Cleopatra’s whole character is the triumph of the voluptuous, of the love of pleasure and the power of giving it, over every other consideration. Octavia is a dull foil to her, and Fulvia a shrew and shrill-tongued. What a picture do those lines give of her—
‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom steal
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.’
What a spirit and fire in her conversation with Antony’s messenger who brings her the unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia! How all the pride of beauty and of high rank breaks out in her promised reward to him—
——‘There’s gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss!’—
She had great and unpardonable faults, but the grandeur of her death almost redeems them. She learns from the depth of despair the strength of her affections. She keeps her queen-like state in the last disgrace, and her sense of the pleasurable in the last moments of her life. She tastes a luxury in death. After applying the asp, she says with fondness—
‘Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,