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Horace's Influence on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
However closely Shakespeare in writing Antony and Cleopatra may have followed North's Plutarch, he did not find in the biography a ready-made tragic heroine. Though Plutarch's Cleopatra is admittedly vivid and fascinating during her days of prosperity, she falls far below the demands of tragedy when her fortune changes. For the Cleopatra of the last two acts of his play, Shakespeare had to look elsewhere. It is my belief that he found what he wanted in Horace's Cleopatra Ode.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947
References
1 Plutarch, “The Life of Marcus Antonius,” in Shakespeare's Plutarch, edited by W. W. Skeat (London: Macmillan & Co., 1904), p. 225.
2 Ibid., pp. 224-225.
3 Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra,” iii. xiii. 73 ff.; v. ii. 13 ff.; v. ii. 120 ff. In this paper all references to Shakespeare's works are from The Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by G. L. Kittredge (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1936).
4 v.ii.338-340.
5 Plutarch, op. cit., p. 222.
6 v.i.65-66.
7 Plutarch, op. cit., pp. 226-227.
8 Horace, The Odes and Epodes, The Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1934), with an English translation by C. E. Bennett, pp. 100-101. Bennett's translation of the passage quoted is: “Yet she, seeking to die a nobler death, showed for the dagger's point no woman's fear, nor sought to win with her swift fleet some secret shore; she even dared to gaze with face serene upon her fallen palace; courageous, too, to handle poisonous asps, that she might draw black venom to her heart, waxing bolder as she resolved to die; scorning, in sooth, the thought of being borne, a queen no longer, on hostile galleys to grace a glorious triumph—no craven woman she!
9 v.ii.55 ff.
10 v.ii.109-110.
11 v.ii.208-230.
12 v.ii.318-319.
13 v.ii.349-351.
14 According to the bibliography for Horace in CBEL, i, 803, and to STC, pp. 306-307, no translation of the Odes or Epodes of Horace was available.
15 See T. W. Baldwin's William Shakespere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944), ii, 497-525. Through citation of passages somewhat parallel in phrasing, Baldwin rather conclusively establishes Shakespeare's acquaintance with Horace's Odes, probably in Lambrinus's edition. Several of these parallelisms—long noticed by Shakespearean scholars—occur in Antony and Cleopatra but have no direct bearing on the thesis of this paper beyond indicating Shakespeare's lifelong awareness of Horace.
16 Odes i, 22; quoted in Titus Andronicus, rv.ii.20-21. This passage, which is contained in Lyly's Grammar, a schoolbook widely used in the sixteenth century, does not of course indicate that Shakespeare had an extensive knowledge of Horace (Baldwin, op. cit., ii, 499).—Another direct reference to Horace occurs in Love's Labor's Lost, iv.ii.104.
17 Plutarch, op. cit., p. 201.
18 Ibid., p. 206.
19 Horace, op. cit., pp. 98-99. Bennett's translation is: “Before this day it had been wrong to bring our Caecuban forth from ancient bins, while yet the frenzied queen was plotting ruin 'gainst the Capitol and destruction to the empire, with her polluted crew of creatures foul with lust—a woman mad enough to nurse the wildest hopes, and drunk with Fortune's favors.”
20 iii.vi.66-68.
21 Horace, of. cit., Epode ix, 11, 11-16, p. 386. Bennett's translation: “The Roman, alas! (ye, O men of after times, will deny the charge)—the Roman bears stakes and weapons at a woman's behest, and, a soldier, can bring himself to become the minion of withered eunuchs, while amid the soldier's standards the sun shines on the shameful Egyptian pavilion.”
22 iii.vi.93-96.
23 Cf. i.i.1-10; iii, x.
24 T. W. Baldwin, op. cit., ii, 497-525.