The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 34
_Eno_. But why, why, why?
_Cleo_. Thou hast forspoke my being in these wars, And say'st it is not fit."
Each phrase of the dialogue reveals her soul, dark fold on fold.
She is the only person who strengthens Antony in his quixotic-foolish resolve to fight at sea.
"_Cleo_. I have sixty sails, Caesar none better."
And then the shameful flight.
I have pursued this bald a.n.a.lysis thus far, not for pleasure merely, but to show the miracle of that portraiture the traits of which can bear examination one by one. So far Cleopatra is, as En.o.barbus calls her, "a wonderful piece of work," a woman of women, inscrutable, cunning, deceitful, prodigal, with a good memory for injuries, yet as quick to forgiveness as to anger, a minion of the moon, fleeting as water yet loving-true withal, a sumptuous bubble, whose perpetual vagaries are but perfect obedience to every breath of pa.s.sion. But now Shakespeare without reason makes her faithless to Antony and to love. In the second scene of the third act Thyreus comes to her with Caesar's message:
"_Thyr_. He knows that you embrace not Antony As you did love but as you feared him.
_Cleo_. O!
_Thyr_. The scars upon your honour therefore he Does pity as constrained blemishes, Not as deserved.
_Cleo_. He is a G.o.d, and knows What is most right. Mine honour was not yielded, But conquered merely.
_Eno_. [_Aside_.] To be sure of that I will ask Antony.--Sir, sir, thou'rt so leaky That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for Thy dearest quit thee."
And when Thyreus asks her to leave Antony and put herself under Caesar's protection, who "desires to give," she tells him:
"I am prompt To lay my crown at his feet, and there to kneel."
Thyreus then asks for grace to lay his duty on her hand. She gives it to him with the words:
"Your Caesar's father oft, When he hath mused of taking kingdoms in, Bestowed his lips on that unworthy place As it rained kisses."
It is as if Antony were forgotten, clean wiped from her mind. The whole scene is a libel upon Cleopatra and upon womanhood. When betrayed, women are faithless out of anger, pique, desire of revenge; they are faithless out of fear, out of ambition, for fancy's sake--for fifty motives, but not without motive. It would have been easy to justify this scene. All the dramatist had to do was to show us that Cleopatra, a proud woman and scorned queen, could not forget Antony's faithlessness in leaving her to marry Octavia; but she never mentions Octavia, never seems to remember her after she has got Antony back. This omission, too, implies a slur upon her. Nor does she kiss Caesar's "conquering hand" out of fear.
Thyreus has told her it would please Caesar if she would make of his fortunes a staff to lean upon; she has no fear, and her ambitions are wreathed round Antony: Caesar has nothing to offer that can tempt her, as we shall see later. The scene is a libel upon her. The more one studies it, the clearer it becomes that Shakespeare wrote it out of wounded personal feeling. Cleopatra's prototype, Mary Fitton, had betrayed him again and again, and the faithlessness rankled. Cleopatra, therefore, shall be painted as faithless, without cause, as Cressid was, from incurable vice of nature. Shakespeare tried to get rid of his bitterness in this way, and if his art suffered, so much the worse for his art. Curiously enough, in this instance, for reasons that will appear later, the artistic effect is deepened.
The conclusion of this scene, where Thyreus is whipped and Cleopatra overwhelmed with insults by Antony, does not add much to our knowledge of Cleopatra's character: one may notice, however, that it is the reproach of cold-heartedness that she catches up to answer. The scene follows in which she plays squire to Antony and helps to buckle on his armour. But this scene (invented by Shakespeare), which might bring out the sweet woman-weakness in her, and so reconcile us to her again, is used against her remorselessly by the poet. When Antony wakes and cries for his armour she begs him to "sleep a little"; the touch is natural enough, but coming after her faithlessness to her lover and her acceptance of Caesar it shows more than human frailty. It is plain that, intent upon enn.o.bling Antony, Shakespeare is willing to degrade Cleopatra beyond nature. Then comes Antony's victory, and his pa.s.sion at length finds perfect lyrical expression:
"O thou day o' the world, Chain mine armed neck; leap thou, attire and all, Through proof of harness to my heart, and there Ride on the pants triumphing."
At once Cleopatra catches fire with that responsive flame of womanhood which was surely her chiefest charm:
"Lord of lords!
O infinite virtue! Com'st thou smiling from The world's great snare uncaught?"
What magic in the utterance, what a revelation of Cleopatra's character and of Shakespeare's! To Cleopatra's feminine weakness the world seems one huge snare which only cunning may escape.
Another day, and final irremediable defeat drives her in fear to the monument and to that pretended suicide which is the immediate cause of Antony's despair:
"Unarm, Eros: the long day's task is done, And we must sleep."
When Antony leaves the stage, Shakespeare's idealizing vision turns to Cleopatra. About this point, too, the historical fact fetters Shakespeare and forces him to realize the other side of Cleopatra. After Antony's death Cleopatra did kill herself. One can only motive and explain this suicide by self-immolating love. It is natural that at first Shakespeare will have it that Cleopatra's n.o.bility of nature is merely a reflection, a light borrowed from Antony. She will not open the monument to let the dying man enter, but her sincerity and love enable us to forgive this:
"I dare not, dear,-- Dear my lord, pardon,--I dare not, Lest I be taken...."
Here occurs a fault of taste which I find inexplicable. While Cleopatra and her women are drawing Antony up, he cries;
"O quick, or I am gone."
And Cleopatra answers:
"Here's sport, indeed!--How heavy weighs my lord!
Our strength has all gone into heaviness, That makes the weight."
The "Here's sport, indeed"! seems to me a terrible fault, an inexcusable lapse of taste. I should like to think it a misprint or misreading, but it is unfortunately like Shakespeare in a certain mood, possible to him, at least, here as elsewhere.
Cleopatra's lament over Antony's dead body is a piece of Shakespeare's self-revealing made lyrical by beauty of word and image. The allusion to his boy-rival, Pembroke, is unmistakable; for women are not contemptuous of youth:
"Young boys and girls Are level now with men; the odds is gone, And there is nothing left remarkable Beneath the visiting moon."
When Cleopatra comes to herself after swooning, her anger is characteristic because wholly unexpected; it is one sign more that Shakespeare had a living model in his mind:
"It were for me To throw my sceptre at the injurious G.o.ds; To tell them that this world did equal theirs Till they had stolen our jewel. All's but naught."
Her resolve to kill herself is borrowed:
"We'll bury him; and then, what's brave, what's n.o.ble, Let's do it after the high Roman fashion, And make death proud to take us."
But the resolution holds:
"It is great To do that thing that ends all other deeds, Which shackles accidents and bolts up change."
It is this greatness of soul in Cleopatra which Shakespeare has now to portray. Caesar's messenger, Proculeius, whom Antony has told her to trust, promises her everything in return for her "sweet dependency." On being surprised she tries to kill herself, and when disarmed shows again that characteristic petulant anger:
"Sir, I will eat no meat, I'll not drink, sir; . . . . . This mortal house I'll ruin, Do Caesar what he can."
And her reasons are all of pride and hatred of disgrace. She'll not be "chastised with the sober eye of dull Octavia," nor shown "to the shouting varletry of censuring Rome." Her imagination is at work now, that quick forecast of the mind that steels her desperate resolve:
"Rather on Nilus' mud Lay me stark nak'd, and let the water-flies Blow me into abhorring."
The heroic mood pa.s.ses. She tries to deceive Caesar as to her wealth, and is shamed by her treasurer Seleucus. The scene is appalling; poor human nature stripped to the skin--all imperfections exposed; Cleopatra cheating, lying, raging like a drab; her words to Seleucus are merciless while self-revealing:
"O slave, of no more trust Than love that's hired."
This scene deepens and darkens the impression made by her unmotived faithlessness to Antony. It is, however, splendidly characteristic and I think needful; but it renders that previous avowal of faithlessness to Antony altogether superfluous, the sole fault in an almost perfect portrait. For, as I have said already, Shakespeare's mistakes in characterization nearly always spring from his desire to idealize; but here his personal vindictiveness comes to help his art. The historical fact compels him now to give his harlot, Cleopatra, heroic attributes; in spite of Caesar's threats to treat her sons severely if she dares to take her own life and thus deprive his triumph of its glory, she outwits him and dies a queen, a worthy descendant, as Charmian says, of "many royal kings." Nothing but personal bitterness could have prevented Shakespeare from idealizing such a woman out of likeness to humanity.
But in this solitary and singular case his personal suffering bound him to realism though the history justified idealization. The high lights were for once balanced by the depths of shadow, and a masterpiece was the result.
Shakespeare leaves out Caesar's threats to put Cleopatra's sons to death; had he used these menaces he would have made Caesar more natural in my opinion, given a touch of characteristic brutality to the calculating intellect; but he omitted them probably because he felt that Cleopatra's pedestal was high enough without that addition.
The end is very characteristic of Shakespeare's temper. Caesar becomes n.o.bly generous; he approves Cleopatra's wisdom in swearing falsehoods about her treasure; he will not reckon with her like "a merchant," and Cleopatra herself puts on the royal robes, and she who has played wanton before us so long becomes a queen of queens. And yet her character is wonderfully maintained; no cunning can cheat this mistress of duplicity: