In the character of Ventidius, Dryden has filled up, with ability, the rude sketches, which Shakespeare has thrown off in those of Scaeva and Eros.  The rough old Roman soldier is painted with great truth; and the quarrel betwixt him and Antony, in the first act, is equal to any single scene that our author ever wrote, excepting, perhaps, that betwixt Sebastian and Dorax; an opinion in which the judgment of the critic coincides with that of the poet.  It is a pity, as has often been remarked, that this dialogue occurs so early in the play, since what follows is necessarily inferior in force.  Dryden, while writing this scene, had unquestionably in his recollection the quarrel betwixt Brutus and Cassius, which was justly so great a favourite in his time, and to which he had referred as inimitable in his prologue to “Aureng-Zebe.[2]”

The inferior characters are better supported in Dryden than in Shakespeare.  We have no low buffoonery in the former, such as disgraces Enobarbus, and is hardly redeemed by his affecting catastrophe.  Even the Egyptian Alexas acquires some respectability, from his patriotic attachment to the interests of his country, and from his skill as a wily courtier.  He expresses, by a beautiful image, the effeminate attachment to life, appropriated to his character and country: 

  O, that I less could fear to lose this being,
  Which, like a snow-ball in my coward hand,
  The more ’tis grasped, the faster melts away.

The Octavia of Dryden is a much more important personage than in the “Antony and Cleopatra” of Shakespeare.  She is, however, more cold and unamiable; for, in the very short scenes in which the Octavia of Shakespeare appears, she is placed in rather an interesting point of view.  But Dryden has himself informed us, that he was apprehensive the justice of a wife’s claim upon her husband would draw the audience to her side, and lessen their interest in the lover and the mistress.  He seems accordingly to have studiedly lowered the character of the injured Octavia, who, in her conduct towards her husband, shews much duty and little love; and plainly intimates, that her rectitude of conduct flows from a due regard to her own reputation, rather than from attachment to Antony’s person, or sympathy with him in his misfortunes.  It happens, therefore, with Octavia, as with all other very good selfish kind of people; we think it unnecessary to feel any thing for her, as she is obviously capable of taking very good care of herself.  I must not omit, that her scolding scene with Cleopatra, although anxiously justified by the author in the preface, seems too coarse to be in character, and is a glaring exception to the general good taste evinced throughout the rest of the piece.

It would be too long a task to contrast the beauties of these two great poets in point of diction and style.  But the reader will doubtless be pleased to compare the noted descriptions of the voyage of Cleopatra down the Cydnus.  It is thus given in Shakespeare: