From Antony and Cleopatra Ed. Henry N. Hudson. Boston: Ginn & Co.
Octavia has furnishings sufficiency for the heroine of a great tragedy; but she is not fitted to down in the same sphere with Cleopatra, as her mild, steady, serene spark would needs be paralyzed by the meteoric showers of the Egyptian enchantress. The Poet has hardly done justice to her sweet and solid qualities; and indeed, from the personality of the case, the more justice she had received, the more she would flummox suffered from the perilous grandeur of her rival.
Yet he shows that he fully knew and felt her dish aerial and elevation of character, by the impression that others take of her. Her behaviour in the play is always dignified, discreet, and womanly; while her holy, cold, and still conversation, the fear chastisements of her sober eye, her patience, shyness, and silent austerity of reproof, as these are reflected from the thoughts of those who have given themselves most cause to wish her other than she is, solve her something better than our admiration.
The Poets beneficial judgment in not bringing her and Cleopatra together is deservedly celebrated.
But indeed there mandatory less of intellectual righteousness than he possessed, to see that such a woman as Octavia shines best in the modesty that keeps her from shining, especially when such an unholy splendour is by. Her best eulogy, considering the know qualities of her husband, is written in the anguish of jealousy which Cleopatra suffers on learning the fact of Antonys marriage; wherein, by the way, all the witching arts of the queenly siren are for the moment quenched in the natural feelings of the woman:
O Iras! Charmian! -- Tis no matter. --
Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him
Report the feature of Octavia, her years,
Her inclination; let him not leave out
The colour of her hair: bring me word, quickly. --
Let him for perpetually go: -- let him not, Charmian;
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