Know, I had still remain'd in Cæsar's camp: Though banish'd from your bed, driven from your house, "Tis true, I have a heart disdains your coldness, And prompts me not to seek what you should offer ; I come to claim you as my own; to show My duty first, to ask, nay beg, your kindness: Your hand, my lord; 'tis mine, and I will have it.'1 Antony, humiliated, refuses the pardon Octavia has brought him, and tells her: 'I fear, Octavia, you have begg'd my life, Nor could my brother grant. . . My hard fortune Subjects me still to your unkind mistakes. But the conditions I have brought are such, You need not blush to take: I love your honour, I have a soul like yours; I cannot take Your love as alms, nor beg what I deserve. I'll tell my brother we are reconciled; He shall draw back his troops, and you shall march To rule the East: I may be dropt at Athens; No matter where. I never will complain, But only keep the barren name of wife, And rid you of the trouble.' 2 This is lofty; this woman has a proud heart, and also a wife's heart: she knows how to give and how to bear; and better, she knows how to sacrifice herself without self-assertion, and calmly; no vulgar mind conceived such a soul as this. And Ventidius, the old general, who with her and before her, comes to rescue Antony from his illusion and servitude, is worthy to speak in behalf of honour, as she had spoken for duty. Doubtless he was a plebeian, a rude and plain-speaking soldier, with the frankness and jests of his profession, sometimes clumsy, such as a clever eunuch can dupe, 'a thick-skulled hero,' who, out of simplicity of soul, from the coarseness of his training, unsuspectingly brings Antony back to the meshes, which he seemed to be breaking through. Falling into a trap, he tells Antony that he has seen Cleopatra unfaithful with Dolabella: Antony. My Cleopatra? Ventidius. Your Cleopatra. Dolabella's Cleopatra. Every man's Cleopatra. Antony. Thou liest. Ventidius. I do not lie, my lord. Is this so strange? Should mistresses be left, You know she's not much used to lonely nights.'' It was just the way to make Antony jealous, and bring him back furious. to Cleopatra. But what a noble heart has this Ventidius, and how we catch, when he is alone with Antony, the man's voice, the deep tones which had been heard on the battlefield! He loves his general like a good dog, and asks no better than to die, so it be at his master's feet. He growls ominously on seeing him cast down, crouches round him, and suddenly weeps: 'Ventidius. Look, emperor, this is no common dew. I have not wept this forty years; but now My mother comes afresh into my eyes, I cannot help her softness. Antony. By Heaven, he weeps! poor, good old man, he weeps! The big round drops course one another down The furrows of his cheeks.-Stop them, Ventidius, Or I shall blush to death: they set my shame, That caused them, full before me. Ventidius. I'll do my best. Antony. Sure there's contagion in the tears of friends: See, I have caught it too. Believe me, 'tis not For my own griefs, but thine. Nay, father!'2 As we hear these terrible sobs, we think of Tacitus' veterans, who, escaping from the marshes of Germany, with scarred breasts, white heads, limbs stiff with service, kissed the hands of Drusus, carried his fingers to their gums, that he might feel their worn and loosened teeth, incapable to bite the wretched bread which was given to them: 'No; 'tis you dream; you sleep away your hours Up, up, for honour's sake; twelve legions wait you, "Twill do you good to see their sun-burnt faces, Their scarr'd cheeks, and chopt hands; there's virtue in them. They'll sell those mangled limbs at dearer rates Than yon trim bands can buy.'3 And when all is lost, when the Egyptians have turned traitors, and there is nothing left but to die well, Ventidius says: 1 All for Love, 4. 1. 2 Ibid. 1. 1. 3 Ibid. "There yet re ain Three legions the town. The last assault An honest pile for burial. . . . Cĥse your death; I care not which I take: I'm only trouble "Tis scarce worth giving. I could wish, indeed, That, like two lions taken in the toils, We might at least thrust out our paws, and wound Antony begs him to go, but he refuses: ... Antony. Do not deny me twice. Ventidius. By Heaven I will not. Let it not be to outlive you. Antony. Kill me first, And with one blow he kills himself. These are the tragic, stoical manners of a military monarchy, the great profusion of murders and sacrifices wherewith the men of this overturned and shattered society killed and died. This Antony, for whom so much has been done, is not undeserving of their love: he has been one of Cæsar's heroes, the first soldier of the van; kindness and generosity breathe from him to the last; if he is weak against a woman, he is strong against men; he has the muscles and heart, the wrath and passions of a soldier; it is this heat of blood, this too quick sentiment of honour, which has caused his ruin; he cannot forgive his own crime; he possesses not that lofty genius which, dwelling in a region superior to ordinary rules, emancipates a man from hesitation, from discouragement and remorse; he is only a soldier, he cannot forget that he has not executed the orders given to him: " Ventidius. Emperor ! Antony. Emperor? Why, that's the style of victory; The conquering soldier, red with unfelt wounds, Salutes his general so; but never more Shall that sound reach my ears. cal ad ty is he to he is ed ty ci is ers He fancies himself on the battlefield, and already passion carries him away. Such a man is not one to govern men; we cannot master fortune until we have mastered ourselves; this man is only made to belie and destroy himself, and to be veered round alternately by every passion. As soon as he believes Cleopatra faithful, honour, reputation, empires, everything vanishes: 'Ventidius. And what's this toy, In balance with your fortune, honour, fame? Antony. What is't, Ventidius? it outweighs them all. Why, we have more than conquer'd Cæsar now. My queen's not only innocent, but loves me. . . . Down on thy knees, blasphemer as thou art, And ask forgiveness of wrong'd innocence! Ventidius. I'll rather die than take it. Will you go? Give to your boy, your Cæsar, This rattle of a globe to play withal, This gewgaw world; and put him cheaply off : I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.' 2 Dejection follows excess; these souls are only tempered against fear; their courage is but that of the bull and the lion; to be fully themselves, they need bodily action, visible danger; their temperament sustains them; before great moral sufferings they give way. When Antony thinks himself deceived, he despairs, and has nothing left but to die: 'Let him (Cæsar) walk Alone upon't. I'm weary of my part. My torch is out; and the world stands before me, Like a black desert at the approach of night; I'll lay me down, and stray no farther on.' 13 Such verses remind us of Othello's gloomy dreams, of Macbeth, of Hamlet's even; beyond the pile of swelling tirades and characters of painted cardboard, it is as though the poet had touched the ancient drama, and brought its emotion away with him. 1 All for Love, 1. 1. 2 Ibid. 2. 1, end. 3 Ibid. 5. 1. By his side another also has felt it, a young man, a poor adventurer, by turns a student, actor, officer, always wild and always poor, who lived madly and sadly in excess and misery, like the old dramatists, with their inspiration, their fire, and who died at the age of thirty-four, according to some of a fever caused by fatigue, according to others of a prolonged fast, at the end of which he swallowed too quickly a morsel of bread bestowed on him in charity. Through the pompous cloak of the new rhetoric, Thomas Otway now and then reached the passions of the other age. It is plain that the times he lived in marred him, that the oratorical style, the literary phrases, the classical declamation, the wellpoised antitheses, buzzed about him, and drowned his note in their sustained and monotonous hum. Had he but been born a hundred years earlier! In his Orphan and Venice Preserved we encounter the sombre imaginations of Webster, Ford, and Shakspeare, their gloomy idea of life, their atrocities, murders, pictures of irresistible passions, which riot blindly like a herd of savage beasts, and make a chaos of the battlefield, with their yells and tumult, leaving behind them but devastation and heaps of dead. Like Shakspeare, his events are human transports and furies-a brother violating his brother's wife, a husband perjuring himself for his wife; Polydore, Chamont, Jaffier, weak and violent souls, the sport of chance, the prey of temptation, with whom transport or crime, like poison poured into the veins, gradually ascends, envenoms the whole man, is spread on all whom he touches, and contorts and casts them down together in a convulsive delirium. Like Shakspeare, he has found poignant and living words,' which lay bare the depths of humanity, the strange noise of a machine which is getting out of order, the tension of the will stretched to breaking-point, the simplicity of real sacrifice, the humility of exasperated and craving passion, which longs to the end and against all hope for its fuel and its gratification.3 Like Shakspeare, he has conceived genuine women,*— 1 Monimia says, in the Orphan (5, end), when dying, 'How my head swims! "Tis very dark; good night.' 2 See the death of Pierre and Jaffier in Venice Preserved (5, last scene). Pierre, stabbed once, bursts into a laugh. For that poor little one you've ta'en such care of; There is jealousy in this last word. 4 'Oh, thou art tender all, Gentle and kind, as sympathizing nature, I'll ever live your most obedient wife, Nor ever any privilege pretend Beyond your will.'-Orphan, 4. 1. |