first day there is the exposition, enforcing the predominance of Caesar and the revulsion against it (Act i. i. and ii.); assigned to the 15th February, 44 b.c.

In the second day there is the assassination with its immediate preliminaries and sequels (Act i. iii., Act ii., Act iii.) 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.[157]

In the third day there is the account of the Proscription in November, 43 b.c. (Act iv. i.). In the fourth day the meeting of Brutus and Cassius, which took place early in 42 b.c., and the apparition of the boding spirit, are described (Act iv. ii. and iii.). Both these days are included in one act.

The fifth day is devoted to the final battle and its accessories, and must be placed in October, 42 b.c. (Act v.).

But the selection, assortment and filiation of the data 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.[158]

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 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:

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.

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:

The drama puts it thus:

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.

Shakespeare thus greatly alters the character of Plutarch’s narrative by his ceaseless activity in sifting it, ordering it afresh, and 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.

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.

Sometimes the new matter is a possible or plausible inference from the premises he found in his author.

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:

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.

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.” (iii. iii. 23.)

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.[159]

Occasionally, however, the dramatist’s insertions directly contradict the text of the Lives, if a more striking or more significant effect is to be attained, and if no essential fact is falsified. Thus Plutarch tells of Ligarius:

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:

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:

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.

In Shakespeare not only is this very effective dramatic touch omitted, 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:

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.

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.’”

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:

These words are so unlike, or, rather, so opposite to all that we should have expected, that Coleridge cannot repress his amazement. He comments:

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, 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:

But this, one feels, is merely an argumentum ad hominem, 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.[160]

The other is the exclamation with which he “pieces out” the anonymous letter that Cassius had left unfinished:

This certainly has somewhat of the republican ring. It breathes the same spirit as Cassius’ own avowal:

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 amour propre 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 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.e. passions) sway’d more than his reason,” and implies that he has not hitherto disjoined “remorse (i.e. 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, 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.[161]

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 inclined to quote concerning him the words of Caesar spoken to Cicero in regard to the historical Brutus:

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.

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 data 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 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.

This may be illustrated by comparing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with the Julius Caesar 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 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:

Brutus’ motives, which Shakespeare sophisticates, can thus be left him. But does this bit of reasoning, which reads like a passage from the Leviathan, 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 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

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:

And Brutus answers:

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.”

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 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.

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 Lives 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.

CHAPTER III THE TITULAR HERO OF THE PLAY

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 Marcus Brutus. 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.

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?

It has been answered that he was wholly indifferent to labels and nomenclature, that he gives his plays somewhat irrelevant titles, such as Twelfth Night, or lets people christen them at their fancy, What You Will, or As You Like It. 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.

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 King Lear as a whole with reference to Cordelia, or Macbeth as a whole with reference to Lady Macbeth.

But in the second place, Julius Caesar, 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 King John to the Bastard, and in Henry IV. 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. 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.

But this is not all. Though it is manifest that Brutus is the principal character, the protagonist, 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:

Antony, above the corpse, sees in prophetic anticipation,

The ghost of Caesar proclaims what he is,

And at the close Brutus apostrophises his dead victim:

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.[162]

This is brought home to us in a variety of ways.

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.

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:

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.[163]

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;

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.[164]

And in one of those comparisons that Montaigne loved, he is more emphatic still:

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[165] 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.[166]

On these isolated hints Shakespeare seizes. He amplifies them and works them out in his conception of the situation.

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.

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 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:

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.

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 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.

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” (i. ii. 3). In his fever, as Cassius maliciously notes,

A pretty saying to chronicle. He says superbly to Mark Antony, “Always I am Caesar”; and in the very next line follows the anticlimax:

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.

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 “holy chase” (i. ii. 3 and 8), and he impresses on Antony the observance of all the ritual: “Leave no ceremony out” (i. 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.

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” (ii. ii. 5); though afterwards, on the news of the portent, he tries to put his own interpretation on it:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

In the same way he prides himself on his inaccessibility to adulation and blandishments.

We may believe that he does indeed stand secure against the grosser 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:

And Decius makes his words good.

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” (i. 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.

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:

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.”[168] 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:”[169] 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.

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 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[170] 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:[171] “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 data of the Life. 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 for the dramatic Advocatus Diaboli. 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.

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

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:

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:

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, but coulde never reade it, though he many times attempted it, 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.[172]

Compare this with the scene in the play:

Can one say that Shakespeare has defrauded Caesar of his magnanimity?

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:

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:

This compliance he makes to his wife, but in presence of Decius Brutus he recovers himself and adopts the stricter standard. What does this imply? Does it not mean that in a certain sense he is playing a part and aping the Immortal to be seen of men?

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:

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 discharge, as he was offended with him for that he was brought in daunger by his tyrannicall power,”[173] 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 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.

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 Imperium. 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.[174] 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 case, of noblesse oblige. The Caesar, the first of those Caesars who were to receive their apotheosis and be hailed as Divi Augusti, 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:

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.

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.

Not only then is Julius Caesar 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.

CHAPTER IV THE EXCELLENCES AND ILLUSIONS OF BRUTUS

CHAPTER V THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF BRUTUS. PORTIA

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 volonté générale. 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.

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 attraction of the play, by which, above all others, it transcends the laboured excellences of Catiline or Sejanus. It excited the admiration and rivalry of the greatest genius of the Restoration period. Scott says of the dispute between Antony and Ventidius in All for Love: “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 Aureng-Zebe.

In the eighteenth century Dr. Johnson, though he finds Julius Caesar 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 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.”

The nucleus of this passage is found just after the account of Brutus’ exploits in Lycia.

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

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.

Again after describing Brutus’ success with the Patareians, Plutarch proceeds:

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.

Previously with reference to the first meeting of the fugitives after they collected their armies and before they came to Sardis at all, Plutarch narrates:

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.

Then at Sardis, but not on occasion of the dispute interrupted by Phaonius, mention is made of the affair with Pella:

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.”

Lastly at the end of the Life of Brutus, 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.

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.

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.

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, the only one Cassius could understand, might quite well, apart from all the rest, have driven him to greater violence:

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:

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.

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.

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.

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 soi disant 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.

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.

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.

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 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:

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 âme damnée while yet interfering in Cassius’ necessary measures with his moral rebukes.[179]

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:

and because he has a vague belief that this is the nick of time;

These are the arguments which he opposes to Cassius’ skilled strategy. He will not even listen to Cassius’ rejoinder:

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:

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.

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 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.[180]

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 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.

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 Julius Caesar 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”?

But this little interlude, which sets Brutus before us with all his winsome and pathetic charm, leads back to the leading motif, 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:

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.

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 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.

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:

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:

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.

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.

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.

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:

At the side of this rare and lofty nature, we see the kindred figure of 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 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.

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.

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

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:

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.

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.

CHAPTER VI THE REMAINING CHARACTERS

Far beneath this pair are the other conspirators who rise up against the supremacy of Caesar.

Among these lower natures, Cassius is undoubtedly the most imposing and most interesting.

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.

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, 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:

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:

and one grand motif 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:

He has hitherto discredited them. And we seem to hear Lucretius in his noble utterance:

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:

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.

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 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.

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.[181] 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 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:

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:

And surely at the moment of achievement, whatever was mean and sordid in the man is consumed in his prophetic rapture that fires the soul of Brutus and prolongs itself in his response.

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.

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,

he answers,

Brutus seeks to win Antony with general considerations of right and justice, Cassius employs a more effective argument:

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:

His plans of the campaign are better, and he has a much better notion of conducting the battle.

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 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.

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.

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 he has misconstrued the words of Lena, and kills himself owing to a mistake; as Messala points out:

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[183] 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.

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.

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 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.

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,

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”:

The minor conspirators, with the adherents of the cause and the humbler dependents, are of course sketched very slightly, as proportion 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.

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

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 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.”

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.

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” (i. 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 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 Philosophes. Nor is it less characteristic that even at the assassination he apparently does not dare to face his victim. Antony describes his procedure

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:

But among those little vignettes, that of Cicero is decidedly the 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 Marcus Brutus Plutarch says of the conspirators:

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.

In the play their reason for leaving him out is very different:

It seems to me, however, highly probable that Shakespeare had read the Life of Cicero 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

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” (i. ii. 282). This has sometimes been 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:

And after the enumeration of the portents, he critically replies:

And then after a passing reference[184] 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.

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 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.”

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:

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.

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 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.

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.

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:

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 if 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.

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 granted it. To Octavius’ servant, who enters ere he has well ended his soliloquy, he says:

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

that must inevitably ensue.

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?

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 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.”

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.

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, read, would show them that Caesar was their best friend.

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.

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.[185] 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 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 coup, withdrawing the mantle and displaying the mutilated corpse,

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

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.

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.

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.[186]

But he has the hybris 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:

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.

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.

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 gabs, like the heroes of the old Teutonic lays or the Chansons de Gestes, 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.

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.

And more explicitly in the Marcus Antonius:

(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.

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.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

CHAPTER I POSITION OF THE PLAY AFTER THE GREAT TRAGEDIES. SHAKESPEARE’S INTEREST IN THE SUBJECT

CHAPTER II ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA , A HISTORY, TRAGEDY, AND LOVE POEM; AS SHOWN BY ITS RELATIONS WITH PLUTARCH

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 Coriolanus or even in Julius Caesar. 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 (ii. ii. 246). Thus, after the scourging of Thyreus, Antony sends Caesar the message:

“If this mislike thee,” said he, “thou hast Hipparchus[198] one of my infranchised bondmen with thee: hang him if thou wilt, or whippe him at thy pleasure, that we may cry quittaunce.”

