“My resolution's placed, and I have nothing
Of woman in me: now from head to foot
I am marble-constant; now the fleeting moon
No planet is of mine.”
The scene with the clown who brings the “pretty worm” is the solid ground of reality on which Cleopatra rests for a breathing space before rising into the blue:
“Cleo. Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me. Now no more
The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip.—
Yare, yare, good Iras! quick.—Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after-wrath. Husband, I come,
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life.”
The whole speech is miraculous in speed of mounting emotion, and when Iras dies first, this Cleopatra finds again the perfect word in which truth and beauty meet:
“This proves me base:
If she first meet the curled Antony
He'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss
Which is my heaven to have. Come, thou mortal wretch,
{To the asp, which she applies to her breast.}
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool,
Be angry, and despatch. O, could'st thou speak,
That I might hear thee call great Caesar, ass
Unpolicied!”
The characteristic high temper of Mary Fitton breaking out again—“ass unpolicied”—and then the end:
“Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?”
The final touch is of soft pleasure:
“As sweet a balm, as soft as air, as gentle,—
Antony!—Nay, I will take thee too.
{Applying another asp to her arm.}
What should I stay—”
For ever fortunate in her self-inflicted death Cleopatra thereby frees herself from the ignominy of certain of her actions: she is woman at once and queen, and if she cringes lower than other women, she rises, too, to higher levels than other women know. The historical fact of her self-inflicted death forced the poet to make false Cressid a Cleopatra—and his wanton gipsy-mistress was at length redeemed by a passion of heroic resolve. The majority of critics are still debating whether indeed Cleopatra is the “dark lady” of the sonnets or not. Professor Dowden puts forward the theory as a daring conjecture; but the identity of the two cannot be doubted. It is impossible not to notice that Shakespeare makes Cleopatra, who was a fair Greek, gipsy-dark like his sonnet-heroine. He says, too, of the “dark lady” of the sonnets: