Dr. Brandes speaks of Enobarbus as a "sort of chorus"; he is
far more than that; he is the intellectual conscience of the play, a
weight, so to speak, to redress the balance which Shakespeare used this
once and never again. What a confession this is of personal partiality!
A single instance will suffice to prove my point: Shakespeare makes
Antony cast the blame for the flight at Actium on Cleopatra, and manages
almost to hide the unmanly weakness of the plaint by its infinitely
pathetic wording:
"Whither hast them led me, Egypt?
A little later Cleopatra asks:
"Is Antony or we in fault for this?"
and at once Enobarbus voices the exact truth:
"Antony only, that would make his will
Lord of his reason. What though you fled
. . . . . .
. . . why should he follow?"
Again and again Antony reproaches Cleopatra, and again and again
Enobarbus is used to keep the truth before us. Some of these reproaches,
it seems to me, are so extravagant and so ill-founded that they discover
the personal passion of the poet.
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