The Oxford edition of Antony and Cleopatra contains an introduction by Michael Neill that I've found to be very useful on several occasions, and it was again yesterday because it contains a passage that was largely responsible for the ideas regarding interactionism that I wrote about in yesterday's post. Here's the excerpt in question:

"'He whom you saw yesterday so boldly venturous,' wrote Montaigne, in a passage that might almost have been inspired by the vagaries of Antony's career, 'wonder not if you see him a dastardly meacock tomorrow next... We are all formed of flaps and patches and of so shapeless and diverse a contexture, that every piece and every moment playeth his part. And there is as much difference between us and our selves, as there is between our selves and another.' The 'self', in effect, is no more than the site of endless theatrical self-inventions and one should 'esteem it a great matter, to play but one man.' In Montaigne's analysis the self cannot be expected to 'hang together' in the fashion assumed by psychological naturalism, because it has no fixed and substantial existence."

I've mentioned a couple of times that I hold the opinion that the conflict that truly concerned Shakespeare was located in the audience, and not among the fictional (or historical) characters found on the stage. With this in mind, the dramas can be seen as unfolding in a way that includes every viewer and every reader directly in every action. They can become an endless resource for knowledge of both the self and the other. Or is that redundant?

I'm preparing for my next lecture - next Wednesday at 11 am at the Atwater library - on Antony and Cleopatra, and I found a most interesting observation (among many) in Michael Neill's splendid introduction to the 1994 Oxford edition. He notes that three times in the play, at very important moments, Antony uses the simple phrase "to do thus". Once when telling Cleopatra that he no longer cares for Rome but only for her:

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch

Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.

Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike

Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life

Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair

[Embracing]

And such a twain can do't, in which I bind,

On pain of punishment, the world to weet

We stand up peerless. (1.1)

The next time (2.2) is when he meets the other triumvirs, Octavius and Lepidus, in Rome and the latter elegantly urges the two not to be too vehement in their own defenses. To which Antony replies that even if they were about to engage in civil war, he would follow such advice:

LEPIDUS

Noble friends,

That which combined us was most great, and let not

A leaner action rend us. What's amiss,

May it be gently heard: when we debate

Our trivial difference loud, we do commit

Murder in healing wounds: then, noble partners,

The rather, for I earnestly beseech,

Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,

Nor curstness grow to the matter.

ANTONY

'Tis spoken well.

Were we before our armies, and to fight,

I should do thus.

The third and final time is at his own suicide (4.14), after his servant, Eros, has chosen to kill himself rather than Antony (as Antony had requested):

Thrice-nobler than myself!

Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what

I should, and thou couldst not. My queen and Eros

Have by their brave instruction got upon me

A nobleness in record: but I will be

A bridegroom in my death, and run into't

As to a lover's bed. Come, then; and, Eros,

Thy master dies thy scholar: to do thus.

[Falling on his sword]

As we know, the thematic center of the play is in the conflict between Rome and Egypt, and all that they symbolize. So here we have Antony using the same phrase in showing his allegiance to Egypt (through Cleopatra), to Rome (through Octavius), and finally to neither. These types of small, intricate details keep coming up over and over again in Shakespeare's work. They are not matters of coincidence.