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Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,

That sucks the nurse asleep?

As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle.

Oh Antony!

It is worth while to observe that Shakespeare has contrasted the extreme magnificence of the descriptions in this play with pictures of extreme suffering and physical horror, not less striking—partly perhaps to excuse the effeminacy of Mark Antony to whom they are related as having happened, but more to preserve a certain balance of feeling in the mind. Caesar says, hearing of his conduct at the court of Cleopatra:

—Antony,

Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once

Wert beaten from Mutina, where thou slew'st

Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel

Did famine follow, whom thou fought'st against,

Though daintily brought up, with patience more

Than savages could suffer. Thou did'st drink

The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle

Which beast would cough at. Thy palate then did deign

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge,

Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,

The barks of trees thou browsed'st. On the Alps,

It is reported, thou did'st eat strange flesh,

Which some did die to look on: and all this,

It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now,

Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek

So much as lank'd not.

The passage after Antony's defeat by Augustus where he is made to say:

Yes, yes; he at Philippi kept

His sword e'en like a dancer; while I struck

The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and 'twas I

That the mad Brutus ended,

is one of those fine retrospections which show us the winding and eventful march of human life. The jealous attention which has been paid to the unities both of time and place has taken away the principle of perspective in the drama, and all the interest which objects derive from distance, from contrast, from privation, from change of fortune, from long-cherished passion; and contracts our view of life from a strange and romantic dream, long, obscure, and infinite, into a smartly contested, three hours' inaugural disputation on its merits by the different candidates for theatrical applause.

The latter scenes of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA are full of the changes of accident and passion. Success and defeat follow one another with startling rapidity. For-tune sits upon her wheel more blind and giddy than usual. This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue between Antony and Eros:

Antony. Eros, thou yet behold'st me?

Eros. Ay, noble lord.

Antony. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish,

A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion,

A towered citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon't, that nod unto the world

And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,

They are black vesper's pageants.

Eros. Ay, my lord.

Antony. That which is now a horse, even with a thought

The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct

As water is in water.

Eros. It does, my lord.

Antony. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is

Even such a body, &c.

This is, without doubt, one of the finest pieces of poetry in Shakespeare. The splendour of the imagery, the semblance of reality, the lofty range of picturesque objects hanging over the world, their evanescent nature, the total uncertainty of what is left behind, are just like the mouldering schemes of human greatness. It is finer than Cleopatra's passionate lamentation over his fallen grandeur, because it is more dim, unstable, unsubstantial. Antony's headstrong presumption and infatuated determination to yield to Cleopatra's wishes to fight by sea instead of land, meet a merited punishment; and the extravagance of his resolutions, increasing with the desperateness of his circumstances, is well commented upon by Enobarbus:

—I see men's judgements are

A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward

Do draw the inward quality after them

To suffer all alike.

The repentance of Enobarbus after his treachery to his master is the most affecting part of the play. He cannot recover from the blow