Cleopatra

by Harold Bloom

            [They heave Antony aloft to Cleopatra]

  And welcome, welcome! Die where thou hast lived;

  Quicken with kissing. Had my lips that power,

  Thus would I wear them out.        [She kisses him]

  All: A heavy sight!

  Antony: I am dying, Egypt, dying.

  Give me some wine, and let me speak a little.

  Cleopatra: No, let me speak, and let me rail so high

  That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel,

  Provoked by my offence.

  act 4, scene 15, lines 33–47

  Palpably Cleopatra wishes to enact a final consummation with Antony, the slang meaning of “die,” though sadly he can no longer quicken to that fulfillment. Antony or is it Shakespeare delights us by repeating the gorgeous “I am dying, Egypt, dying.” Her response is hilarious, denouncing Fortune as a treacherous hussy, while herself shouting like one.

  Bungling everything down to the very end, Antony advises her to trust only Proculeius among the captains of Octavius. Proculeius in fact will lie to her and it will be Dolabella who warns her that the victor will lead her in triumph. Shakespeare surges to the heights with Antony’s final words and Cleopatra’s sublime shock, initially unable to absorb his loss:

  Antony: The miserable change now at my end

  Lament nor sorrow at, but please your thoughts

  In feeding them with those my former fortunes,

  Wherein I lived the greatest prince o’th’ world,

  The noblest; and do now not basely die,

  Not cowardly put off my helmet to

  My countryman—a Roman by a Roman

  Valiantly vanquished. Now my spirit is going;

  I can no more.

  Cleopatra:  Noblest of men, woo’t die?

  Hast thou no care of me? Shall I abide

  In this dull world, which in thy absence is

  No better than a sty? [Antony dies] Oh, see, my women,

  The crown o’th’ earth doth melt. My lord!

  Oh, withered is the garland of the war;

  The soldier’s pole is fall’n! Young boys and girls

  Are level now with men. The odds is gone,

  And there is nothing left remarkable

  Beneath the visiting moon.

  [She faints]

  act 4, scene 15, lines 53–70

  Antony, noblest at the close, urges her neither to lament nor to sorrow but to remember his former greatness and the manner of his Roman death, valiantly vanquished only by himself. As he dies, Cleopatra forsakes histrionics and croons her desolation tenderly. She realizes that everyone else bores her and passionately salutes the falling away of his polestar or battle flag and of his sexual strength wasting away in death. Her great outcry “the odds is gone” implies there is no longer a difference between large and small, and there is nothing worth the stakes.

  It would be difficult to overpraise this sublime lamentation that is also a high celebration of departed greatness. However grandiose Cleopatra may sound, she is not acting, but is carried up by an exaltation that achieves an ultimate eloquence.

  “I shall win at the odds,” Hamlet says, going into the death duel with Laertes. He does win and if he dies, that is welcome to him. Hamlet is a universe away from Cleopatra. When she comes out of her swoon, there is a return to the great actress playing her farewells and yet her language is touched by a new nobility:

  No more, but e’en a woman, and commanded

  By such poor passion as the maid that milks

  And does the meanest chares. It were for me

  To throw my scepter at the injurious gods,

  To tell them that this world did equal theirs

  Till they had stol’n our jewel. All’s but naught;

  Patience is sottish, and impatience does

  Become a dog that’s mad. Then is it sin

  To rush into the secret house of death

  Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?

  What, what, good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian?

  My noble girls! Ah, women, women! Look,

  Our lamp is spent, it’s out. Good sirs, take heart.

  We’ll bury him; and then what’s brave, what’s noble,

  Let’s do’t after the high Roman fashion

  And make death proud to take us. Come, away.

  This case of that huge spirit now is cold.

  Ah, women, women! Come. We have no friend

  But resolution, and the briefest end.

          [Exeunt; those above bearing off Antony’s body]

  act 4, scene 15, lines 78–96

  Rejecting foolish patience and insane impatience as being of no utility, she asks the rhetorical question of whether it is sinful for her to precipitate herself into the secret house of death, before death has the audacity to claim her. Certainly she is again playacting and doubts her own resolution. The high Roman fashion is not hers, but she will die an Egyptian death.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Round World / Should Have Shook Lions into Civil Streets

  Shakespeare grants us an interval between Cleopatra’s intense art of dissimulation and her gathering desolation. He centers us entirely upon Octavius Caesar with a portrayal at once dispassionate and chilling. Octavius’s incredulous response to the realization that Antony is dead liberates his own dormant capacity for eloquence:

  Octavius: The breaking of so great a thing should make

  A greater crack. The round world

  Should have shook lions into civil streets

  And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony

  Is not a single doom; in the name lay

  A moiety of the world.

  Dercetas:      He is dead, Caesar,

  Not by a public minister of justice,

  Nor by a hirèd knife; but that self hand

  Which writ his honor in the acts it did

  Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,

  Splitted the heart. This is his sword.    [He offers the sword]

  I robbed his wound of it. Behold it stained

  With his most noble blood.

  Octavius:       Look you, sad friends?

  The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings

  To wash the eyes of kings.

  Agrippa:       And strange it is

  That nature must compel us to lament

  Our most persisted deeds.

  Maecenas:       His taints and honors

  Waged equal with him.

  Agrippa:      A rarer spirit never

  Did steer humanity; but you gods will give us

  Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touched.

  Mecaenas: When such a spacious mirror’s set before him,

  He needs must see himself.

  act 5, scene 1, lines 14–35

  “Breaking” has a Yeatsian tonality since it comprehends revelation, destruction, and a fresh making of the world. The “crack” is at once a breaking apart and a fearsome clamor. As when Julius Caesar was assassinated, lions should have been unleashed in the city and fleeing citizens should have been running to their own dens or indeed into the lair of the lions. Antony’s death is the ruin of many and the restoration of his enemies. Antony’s very name held a moiety or half of the universe.

  What are we to make of the tears of Octavius Caesar? His yes-men offer qualified praise of the dead Herculean while commending their master for his unlikely tenderness. Octavius again is moved to an eloquence scarcely in his character:

  Octavius:      O Antony,

  I have followed thee to this; but we do launch

  Diseases in our bodies. I must perforce

  Have shown to thee such a declining day,

  Or look on thine; we could not stall together

  In the whole world. But yet let me lament

  With tears as sovereign as the blood of h
earts

  That thou, my brother, my competitor

  In top of all design, my mate in empire,

  Friend and companion in the front of war,

  The arm of mine own body, and the heart

  Where mine his thoughts did kindle—that our stars,

  Unreconciliable, should divide

  Our equalness to this. Hear me, good friends—  [Enter an Egyptian]

  But I will tell you at some meeter season.

  The business of this man looks out of him;

  We’ll hear him what he says.—Whence are you?

  Egyptian: A poor Egyptian yet, the Queen, my mistress,

  Confined in all she has, her monument,

  Of thy intents desires instruction,

  That she preparedly may frame herself

  To th’ way she’s forced to.

  Octavius:      Bid her have good heart.

  She soon shall know of us, by some of ours,

  How honorable and how kindly we

  Determine for her. For Caesar cannot live

  To be ungentle.

  Egyptian:  So the gods preserve thee!

  act 5, scene 1, lines 35–60

  Octavius, moving toward his usual mode, waves aside false regrets and admits he pursued Antony to extinction. Rather dubiously, he asserts the necessity of curing himself by lancing his rival as a disease in his own system. Essentially and accurately he says that it was either you or me. One had to go. Each took up all the space and they could never have dwelt together. He tells us he weeps but we cannot believe him. When he calls Antony his brother, he intends to mean more than brother-in-law yet that is all the truth. “My competitor” is precise: agonist, former partner, equal power monger.

  Shakespeare’s subtle art informs the move by Octavius to a more deceptive rhetoric. Antony fought at the front of his men; Octavius Caesar safely commanded from the rear. Antony was indeed his sword arm, and the Herculean brave heart served only to kindle thoughts of courage in the canny Octavius. Finally, the stars are blamed for making the two former partners deadly opponents.

  He is relieved to break off to hear Cleopatra’s messenger and becomes himself again. Needing her treasure to pay his troops and desiring to parade her through the streets of Rome in his triumph, Octavius praises himself for honor, gentleness, and kindness though he is too shrewd not to know she will not believe a word. Her greatness of spirit he acknowledges and rues, and moves to outwit the serpent of old Nile.

  Shakespeare concludes this curious negative epiphany of Octavius with the politic future Emperor Augustus going off with his followers to continue self-justification. He pleads his reluctance to pursue Antony and cites his supposed gentle calm in the letters sent to his rival.

  Sometimes when I reread this scene I marvel at Shakespeare’s reticent control in this portrait of power. Once again what we think of Octavius is left entirely to our own perspective.

  CHAPTER 13

  He Words Me, Girls, He Words Me

  The pageant of Cleopatra’s glorious closing scenes begins with her gradual and necessarily grudging ascent to the apotheosis of her great career:

  Cleopatra: My desolation does begin to make

  A better life. ’Tis paltry to be Caesar;

  Not being Fortune, he’s but Fortune’s knave,

  A minister of her will. And it is great

  To do that thing that ends all other deeds,

  Which shackles accidents and bolts up change,

  Which sleeps and never palates more the dung,

  The beggar’s nurse and Caesar’s.

  act 5, scene 2, lines 1–8

  Cleopatra initially takes on the role of a heroine defying Fortune while deprecating Octavius Caesar. He is merely Fortune’s servant. Resolving again on suicide, she praises her own greatness in going toward a deep sleep beyond change and accident, and in which she will no longer taste with relish the manure that nurses Octavius and the common beggar.

  [Enter Proculeius]

  Proculeius: Caesar sends greeting to the Queen of Egypt,

  And bids thee study on what fair demands

  Thou mean’st to have him grant thee.

  Cleopatra:           What’s thy name?

  Proculeius: My name is Proculeius.

  Cleopatra:          Antony

  Did tell me of you, bade me trust you; but

  I do not greatly care to be deceived

  That have no use for trusting. If your master

  Would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him

  That majesty, to keep decorum, must

  No less beg than a kingdom. If he please

  To give me conquered Egypt for my son,

  He gives me so much of mine own as I

  Will kneel to him with thanks.

  Proculeius:         Be of good cheer;

  You’re fallen into a princely hand. Fear nothing.

  Make your full reference freely to my lord,

  Who is so full of grace that it flows over

  On all that need. Let me report to him

  Your sweet dependency, and you shall find

  A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness

  Where he for grace is kneeled to.

  Cleopatra:         Pray you tell him

  I am his fortune’s vassal and I send him

  The greatness he has got. I hourly learn

  A doctrine of obedience, and would gladly

  Look him i’th’ face.

  Proculeius:   This I’ll report, dear lady.

  Have comfort, for I know your plight is pitied

  Of him that caused it.

  act 5, scene 2, lines 9–34

  In the dialogue with Proculeius, Cleopatra plays the obedient suppliant but in the barbed language of a bitter irony. Conquered Egypt, though her own, is begged for Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar, to be garroted at the age of seventeen by the order of Octavius. Grimly she salutes Octavius Caesar by acknowledging “the greatness he has got” by overwhelming force.

  [Roman soldiers enter from behind Cleopatra and take her prisoner]

  Proculeius: [to the Soldiers] You see how easily she may be surprised.

  Guard her till Caesar come.

  Iras:          Royal Queen!

  Charmian: Oh, Cleopatra, thou art taken, Queen.

  Cleopatra: Quick, quick, good hands. [Draws a dagger]

  Proculeius:          Hold, worthy lady, hold!

  [Disarms her] Do not yourself such wrong, who are in this

  Relieved, but not betrayed.

  Cleopatra:       What, of death too,

  That rids our dogs of languish?

  Proculeius:        Cleopatra,

  Do not abuse my master’s bounty by

  Th’undoing of yourself. Let the world see

  His nobleness well acted, which your death

  Will never let come forth.

  Cleopatra:      Where art thou, Death?

  Come hither, come! Come, come and take a queen

  Worth many babes and beggars!

  act 5, scene 2, lines 35–47

  Surprised by the Roman soldiers who pinion her, she draws her dagger when released, though with so consummate an actress we cannot be certain that she would stab herself if she could. Her marvelous response to the absurdity of Proculeius saying he has rescued and not betrayed her is to cry out that she has been deprived even of death and betrayed of her right to die.

  Proculeius:       Oh, temperance, lady!

  Cleopatra: Sir, I will eat no meat, I’ll not drink, sir;

  If idle talk will once be necessary,

  I’ll not sleep, neither. This mortal house I’ll ruin,

  Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I

  Will not wait pinioned at your master’s court,

  Nor once be chastised with the sober ey
e

  Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up

  And show me to the shouting varletry

  Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt

  Be gentle grave unto me! Rather on Nilus’ mud

  Lay me stark nak’d, and let the waterflies

  Blow me into abhorring! Rather make

  My country’s high pyramides my gibbet

  And hang me up in chains!

  act 5, scene 2, lines 47–61

  Proculeius is nasty in his sly irony that the nobility of Octavius would not be acted out in his Roman triumph if her death deprived him of her public humiliation. Cleopatra’s dramatic art is heard in her fourfold “come” that erotically is addressed to death, urging it to take her, an urgency beyond its too frequent devouring of infants and beggars.

  Theatricalism, Cleopatra’s genius, is almost too strident as she vows to starve herself of meat, wine, and slumber so as to thwart Octavius Caesar. Her vision of a horror of humiliation awaiting her in Rome evokes the shouting rabblement of plebeians who would exult at her degradation. Beyond all bounds she even pains us with a terrible image of her seductive beauty stark naked in the mud of the Nile, swelled up with maggots as the waterflies make her corpse a depository for their eggs. After that grotesque nightmare, it is almost a relief to see her hung up in chains from a pyramid.

  Shakespeare interposes a little ease with the entrance of Dolabella:

  Dolabella: Most noble Empress, you have heard of me?

  Cleopatra: I cannot tell.

  Dolabella:      Assuredly you know me.

  Cleopatra: No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.

  You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams;

  Is’t not your trick?

  Dolabella:   I understand not, madam.

  Cleopatra: I dreamt there was an emperor Antony.

  Oh, such another sleep, that I might see

  But such another man!

  Dolabella:      If it might please ye—

  Cleopatra: His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck

  A sun and moon which kept their course and lighted

  The little O, the earth.

  Dolabella:     Most sovereign creature—

  Cleopatra: His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm

  Crested the world; his voice was propertied

  As all the tunèd spheres, and that to friends;

  But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

  He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,