Part 67

CLEOPATRA.

No, no; I love not that way; you are cozen'd; I love with as much ambition as a conqueror, And where I love will triumph!

CÆSAR.

So you shall: My heart shall be the chariot that shall bear you: All I have won shall wait upon you. By the gods, The bravery of this woman's mind has fir'd me! Dear mistress, shall I but this once----

CLEOPATRA.

How! Cæsar! Have I let slip a second vanity That gives thee hope?

CÆSAR.

You shall be absolute, And reign alone as queen; you shall be any thing.

CLEOPATRA.

* * * *

Farewell, unthankful!

CÆSAR.

Stay!

CLEOPATRA.

I will not.

CÆSAR. I command.

CLEOPATRA.

Command, and go without, sir, I do command thee be my slave forever, And vex, while I laugh at thee!

CÆSAR.

Thus low, beauty---- [He kneels

CLEOPATRA.

It is too late; when I have found thee absolute, The man that fame reports thee, and to me, May be I shall think better. Farewell, conqueror!

(Exit.)

Now this is magnificent poetry, but this is not Cleopatra, this is not "the gipsey queen." The sentiment here is too profound, the majesty too real, and too lofty. Cleopatra could be great by fits and starts, but never sustained her dignity upon so high a tone for ten minutes together. The Cleopatra of Fletcher reminds us of the antique colossal statue of her in the Vatican, all grandeur and grace. Cleopatra in Dryden's tragedy is like Guido's dying Cleopatra in the Pitti Palace, tenderly beautiful. Shakspeare's Cleopatra is like one of those graceful and fantastic pieces of antique Arabesque, in which all anomalous shapes and impossible and wild combinations of form are woven together in regular confusion and most harmonious discord: and such, we have reason to believe, was the living woman herself, when she existed upon this earth.

OCTAVIA.

I do not understand the observation of a late critic, that in this play "Octavia is only a dull foil to Cleopatra." Cleopatra requires no foil, and Octavia is not dull, though in a moment of jealous spleen, her accomplished rival gives her that epithet. It is possible that her beautiful character, if brought more forward and colored up to the historic portrait, would still be eclipsed by the dazzling splendor of Cleopatra's; for so I have seen a flight of fireworks blot out for a while the silver moon and ever-burning stars. But here the subject of the drama being the love of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavia is very properly kept in the background, and far from any competition with her rival: the interest would otherwise have been unpleasantly divided, or rather Cleopatra herself must have served but as a foil to the tender, virtuous, dignified, and generous Octavia, the very beau ideal of a noble Roman lady:--

Admired Octavia, whose beauty claims No worse a husband than the best of men; Whose virtues and whose general graces speak That which none else can utter.

Dryden has committed a great mistake in bringing Octavia and her children on the scene, and in immediate contact with Cleopatra. To have thus violated the truth of history might have been excusable, but to sacrifice the truth of nature and dramatic propriety, to produce a mere stage effect, was unpardonable. In order to preserve the unity of interest, he has falsified the character of Octavia as well as that of Cleopatra: he has presented us with a regular scolding-match between the rivals, in which they come sweeping up to each other from opposite sides of the stage, with their respective trains, like two pea-hens in a passion. Shakspeare would no more have brought his captivating, brilliant, but meretricious Cleopatra into immediate comparison with the noble and chaste simplicity of Octavia, than a connoisseur in art would have placed Canova's Dansatrice, beautiful as it is, beside the Athenian Melpomene, or the Vestal of the Capitol.