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 possi-
bilities 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, served 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:
This common body,

Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,
To rot itself with motion.

(1. iv. 44.) 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 nere. 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 :

Who does i' the wars more than his captain can
Becomes his captain's captain: and ambition,
The soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss,
Than gain which darkens him.

I could do more to do Antonius good,

But 't would offend him; and in his offence
Should my performance perish.

(III. i. 21.)

And not only is Silius convinced; he gives his full

approval to Ventidius' policy:

Without the which a soldier, and his sword,

Thou hast, Ventidius, that

(III. i. 27.)

Grants scarce distinction.

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.1 And their intimate is the absolutely

If the ideas were in Shakespeare's mind that Professor Zielinski of St. Petersburg attributes to him (Marginalien Philologus, 1905), the gracelessness of Charmian passes all bounds. "(Die) muntre Zofe wünscht sich vom Wahrsager allerhand schöne Sachen: 'lass mich an einem Nachmittag drei Könige heiraten, und sie alle als Wittwe überleben; lass mich mit fünfzig Jahren ein Kind haben, dem Herodes von Judaea huldigen soll: lass mich Octavius Caesar heiraten, etc.' Das 'Püppchen' dachte sich Shakespeare jünger als ihre Herrin: fünfzig würde sie also-um Christi Geburt. Ist es nun klar, was das für ein Kind ist, dem Herodes von Judaea huldigen soll.' 'Eπàν €Űρηте, ἀπαγγείλατέ μοι, ὅπως κἀγὼ ἐλθῶν προσκυνήσω αὐτῷ, sagt er selber, Matth. ii. 18. Und wem sagt er es? Den Heiligen drei Königen. Sollten es nicht dieselben sein, die auch in Charmian's Wunschzettel stehen? Der Einfall ist einer Mysterie würdig: Gattin der heiligen drei Könige, Mutter Gottes, and römische Kaiserin dazu." Worthy of a mystery, perhaps! but more worthy of a scurrilous lampoon. It might perhaps be pointed out, that, if fifty years old at the beginning of the Christian

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: Within our files there are,

Of those that served Mark Antony but late,
Enough to fetch him in.

(IV. i. 12.)

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 :

For this,

I'll never follow thy pall'd fortunes more. (11. vii. 87.) Menas is a pirate, but he speaks the thought of the time; for it is only to fortune that the whole

era, Charmian could only be ten at the opening of the play: but this is a small point, and I think it very likely that Shakespeare intended to rouse some such associations in the mind of the reader as Professor Zielinski suggests. Mr. Furness is rather scandalised at the "frivolous irreverence," but it fits the part, and where is the harm? One remembers Byron's defence of the audacities in Cain and objection to making "Lucifer talk like the Bishop of London, which would not be in the character of the former."