Yet though the sultry splendours of the scenes seem to blast rather than foster, though the air is laden with pestilence, and none of the protagonists has escaped the infection, the total effect is anything but depressing. As in Macbeth we accept without demur the penalty exacted for the offence. As in Coriolanus we welcome the magnanimity that the offenders recover or achieve at the close. If there is less of acquiescence in vindicated justice than in the first, if there is less of elation at the triumph of the nobler self than in the second, there is yet something of both. In this respect too it seems to stand between them and we cannot be far wrong if we place it shortly after the one and shortly before the other, near the end of 1607.
And that means too that it comes near the end of Shakespeare’s tragic period, when his four chief tragedies were already composed and when he was well aware of all the requirements of the tragic art. In his quartet of masterpieces he was free to fulfil these requirements without let or hindrance, for he was elaborating material that claimed no particular reverence from him. But now he turns once more to authorised history and in doing so once more submits to the limitations that in his practice authorised history imposed. Why he did so it is of course impossible to say. It was a famous story, accessible to the English public in some form or other from the days of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, and at an early age Shakespeare was attracted by it, or at least was conversant with Cleopatra’s reputation as one of the world’s paragons of beauty. In Romeo and Juliet Mercutio includes her in his list of those, Dido, Hero, Thisbe and the rest, who in Romeo’s eyes are nothing to his Rosaline; compared with that lady he finds “Cleopatra a gipsy.”[191] And so indeed she was, for gipsy at first meant nothing else than Egyptian, and Skelton, in his Garland of Laurel, swearing by St. Mary of Egypt, exclaims:
By Mary gipcy,
Quod scripsi scripsi.
But in current belief the black-haired, tawny vagrants, who, from the commencement of the sixteenth century, despite cruel enactments cruelly enforced, began to swarm into England, were of Egyptian stock. And precisely in this there lay a paradox and riddle, for according to conventional ideas they were anything but comely, and yet it was a matter of common fame that a great Roman had thrown away rule, honour and duty in reckless adoration of the queen of the race. Perhaps Shakespeare had this typical instance in his mind when in Midsummer Night’s Dream he talks of the madness of the lover who
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.
(V. i. 11.)
For to the end the poet ignores the purity of Cleopatra’s Greek descent, and seems by many touches to imagine her as of the same type as those undesirable immigrants against whom the penal laws were of so little avail. Nevertheless he accepts the fact of her charm, and, in As You Like It, among the contributions which the “Heavenly Synod” levied on the supreme examples of womankind for the equipment of Rosalind, specifies “Cleopatra’s majesty.”[192] It is not the quality on which he was afterwards to lay stress, it is not the quality that Plutarch accentuates, nor is it likely to have been suggested by the gipsies he had seen. But there was another source on which he may have drawn. Next to the story of Julius Caesar, the story of Antony and Cleopatra was perhaps the prerogative Roman theme among the dramatists of the sixteenth century[193] and was associated with such illustrious personages as Jodelle and Garnier in France, and the Countess of Pembroke and Daniel in England. It is, as we have seen, highly probable that Shakespeare had read the versions of his compatriots at any rate, and their dignified harangues are just of the kind to produce the impression of loftiness and state.
Be that as it may, Cleopatra was a familiar name to Shakespeare when he began seriously to immerse himself in her history. We can understand how it would stir his heart as it filled in and corrected his previous vague surmises. What a revelation of her witchcraft would be that glowing picture of her progress when, careless and calculating, she condescended to obey the summons of the Roman conqueror and answer the charge that she had helped Brutus in his campaign.
When she was sent unto by divers letters, both from Antonius him selfe and also from his frendes, she made so light of it, and mocked Antonius so much, that she disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the river of Cydnus, the poope whereof was of gold, the sailes of purple, and the owers of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sounde of the musicke of flutes, howboyes, citherns, violls, and such other instruments as they played upon in the barge. And now for the person of her selfe: she was layed under a pavillion of cloth-of-gold of tissue, apparelled and attired like the goddesse Venus, commonly drawen in picture: and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretie faire boyes apparelled as painters doe set forth god Cupide, with little fannes in their hands, with which they fanned wind upon her. Her ladies and gentlewomen also, the fairest of them were apparelled like the nymphes Nereides (which are the mermaides of the waters) and like the Graces, some stearing the helme, others tending the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of which there came a wonderfull passing sweete savor of perfumes, that perfumed the wharfes side pestered[194] with innumerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge all alongest the rivers side: others also ranne out of the citie to see her comming in. So that in the end, there ranne such multitudes of people one after an other to see her, that Antonius was left post alone in the market place, in his Imperiall seate to geve audience: and there went a rumor in the peoples mouthes that the goddesse Venus was come to play with the god Bacchus,[195] for the generall good of all Asia. When Cleopatra landed, Antonius sent to invite her to supper with him. But she sent him word againe, he should doe better rather to come and suppe with her. Antonius therefore to shew him selfe curteous unto her at her arrivall, was contented to obey her, and went to supper to her: where he found such passing sumptuous fare that no tongue can expresse it.