For example, Antony insults Cleopatra:
"You have been a boggler ever."
And the proof forsooth is:
"I found you as a morsel cold upon
Dead Caesar's trencher."
But to have been Caesar's mistress was Cleopatra's chief title to fame.
Shakespeare is here probably reviling Mary Fitton for being deserted by
some early lover. Curiously enough, this weakness of Antony increases
the complexity of his character, while the naturalistic passion of his
words adds enormously to the effect of the play. Again and again in this
drama Shakespeare's personal vindictiveness serves an artistic purpose.
The story of "Troilus and Cressida" is in itself low and vile, and when
loaded with Shakespeare's bitterness outrages probability; but the love
of Antony and Cleopatra is so overwhelming that it goes to ruin and
suicide and beyond, and when intensified by Shakespeare's personal
feeling becomes a world's masterpiece.
We have already seen that the feminine railing Shakespeare puts in the
mouth of Antony increases the realistic effect, and just in the same way
the low cunning, temper, and mean greed which he attributes to
Cleopatra, transform her from a somewhat incomprehensible historical
marionette into the most splendid specimen of the courtesan in the
world's literature.
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