This becomes:

So, too, Plutarch says of Dolabella’s disclosure to Cleopatra:

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.

The words are closely copied in Dolabella’s statement:

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.

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.”

Shakespeare knows when he is well off and accepts the goods the gods provide.

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

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.

Shakespeare’s Antony says:

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

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.

Shakespeare gives a more bitter poignancy to the confession.

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:

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, 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.

Shakespeare copies even Caesar’s convenient reticence as to the borrowed vessels.

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.

(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.

The long bead-roll of shadowy potentates evidently delights Shakespeare’s ear as it would have delighted the ear of Milton or Victor Hugo[199]:

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Much more numerous and generally much more noteworthy than the strictly verbal suggestions are those that, conveyed altogether in Shakespeare’s 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.

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.”

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!

Or again we are told of Cleopatra’s precautions after Actium.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arrived at the Syrian coast he awaits her coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Similarly his final verdict in the Comparison of Demetrius and Marcus Antonius is unrelenting:

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III THE ASSOCIATES OF ANTONY

The political setting of Julius Caesar 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 Antony and Cleopatra 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:

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 diminutives, for doits” (iv. 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” (v. 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.

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:

And not only is Silius convinced; he gives his full approval to Ventidius’ policy:

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.

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” (ii. i. 22, et seq.). 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” (ii. 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 (ii. v. 21).

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 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 (ii. 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 protervitas that has infected souls capable of high loyalty and devotion.[203] 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 (iv. 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:

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 (iii. 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:

Menas is a pirate, but he speaks the thought of 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.

The corroding influence of the Zeitgeist 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.

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.

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.

Thus we see Enobarbus designated for a somewhat invidious and trying task, and this implies Antony’s confidence in him, and his own efficiency.

Then we are told that when the rupture with Caesar came,

Antonius, through the perswasions of Domitius, commaunded Cleopatra to returne againe into Ægypt, and there to understand[204] the successe of this warre,

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.

More remotely too this gave Shakespeare the hint for Enobarbus’ other censures on Antony’s conduct of the campaign.

Thirdly, in the account of the various misfortunes that befell Antony before Actium, and the varying moods in which he confronted them, Shakespeare read:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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:

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:

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.

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:

Nor does he suffer love to interfere with business:

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:

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:

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:

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 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:

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.

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:

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; 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 (iii. 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:

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:

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 presence and plans of the Queen, is inexorable in laying the blame on the right shoulders:

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:

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:

The paltering of Cleopatra however is a further object lesson:

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:

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:

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 intelligible means. He is made to realise that he has taken wrong measures in his own interest, by Octavius’ treatment of the other deserters.

Then the transmission to him of his treasure with increase, makes him feel that after all loyalty might have been a more profitable investment:

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:

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 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:

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” (iv. ix. 14).

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.

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 “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:

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:

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,

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.

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.

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.

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,

Mecaenas, too, pays his tribute to her “beauty, wisdom, modesty” (ii. 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” (ii. vi. 131). Antony thinks of her as patient, even when he threatens Cleopatra with her vengeance by personal assault (iv. xii. 38). Cleopatra, with her finer intuition, even when recalling Antony’s threat, conjectures more justly what that vengeance would be:

And elsewhere she asserts that she will not

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 can be but most miserable still.” In Shakespeare this petition, eked out with reminiscences of the appeal of Blanch in King John, and with anticipations of the appeal of Volumnia in Coriolanus, is addressed to Antony, and the even balance of her sympathies is accented and reiterated in a way for which Plutarch gives no warrant.

In the Life 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

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

or if Antony describes her equipoise of feeling as

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 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:

And again:

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.

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 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.

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 Antony and Cleopatra such personal 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:

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:

CHAPTER IV THE POLITICAL LEADERS

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?

Let us run through the series of them; and despite his pride of place we cannot begin lower than with the third Triumvir.

Lepidus, the “slight unmeritable man, meet to be sent on errands,” as he is described in Julius Caesar, 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.

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:

Knowing the zeal and influence of Enobarbus, he recommends his mediation as a becoming and worthy deed, and tries to mitigate his vehemence:

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:

But all this springs from no real kindliness or public spirit. Pompey understands the position:

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:

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:

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.

In his efforts at bonhomie, 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:

His deposition, which must come in the natural course of things, is mentioned only casually and contemptuously:

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:

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,

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:

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.

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:

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

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:

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:

So, when told that he looks older, his reply is magnanimous:

Antony confesses that he owes him thanks for generous treatment:

We presently get to hear what these were, and must admit that he acted like a gentleman:

He has moreover a certain filial piety for the memory of his father, and a certain afterglow of free republican sentiment:

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.[206] It is this that in the play, and in complete contradiction of the Life, 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” (i. ii. 191),—a great exaggeration of Plutarch’s statement that he “so scoored[207] all the sea thereabouts (i.e., 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 (i. ii. 193), though there is no hint of this popular support in the history. And he concludes that Pompey’s

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; “therefore 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” (i. 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” (i. iv. 29); or as driven by fear of Pompey to “cement their divisions and bind up the petty difference” (ii. 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

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 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” (ii. vi. 84), and his like remark to Enobarbus: “Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune” (ii. 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.

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:

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

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. Even Antony’s chief complaint in regard to Pompey’s overthrow is that he gets none of the unearned increment; or, as Octavius says,

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 savoir faire and savoir vivre. 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:

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.

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 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

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 Merchant of Venice:

It is because Antony’s vices are those of the common spirits and the barbarous multitudes that Octavius despises him:

His own failings do not lie in the direction of vulgar indulgence. He is a foe to all excess. When the feasters pledge him, he objects to the compulsory carouse:

And he can address a dignified remonstrance and rebuke to his less temperate associates:

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.

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:

It is quite true that he thinks of what is due to 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:

It really means something when a man like Octavius, busy with the affairs of the whole world, spares time for frequent domestic correspondence.

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.

Treating it meanwhile, however, as an expedient for knitting the 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?

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:

Octavius will not be diverted from the immediate business:

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.

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:

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.

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:

Her brother Octavius was willing unto it, not for his (i.e. 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.

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 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:

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:

Thus when Antony returns to Cleopatra, as he was bound to do, Octavius manages to represent himself as the aggrieved 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Again, having won his first victory through Cleopatra’s flight, Caesar cynically reckons for new success on her corruptibility:

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 he stands for Antony: but owing to North’s fortunate ambiguity Shakespeare takes it as referring to the speaker:

A more subtle contumely; for it implies that Caesar with scornful impartiality acknowledges Antony’s superiority as a sabreur, but can afford to dismiss that as of no moment. His response has already been annotated in advance by Enobarbus, when Antony was inditing his cartel:

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 (iv. i. 16). Nor are his expectations deceived, for he reckons out everything:

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.

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,

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:

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:

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:

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:

So Octavius proceeds to a recital of Antony’s merits in which he bespeaks a double portion of the praise he seems to dispense:

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:

Then follows the official valediction:

So the last word is a testimonial to himself.

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 éloge has been compared to a funeral sermon, and will not interfere with the victor’s appetite for the fruits of victory. But 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” (ii. vii. 106). “Possess it, I’ll make answer,” is Octavius’ reply and reproof.

CHAPTER V MARK ANTONY

“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.

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.

Of course we are apt to carry with us to the present play the impression we have received from the sketch of Antony in Julius Caesar. 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 Julius Caesar it is the contriving side of his nature that is prominent, and the other is only indicated by the remarks of acquaintances: in Antony and Cleopatra, 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 Julius Caesar 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 Antony and Cleopatra, 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.

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 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!”[208] 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” (ii. 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” (iii. 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” (i. i. 52). Or he goes a-fishing, in which art he is a novice and presently becomes a dupe, when he pulls up the salt-fish “with fervency” (ii. 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:

In short his breathless pursuit of all sorts of experiences more than justifies the scandalised summary of Octavius:

And he goes on to describe how Antony has been so indiscriminate as

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:

It is this demand to share in all the Erdgeist 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:

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.

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:

The general voice cries out against him at home, where his faults are taunted

His newly arrived friends find the worst libels verified, as Demetrius admits:

Octavius is not unduly severe in his condemnation:

Nor is he without qualms himself. Sudden revulsions of feeling disturb his riots when “a Roman thought hath struck him” (i. ii. 87). He feels that stopping short in his labours and relaxing his energy, he gives his baser tendencies the sway, and cries:

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.

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 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.

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:

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 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.

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:

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:

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 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:

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:

He is speaking too true when he says:

And his last message runs:

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.

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:

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 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:

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:

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:

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 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” (iii. ii. 33).

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.

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 éclat, when

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.

But in his infatuation he throws all his advantages away. He pronounces on himself the verdict which his whole story confirms:

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:

And presently he continues:

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.

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 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:

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:

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:

The authority for the idea that Antony was in a manner hypnotised by her love, Shakespeare found, like so much else, in the Life, 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:

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 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.

Antony cries in the play:

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:

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” (iii. 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 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.”[209] 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:

That course was to beseech Octavius by his schoolmaster,

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 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:

Of course it is absurd and mad; and the madness and absurdity are brought out, in the play, not in the Life, 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 messenger is less an excess of audacity than the gnash of the teeth in the last agony: as Enobarbus remarks:

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.

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 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.[210]

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 and affecting is this gallant fronting of fate. As Cleopatra arms him for his last little victory, he cries with his old self-consciousness:

He welcomes the time for battle:

Cleopatra recognises his greatness and his doom:

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.

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.

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” (iv. xiv. 10). Then comes the message that his beloved is no more, and his resolution is fixed:

His thoughts are with his Queen in the Elysian fields where he will ask her pardon,[212] 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.

The wound he deals himself is not at once fatal. He lives long enough to comfort his followers in the heroic words:

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:

CHAPTER VI CLEOPATRA

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 more remorselessly he sacrifices the one-sided claims of the conception in which he delights to the laws of tragic necessity.

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.[214] 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 Dream of Fair Women tells how she summons him:

Hawthorne in his Transformation, describing Story’s statue of Cleopatra, which here he attributes to Kenyon, goes further:

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.

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.

Not often or obtrusively, but of set purpose and beyond the possibility of neglect, does Shakespeare refer to her racial peculiarities. Philo talks of her “tawny front” (i. 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:

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,

The sun has indeed shone on her and into her. She has known the love and adoration of the greatest.

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 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

Talking of her preparations to meet Antony, Plutarch says:

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.

“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:

She herself in ironical self-disparagement avows that she is “wrinkled deep in time” (i. v. 29) and exclaims:

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 attractions with all the aids of art, wealth and effect, as we see from the mise-en-scène 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:

Now her beawtie (as it is reported) was not so passing, as unmatchable of other women,[215] 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.

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

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.

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:

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.

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.

And on the other hand she can faint at will, weep and sob beyond measure.

Here, too, the hint is given by Plutarch, but in a later passage, when she fears Antony may return to Octavia:

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.

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 sorts of opposite reproaches. Since he does not bewail Fulvia, that is proof of infidelity:

When his distress is not to be confined, she taxes him with mourning for his wife:

When he loses patience, she mocks at him:

But at the word of his leaving she is at once all wistful tenderness:

But thence again she passes on the instant to grave and quiet dignity:

It is the unexpectedness of her transitions, the impossibility of foreseeing what she will say or do, the certainty that whatever she says or does will be a surprise, that keeps Antony and everyone else in perpetual agitation.[218] 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:

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.

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:

And she does this sort of thing on principle. She tells Alexas:

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” (i. 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” (i. ii. 151).

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.

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 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:

And while we are still smiling at the last little touch, comes that moving outburst of a sensitive and sorely stricken soul:

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” (iii. iii. 43); and she concludes, “All may be well enough” (iii. iii. 50).

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 us. When the messenger of woe is to give his tidings to Antony, he hesitates and says:

and Antony answers nobly and truly:

We cannot help remembering Antony’s words when Cleopatra visits on the bearer the fault of the bad news to her:

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.

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 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.[219] 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,

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:

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.

But she recoils from her lover’s desperation, as she always does when 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:

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 finesses of her art.

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.

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:

she answers well, “They do not go together.” Her passionate ejaculation ere she faints above his corpse, her appeal to her frightened women,

have a whole-heartedness and intensity that first reveal the greatness of her nature.

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.

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.

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”[220] still assert their sway. She has too easily taken to heart Antony’s advice, 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.

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.[221]

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:

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.

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.

It is just then that Caesar is announced; and it is hard to believe that Cleopatra, with her two master passions excited 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.

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, perswading him selfe thereby that she had yet a desire to save her life. 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, supposing he had deceived her, but in deede he was deceived him selfe.

And North underlines the suggestive clauses with his comment:

Cleopatra finely deceiveth Octavius Caesar, as though she desired to live.

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 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.

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:

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.

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:

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[223] her in every poynt.

In the play this suggestion is put back to the interview with Thyreus; and is made, not refuted, on the authority of Octavius.

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:

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?

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 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.”

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:

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.

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.

These arguments are ingenious and not without their cogency, but they leave one unconvinced. The difficulties in accepting them are far 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.

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 death as the only practical solution, and that the rest of her behaviour at this stage accords ill with mercenary imposture.

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.

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.

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 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:

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.[224] 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 protégée of Caesar.

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 think that it, better than the two previous theories we have discussed, satisfies the conditions, by conforming with the data 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.

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:

These words of wrath have lingered in her memory and she echoes them in his dying ears:

The loathsomeness of the prospect grows in her imagination, and compared with it the most loathsome fate is desirable. She tells Proculeius:

And now in the full realisation of the scene, she brings it home to her women:

Such thoughts expel once for all her mutability and flightiness:

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 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:

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:

Thereupon she too applies the asp and provokes its fang.

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:

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:

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.

CHAPTER VII ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

Hitherto this discussion of Antony and Cleopatra 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.

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 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:

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.”

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 with Octavia, Cleopatra by her traffickings with Octavius and Thyreus.[225] 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.

These terrors and suspicions are inevitable in such love as theirs.

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?

Much more frequently it has been asked in regard to Cleopatra. She frankly avows even in retrospect her policy of making him her prey. Thus does she mimic fact in her pastime:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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

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!” (iv. viii. 16). When he dies, the world seems to her “no better than a sty” (iv. 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.

Various interpretations have been given of these lines, but on any possible interpretation they exalt Antony alike above fact and fancy.[226] 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.

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.

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 Phaedrus.

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.

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 Symposium, 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.

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.[227]

And, on the other hand, Diotima’s opposite theory does not apply to this particular case, at least, to begin with or superficially:

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.[228]

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 Wahlverwandschaft, 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.

The second is less austere, and, for the time being, more comprehensive. It is founded on a correspondence in all sorts of 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 à propos of this he did not quote Aristophanes’ saying in the Symposium—

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.

Here we have a picture of the completest camaraderie 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:

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

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,

And he pays homage to her in every mood:

It is as genuine and catholic admiration as Florizel’s for Perdita:

But apart from their sincerity and range, how different are the two tributes: Florizel’s all innocence and simplicity, Antony’s raffiné and sophisticated. We feel from his words that he would endorse Shakespeare’s ambiguous praise of his own dark lady:

Does not Enobarbus speak in almost exactly the same way of the Cleopatra that Antony adores?

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 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.

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:

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.

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 him on his return, her words have a new seriousness and weight.[229] 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:

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 not altogether new. It occurs in Daniel’s tragedy, when she calls on Antony’s spirit to pray the gods on her behalf:

It also occurs twice in Plutarch, from whom Daniel probably obtained it. In the Comparison of Demetrius and Marcus Antonius, he writes:[230]

Antonius first of all married two wives together, the which never Romane durst doe before, but him self.

In the biography, when Cleopatra has lifted him to the Monument, we are told:

Then she dryed up his blood that had berayed his face, and called him her Lord, her husband, and Emperour, forgetting her owne miserie and calamity for the pitie and compassion she tooke of him.

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:

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 Phaedrus: “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.

CORIOLANUS — CHAPTER I POSITION OF THE PLAY BEFORE THE ROMANCES. ITS POLITICAL AND ARTISTIC ASPECTS

Coriolanus 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.

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.

Of these, one which has been considered to give the terminus a quo in dating the play was pointed out by Malone in the fable of Menenius. Plutarch’s account is somewhat bald:

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.”

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 Remaines concerning Britaine, which appeared in 1605.

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 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.

It has been pointed out,[231] 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 Remaines, occasionally with verbal coincidence, it seems not unlikely that the Remaines 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.[232] Moreover, it has been shown by Mr. Sidney Lee that there were friendly 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.”

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 Coriolanus could not have been written, and it would not of itself establish a date shortly after the publication of the Remaines. Such a date 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.

On the other hand, an excessively late date has been proposed for Coriolanus 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:

Think now with thy selfe, how much more unfortunatly, then all the women livinge we are come hether;

but in the fourth edition this becomes unfortunate, and so Shakespeare has it:

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:

If I had feared death, I would not have come hither to have put my life in hazard: but prickt forward with spite and desire I have to be revenged of them that thus have banished me, etc.

In 1603, this suffers the curtailment, “pricked forward with desire to be revenged, etc.” But Shakespeare says:

This argument is no doubt of the same precarious kind as the other; still in degree it is stronger, for the persistence of spite is much more distinctive than the disappearance of a suffix.

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 Coriolanus, 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.

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.

Thus it has been argued that the severe cold in January, 1608, when even the Thames was frozen over, furnished the simile:

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.

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:

But even in Venus and Adonis Shakespeare had told how, in admiration of the youth’s beauty, the birds

and in Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Titania orders the fairies to feed Bottom

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.

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” (ii. ii. 105), and a remark in Epicoene: “You have lurched your friends of the better half of the garland” (v. 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[233] that Nashe has only the lurch and not the supplementary words, of the garland, 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 Coriolanus must have been in existence before Epicoene was acted in January 1609, old style.

How long before? And did it succeed or precede Antony and Cleopatra?

Attempts have been made to find in that play immediate anticipations of the mental attitude and of particular thoughts that appear in Coriolanus. Thus Octavia’s dilemma in her petition has been quoted:

And this has been taken as a link with Volumnia’s perplexity:

But then the same sort of conflict puzzles the Lady Blanch in King John:

Could not this style of argument be used to prove that Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra immediately followed King John?

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 Coriolanus. But Julius Caesar 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.

