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INTRODUCTORY

REMARKS

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STATE OF THE TEXT, CHRONOLOGY, ETC.

HE history of the text of this tragedy is the same with that of its Plutarchian companions, CORIOLANUS and JULIUS CESAR,-it never having been printed during the author's life, and having been entered by the publishers of the folio collection of his plays after his death, as one of those "copies not formerly entered to other men." On the state of the text, I have nothing to add to the statements of Mr. Knight:-" The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra' was first printed in the folio collection of 1623. The play is not divided into acts and scenes in the original; but the stage-directions, like those of the other Roman plays, are very full. The text is, upon the whole, remarkably accurate; although the metrical arrangement is, in a few instances, obviously defective. The positive errors are very few. Some obscure passages present themselves; but, with one or two exceptions, they are not such as to render conjectural emendation desirable."-Pictorial Shakespeare. In the Introductory Remarks prefixed in this edition to CORIOLANUS and JULIUS CESAR, the main reasons have been stated at large for believing the three great Roman historical tragedies to have been among the productions of the later years of their author's life-after 1608 or 1609. One historical, or rather traditionary, authority, supporting this opinion, was then accidentally forgotten, and it may be added with equal propriety in this place. The Rev. John Ward, a regular physician, and also a clergyman of the Church of England, was vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon in the next generation after Shakespeare, when he might well have known old persons who recollected the Poet. He left a diary of facts and opinions, kept after the fashion of that age, from 1648 to 1679, which remained in manuscript until 1839, when it was found, and arranged and published by Dr. Severn. He seems to have preserved all that he could glean from still living tradition in respect to the great Poet, though that is less than might have been expected under such circumstances. The most curious item of his information is his statement, that "Shakespeare in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for it had an allowance so large that he spent at the rate of 1000l. a year, as I have heard."* employment of the great dramatist's later years is so probable in itself, and the circumstance so little likely to have been invented (though it might have been exaggerated) by village tradition, or by the preserver of it, who was evidently a very inquisitive and matter-of-fact person, that his testimony adds much weight to arguments internal and external for assigning to those "elder days" of village and rural retirement several of the plays-the Roman tragedies among the number-for which editors have ascribed an earlier date; since it would be difficult to make out any list of plays, not certainly known to have a prior date, which might be supposed to have been produced during the last seven or eight years of the Poet's life, even at a less prolific rate than two a year, without including in the number the three great Roman tragedies, with the TEMPEST and the WINTER'S TALE.

This

All the external facts and critical indications before stated in relation to JULIUS CESAR and CORIOLANUS, apply with equal force to ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. The minute research of Mr. Collier, and other historians of the old English theatre, have not succeeded in discovering any trace of its having been performed before it was published in the folio of Heminge & Condell. But Mr. Collier thinks that having been "written late in 1607, it was brought out at the Globe Theatre in the spring of 1608." This opinion he, with prior critics, grounds on the fact, that Edward Blount (a publisher afterwards concerned in the publication of the folio of 1623) entered in the Stationers' Register a memorandum of " a book called Anthony and Cleopatra.'"

But the story of Cleopatra was a favourite theme for poets and dramatists of the age, as the reader will perceive from the notice of some of the dramas on this theme at the end of the Notes to the play in this edition. "A book" might have been a poem, or a translation of one of the two French tragedies-Iodelle's or Garnier's-on this theme, or of one of the Latin ones. About the same date, as we learn from Henslowe's Diary, Ben Jonson, Decker, and others, were engaged to prepare a drama on this subject for the stage. Finally, it might have been that Shakespeare himself in 1608, after becoming familiar with North's Plutarch, and adopting it as "his storehouse of learned history," had fixed upon Cleopatra as the heroine of a future piece, and having announced his intention, Blount the publisher, after the fashion of the day, as Henslowe exhibits it to us, had made overtures for the copyright. But as fifteen years later, the same publisher was one of those (Blount & Jaggard) who entered this tragedy as "one of those not formerly entered to other men," it seems certain that the "Anthony and Cleopatra" of 1608 was not Shakespeare's tragedy, actually then written, but much more probably some other play, poem, history, or romance, written or intended to be written on the same popular theme.

