And when Thyreus asks her to leave Antony and put herself under Caesar's protection, who “desires to give,” she tells him:
“I am prompt
To lay my crown at his feet, and there to kneel.”
Thyreus then asks for grace to lay his duty on her hand. She gives it to him with the words:
“Your Caesar's father oft,
When he hath mused of taking kingdoms in,
Bestowed his lips on that unworthy place
As it rained kisses.”
It is as if Antony were forgotten, clean wiped from her mind. The whole scene is a libel upon Cleopatra and upon womanhood. When betrayed, women are faithless out of anger, pique, desire of revenge; they are faithless out of fear, out of ambition, for fancy's sake—for fifty motives, but not without motive. It would have been easy to justify this scene. All the dramatist had to do was to show us that Cleopatra, a proud woman and scorned queen, could not forget Antony's faithlessness in leaving her to marry Octavia; but she never mentions Octavia, never seems to remember her after she has got Antony back. This omission, too, implies a slur upon her. Nor does she kiss Caesar's “conquering hand” out of fear. Thyreus has told her it would please Caesar if she would make of his fortunes a staff to lean upon; she has no fear, and her ambitions are wreathed round Antony: Caesar has nothing to offer that can tempt her, as we shall see later. The scene is a libel upon her. The more one studies it, the clearer it becomes that Shakespeare wrote it out of wounded personal feeling. Cleopatra's prototype, Mary Fitton, had betrayed him again and again, and the faithlessness rankled. Cleopatra, therefore, shall be painted as faithless, without cause, as Cressid was, from incurable vice of nature. Shakespeare tried to get rid of his bitterness in this way, and if his art suffered, so much the worse for his art. Curiously enough, in this instance, for reasons that will appear later, the artistic effect is deepened.
The conclusion of this scene, where Thyreus is whipped and Cleopatra overwhelmed with insults by Antony, does not add much to our knowledge of Cleopatra's character: one may notice, however, that it is the reproach of cold-heartedness that she catches up to answer. The scene follows in which she plays squire to Antony and helps to buckle on his armour. But this scene (invented by Shakespeare), which might bring out the sweet woman-weakness in her, and so reconcile us to her again, is used against her remorselessly by the poet. When Antony wakes and cries for his armour she begs him to “sleep a little”; the touch is natural enough, but coming after her faithlessness to her lover and her acceptance of Caesar it shows more than human frailty. It is plain that, intent upon ennobling Antony, Shakespeare is willing to degrade Cleopatra beyond nature. Then comes Antony's victory, and his passion at length finds perfect lyrical expression:
“O thou day o' the world,
Chain mine armed neck; leap thou, attire and all,
Through proof of harness to my heart, and there
Ride on the pants triumphing.”
At once Cleopatra catches fire with that responsive flame of womanhood which was surely her chiefest charm:
“Lord of lords!
O infinite virtue! Com'st thou smiling from
The world's great snare uncaught?”
What magic in the utterance, what a revelation of Cleopatra's character and of Shakespeare's! To Cleopatra's feminine weakness the world seems one huge snare which only cunning may escape.