The death of Antony and Cleopatra is a subject which has been treated by the
greatest wits of our nation, after Shakespeare; and by all so variously, that their
example has given me the confidence to try myself in this bow of Ulysses
amongst the crowd of suitors, and, withal, to take my own measures, in aiming at
the mark. I doubt not but the same motive has prevailed with all of us in this
attempt; I mean the excellency of the moral: For the chief persons represented
were famous patterns of unlawful love; and their end accordingly was
unfortunate. All reasonable men have long since concluded, that the hero of the
poem ought not to be a character of perfect virtue, for then he could not, without
injustice, be made unhappy; nor yet altogether wicked, because he could not
then be pitied. I have therefore steered the middle course; and have drawn the
character of Antony as favourably as Plutarch, Appian, and Dion Cassius would
give me leave; the like I have observed in Cleopatra. That which is wanting to
work up the pity to a greater height, was not afforded me by the story; for the
crimes of love, which they both committed, were not occasioned by any
necessity, or fatal ignorance, but were wholly voluntary; since our passions are,
or ought to be, within our power. The fabric of the play is regular enough, as to
the inferior parts of it; and the unities of time, place, and action, more exactly
observed, than perhaps the English theatre requires. Particularly, the action is so
much one, that it is the only one of the kind without episode, or underplot; every
scene in the tragedy conducing to the main design, and every act concluding with
a turn of it. The greatest error in the contrivance seems to be in the person of
Octavia; for, though I might use the privilege of a poet, to introduce her into
Alexandria, yet I had not enough considered, that the compassion she moved to
herself and children was destructive to that which I reserved for Antony and
Cleopatra; whose mutual love being founded upon vice, must lessen the favour
of the audience to them, when virtue and innocence were oppressed by it. And,
though I justified Antony in some measure, by making Octavia's departure to
proceed wholly from herself; yet the force of the first machine still remained; and
the dividing of pity, like the cutting of a river into many channels, abated the
strength of the natural stream. But this is an objection which none of my critics
have urged against me; and therefore I might have let it pass, if I could have
resolved to have been partial to myself. The faults my enemies have found are
rather cavils concerning little and not essential decencies; which a master of the
ceremonies may decide betwixt us. The French poets, I confess, are strict
observers of these punctilios: They would not, for example, have suffered
Cleopatra and Octavia to have met; or, if they had met, there must have only
passed betwixt them some cold civilities, but no eagerness of repartee, for fear of
offending against the greatness of their characters, and the modesty of their sex.
This objection I foresaw, and at the same time contemned; for I judged it both
natural and probable, that Octavia, proud of her new-gained conquest, would
search out Cleopatra to triumph over her; and that Cleopatra, thus attacked, was
not of a spirit to shun the encounter: And it is not unlikely, that two exasperated
