Part 35 (1/2)

”He words irls, he words me that I should not Be noble to myself”

She holds to her heroic resolve; she will never be degraded before the base Ro Cleopatra boyhere that Shakespeare lends Cleopatra, as he afterwards lent Coriolanus, his own delicate senses and neuropathic loathing for reasy aprons” and ”thick breaths rank of gross diet”; it is Shakespeare too and not Cleopatra who speaks of death as bringing ”liberty” In ”Cymbeline,” Shakespeare's mask Posthumus dwells on the same idea But these lapses are momentary; the superb declaration that follows is worthy of the queen:

”My resolution's placed, and I have nothing Of woman in me: now fro moon No planet is of s the ”pretty worround of reality on which Cleopatra rests for a breathing space before rising into the blue:

”_Cleo_ Give s in rape shall ood Iras! quick--Methinks I hear Antony call; I see him rouse himself To praise my noble act; I hear hiive men To excuse their after-wrath Husband, I coe prove ive to baser life”

The whole speech iseain the perfect word in which truth and beauty meet:

”This proves me base: If she first meet the curled Antony He'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss Which is my heaven to have Come, thou mortal wretch, [_To the asp, which she applies to her breast_]

With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate Of life at once untie: poor venory, and despatch O, could'st thou speak, That I reat Caesar, ass Unpolicied!”

The characteristic high teain--”ass unpolicied”--and then the end:

”Peace, peace!

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep?”

The final touch is of soft pleasure:

”As sweet a balentle,-- Antony!--Nay, I will take thee too

[_Applying another asp to her arm_]

What should I stay--”

For ever fortunate in her self-inflicted death Cleopatra thereby frees herself fronominy of certain of her actions: she is woes lower than other woher levels than other women know The historical fact of her self-inflicted death forced the poet to ipsy-th redeemed by a passion of heroic resolve Thewhether indeed Cleopatra is the ”dark lady” of the sonnets or not

Professor Dowden puts forward the theory as a daring conjecture; but the identity of the two cannot be doubted It is impossible not to notice that Shakespeare ipsy-dark like his sonnet-heroine He says, too, of the ”dark lady” of the sonnets:

”Whence hast thou this becos ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and warrantise of skill, That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?”

Enobarbus praises Cleopatra in precisely the sas, Become themselves in her”

Antony, too, uses the sa queen!

Whoh, To weep; whose every passion fully strives To make itself, in thee, fair and ade of the ”dark lady” or of Cleopatra, or they would never talk of ”daring conjecture” in regard to this simple identification The points of likeness are numberless