Make your best use of this: I have perform’d
Your pleasure and my promise.
(V. ii. 200.)
It is only now and then that such small loans stand out as examples of the “happy valiancy of style” that characterises the drama as a whole. For instance, at the end when Cleopatra is dead and Charmian has applied the asp, the brief interchange of question and answer which Plutarch reports could not be bettered even by Shakespeare.
One of the souldiers seeing her, angrily sayd unto her: “Is that well done, Charmion?” “Verie well,” sayd she againe, “and meete for a Princes discended from a race of so many noble Kings.”
Shakespeare knows when he is well off and accepts the goods the gods provide.
1st Guard.Charmian, is this well done?
Charmian. It is well done and fitting for a princess
Descended from so many royal kings.
(V. ii. 238.)