Another day, and final irremediable defeat drives her in fear to the monument and to that pretended suicide which is the immediate cause of Antony's despair:
“Unarm, Eros: the long day's task is done,
And we must sleep.”
When Antony leaves the stage, Shakespeare's idealizing vision turns to Cleopatra. About this point, too, the historical fact fetters Shakespeare and forces him to realize the other side of Cleopatra. After Antony's death Cleopatra did kill herself. One can only motive and explain this suicide by self-immolating love. It is natural that at first Shakespeare will have it that Cleopatra's nobility of nature is merely a reflection, a light borrowed from Antony. She will not open the monument to let the dying man enter, but her sincerity and love enable us to forgive this:
“I dare not, dear,—
Dear my lord, pardon,—I dare not,
Lest I be taken....”
Here occurs a fault of taste which I find inexplicable. While Cleopatra and her women are drawing Antony up, he cries;
“O quick, or I am gone.”
And Cleopatra answers:
“Here's sport, indeed!—How heavy weighs my lord!
Our strength has all gone into heaviness,
That makes the weight.”
The “Here's sport, indeed”! seems to me a terrible fault, an inexcusable lapse of taste. I should like to think it a misprint or misreading, but it is unfortunately like Shakespeare in a certain mood, possible to him, at least, here as elsewhere.
Cleopatra's lament over Antony's dead body is a piece of Shakespeare's self-revealing made lyrical by beauty of word and image. The allusion to his boy-rival, Pembroke, is unmistakable; for women are not contemptuous of youth: