Note 79 — HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.

"The Octavia of Dryden is a much more important personage than in the Antony and Cleopatra of Shakspeare. She is, however, more cold and unamiable, for in the very short scenes in which the Octavia of Shakspeare is introduced, she is placed in rather an interesting point of view. But Dryden has himself informed us that he was apprehensive that the justice of a wife's claim would draw the audience to her side, and lessen their interest in the lover and the mistress. He seems accordingly to have studiously lowered the character of the injured Octavia who, in her conduct to her husband, shows much duty and little love." Sir W. Scott (in the same fine piece of criticism prefixed to Dryden's All for Love) gives the preference to Shakspeare's Cleopatra.