But be this as it may, at most such an entry, if it referred to this very tragedy, could only prove that it was

*He was appointed to this vicarage in 1662.

written or in preparation in 1608, and was, therefore, one of the first of those written during the last eight years of the author's life, instead of being, as seems the better opinion, among his latest works, and thus in the order of time, as well as of the dramatic narrative, subsequent to JULIUS CESAR. This tragedy has, in fact, much of the appearance of having been written as a sequel or second part to JULIUS CESAR-a certain degree of previous knowledge of the history and characters being apparently taken for granted, and the characters and story continued with the same sort of coherence that we find between the first and second parts of HENRY IV. Yet this too might possibly result from the Poet having worked up in his own mind the story of "the mightiest Julius" and his successors as one whole, while he began with either part as might happen most to strike his fancy; and knowing that other dramatists had made his audience familiar with the main incidents and characters, he was under no necessity to follow the precise order of history in his composition.

My own impression, however, is still that this is the later production, and probably written not very long before or after the TEMPEST, to which it bears some marked resemblance in its metrical taste, its cast of language and thought, such as may be often observed to prevail in particular periods of the life of great authors-Dryden may be noticed as an instance-between their productions of each period, as compared with those of any other epoch of their minds. There is, for instance, in this tragedy, a much larger number than usual of lines hypermetrical by redundant syllables, such as Stevens, and the editors of his taste, labour to prune off by conjectural emendation. The same kind of metrical freedom is of frequent occurrence in the TEMPEST, and much more so than in the earlier plays. Again, in the entire absence of any common groundwork of plot or character, we are often reminded in the one play of striking passages as characteristics in the other, sometimes by the association of resemblance, sometimes by the equally strong association of contrast, so marked as to indicate that the contrast was not merely accidental. Thus the gloomy splendor of Antony's farewell to his own falling fortunes, and his parallel of his own fading glory to "Black Vesper's pageants," which

with a thought

The rack dislimns; and makes it indistinct,
As water is in water:

recalls the grave, lofty morality of Prospero, reminding us that all the pomp and greatness of this world

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On the other hand, nothing can be imagined more widely asunder than the simple truth, the earnest gentleness, the constant, confiding affection, the graceful bashfulness, the exquisite purity-"pure to the last recesses of the iniad," of Miranda; and on the other side, Cleopatra, false, fickle, violent, capricious, voluptuous, bold, brilliant;— the one the idealized perfection of natural loveliness and goodness, the other the most dazzling result of luxurious and vicious refinement. The contrast between the two at every point is so strong, that I cannot but think that the portrait last presented to the Poet's eye by his creative imagination, whichever one it was, must have had the truth and vividness of its lineaments constantly suggested and heightened by the opposite traits and expression of the other. Without, however, laying much stress upon any particular theory of the precise date of this splendid historical drama, it is clear that all the testimonies and indications, internal and external, designate it as the production of a poet no longer young, and in the full maturity of mind, sympathizing with the feelings and character of advancing age, and rich in that knowledge of life which nature and genius alone cannot give.

Thus Juliet, Ophelia, Desdemona, Viola, and Portia, are all within the natural range of a young poet's power of representation. They are ideas of admirable general nature, varied refined, adorned by fancy and feeling. But Cleopatra, as she appears in this tragedy, is a character that could not have been thus depicted but from the actual observation of life, or from that reflected knowledge which can be drawn from history and biography. To a modern author, such as Scott, biographical memoirs and literature could supply to a certain degree the want of a living model, even for such a personage as this "wrangling queen-whom everything becomes"-whom

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety,

while "vilest things become themselves in her." But there was no such literary assistance accessible to Shakespeare. Plutarch had given the dry outline of the character, with some incidents which, to an ordinary poet, would have suggested nothing more, which in this drama have expanded themselves into scenes of living and speaking truth. But all this, and all the minute finishing of the character, Shakespeare must have collected from his own observation of life, drawing the fragments from various quarters, perhaps from very humble ones, and blending them all in this brilliant historical impersonation of such individual truth, that there are few readers who do not feel, with Mrs. Jameson, that "Shakespeare's Cleopatra produces the same effect on them that is recorded of the real Cleopatra. She dazzles our faculties, perplexes our judgment, and bewitches our fancy; we are conscious of a kind of fascination, against which our moral sense rebels, but from which there is no escape."

