Cleopatra
Page 4
act 2, scene 5, lines 60–68
To call this Cleopatra a hellcat seems an understatement. After striking the unhappy Messenger twice, she drags him up and down and is about to knife him when off he runs. Sagacity returns with the realization that she has loved too well. Feigning a collapse she yet confronts her own ambivalence at being abandoned. Her Antony is now a perspective, Gorgon one way, Mars the other. Curiously, she sees him as the female Gorgon, serpentine and turning victims to stone. Yet her discomfiture passes into a cold estimate of her rival.
When again we are in her Alexandrian palace, the wretched Messenger is called back and saves himself from another beating with his apt responses:
Cleopatra: Where is the fellow?
Alexas: Half afeard to come.
Cleopatra: Go to, go to. [Enter the Messenger as before]
Come hither, sir.
Alexas: Good Majesty,
Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you
But when you are well pleased.
Cleopatra: That Herod’s head
I’ll have; but how, when Antony is gone,
Through whom I might command it?—Come thou near.
Messenger: Most gracious Majesty!
Cleopatra: Didst thou behold Octavia?
Messenger: Ay, dread Queen.
Cleopatra: Where?
Messenger: Madam, in Rome.
I looked her in the face, and saw her led
Between her brother and Mark Antony.
Cleopatra: Is she as tall as me?
Messenger: She is not, madam.
Cleopatra: Didst hear her speak? Is she shrill-tongued or low?
Messenger: Madam, I heard her speak. She is low-voiced.
Cleopatra: That’s not so good. He cannot like her long.
Charmian: Like her! Oh, Isis, ’tis impossible.
Cleopatra: I think so, Charmian. Dull of tongue, and dwarfish.—
What majesty is in her gait? Remember,
If e’er thou looked’st on majesty.
Messenger: She creeps:
Her motion and her station are as one.
She shows a body rather than a life,
A statue than a breather.
Cleopatra: Is this certain?
Messenger: Or I have no observance.
Charmian: Three in Egypt
Cannot make better note.
Cleopatra: He’s very knowing,
I do perceive’t. There’s nothing in her yet.
The fellow has good judgment.
Charmian: Excellent.
Cleopatra: Guess at her years, I prithee.
Messenger: Madam,
She was a widow—
Cleopatra: Widow? Charmian, hark.
Messenger: And I do think she’s thirty.
Cleopatra: Bear’st thou her face in mind? Is’t long or round?
Messenger: Round, even to faultiness.
Cleopatra: For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so.—
Her hair, what color?
Messenger: Brown, madam; and her forehead
As low as she would wish it.
Cleopatra: [giving money] There’s gold for thee.
Thou must not take my former sharpness ill.
I will employ thee back again; I find thee
Most fit for business. Go make thee ready;
Our letters are prepared. [Exit Messenger]
Charmian: A proper man.
Cleopatra: Indeed, he is so. I repent me much
That so I harried him. Why, methinks, by him,
This creature’s no such thing.
Charmian: Nothing, madam.
Cleopatra: The man hath seen some majesty, and should know.
act 3, scene 3, lines 1–45
This intricate dance of dispraise rescues the Messenger and restores Cleopatra’s pride in her own sexual allure. She knows as we do that Antony must return to her strong toil of grace.
CHAPTER 7
In the East My Pleasure Lies
Shakespeare chooses not to show us the reunion of Cleopatra and Antony. Perhaps he feared one climax after another in this flowing cavalcade. We learn of their reconciliation only from Octavius:
Octavius: Contemning Rome, he has done all this and more
In Alexandria. Here’s the manner of’t:
I’th’ marketplace, on a tribunal silvered,
Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold
Were publicly enthroned. At the feet sat
Caesarion, whom they call my father’s son,
And all the unlawful issue that their lust
Since then hath made between them. Unto her
He gave the stablishment of Egypt, made her
Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,
Absolute queen.
Maecenas: This in the public eye?
Octavius: I’th’ common showplace, where they exercise.
His sons he there proclaimed the kings of kings:
Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia
He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assigned
Syria, Cilicia and Phoenicia. She
In th’ habiliments of the goddess Isis
That day appeared, and oft before gave audience,
As ’tis reported, so.
act 3, scene 6, lines 1–19
The crowning iniquity, in Roman judgment, is that Cleopatra’s assumption of divinity completes Antony’s “treason” in dividing the empire.
Maecenas: Let Rome be thus informed.
Agrippa: Who, queasy with his insolence already,
Will their good thoughts call from him.
Octavius: The people knows it, and have now received
His accusations.
Agrippa: Who does he accuse?
Octavius: Caesar, and that, having in Sicily
Sextus Pompeius spoiled, we had not rated him
His part o’th’isle. Then does he say he lent me
Some shipping, unrestored. Lastly, he frets
That Lepidus of the triumvirate
Should be deposed, and, being, that we detain
All his revenue.
Agrippa: Sir, this should be answered.
Octavius: ’Tis done already, and the messenger gone.
I have told him Lepidus was grown too cruel,
That he his high authority abused
And did deserve his change. For what I have conquered,
I grant him part; but then in his Armenia,
And other of his conquered kingdoms, I
Demand the like.
Maecenas: He’ll never yield to that.
Octavius: Nor must not then be yielded to in this.
act 3, scene 6, lines 20–39
In disdain of Rome, Cleopatra and Antony are crowned empress and emperor of the East. Caesarion, the son Julius Caesar begot upon Cleopatra, rouses Octavius to a particular bitterness. He in fact was not the son of Julius Caesar but the grandnephew adopted by Caesar as his heir. After the death of Cleopatra, Octavius ordered Caesarion to be executed.
Attired as the goddess Isis, Cleopatra moves toward her final epiphany at Actium where Antony prepares for the decisive battle with Octavius. Over the strong objections of Enobarbus, Cleopatra insists she will lead her fleet so as not to be parted from Antony. Both lovers court destruction by overriding Enobarbus and choosing to fight by sea rather than land.
Cleopatra provokes disaster by fleeing the battle with all her ships. The disgrace of Antony is a shock to his most loyal commanders:
Enobarbus: Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer!
Th’Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,
With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder.
To see’t mine eyes are blasted. [Enter Scarus]
Scarus: Gods and goddesses!
All the whole synod of them!
Enobarbus: What’s thy passion?
Scarus: The greater cantle of the world is lost
With very ignorance; we have kissed away
Kingdoms and provinces.
Enobarbus: How appears the fight?
Scarus: On our side, like the tokened pestilence,
Where death is sure. Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt—
Whom leprosy o’ertake!—i’th’ midst o’th’ fight,
When vantage like a pair of twins appeared
Both as the same, or, rather ours the elder,
The breeze upon her, like a cow in June,
Hoists sails and flies.
Enobarbus: That I beheld.
Mine eyes did sicken at the sight and could not
Endure a further view.
Scarus: She once being loofed,
The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,
Claps on his sea wing and, like a doting mallard,
Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.
I never saw an action of such shame.
Experience, manhood, honor, ne’er before
Did violate so itself.
act 3, scene 10, lines 1–23
We do not know why Cleopatra flees. The enigma is why Antony sails after her, abandoning his men. Scarus, who will remain loyal to Antony, nevertheless eloquently characterizes his commander’s shame as “the noble ruin of her magic.”
Enobarbus: Alack, alack!
[Enter Canidius]
Canidius: Our fortune on the sea is out of breath,
And sinks most lamentably. Had our general
Been what he knew himself, it had gone well.
Oh, he has given example for our flight
Most grossly by his own!
Enobarbus: Ay, are you thereabouts? Why then, good night indeed.
Canidius: Toward Peloponnesus are they fled.
Scarus: ’Tis easy to’t, and there I will attend
What further comes.
Canidius: To Caesar will I render
My legions and my horse. Six kings already
Show me the way of yielding.
Enobarbus: I’ll yet follow
The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason
Sits in the wind against me.
act 3, scene 10, lines 23–36
The image of the downward wind opens and closes this sequence. Turning her ship’s head close to the wind and thus choosing distance, Cleopatra runs away. Antony flees like a water bird, a doting male duck, his nobility collapsing. Like Scarus, Enobarbus realizes he will be tracked and hunted down like a dying wind and yet struggles to remain loyal.
What animates Cleopatra? Is it cowardice? Can it be deliberate treachery? Or is this her vengeance, on whatever level of awareness, for Antony’s expedient marriage to Octavia? It may well be all three and more. So complex is her nature that we want to call it divided but we would err. She is so artful that we never can know her motivations. Nor can she.
What we can perceive is that Cleopatra and the entire tragicomedy is profoundly Ovidian, unsurprising since the Roman poet Ovid was a major influence on Shakespeare and many of his contemporaries. Cleopatra is metamorphic to a fault. She flows and ebbs and returns in full vigor. Antony, like Ovid’s Hercules, goes from woman to woman until he meets his bright culmination and destruction in Cleopatra.
In Ovid all identity flows and then merges with fresh identities. Cleopatra, unlike Antony, retains her essential being. Like the Nile she inundates and then brings forth a harvest of burgeoning vivaciousness. Metamorphic, she yet overcomes change through histrionic genius. She acts and is, and who can tell what in her is not theatrical?
Antony, bereft of authority and of honor, provokes Cleopatra into one of her histrionic transports:
Eros: Nay, gentle madam, to him, comfort him.
Iras: Do, most dear Queen.
Charmian: Do; why, what else?
