Then halting-bleeding, with a wound that from a T has been made an H, he still follows the chase. It is a little touch of irony, apt to be overlooked, that he, who has cursed Cleopatra’s magic and raged because kingdoms were kissed away, should now as grand reward have his merits commended to “this great fairy,” and as highest honour have leave to raise her hand—the hand that cost Thyreus so dear—to his own lips. Doubtless, despite his late outbreak, he appreciates these favours as much as the golden armour that Cleopatra adds. Says Antony,
He has deserved it, were it carbuncled
Like holy Phoebus car.
(IV. viii. 28.)
He has: for he is of other temper than his nameless and featureless original in Plutarch, who is merely a subaltern who had fought well in the sally.
Cleopatra to reward his manlines, gave him an armor and head peece of cleene gold: howbeit the man at armes when he had received this rich gift, stale away by night and went to Caesar.
Not so Scarus. He is still at his master’s side on the disastrous morrow and takes from him the last orders that Antony as commander ever gave.
In this Roman legionary the spirit of military obligation still asserts its power; and the spirit of domestic obligation is as strong in the Roman matron Octavia. Shakespeare has been accused of travestying this noble and dutiful lady. He certainly does not do that, and the strange misstatement has arisen from treating seriously Cleopatra’s distortion of the messenger’s report, or from taking that report, when the messenger follows Cleopatra’s lead, as Shakespeare’s deliberate verdict. If the messenger says that she is low-voiced and not so tall as her rival, is that equivalent to the “dull of tongue, and dwarfish” into which it is translated? And finding it so translated, is it wonderful that the browbeaten informant should henceforth adopt the same style himself, and exaggerate her deliberate motion to creeping, her statuesque dignity to torpor, the roundness of her face to deformity—which Cleopatra at once interprets as foolishness—the lowness of her forehead to as much as you please, or, in his phrase, “as she would wish it.” Agrippa, on the other hand speaks of her as one,
whose beauty claims
No worse a husband than the best of men: