Part 34 (1/2)

_Eno_ But hy?

_Cleo_ Thou hast forspokein 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 shaht

I have pursued this bald analysis 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 Enobarbus calls her, ”a wonderful piece of work,” a woal, with a good er, a -true withal, a suaries are but perfect obedience to every breath of passion But now Shakespeare without reason makes her faithless to Antony and to love In the second scene of the third act Thyreus coe:

”_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 God, and knows What is ht 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 , 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 doms 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 woer, 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 woet Antony's faithlessness in leaving her to marry Octavia; but she never ot Antony back This omission, too, i 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 a 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 beco Cleopatra's prototype, Mary Fitton, had betrayed hiain, and the faithlessness rankled Cleopatra, therefore, shall be painted as faithless, without cause, as Cressid was, froet rid of his bitterness in this way, and if his art suffered, so h, 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 overwhele 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 arht bring out the soain, is used against her remorselessly by the poet When Antony wakes and cries for his ars hi after her faithlessness to her lover and her acceptance of Caesar it shows more than hu Antony, Shakespeare is willing to degrade Cleopatra beyond nature Then coth finds perfect lyrical expression:

”O thou day o' the world, Chain h proof of harness to ”

At once Cleopatra catches fire with that responsive flame of womanhood which was surely her chiefest charm:

”Lord of lords!

O infinite virtue! Coht?”

What ic in the utterance, what a revelation of Cleopatra's character and of Shakespeare's! To Cleopatra's fee snare which only cunning may escape