e called
"Anthony and Cleopatra."' No copy of this date is known, and once again
the company probably hindered the publication. The play was first
printed in the folio of 1623. The source of the tragedy is the life of
Antonius in North's 'Plutarch.' Shakespeare closely followed the
historical narrative, and assimilated not merely its temper, but, in the
first three acts, much of its phraseology. A few short scenes are
original, but there is no detail in such a passage, for example, as
Enobarbus's gorgeous description of the pageant of Cleopatra's voyage up
the Cydnus to meet Antony (II. ii. 194 seq.), which is not to be matched
in Plutarch. In the fourth and fifth acts Shakespeare's method changes
and he expands his material with magnificent freedom. {245} The whole
theme is in his hands instinct with a dramatic grandeur which lifts into
sublimity even Cleopatra's moral worthlessness and Antony's criminal
infatuation. The terse and caustic comments which Antony's level-headed
friend Enobarbus, in the role of chorus, passes on the action accentuate
its significance. Into the smallest as into the greatest personages
Shakespeare breathed all his vitalising fire. The 'happy valiancy' of
the style, too--to use Coleridge's admirable phrase--sets the tragedy
very near the zenith of Shakespeare's achievement, and while
differentiating it from 'Macbeth,' 'Othello,' and 'Lear,' renders it a
very formidable rival.

'Coriolanus.'

'Coriolanus' (first printed from a singularly bad text in 1623) similarly
owes its origin to the biography of the hero in North's 'Plutarch,'
although Shakespeare may have first met the story in Painter's 'Palace of
Pleasure' (No. iv.) He again adhered to the text of Plutarch with the
utmost literalness, and at times--even in the great crises of the
action--repeated North's translation word for word. {246} But the
humorous scenes are wholly of Shakespeare's invention, and the course of
the narrative was at times slightly changed for purposes of dramatic
effect. The metrical characteristics prove the play to have been written
about the same period as 'Antony and Cleopatra,' probably in 1609. In
its austere temper it contrasts at all points with its predecessor. The
courageous self-reliance of Coriolanus's mother, Volumnia, is severely
contrasted with the submissive gentleness of Virgilia, Coriolanus's wife.
The hero falls a victim to no sensual flaw, but to unchecked pride of
caste,