Cleopatra: Let me sit down. O Juno!
Antony: No, no, no, no, no.
Eros: See you here, sir?
Antony: O fie, fie, fie!
Charmian: Madam!
Iras: Madam! O, good Empress!
Eros: Sir, sir!
Antony: Yes, my lord, yes. He at Philippi kept
His sword e’en like a dancer, while I struck
The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and ’twas I
That the mad Brutus ended. He alone
Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had
In the brave squares of war; yet now—no matter.
act 3, scene 11, lines 25–40
On the verge of fainting, a skill at which she is superb, Cleopatra is led to her lover, who is overwhelmed by self-disgust. Tellingly, his particular bitterness is that he, a great swordsman and leader in battle, must now yield to Octavius, who fought only through his underlings and kept his ornamental sword sheathed like a dancer in performance. His reproach to Cleopatra is searing: “Oh, whither hast thou led me, Egypt?”
Cleopatra: Ah, stand by.
Eros: The Queen, my lord, the Queen.
Iras: Go to him, madam, speak to him.
He is unqualitied with very shame.
Cleopatra: Well then, sustain me. Oh!
Eros: Most noble sir, arise. The Queen approaches.
Her head’s declined, and death will seize her but
Your comfort makes the rescue.
Antony: I have offended reputation,
A most unnoble swerving.
Eros: Sir, the Queen.
Antony: O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? See
How I convey my shame out of thine eyes
By looking back what I have left behind
’Stroyed in dishonor.
Cleopatra: Oh, my lord, my lord,
Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought
You would have followed.
Antony: Egypt, thou knew’st too well
My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’ strings,
And thou shouldst tow me after. O’er my spirit
Thy full supremacy thou knew’st, and that
Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command me.
act 3, scene 11, lines 41–60
Is this still Antony? Can we be moved by this pathetic complaint?
Cleopatra: Oh, my pardon!
Antony: Now I must
To the young man send humble treaties, dodge
And palter in the shifts of lowness, who
With half the bulk o’th’ world played as I pleased,
Making and marring fortunes. You did know
How much you were my conqueror, and that
My sword, made weak by my affection, would
Obey it on all cause.
Cleopatra: Pardon, pardon!
Antony: Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates
All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss. [They kiss]
Even this repays me.—We sent our schoolmaster;
Is ’a come back?—Love, I am full of lead.—
Some wine, within there, and our viands! Fortune knows
We scorn her most when most she offers blows.
act 3, scene 11, lines 60–73
Whether or not she is overcome by chagrin or is playing her part, Cleopatra strikingly is reduced to a plea for pardon. Antony, recovering with a tender dignity, calls for a kiss that equals all he has lost. It is one of a series of sad moments that will mark his descent to darkness.
CHAPTER 8
You
Will Be Whipped
We go into the dark and will abide there with only a few ascents to light as Antony commences to lose his flowing hold upon vitality and a flawed nobility:
Antony: Is that his answer?
Ambassador: Ay, my lord.
Antony: The Queen shall then have courtesy, so she
Will yield us up.
Ambassador: He says so.
Antony: Let her know’t.—
To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head,
And he will fill thy wishes to the brim
With principalities.
Cleopatra: That head, my lord?
Antony: [to Ambassador] To him again. Tell him he wears the rose
Of youth upon him, from which the world should note
Something particular. His coin, ships, legions,
May be a coward’s, whose ministers would prevail
Under the service of a child as soon
As i’th’ command of Caesar. I dare him therefore
To lay his gay caparisons apart
And answer me declined, sword against sword,
Ourselves alone. I’ll write it. Follow me.
[Exeunt Antony and Ambassador]
Enobarbus: [aside] Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will
Unstate his happiness, and be staged to th’ show
Against a sworder! I see men’s judgments are
A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them
To suffer all alike. That he should dream,
Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will
Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued
His judgment too.
Servant: A messenger from Caesar.
Cleopatra: What, no more ceremony? See, my women,
Against the blown rose may they stop their nose
That kneeled unto the buds.—Admit him, sir.
Enobarbus: [aside] Mine honesty and I begin to square.
The loyalty well held to fools does make
Our faith mere folly; yet he that can endure
To follow with allegiance a fall’n lord
Does conquer him that did his master conquer
And earns a place i’th’ story.
act 3, scene 13, lines 13–46
It is a delicate moment when Antony tells Cleopatra that his grizzled head will purchase her freedom to hold sway. What is the nuance of: “That head, my lord?” You can hear tenderness but also a surmise that this is her way to go on living and reigning. Enobarbus ruminates that the decline of fortune draws Antony’s inward judgment into absurdity. This faithful soldier struggles with the dilemma of loyalty that becomes folly. For now Enobarbus chooses the moral triumph of allegiance over the abyss of a downward trajectory into darkness.