and Fury of their lives. Indeed, such love is selfdestructive, and for it the lovers sacrifice the means of securing it against the hostile power of things. Yet, just because it is so plenary and permeating, it becomes an inspiration too. When its prodigal largesse fails, at the hour when it is stripped of its inessential charms, the lovers are thrown back on itself; and at once it elevates them both. Antony, believing Cleopatra dead, and not yet undeceived as to the part that he fancies she played at the last, thinks only of following her to entreat and obtain a reconciliation.

I will o'ertake thee, Cleopatra, and
Weep for my pardon.

(IV. xiv. 44.) When he learns that she still lives, no reproach crosses his lips for the deceit; his only wish as the blood flows from his breast is to be borne "where Cleopatra bides" to take a last farewell. He wrestles with death till he receives the final embrace :

I am dying, Egypt, dying only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.

(IV. XV. 18.) Thereafter he has no thought of himself but only of her, counselling her in complete self-abnegation to seek of Cæsar her honour with her safety, and recommending her to trust only Proculeius-one who, as we soon learn, would be eager to preserve her life.

And her love, too, though perhaps more fitfully, yet all the more strikingly, is deepened and solemnised by trial. After Actium it quite loses its element of mockery and petulance. Her flout at Antony's negligence before the battle is the last we hear her utter. Henceforth, whether she protests her faith, or speeds him to the fight, or welcomes him on his return, her words have a new seriousness

1

and weight. Her feeling seems to become simpler and sincerer as her fortunes cloud, and at her lover's death it is nature alone that triumphs. In the first shock of bereavement Iras, attempting consolation, addresses her as " Royal Egypt, Empress"; and she replies:

No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded
By such poor passion as the maid that milks
And does the meanest chares.

(IV. XV. 72.)

Her grief for her great loss, a grief, perhaps, hardly anticipated by herself, is in her own eyes her teacher, and "begins to make a better life." Even now she may falter, if the usual interpretation of her fraud with the treasure is correct. Even now, at all events, she has to be urged by the natural and royal but not quite unimpeachable motive, the dread of external disgrace. Cleopatra is very human to the last. Her weaknesses do not disappear, but they are but as fuel to the flames of her love by which they are bred and which they help to feed. It is still as the "curled Antony" she pictures her dead lover, and it is in "crown and robe" that she will receive that kiss which it is her heaven to have. But even in this there is a striking similarity to Antony's expectation of the land where "souls do couch on flowers," and where they will be the cynosure of the gazing ghosts. Their oneness of heart and feeling is indeed now complete, and their love is transfigured. It is at his call she comes, and his name is the last word she utters, before she lays the second asp on her arm. The most wonderful touch of all is that now she feels her right to be considered his wife. This, of course, is due to Shakespeare, but it is not altogether new. It occurs in Daniel's

Le plus grand miracle de l'amour, c'est de guérir de la coquetterie. La Rochefoucauld.

tragedy, when she calls on Antony's spirit to pray the gods on her behalf:

O if in life we could not severd be,

Shall death divide our bodies now asunder?
Must thine in Egypt, mine in Italy,

Be kept the Monuments of Fortune's wonder?
If any powres be there whereas thou art
(Sith our country gods betray our case),

O worke they may their gracious helpe impart
To save thy wofull wife from such disgrace.

It also occurs twice in Plutarch, from whom Daniel probably obtained it. In the Comparison of Demetrius and Marcus Antonius, he writes:1

Antonius first of all married two wives together, the which never lomane durst doe before, but him self.

In the biography, when Cleopatra has lifted him to the Monument, we are told:

Then she dryed up his blood that had berayed his face, and called him her Lord, her husband, and Emperour, forgetting her owne miserie and calamity for the pitie and compassion she tooke of him.

It is not, therefore, the invention of the idea, but the new position in which he introduces it, that shows Shakespeare's geni" It has no great significance, either in Plutarch or Daniel. In the one, Cleopatra is speaking in compassion of Antony; in the other, she is bespeaking Antony's compassion for herself. But in Shakespeare, when she scorns life for her love, and prefers honour with the aspic's bite to safety with shame, she feels that now at last their union has the highest sanction, and that all the dross of her nature is purged away from the pure spirit: Husband, I come :

Now to that name my courage prove my title!

I am fire and air: my other elements
I give to baser life.

(v. ii. 290.)

'Cleopatra was actually married to Antony, as has been proved by Professor Ferrero. But Plutarch nowhere else mentions the circumstance, and it contradicts the whole tenor of his narrative.

Truly their love, which at first seemed to justify Aristophanes against Diotima, just because it is true love, turns out to answer Diotima's description after all. Or perhaps it rather suggests the conclusion in the Phaedrus: "I have shown this of all inspirations to be the noblest and the highest, and the offspring of the highest; and that he who loves the beautiful, is called a lover, because he partakes of it." Antony and Cleopatra, with all their errors, are lovers and partake of beauty, which we cannot say of the arid respectability of Octavius. It is well and right that they should perish as they do: but so perishing they have made their full atonement; and we can rejoice that they have at once triumphed over their victor, and left our admiration for them free.

POSITION OF THE PLAY BEFORE THE ROMANCES.
ITS POLITICAL AND ARTISTIC ASPECTS

Coriolanus seems to have been first published in the folio of 1623, and is one of the sixteen plays described as not formerly "entered to other men.' In this dearth of information there has naturally been some debate on the date of its composition, yet the opinions of critics with few exceptions agree as to its general position and tend more and more to limit the period of uncertainty to a very few

months.

This comparative unanimity is due to the evidence of style, versification, and treatment rather than of reminiscences and allusions. Though a fair number of the latter have been discovered or invented, some of them are vague and doubtful, some inapposite or untenable, hardly any are of value from their inherent likelihood.

Of these, one which has been considered to give the terminus a quo in dating the play was pointed out by Malone in the fable of Menenius. Plutarch's account is somewhat bald:

On a time all the members of mans bodie, dyd rebell against the bellie, complaining of it, that it only remained in the middest of the bodie, without doing any thing, neither