He does not present us
with groups of stage-puppets or poetical machines making set
speeches on human life, and acting from a calculation of ostensible
motives, but he brings living men and women on the scene, who speak
and act from real feelings, according to the ebbs and flows of
passion, without the least tincture of the pedantry of logic or
rhetoric. Nothing is made out by inference and analogy, by climax
and antithesis, but everything takes place just as it would have
done in reality, according to the occasion.--The character of
Cleopatra is a masterpiece. What an extreme contrast it affords to
Imogen! One would think it almost impossible for the same person to
have drawn both. She is voluptuous, ostentatious, conscious,
boastful of her charms, haughty, tyrannical, fickle. The luxurious
pomp and gorgeous extravagance of the Egyptian queen are displayed
in all their force and lustre, as well as the irregular grandeur of
the soul of Mark Antony. Take only the first four lines that they
speak as an example of the regal style of love-making.
Cleopatra. If it be love, indeed, tell me how much?
Antony. There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
Cleopatra. I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.
Antony. Then must thou needs find out new heav'n, new earth.
The rich and poetical description of her person, beginning:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick--
seems to prepare the way for, and almost to justify the subsequent
infatuation of Antony when in the sea-fight at Actium, he leaves the
battle, and 'like a doting mallard' follows her flying sails.
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