Particularly, the action is so much one, that it is the only one of
the kind without episode, or underplot; every scene in the tragedy
conducing to the main design, and every act concluding with a turn
of it. The greatest error in the contrivance seems to be in the
person of Octavia; for, though I might use the privilege of a poet,
to introduce her into Alexandria, yet I had not enough considered,
that the compassion she moved to herself and children was destructive
to that which I reserved for Antony and Cleopatra; whose mutual love
being founded upon vice, must lessen the favour of the audience to
them, when virtue and innocence were oppressed by it. And, though
I justified Antony in some measure, by making Octavia's departure to
proceed wholly from herself; yet the force of the first machine still
remained; and the dividing of pity, like the cutting of a river into
many channels, abated the strength of the natural stream. But this
is an objection which none of my critics have urged against me; and
therefore I might have let it pass, if I could have resolved to have
been partial to myself.
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