Again, the manner in which the Poet has exhibited the weakness of a great mind-of a hero past the middle stage of life, when “ grey hath mingled with his brown," who is seen bowing his "grizzled head" to the caprices of a wanton who, like himself, begins to be "wrinkled deep in time,”—all this belongs to a poet himself of maturer life. To a younger poet, the weakness of passion at an age when "the hey-day of the blood" should be calm, would in itself have something of an air of ridicule. So sensible of this danger were all the other poets who have essayed this theme, that all, not excepting Dryden, have avoided any allusion which should turn the attention to the circumstance.

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Shakespeare, on the contrary, brings this into bold relief, and luxuriates in showing, under every light, the irregular greatness of his hero, with all his weakness; and thus, by a close adherence to historic truth, individualized and made present and real by his own knowledge of, and sympathy with human infirmity, has given to his scenes of passionate frailty an originality of interest, not to be attained by those who would not venture to hazard the interest of their plot upon the loves of any but the young and beautiful.

But independently of any other indications, it is certain that the ripe maturity of poetic mind pervades the whole tone of the tragedy, its diction, imagery, characters, thoughts. It exhibits itself everywhere, in a copious and varied magnificence, as from a mind and memory stored with the treasures acquired in its own past intellectual efforts, as well as with the knowledge of life and books, from all which the dramatic muse, (to borrow the oriental imagery which Milton has himself drawn from this very tragedy,) like

the gorgeous East, with liberal hand,

Showers on her kings Barbaric pearl and gold.

Its poetry has an autumnal richness, such as can succeed only to the vernal luxuriance of genius, or its fiercer midsummer glow. We need no other proof than that which its own abundance affords, that this tragedy is the rich product of a mind where, as in Mark Antony's own Egypt, his "Nilus had swelled high,” and

when it ebbed, the seedsman

Upon its slime and ooze scattered his grain,

Which shortly came to harvest.*

SOURCE OF THE PLOT, COSTUME, ETC.

For some account of North's remarkable translation of Plutarch, and the possible other sources of the plot of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, we refer the reader to the remarks entitled "Sources of the Plot of the three Roman Tragedies," at the end of the Notes to this play.

The costume of the Roman personages of the piece is, of course, that of the patricians and soldiers of the empire, and the last days of the republic; which, with the aid of the Pictorial edition, we can notice more at large in another place. On the Egyptian costume of Cleopatra and her court, Mr. Planché remarks, in the Pictorial edition, that "for the costume of Egypt, during the latter period of Greek domination, we have no satisfactory authority. Winkelman describes some figures which, he asserts, were made by Egyptian sculptors under the dominion of the Greeks, who introduced into Egypt their gods as well as their arts; while, on the other hand, the Greeks adopted Egyptian usages.' But from these mutilated remains of Greco-Egyptian workmanship we are unable to ascertain how far the Egyptians generally adopted the costume of their conquerors, or the conquerors themselves assumed that of the vanquished. In the work on Egyptian antiquities, published in the 'Library of Entertaining Knowledge,' the few facts bearing upon this subject have been assembled, and the minutest details of the more ancient Egyptian costume will be found in the admirable works of Sir G. Wilkinson: but it would be worse than useless to enter here into a long description of the costume of the Pharaohs, unless we could assert how much, if any part of it, was retained by the Ptolemies."

* ANTONY AND Cleopatra, act ii. scene 7.

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