ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. On 20 May 1608. Blount entered in the Stationers' Register "A Book called Antony and Cleo patra.* This was undoubtedly Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra.> Internal evidence also places the date of composition at 1607-08, when the dramatist was in the full maturity of his powers. So far as we know, the play was not printed until it appeared in the First Folio of 1623. Shakespeare's single source, "The Life of Marcus Antonius* in North's 'Plu tarch,' is followed closely, except for certain omissions which serve to accelerate the dramatic action and to free Antony from unjust charges of voluptuousness and cruelty brought against him by history. While Antony and Cleo patra) ranks high among the great tragedies of Shakespeare's third period of dramatic activity, it is the most faultily constructed of all of them. Certain critics profess to have detected a change of emphasis at the end of the third act, where the purely historical interest of the first part gives way to the psychological and personal interest connected with the two prin cipal characters in the second part of the play. But the apparent change of emphasis is unreal; the latter interest is dominant throughout the play, the historical material of the first part merely furnishing a spectacular background of empire and war for the drawing of protagonists of almost superhuman proportions. A more serious blemish is the confusion resulting from the introduction, particularly in the fourth act, of short, scrappy scenes of battle with con stantly changing groups of actors. As in the fourth act of (King Lear,> the necessity of tak ing in imagination frequent and fatiguing jour neys over thousands of miles is bewildering to the reader's mind and detracts from the im pression of unity necessary in a perfectly con structed drama. In spite of differences of opinion, however, (Antony and Cleopatra) is a pure tragedy, in which the moral purpose of the dramatist predominates over either historical or political considerations. The whole play is a powerful elaboration, in language of un paralleled beauty and imaginative power, of the theme of inevitable destruction visited upon a man of extraordinary possibilities because of voluptuous self-indulgence. Antony, a man of prodigal powers and of heroic but unsymmetri cal proportions, is placed in an enervating at mosphere of sensuous splendors; the strong sensual set of his nature responds to the physi cal fascination of Cleopatra so that he becomes her slave; his imagination is ensnared by her endless variety; and, in spite of vigorous resist ance, he finally plunges to destruction. His noble
ness of nature takes corruption from his one (vicious mole of natur' He loses his prodigious energy, forgets the meaning of honor, his judg ment becomes impaired and the joy of life is swallowed up in the despair of spent forces, out of which he snatches just strength enough to die bravely. Though Shakespeare denies none of the glory of earthly pomp and the splendor of sen suous passion, still as an artist he is true to the moral law which pronounces the worship of pleasure a deceit and a snare. In
Shakespeare has given us the most complex and wonderful of all his miraculous creations of women. She is the personification of voluptuous attractiveness, whose fascination lies in her power of appeal not merely to the senses but to the sensuous imagination. In spite of her su perior mental qualities, her unparalleled grace and beauty, and her vivacity of imagination, we still find in her all that is gross and wanton in womanhood. As Mrs. Jameson says, '
Bibliography.— Bradley, A. C., pearean Tragedy) (New York 1904) ; id., 'Oxford Lectures on English Poetry' (ib. 1905) ; Corson, Hiram, (Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare' (Boston 1889) • Jame son, Anna, 'Shakespeare's Heroines' (1832). A complete bibliography will be found in Furness, H. H., 'New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare' (Philadelphia 1873 et seq.).