Antony and Cleopatra (1921) Yale/Appendix A
APPENDIX A
Source of the Play
Shakespeare took the story of Antony and Cleopatra, much of the characterization, and not a little of the language from Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Compared Together, as translated by Sir Thomas North (1st ed. 1579). This most notable among biographies is first of all a study of character and hence lent itself here, as in the case of Julius Cæsar, to the purpose of the dramatist.
The story of Antony and Cleopatra as Shakespeare tells it is much abridged from Plutarch. The events between Antony's marriage with Octavia in 40 B. C. and the battle of Actium in 31 B. C. contain little of dramatic interest. Antony's unsuccessful Parthian campaign would have only hindered the narrative; and Shakespeare wisely omits and condenses. Even so, the mosaic of little scenes in the third and fourth acts represents the dramatist's difficulty with a sweep of history so extensive. Shakespeare invents no action of importance; he regarded his source as history, and was faithful to it; but it was not the Roman empire and its fate which interested him. Indeed, his view of the Roman world and the problems of a vast international organization is quite without comprehension, as one would expect from an inhabitant of a self-contained England just emerging from medievalism. Rather he viewed these adventures of Rome in the East as a romantic setting merely for a great and human story of a lover who loved not wisely, but too well.
In language, as in plot, Shakespeare displays here his accustomed economy. Wherever North's expressive prose may be raised into poetry, he does so with little change of vocabulary. He tears out words, phrases, sentences from his source, and rebuilds according to his own design. Sometimes the suggestions in North are so good that the dramatist has scarcely improved upon them. But usually his rendering makes all the difference between fair prose and great poetry. Compare the lines in Shakespeare (IV. xiii. 51–58) with this from North:
'And as for himselfe, that she should not lament nor sorow 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 & honours he had received, considering that while he lived he was the noblest and greatest Prince of the world, & that now he was overcome, not cowardly, but valiantly, a Romaine by an other Romaine.'
This represents perhaps the extreme of dependence. A fairer idea of the relationship between the two texts may be gained by considering also this which follows in comparison with III. ix. Here the first sentence, which merely records a dramatic situation, has served as the suggestion for a great scene.
'When he arrived at the head of Tænarus, there Cleopatræs women first brought Antonius and Cleopatra to speake together, . . . Now for himself, he determined to cross over into Africk, & took one of his carects or hulks loden with gold, . . . & gave it unto his friends: commanding them to depart, and to seek to save themselves. They answered him weeping, that they would neither doe it, nor yet forsake him. Then Antonius verie courteously and lovingly did comfort them, and prayed them to depart: and wrote unto Theophilus governour of Corinthe, that he would see them safe, & helpe to hide them in some secret place, untill they had made their way & peace with Cæsar.'
Shakespeare adds only one important personality to the drama, that of the cool and slightly cynical Enobarbus, who in Plutarch is little more than a name. To Cleopatra he gives that nobleness in sensuality and unwithering charm which has made the creature of his imagination far more real than the historical figure of the great queen. Antony gains also. The man himself, as Plutarch conceived of him, was nobler than his deeds. This Shakespeare realized, and without changing the story of his degradation, gives his hero words which reveal the generous emotion and noble mind of a hero. The play lives, however, chiefly because of the seductive splendor of Cleopatra, the most feminine and the most pagan of Shakespeare's women.