Notes to Preface
1. Goethe is the most famous spokesman for this view, although he merely alludes to it in passing. See Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, January 31, 1827.
2. Samuel Johnson, Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), VII, 65–66.
3. See, for example, John Palmer, Political Characters of Shakespeare (London: Macmillan, 1945), pp. 308–9.
4. See M. W. MacCallum, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays and Their Background (London: Macmillan, 1910), p. 513, for the claim that the departures from Plutarch in Coriolanus “may have arisen quite naturally and unconsciously from Shakespeare’s indifference to questions of constitutional theory and his inability to understand the ideals of an antique self-governing commonwealth controlled by all its free members as a body.”
5. See James Phillips, Jr., The State in Shakespeare’s Greek and Roman Plays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), p. 206: “In Coriolanus democracy is tried and found wanting.” Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 135, speaks of Coriolanus “searching for a way to accept public office in a democracy.”
6. See, for example, Phillips, p. 104.
7. On this general subject, see Kurt von Fritz, The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954). The idea of the mixed regime originated with Aristotle, was applied to Rome by the Greek historian Polybius, and later in a different form became the basis of Machiavelli’s analysis of the Republic. See in particular Aristotle, Politics, 1293b-1294b, Polybius, Histories, VI.10–18, and Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, I.ii. On the relevance of the idea of the mixed regime to the Roman plays, see Clifford Chalmers Huffman, Coriolanus in Context (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1971), pp. 30–34. Huffman’s book is an impressively documented study of how important and how widespread the idea of the mixed regime was in Renaissance political thought, even among English writers. For evidence that English Renaissance poets were aware of the mixed regime, see Fulke Greville’s A Treatise of Monarchy, stanzas 618–19, in The Remains (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 190.
8. See Machiavelli, Discourses, III.xxiv, and Charles de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, tr. by David Lowenthal (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), p. 91.
9. Montesquieu, pp. 92–93.
10. For a summary of the latest evidence for dating Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra, see the Riverside Shakespeare, ed. by G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), pp. 55, 1343, 1392. The consensus is that the two plays were written sometime during the years 1606–1608. Virtually no basis exists for deciding which of the two was written first, although most editors place Coriolanus after Antony and Cleopatra. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is quite possible that the two plays were conceived and executed more or less simultaneously.
11. At almost the same time that Shakespeare was working on Coriolanus, a French playwright, Alexandre Hardy, wrote a tragedy called Coriolan. See Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), V, 474–76. Later dramatizations of the Coriolanus story, such as James Thomson’s or Bertolt Brecht’s, appear to be direct responses to Shakespeare’s version. The same must be said of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and T. S. Eliot’s poem “Coriolan.” Whether any major artist would have touched the Coriolanus theme without Shakespeare’s example is doubtful.
12. See Huffman, pp. 29–30, Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (London: Methuen, 1965), p. 146, and T. J. B. Spencer, “Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Romans,” Shakespeare Survey No. 10 (1957), p. 31.
13. Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 595.
14. See Bullough, p. 454.
15. Machiavelli’s discussion of the Roman Republic virtually begins with the tribunate and its distinctive role in Roman political life (Discourses on Livy, I.iii). See also José Ortega y Gasset, Concord and Liberty (New York: Norton, 1946), pp. 41–47.
16. Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, tr. by Sir Thomas North (New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1941), II, 302–3.
17. Bullough advances the intriguing theory that Shakespeare came upon the life of Coriolanus through the medium of the life of Alcibiades (V, 455). In Bullough’s hypothetical reconstruction, Shakespeare, starting with Plutarch’s life of Antony, became interested in the story of Timon, which Plutarch tells in the course of narrating Antony’s life. To find material for a play about Timon, Shakespeare turned to Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, which in turn led him to the parallel life of Coriolanus. As speculative as Bullough’s account may be, it has a certain plausibility. See also T. J. B. Spencer, William Shakespeare: The Roman Plays (London: Longmans, Green, 1963), p. 38.
18. Cf. Bullough’s formulation of the contrast, V, 454–55: “Antony and Coriolanus ‘were at once like and unlike,’ both victims of passion, but of very different passions. . . . They exemplified the two complementary aspects of human nature defined by many ethical writers since Aristotle; for if Antony was a slave to the ‘concupiscible’ forces, Coriolanus was at the mercy of the ‘irascible’ elements in his personality. They are indeed parallel portraits.”
19. Though Titus Andronicus should in some sense be classified as one of Shakespeare’s Roman plays, I have left it out of consideration entirely, because it is obviously an immature work and does not display the understanding of Rome Shakespeare developed in his later Roman tragedies.
20. See especially Allan Bloom’s essay, “Julius Caesar: The Morality of the Pagan Hero,” Shakespeare’s Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1964), a discussion which suggested many of the basic ideas of this book.
21. Goddard, pp. 593–94: “Antony and Cleopatra may be taken not only by itself, but as the final part of Shakespeare’s Roman trilogy—Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra—last not in order of composition but in historical sequence. Coriolanus, Brutus, Antony; Volumnia-Virgilia, Portia, Cleopatra: the men, and even more the women, give us a spiritual history of Rome from its austere early days, through the fall of the republic, to the triumph of the empire.”
22. For all quotations from Shakespeare, I have used the new Riverside edition. References to line numbers follow the lineation of this edition. Fortunately for a study relying heavily on textual evidence, the texts of both Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra (and Julius Caesar as well) are in comparatively good condition. The sole authority for all three plays is the First Folio, and there are relatively few disputed readings in the texts, and almost none of any real significance. I have, however, checked all the standard emendations against the Folio original, and in a few cases restored the Folio reading where it seemed to make sufficient sense as it stood not to warrant emendation. I have followed Evans in his practice of bracketing all emendations of the original text, so that readers may be aware of editorial intervention.
Notes to Introduction
1. For a list of similar images, see Maurice Charney, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 103–5.
2. Charney, p. 93.
3. Charney, pp. 102–3.
4. Charney cites them both, pp. 105–6.
5. Cf. Janet Adelman, The Common Liar (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), p. 132.
6. See Charney, pp. 109–12, and Adelman, pp. 153–54. However, Rome sometimes seems as liable to idleness as Egypt (I.iv.76). Ultimately the difference between Egypt and Rome in Antony and Cleopatra reduces to the difference between a country which has long had an imperial regime and way of life and one which is just developing them. That is why Rome has so much to learn from Egypt.
7. II.i.16–20, 28–30, III.vi.64–66, III.vii.20–23, 56–57, 74–75.
8. Charney, pp. 106–7.
9. Charney, p. 95.
10. Charney, pp. 142–57.
11. Cf. J. Leeds Barroll, “The Characterization of Octavius,” Shakespeare Studies, VI(1970), 248.
12. Barroll, pp. 238–41.
13. See Adelman, p. 131: “Although Octavius is the spokesman for measure, he is by no means the spokesman for the idea of Rome itself: our sense of ancient Roman virtue comes not from Octavius but from the descriptions of Antony as he used to be.”
14. See Charney, p. 143, on the connection between “images of temperance and austerity” and “an heroic aristocratic ideal.”
15. Austerity makes strange bedfellows in Goddard, p. 612: “Digestive comfort . . . would have made as little difference to Coriolanus as to Saint Francis himself.” This statement is correct as it stands, but it might be somewhat misleading.
16. See Goddard, p. 612.
17. This word should be thought of as a translation of the Greek word thumos, which, unlike eros, has not found its way into English usage. A reading of Plato’s discussion in the Republic of eros and thumos, the two irrational parts of the soul, is very helpful for understanding the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. See especially 369b-376c and 439a-441c, and above all 440c-d, a passage which associates thumos with anger, austerity, and a concern for justice.
18. Brutus points out that “he is given / To sports, to wildness, and much company” (II.i. 188–89). See also II.ii.116.
19. See MacCallum, p. 513.
20. On the link between these scenes, see Derek Traversi, Shakespeare: The Roman Plays (London: Hollis & Carter, 1963), p. 218.
21. On the availability in England of Machiavelli’s writings, including the Discourses, see Huffman, pp. 110–12, 119–20.
22. A. C. Bradley points out that Shakespeare goes beyond Plutarch in attributing this fate to Sossius. See “Antony and Cleopatra,” Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London: Macmillan, 1909), p. 306.
23. See MacCallum, p. 461.
24. Cf. Traversi, p. 208.
25. Cf. Adelman, pp. 132–34.
Notes to Part One
1. Quoted in the translation of Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 210.
Notes to Chapter 1
1. For a definition of the polis, see Aristotle, Politics, 1253a-b. For a fuller discussion of the difference between the modern state and the ancient city, see Harry Jaffa, “Aristotle,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), pp. 65–67.
2. Aristotle, Politics, 1276b, 1–12.
3. See Aristotle, Politics, 1252b, 30–31.
4. On the style of this speech, see Reuben Brower, Hero and Saint: Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 354–60.
5. Shakespeare’s Plutarch, ed. by T. J. B. Spencer (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 305.
6. In Julius Caesar (I.i), “the tribunes are even put in the position of defending the traditional role of the senatorial class, so that the constitution can remain intact!” (Bloom, p. 82).
7. For the sake of parallelism, it is tempting to use the word erotic to characterize those in whom the force of eros predominates, but this word has such strong connotations in English that its use might be misleading. The most prudent course seems to be to use the adjective appetitive for describing people like Menenius and the majority of the plebeians, in whom eros generally takes the form of appetite.
8. Cf. Rabkin, p. 138.
9. See Rabkin, p. 122, Traversi, pp. 208–12, Judah Stampfer, The Tragic Engagement: A Study of Shakespeare’s Classical Tragedies (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), p. 295, and Roy Battenhouse, Shakespearean Tragedy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), pp. 341–47.
10. See Shakespeare’s Plutarch, pp. 300–1.
11. See Bloom, pp. 79–80.
12. One of the many critics who apparently see nothing problematic about the fable of the belly inadvertently confirms this point. Phillips (p. 155) views Menenius as a straightforward spokesman for Shakespeare, but when he tries to state the moral of the patrician’s tale, he cannot help speaking of the “head” where Menenius spoke of the “belly”: “The chief implication of Menenius’ fable, and of his reference to one citizen as the ‘great toe of this assembly,’ is that as the feet cannot supplant the head in the government of the natural body, no more can the commoners supplant the aristocrats in the government of the political body.”
13. Cf. Goddard, pp. 616–17.
14. See Bloom, p. 81.
15. See Coriolanus, II.ii.144–45.
16. On “the corruption of the people” as “the key to the mastery of Rome,” see Bloom, pp. 80–83.
17. The disparity between nature and convention is perhaps hinted at during the weird moment in Julius Caesar (II.i.101–11) when the conspirators try to determine where the sun rises, only to decide the precise point keeps changing throughout the year and does not correspond with due east, where Rome has built its Capitol. The city tries to remain fixed, while nature varies. On the importance of this scene, see Goddard, pp. 316–17.
Notes to Chapter 2
1. For a psychoanalytic view of Coriolanus, see Otto Rank, Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage (Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1926), pp. 214–17. Positing an Oedipus complex in Coriolanus, Rank claims that from a “hater of his father,” he becomes a “hater of his fatherland” (p. 216). On Coriolanus’ relation to his mother, see R. Browning, “Coriolanus, Boy of Tears,” Essays in Criticism, IV (1954), 18–31, Michael McCanles, “The Dialectic of Transcendence in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus,” PMLA, LXXXII (1967), 51–3, Katherine Stockholder, “The Other Coriolanus,” PMLA, LXXXV (1970), 232–3, and Lawrence Danson, Tragic Alphabet: Shakespeare’s Drama of Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 152–55.
2. See J. L. Simmons, Shakespeare’s Pagan World: The Roman Tragedies (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1973), pp. 51–52.
3. On the importance of the definition of a citizen, see Aristotle, Politics, 1274b-1275b.
4. In the Folio, these lines are ascribed to Menenius. However, in view of the obviously incorrect ascription of the preceding line to Coriolanus, it is reasonable to assign this speech to Coriolanus, especially since Volumnia attributes precisely these sentiments to him earlier in the play (I.iii.30–32). All editors follow this practice.
5. Consider I.i.171–72, I.iv.34–36, II.i.246–53, III.i.137–39. Cf. Aristotle’s discussion of natural slavery, Politics, 1254b.
6. See Polybius, Histories, VI.48–50, and Machiavelli, Discourses, 1.11, v-vi. Sparta was the other principal example of the mixed regime in antiquity. See Huffman, p. 34. Battenhouse, p. 365, points out that Coriolanus has “a Spartan view of society.”
7. Polybius, Histories, VI.45.3–5.
8. See Huffman, p. 70.
9. See Polybius, Histories, VI. 10.13–14, and Machiavelli, Discourses, 1.11. Polybius discusses Lycurgus in Histories, VI. 10, but does not bother to mention the legendary founder of Rome, Romulus, in his discussion of the Roman regime. Machiavelli (Discourses, I.ii) does mention Romulus after discussing Lycurgus, but points out that the laws Romulus gave his people were suitable to a monarchy and could not provide the basis for a republic.
10. Several characters within the play understand that Rome is dependent upon the good fortune of its citizens. See I.iv.44, I.v.20–22, V.iii.119–20, V.vi.117.
11. Plutarch makes this point at the beginning of his comparison of Coriolanus with Alcibiades. See Lives, II, 299. See also Livy, Histories, 11. 38, and Machiavelli, Discourses, III.xiii.
12. Consider I.i.199–200, I.iv.28–29, 38–40, III.i.223–224, 241–42.
13. Brower, p. 377.
14. Plutarch’s Coriolanus has no hesitations about showing his wounds. See Shakespeare’s Plutarch, p. 319.
15. Traversi, pp. 249–51.
16. What is suggested to Coriolanus in III.ii is in effect Aristotle’s idea that natural right is part of political right. See Nicomachean Ethics, 1135b.
17. Shakespeare’s departures from Plutarch in this minor incident show how carefully he rethought the character of Coriolanus. In Plutarch’s account, the Volsce is simply an “old friend,” who was once “host” to Coriolanus, and, far from being poor, was an “honest wealthy man” (Shakespeare’s Plutarch, p. 312). No mention is made of any services he performed for Coriolanus, and Coriolanus does not forget his name. All the changes Shakespeare made have the effect of bringing out Coriolanus’ reluctance to be dependent on another man, especially one beneath him in dignity. Shakespeare might have derived the idea for this incident directly or indirectly from Aristotle’s description of magnanimous men in the Nicomachean Ethics, 1124b: “They seem also to remember any service they have done, but not those they have received (for he who receives a service is inferior to him who has done it, but the magnanimous man wishes to be superior)” (quoted in the translation of W. D. Ross). A reading of the entire section on megalopsychia, or “greatness of soul,” in the Nicomachean Ethics is very helpful in studying Coriolanus, since at many points Aristotle could be describing Shakespeare’s hero. (For example: “He is free of speech because he is contemptuous, and he is given to telling the truth, except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar,” 1124b.) See also Rodney Poison, “Coriolanus as Aristotle’s Magnanimous Man,” Pacific Coast Studies in Shakespeare (Eugene: University of Oregon, 1966), pp. 210–24, and Battenhouse, pp. 365–69.
18. See McCanles, p. 46, and Simmons, pp. 45–46.
19. McCanles, p. 47, and Stockholder, pp. 231–32.
20. This passage is directly based on the comparison of Coriolanus with Alcibiades in Plutarch’s Lives, II, 299–300: “He is less to be blamed that seeketh to please and gratify his common people than he that despiseth and disdaineth them, and therefore offereth them wrong and injury because he would not seem to flatter them to win more authority. For as it is an evil thing to flatter the common people to win credit, even so is it besides dishonesty—and injustice also—to attain to credit and authority, for one to make himself terrible to the people by offering them wrong and violence.”
21. Lives, II, 305. Plutarch’s remark might be traced to Aristotle’s discussion of greatness of soul, Nicomachean Ethics, 1124a.
22. See Bloom, pp. 83–85.
23. On the importance of hidden or indirect government in Republican Rome, see Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., “Machiavelli’s New Regime,” Italian Quarterly, XIII (1970), 63–95.
Notes to Chapter 3
1. In Plutarch, Coriolanus “went on his way with three or four of his friends” (Shakespeare’s Plutarch, p. 334).
2. See, for example, Bloom, pp. 85–86, Charney, p. 187, and F. N. Lees, “Coriolanus, Aristotle, and Bacon,” Review of English Studies, I (1950), 114–25.
3. Politics, 1252b28–1253a5.
4. Politics, 1253a8–18.
5. Politics, 1253a25–29.
6. On the significance of Hercules in Coriolanus, see Eugene M. Waith, The Herculean Hero (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 121–43.
7. See Danson, pp. 154–55.
8. On Coriolanus’ death, see Danson, pp. 159–62. On Coriolanus’ failure to transcend Rome, see McCanles, pp. 50–51.
9. Cf. Troilus and Cressida, IILiii.103–11. See also Plato, Alcibiades I, 132d-133d, and Simmons, pp. 95–98.
10. See D. J. Enright, The Apothecary’s Shop (London: Secker & Warburg, 1957), who sees in the play (p. 51) “the dangers that are often implied in the word ‘political’—the dangers of a situation in which each opposing side understands the other (in the way that Coriolanus is right about the plebeians, and the plebieans are right about Coriolanus), but neither side understands itself.” See also Traversi, pp. 227–28, and L. C. Knights, Public Voices (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971), pp. 42–43.
11. On the connection between style and meaning in the Roman plays, see Charney, chapter 2.
12. See Harry Levin, “Introduction to Coriolanus,” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 1213, and Brower, pp. 217–18.
13. See Charney, pp. 65–66, and Danson, pp. 62–63.
14. A comparison of Brutus’ speech with Antony’s in the preceding scene will confirm the point that in addressing the people, to speak directly, briefly, and truly is not to speak wisely.
15. In North’s Plutarch, the character who breaks in upon Brutus and Cassius “cared for never a Senator of them all.” See Shakespeare’s Plutarch, p. 146, and Bloom, p. 101, p. 110.
16. See Levin, p. 1213.
17. See Brower, pp. 224–26.
18. See Bloom, p. 95.
19. Hence W. I. Carr’s apt characterization of Coriolanus as “a bundle of assertions in a suit of armour” in “‘Gracious Silence’—A Selective Reading of Coriolanus,” English Studies, XLVI (1965), 234.
20. Coriolanus’ second soliloquy (IV.iv.12–26), though not in rhyme, is almost as artificially composed as the first and just as platitudinous, starting from the trite exclamation: “O world, thy slippery turns!” See Sailendra Kuman Sen, “What Happens in Coriolanus” Shakespeare Quarterly, IX (1958), 338.
21. Coriolanus’ “lack of education” is the first point Plutarch makes about the Roman in his biography (Shakespeare’s Plutarch, p. 297). In the corresponding point in Plutarch’s parallel life of Alcibiades, we learn how readily the Greek took to education. Moreover, he had no less a teacher than Socrates.
22. Plutarch describes the Cynic who broke in upon Brutus and Cassius as a man who “took upon himself to counterfeit a philosopher not with wisdom and discretion but with a certain bedlam and frantic motion,” “a hasty man and sudden in all his doing,” who had a “bold manner of speech.” See Shakespeare’s Plutarch, p. 146.
23. On the importance of this “missing scene,” see Stockholder, p. 231.
24. Where Shakespeare found the name Nicanor, or why he used it here, is difficult to discover, but Plutarch in his Life of Phocion does mention a Nicanor who would be an excellent namesake for both a spy and a foil to Coriolanus. See T. J. B. Spencer, William Shakespeare: The Roman Plays, p. 40. Plutarch’s Nicanor achieves command over the city of Athens by deceit, uses “secret means” and bribes to keep himself in power, and can be persuaded to court the favor of the Athenians, and even to “give the people the pastime of common plays” (see Lives, VI, 41, 39). The unpunished treachery of Plutarch’s Nicanor contrasts with the punished loyalty of Plutarch’s Phocion in much the same way that the unpunished treachery of Shakespeare’s Nicanor contrasts with the punished loyalty of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The story of Phocion parallels that of Coriolanus in its broad outlines, a fact to which the mention of Nicanor in IV.iii may be intended to call our attention, thereby extending to Coriolanus the parallel Plutarch draws at the end of his biography between Phocion and another Athenian unjustly sentenced to death by the city (Lives, VI, 48). See also Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, tr. by Richard Knolles (London: 1606), 532g, 704i.
25. See, for example, Rabkin, p. 143.
26. See Kenneth Burke, “Coriolanus and the Delights of Faction,” Hudson Review, XIX (1966), 191–92.
27. For the importance of the exiled Tarquin kings, see Machiavelli, Discourses, I.iii. For the association of Coriolanus with the Tarquins, see V.iv.42–43.
28. According to both Livy and Machiavelli, the Roman Senate’s policy was to make one man bear the brunt of popular anger and then sacrifice him to appease the plebeians. See Livy, Histories, II.xxxv.3–4 and Machiavelli, Discourses, I.iii, viii, xxxiv–v. See also Mansfield, pp. 76–77.
29. See Carr, p. 223, and Simmons, pp. 7, 16–17.
30. See Politics, 1276b-1277b, 1294a-b.
Notes to Part Two
1. Quoted in the translation of Walter Kaufmann, pp. 211–12. See also Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sect. 23.
Notes to Chapter 4
1. See Lord David Cecil, Poets and Story-Tellers (New York: Macmillan, 1949), pp. 8–9: in Antony and Cleopatra “the private life is, as it were, a consequence of the public life.”
2. Traversi, p. 101.
3. See A. P. Riemer, A Reading of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (Sidney: Sidney University Press, 1968), p. 34, MacCallum, p. 344, and Simmons, p. 43.
4. See Bloom, p. 90.
5. The one appeal to political principle in the play, however insincere it may be, is to the principle of the Republic (II.vi.10–19), and has an archaic ring. The absence of the common good threatens to obliterate the distinction between a soldier and a pirate. Menas claims they differ no more than a thief “by land” and a “thief by sea” (II.vi.83–96). Cf. Bradley’s judgment on the Triumvirs: “They are no champions of their country like Henry V. . . . Their aims . . . are as personal as if they were captains of banditti; and they are followed merely from self-interest or private attachment” (“Antony and Cleopatra,” p. 291). See also MacCallum, p. 345.
6. In Coriolanus, Rome appears intent on preserving the Volsces as enemies, perhaps as part of a patrician policy of using foreign wars to divert attention from domestic strife. Notice how certain the Volsces are that their town will be “deliver’d back on good condition” (I.x.2).
7. On the parallel between war and “boys pursuing summer butterflies,” see Coriolanus, IV.vi.94.
8. See Maynard Mack, “Introduction to Antony and Cleopatra,” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, p. 1170, and Ann Slater, Notes on Antony and Cleopatra (London: Ginn, 1971), pp. 22–23.
9. G. Wilson Knight, The Imperial Theme (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), p. 156.
10. See MacCallum, p. 344.
11. See, for example, Shakespeare’s Plutarch, p. 247. The word “senators” appears only once in the play (II.vi.9), and even then is misapplied.
12. Shakespeare’s Plutarch, p. 243, and Barroll, “Octavius,” p. 264.
13. See, for example, Charney, p. 214.
14. But see A. C. Bradley, “Coriolanus” (British Academy Shakespeare Lecture, 1912), reprinted in Studies in Shakespeare, ed. by Peter Alexander (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 220–21, Battenhouse, pp. 330–31, and Jay Halio, “Coriolanus: ‘Shakespeare’s Drama of Reconciliation,’” Shakespeare Studies, VI (1970), 299.
15. Shakespeare’s Plutarch, pp. 299, 339, 351.
16. On this subject, see Machiavelli, Discourses, I.xiv.
17. On the identity of the song, see Peter J. Seng, “Shakespeare’s Hymn-Parody?” Renaissance News, XVIII (1965), 4–6.
18. Perhaps in this context one might interpret the otherwise puzzling Biblical allusions in Antony and Cleopatra. The most striking of these are what seem to be several quotations from the Book of Revelation, concentrated at the point of Antony’s suicide (compare IV.xiv.106–8 with Rev., viii:10, x:6, viii:13, and ix:6; these parallels, and several others, were first pointed out by Ethel Seaton using the Geneva Bible in “Antony and Cleopatra and the Book of Revelation,” Review of English Studies, XXII [1946], 219–24. See also Battenhouse, pp. 176–81). Also suggestive is the number of times Herod of Jewry is mentioned in the play (I.ii.28–29, III.iii.3–4, III.vi.73, IV.vi.12), perhaps an attempt to bring Roman events into line with the Biblical chronology, especially since Herod’s name comes up in conjunction with talk of “three kings” and a miraculous birth (I.ii.26–30). See Battenhouse, p. 173, and William Blisset, “Dramatic Irony in Antony and Cleopatra,” Shakespeare Quarterly, XVIII (1967), 164–65. Finally, by referring to the Biblical “hill of Basan” (III.xiii.127), Antony in effect compares himself to the roaring bulls of Psalm 22, whose opening line does convey something of the emotion Antony is feeling in this particular scene. See J. A. Bryant, Jr., Hippolyta’s View (University of Kentucky Press, 1961), pp. 179–80. One could go on uncovering Biblical allusions in Antony and Cleopatra, but these are enough to make the point that Shakespeare may be trying to remind us of what was happening almost contemporaneously with the Roman drama he unfolds, a drama on another plane that was soon to eclipse in importance the history of Rome, or at least turn it in a new direction. On this general subject, see Simmons, especially pp. 7–14.
19. See J. Leeds Barroll, “Shakespeare and the Art of Character: A Study of Anthony,” Shakespeare Studies, V (1969), 196–97.
20. This defect in Octavius’ rule is evident in his treatment of Pompey, but betrays itself most clearly in his ineffective dealings with Cleopatra, who easily sees through his plans and defeats his purposes, in part because of Dolabella’s disloyalty to Octavius. See Barroll, “Octavius,” pp. 273–83.
21. Antony’s ability to summon up tears and call on men’s pity is already evident in Julius Caesar (III.ii. 169–70, 193–96). See also Shakespeare’s Plutarch, p. 193, pp. 230–32. On the interpretation of IV.ii, see Battenhouse, p. 173, and Arnold Stein, “The Image of Antony: Lyric and Tragic Imagination,” Kenyon Review, XXI (1959), 594.
22. The principle of Antony’s defense of himself to Octavius is enunciated in a different context by Cleopatra: “And when good will is show’d, though’t come too short, / The actor may plead pardon” (II.v.8–9). (When Coriolanus speaks in favor of “good will,” he still insists that it be “effected,” [I.ix.18–19].) The idea of the contrast between deeds and intentions is appropriately introduced by the eunuch Mardian at I.v.15–18.
23. Antony tests the loyalty of his troops in the same way he tests Cleopatra’s—by smoothing the way to betrayal and making the prospect of a deal with Octavius seem attractive. Compare III.xiii. 17–19 with III.xi.4–6.
Notes to Chapter 5
1. See Cecil, p. 10: the love of Antony and Cleopatra “would be essentially altered were it to be transferred to a private setting. If Antony and Cleopatra had been private persons, their story simply could not have happened.” See also C. E. Nolan, “Antony and Cleopatra and the Triumph of Rome,” University Review, XXXII (1966), 200.
2. Cf. Stampfer, pp. 241–43.
3. See Rabkin, pp. 179–84.
4. See, for example, Henry Alonzo Myers, Tragedy: A View of Life (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956), pp. 110–28.
5. Note, for example, the similarity between Cleopatra’s comparing herself with Octavia in III.iii and Hermia’s comparing herself with Helena in III.ii of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
6. See Bloom, p. 53.
7. For a more detailed discussion of hyperbole in the play, particularly its role in lifting the lovers above the comic plane, see Adelman, pp. 110–21.
8. For the link between love and death in the Tristan legend, see Denis De Rougemont, Love in the Western World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1956).
9. For a discussion of suicide in Shakespeare’s Roman plays, see Charney, pp. 209–14.
10. See Riemer, p. 113.
11. See David Daiches, “Imagery and Meaning in Antony and Cleopatra,” English Studies, XLIII (1962), 351.
12. Only the barest hints of an afterlife can be found in Plutarch’s Life of Antony: when Antony hears of Cleopatra’s death, he tells her “I will not be long from thee” and when she is offering a funeral sacrifice to him, she speaks of “the gods where thou art now” (Shakespeare’s Plutarch, pp. 277, 290).
13. See Stein, pp. 595–97, and Traversi, p. 103.
14. Cf. 1 Corinthians, ii:9.
15. See Traversi, pp. 183–86.
16. See III.vi.1–19, III.xiii.182–85, IV.viii.29–39, and Julian Markels, The Pillar of the World: Antony and Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s Development (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968), p. 45.
17. See I.i.33–34, III.xiii.90, 162, IV.xii.20–23, IV.xv.63, V.ii.298–99. See also Adelman, pp. 147–48.
18. Cf. Adelman, p. 149. The tragedy of Rome itself has its origins in similar tensions. Like Coriolanus, Rome cannot stand alone against the whole world, and like Antony and Cleopatra, it cannot make itself into the whole world either without losing its separate identity as a city. From the point of view of the individual citizen the city may appear to be the only true whole, but as the limits of Rome indicate, the city’s “wholeness” is in its own way partial, especially in relation to the cosmic whole (see above, Chapter 1, note 17). For a suggestive discussion of the polis in terms of the classical problem of the whole and the part, see Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), pp. 247–50, 330–31.
19. Cf. 11.25–48 of Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and Turtle,” a poem which explores the same paradoxes of love and death that Antony and Cleopatra does. See Adelman, p. 112.
20. Cf. Adelman, p. 160.
21. Cf. Battenhouse, p. 168.
22. See Elias Schwartz, “The Shackling of Accidents: Antony and Cleopatra,” College English, XXIII (1962), 557.
Notes to Chapter 6
1. One might at first assume that politics and public life are identical, but it is possible to be a public figure without being strictly speaking political. Our world offers numerous examples of people who use fame in a nonpolitical field (entertainment, athletics, education, etc.) as an entrance into politics; by contrast, Antony and Cleopatra seem to regard politics as the springboard, into some new but as yet undefined form of celebrity.
2. Noble must mean something different in Antony and Cleopatra from what it does in Coriolanus if Octavius is able to speak of “noble weakness” (V.ii.344). Most of the paradoxes or oxymorons in Antony and Cleopatra are a result of the revaluation of Roman values that takes place as the play progresses, with defeat becoming victory, and the high and the low as traditionally understood in Rome exchanging places. See I.v.33–34, II.ii.226, 237–39, III.iv.29–30, IV.xiv.78, 108, 136–38, IV.xv.84, V.ii.1–8, 236–37, 316.
3. On “the force of this restrictive clause,” see Ernest Schanzer, The Problem Plays of Shakespeare (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), p. 155.
4. See Cecil, pp. 11–12, John Holloway, The Story of the Night (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 101–5, and Louis Auchincloss, Motiveless Malignity (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), pp. 56–57.
5. See Matthew Proser, The Heroic Image in Five Shakespearean Tragedies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 194. Charmian’s request of the soothsayer (I.ii.26–30) reveals the full extent of transpolitical ambitions.
6. See also III.xiii. 172–82, 191–94, IV.iv.29–33, IV.viii.19–22.
7. See I.i.41, I.iii.27–29, 62–65, II.v.107–8, II.vi.64–70, III.xiii.105, 116–22.
8. John Danby, Poets on Fortune’s Hill (London: Faber & Faber, 1952), p. 136.
9. See III.xi.69–70, III.xiii.167, IV.xiv.34–36.
10. See Stephen Shapiro, “The Varying Shore of the World: Ambivalence in Antony and Cleopatra,” Modern Language Quarterly, XXVII (1966), 25.
11. See, for example, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I.ii.22, Troilus and Cressida, III.ii.119, Romeo and Juliet, I.i.21–23, 169–70, and Twelfth Night, III.i.120.
12. In the correlation of forms of regimes with forms of souls in Books VIII and IX of the Republic, tyranny in the city corresponds to boundless desire in the soul. See 573b, 575a.
13. See Danby, p. 135, p. 139.
14. See Simmons, p. 126, p. 148.
15. See Simmons, pp. 120–21, 136.
16. See I.i.33, I.v.77–78, II.v.78, 93–95, III.xiii.164. See Paul Lawrence Rose, “The Politics of Antony and Cleopatra,” Shakespeare Quarterly, XX (1969), 382–83.
17. See also I.iv.1–3, II.ii.30–35, III.vi.1–38, V.i.35–49, 65–66. Even Antony understands that Octavius is particularly concerned about the “public ear” (III.iv.5). See Barroll, “Octavius,” pp. 265, 272.
18. Octavius’ soldiers do not desert him when he suffers a setback, but take the turn in their fortunes rather calmly (IV.vii.1–3, IV.ix.4–5), whereas the followers of Antony seem peculiarly given to desertion. In fact we never learn how many men Antony has lost in a battle, but only how many he has lost after a battle (III.x.25–34, IV.vi.10–17).
19. See Aristotle, Politics, 1295a, Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV.vi.12, and Cyropaideia, I.iii.18.
20. The word law appears only once in Antony and Cleopatra (III.xii.32–33), and then is used by Octavius, and only in a rather extralegal context: Thidias is told to “make his own edict.” The closest Antony ever comes to laying down a law for his subjects is at I.i.38–40, but this is hardly a conventional statute, even if Thidias is eventually convicted and punished under it.
21. The creativity of the lovers is manifest on the lowest level in their endless invention of new pleasures and diversions, summed up in Antony’s question: “What sport to-night?” (I.i.46–47). On the connection between creativity and nihilism in Antony and Cleopatra, see Terence Eagleton, Shakespeare and Society (New York: Schocken Books, 1967), pp. 122–23.
22. For a possible connection between beast and god in this one image, see Robert G. Hunter, “Cleopatra and the ‘Oestre Junonicque,’” Shakespeare Studies, V (1969), 236–39.
23. Cf. Simmons, p. 18: “In Coriolanus Shakespeare discovers a hero whose fate is the abstract of a larger tragedy, the tragedy of Rome itself.” See Simmons, p. 9, for a statement of the nature of this tragedy: “The pressures and the exigencies of Rome conflict with vision even as the city helps to generate aspiration.”
24. T. S. Eliot is one of the few, calling Coriolanus, together “with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s most assured artistic success” (Selected Essays [New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932] p. 124). As if to prove the point, Charney, p. 40, finds this a “bewildering remark.”
25. Cf. Adelman, p. 159, p. 225 (note 44).