Yet the passion
of desire that sways Antony is so splendidly portrayed; is, too, so
dominant in all of us, that we accept it at once as explaining the
inexplicable.
In measure as Shakespeare ennobled Antony, the historical fact of
ultimate defeat and failure allowed him to degrade Cleopatra. And this
he did willingly enough, for from the moment he took up the subject he
identified the Queen of Egypt with his own faithless mistress, Mary
Fitton, whom he had already tried to depict as "false Cressid." This
identification of himself and his own experience of passion with the
persons and passions of the story explains some of the faults of the
drama; while being the source, also, of its singular splendour.
In this play we have the finest possible example of the strife between
Shakespeare's yielding poetic temperament and the severity of his
intellect. He heaps praises on Antony, as we have seen, from all sides;
he loved the man as a sort of superb
alter ego, and yet his
intellectual fairness is so extraordinary that it compelled him to
create a character who should uphold the truth even against his heart's
favourite.
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