Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/396

386 chose the theme of Antony and Cleopatra, not because it was new or extraordinary, but because it was a noble illustration of a normal dilemma of human existence. He knew of course that the defeat in the decisive battle of Actium of the last kingdom of the Grecian empire by triumphant Rome was epoch making, and offered superb opportunities for historical and scenic contrasts; but he did not wish to write a "world drama." When he raises the curtain, Actium has already been fought and the destiny of nations decided; what remains is the personal fate of Antony and of Cleopatra, the former vainly though nobly endeavoring to reanimate his former manhood and loyalty, the latter trying amid the wreck to save her domination over him, and each tortured by lack of true faith in the other. Their emotions in the brief final crisis of their lives Dryden sought to trace with clearness and truth to nature, and to express with majestic simplicity.

SHELLEY AND "THE CENCI"

When Shelley in his preface to "The Cenci" speaks of "teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself," he expresses intentions not widely different from those of all dramatists, including Dryden; but when he mentions his desire to "make apparent some of the most dark and secret caverns of the human heart," he indicates his own predilection. This he followed in choosing as his subject a "dark and secret" crime, the situation into which the monstrous Cenci forces Beatrice being unspeakable and abnormal. As suitable backgrounds, Shelley selects a sinister banquet, a gloomy castle at night, and a prison with instruments of torture. Yet he wishes not to fix attention upon physical horrors, but to use them to call forth in his characters extreme revelations of vice and virtue. He feels that only under such dread circumstances can the deepest potentialities of human nature be displayed. The very extremity of Beatrice's plight lays bare the core of her womanhood, revealing to the full the sensitiveness of chastity and the courage of innocence.