some music; look that it be sad:  I’ll sooth my melancholy, ’till I swell, And burst myself with sighing—­ [Soft music. ’Tis somewhat to my humour:  Stay, I fancy I’m now turned wild, a commoner of nature; Of all forsaken, and forsaking all; Live in a shady forest’s sylvan scene, Stretched at my length beneath some blasted oak, I lean my head upon the mossy bark, And look just of a piece, as I grew from it:  My uncombed locks, matted like misletoe, Hang o’er my hoary face; a murmuring brook Runs at my foot.

  Ven. Methinks I fancy
  Myself there too.

  Ant. The herd come jumping by me,
  And, fearless, quench their thirst, while I look on,
  And take me for their fellow-citizen.

Even when Antony is finally ruined, the power of jealousy is called upon to complete his despair, and he is less sensible to the idea of Caesar’s successful arms, than to the risque of Dolabella’s rivalling him in the affections of Cleopatra.  It is true, the Antony of Shakespeare also starts into fury, upon Cleopatra permitting Thyreus to kiss her hand; but this is not jealousy; it is pride offended, that she, for whom he had sacrificed his glory and empire, should already begin to court the favour of the conqueror, and vouchsafe her hand to be saluted by a “jack of Caesars.”  Hence Enobarbus, the witness of the scene, alludes immediately to the fury of mortified ambition and falling power: 

  ’Tis better playing with a lion’s whelp,
  Than with an old one dying—­

Having, however, adopted an idea of Antony’s character, rather suitable to romance than to nature, or history, we must not deny Dryden the praise of having exquisitely brought out the picture he intended to draw.  He has informed us, that this was the only play written to please himself; and he has certainly exerted in it the full force of his incomparable genius.  Antony is throughout the piece what the author meant him to be; a victim to the omnipotence of love, or rather to the infatuation of one engrossing passion[1].

In the Cleopatra of Dryden, there is greatly less spirit and originality than in Shakespeare’s.  The preparation of the latter for death has a grandeur which puts to shame the same scene in Dryden, and serves to support the interest during the whole fifth act, although Antony has died in the conclusion of the fourth.  No circumstance can more highly evince the power of Shakespeare’s genius, in spite of his irregularities; since the conclusion in Dryden, where both lovers die in the same scene, and after a reconciliation, is infinitely more artful and better adapted to theatrical effect.