On one question about Cleopatra both editors, Mr. Case more tentatively and Dr. Furness very decidedly, dissent from the interpretation given in the last pages of my lecture. The question is how we are to understand the fact that, although on Antony’s death Cleopatra expresses her intention of following him, she does not carry out this intention until she has satisfied herself that Octavius means to carry her to Rome to grace his triumph. Though I do not profess to feel certain that my interpretation is right, it still seems to me a good deal the most probable, and therefore I have not altered what I wrote. But my object here is not to defend my view or to criticise other views, but merely to call attention to the discussion of the subject in Mr. Case’s Introduction and Dr. Furness’s Preface.
NOTE D
Shakespeare, it seems clear, imagined Cleopatra as a gipsy. And this, I would suggest, may be the explanation of a word which has caused much difficulty. Antony, when ‘all is lost,’ exclaims (IV. x. 38):
| O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,— Whose eye beck’d forth my wars, and call’d them home, Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,— Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose, Beguil’d me to the very heart of loss. |
Pope changed ‘grave’ in the first line into ‘gay.’ Others conjecture ‘great’ and ‘grand.’ Steevens says that ‘grave’ means ‘deadly,’ and that the word ‘is often used by Chapman’ thus; and one of his two quotations supports his statement; but certainly in Shakespeare the word does not elsewhere bear this sense. It could mean ‘majestic,’ as Johnson takes it here. But why should it not have its usual meaning? Cleopatra, we know, was a being of ‘infinite variety,’ and her eyes may sometimes have had, like those of some gipsies, a mysterious gravity or solemnity which would exert a spell more potent than her gaiety. Their colour, presumably, was what is called ‘black’; but surely they were not, like those of Tennyson’s Cleopatra, ‘bold black eyes.’ Readers interested in seeing what criticism is capable of may like to know that it has been proposed to read, for the first line of the quotation above, ‘O this false fowl of Egypt! haggard charmer.’ [Though I have not cancelled this note I have modified some phrases in it, as I have not much confidence in my suggestion, and am inclined to think that Steevens was right.]
[1] As this lecture was composed after the publication of my Shakespearean Tragedy I ignored in it, as far as possible, such aspects of the play as were noticed in that book, to the Index of which I may refer the reader.
[2] See Note A.
[3] ‘Now whilest Antonius was busie in this preparation, Octavia his wife, whom he had left at Rome, would needs take sea to come unto him. Her brother Octauius Cæsar was willing vnto it, not for his respect at all (as most authors do report) as for that he might haue an honest colour to make warre with Antonius if he did misuse her, and not esteeme of her as she ought to be.’—Life of Antony (North’s Translation), sect. 29. The view I take does not, of course, imply that Octavius had no love for his sister.
[4] See Note B.