Still there is little doubt that Coriolanus 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 Antony and Cleopatra 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 Macbeth satisfies, and even more than in the case of Antony and Cleopatra 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 Cymbeline than as we do at the close of Othello.” We cannot be far wrong in placing it in the last months of 1608 or the first months of 1609.

Attempts have been made to find suggestions of a personal kind for Shakespeare’s choice of the subject. The extreme ease with which they 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 Lear sees in it the outcome of events that occurred in the first years of the century.

The material for Coriolanus 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.[234] 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 Coriolanus. 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 Remaines concerning Britaine, 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 Coriolanus, for the dating of which only the very relative evidence of metre and style is available, may most probably have proceeded.[235]

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.[236] 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 The Conspiracie and The Tragedie which were acted in 1608.

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:[237]

The death of a mother is always a mournfully irreparable loss, often the saddest a man can sustain. We can realise 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,[238] 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.

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 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.

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 Coriolanus Shakespeare intended a two-fold warning, to the pride of James, and to the gathering resistance of the Commons.”[239] Mr. Garnett,[240] 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 Tempest, 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:

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 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.

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 Coriolanus 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 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.

It is particularly important to emphasise this in view of the circumstance that Coriolanus 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 Shirley, 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. It is to make you feel life strongly”—(that is the main thing, and then comes the indirect consequence)—“not only your virtues but your vicious perverse points.”

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.

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.”

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 ex hypothesi 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 Induction to the second part of Henry IV., when Rumour, whose words, in this respect at least, cannot be influenced by individual bias, speaks of

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 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.

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.

Now, holding these opinions, would Shakespeare be likely to glorify Coriolanus? Of course, in a sense he does. There is a Lues Boswelliana 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:

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.

Quite apart from the final apostasy he strikes the 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:

She answers her own question by quoting Aufidius’ estimate, and proceeds:

“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.”

That, so far as it goes, is a quite legitimate “moral” to draw from the story; and it is the obvious one.

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 illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of Shakespeare’s politics.[241] 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 Coriolanus as a drama nor the fairness of its political views, but solely its fidelity to antiquarian truth and the accuracy of its antiquarian data.”

Clearly it was impossible for Shakespeare to revive the spirit of the times in Coriolanus, even to the extent that he had done so in Julius Caesar or Antony and Cleopatra, 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, 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[242] 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 Fortuna Muliebris.

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.

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.

But if Plutarch’s Coriolanus 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 Coriolanus, 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.

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 Coriolan 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 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 motifs 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.”[243] 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.

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 Coriolan there were six, and there is as well a seventh place indicated in the play without scenical decoration.[244] Even so they are few, compared with the two and twenty[245] 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.

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.[246] 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.

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 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.

Thus Coriolanus, again as in Shakespeare but not as in Plutarch, accepts his banishment as a calamity to those that inflict it.

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.

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 Life 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.

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 Julius Caesar 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 Antony and Cleopatra 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 Coriolanus 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.[248]

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 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.

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 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.

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, the expiation of his passion in death and the fruitless triumph of his rival.

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:

The Tragedy of Coriolanus 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.

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.

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 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 Lear and Macbeth, yet he gives a new colouring to the picture as he hardly does to genuine histories like Richard II. or Antony and Cleopatra.

This will appear from a comparison of the play with the Life.

CHAPTER II PARALLELS AND CONTRASTS WITH PLUTARCH

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.[249]

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.[250] But it does not stand alone. Somewhat shorter, but still longer than any loan in the other plays, is Coriolanus’ announcement of himself to Aufidius, and in it Shakespeare follows North even more closely than in the former instance.

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[251] 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.

Shakespeare gives little else than a transcript, though, of course, a poetical and dramatic transcript, of this splendid piece of forthright prose.

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 Life run as follows:

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.

Shakespeare puts the notifications in the Tribune’s mouth:

Many editors saw that something had dropped out, but no attempt to fill the gap was satisfactory, till Delius, having recourse to North, supplemented,

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:

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.

Shakespeare makes short work of chronology by putting this allusion into the mouth of Titus Lartius:

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[254] that North, owing to a small typographical error in the French, misunderstood the scope of Cominius’ offer to Marcius. Amyot says:

“Et en fin lui dit, que de tous les cheveaux prisonniers, 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.”

There should be a comma after cheveaux, as appears on reference to the Greek,[255] and Marcius is told to select ten of the horses, prisoners, and other chattels; but North took the prisonniers as used adjectivally in agreement with the preceding noun and translated:

So in the ende he willed Martius, he should choose out of all the horses they had taken 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.

Further there is the quite incorrect abridgment in the margin:

The tenth parte of the enemies goods offered Martius for rewarde of his service by Cominius the Consul.

Shakespeare combines these misstatements:

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:

Now in those dayes, valliantnes was honoured in Rome above all the other vertues.

Cominius begins his panegyric:

When Marcius drives the Volscians back to Corioli and the Romans hesitate to pursue, we are told:

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.

Compare his exhortation:

When the proposal to distribute the corn is being discussed, many senators are in favour of it:

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.

Brutus charges him with this in the play:

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:

In the play Coriolanus before the house of Aufidius soliloquises:

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 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 a.u.c., 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.

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, Fortuna Muliebris, after the withdrawal of Coriolanus from Rome.

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.

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:

From the worshippers they become the worshipped.

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 above all other, a goodly horse with a capparison, and all furniture to him.” This Shakespeare does not omit. Cominius declares:

But the same episode furnishes Titus Lartius with his imagery as he points to the wounded and victorious hero:

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 Life, for instance, describes what takes place after Marcius has joined Cominius, before they hurry off to the second fight.

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.

Here is what Shakespeare makes of this:

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.

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 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.

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 Life, 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.

Next to the hero, for example, it is his mother who is most conspicuous 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:

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.[257] 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.

Again, in reference to Marcius’ strenuous career, Plutarch writes:

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.

In the play, it is not with tears of joy that Volumnia welcomes her warrior home.

Here is another instance of piety that Plutarch cites:

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.

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.

All these notices occur in the first pages of the Life. Thenceforward till her intervention at the close there is only a passing mention of her affliction at her son’s banishment.

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.

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.

Now it is clear that the presence of Volumnia does not pervade the Life as it does the play, and she has not nearly so much to do. 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.

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.

Young Marcius, again, is not merely one of the two children mentioned in the Life. As Mr. Verity remarks,[258] in this case “the half is certainly better than the whole”; and the 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.”

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.

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 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:

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 Tribuni Plebis.

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.[259] 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.

And it is the same, or nearly the same, if we turn from Marcius’ friends to his enemies.

The tribunes, for example, are comparatively colourless. On the institution of the new magistracy,

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We do not hear of him after this till Coriolanus has come back from the siege of Rome.

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.

So he contrives and effects the assassination of his rival.

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 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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 colouring, that significant insertions and no less significant omissions concur to alter the effect of the whole.

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.

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 Life, 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.

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:

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, 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.

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:

The second is given in the language of the plebeians themselves:

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 (iii. 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.

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 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 Life 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.

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.

Now there are several things to notice in Shakespeare’s 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.

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.

Again, Plutarch dwells on the unfairness of the arrangements for taking the votes, which has the effect of packing the jury:

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.

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.

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 tyrant, as Plutarch certainly did but as Shakespeare probably did not, in the strict classical sense of tyrannus, 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.

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 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 Life, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

At any rate, the proclamation brings about a declaration of hostilities, and war speedily follows.

Now in Shakespeare, Lartius, for fear of attack, has to surrender Corioli even before Coriolanus meets with his rebuff.

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.

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:

And Aufidius welcomes Coriolanus to the feast with the words:

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:

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.

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.

Or take another instance. In describing the first inroad of Coriolanus, Plutarch writes:

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 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.

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

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.

Afterwards, however, when he encamps so near Rome, the majority has its way:

For there was no Consul, Senatour, nor Magistrate, that durst once contrarie the opinion of the people, for the calling home againe of Martius.

Accordingly, the first envoys are instructed to announce to him his re-instatement in all his rights.

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 being revoked. Only when peace is concluded does his recall follow quite naturally, as an act of gratitude, in the burst of jubilant relief:

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

CHAPTER III THE GRAND CONTRAST. SHAKESPEARE’S CONCEPTION OF THE SITUATION IN ROME

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 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.

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.

Similarly the interests of the country are supreme when Coriolanus, with his new allies, advances to the attack:

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 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.

And Mr. Lloyd clinches his plea by his estimate of the catastrophe.

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.

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.

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.

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, and that all must see how in the long run such a state must inevitably succumb to the greater moral force of Rome.

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 Civitas, 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.

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 Life.

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 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 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.

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 Tribuni plebis, “whose office should be to defend the poore people from violence and oppression.” Then he concludes this part of his recital:

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.

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 régime 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 return, only stipulate for a machinery that will protect them against further oppression.

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.

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.

This circumstance, combined with the still later demand for a distribution of corn, Shakespeare transposes, and makes 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.

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.

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 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:

But even among the maddened and famishing crowd, Marcius is not without his advocate. The Second Citizen admonishes them:

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.

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:

You must in no way say he is covetous;

and the First rejoins:

We have seen how Shakespeare adopts from Plutarch the motive for the plebeians’ initial support of Coriolanus at the 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.

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.

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:

Afterwards too he recognises that they are earning their share of the spoil, even as before they had borne themselves stoutly:

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:

Whereupon taking those that willingly offered them selves he went out of the cittie:

which supplies the sentence,

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:

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 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:

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:

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.