patra and the change which takes place in her deportment towards Antony, when their evil fortune darkens round them, is as beautiful and interesting in itself as it is striking and natural. Instead of the airy caprice and provoking petulance she displays in the first scenes, we have a mixture of tenderness, and artifice, and fear, and submissive blandishment. Her behaviour, for instance, after the battle of Actium, when she quails before the noble and tender rebuke of her lover, is partly female subtlety and partly natural. feeling....

History is followed closely in all the details of the catastrophe, and there is something wonderfully grand in the hurried march of events towards the conclusion. As disasters hem her round, Cleopatra gathers up her faculties to meet them, not with the calm fortitude of a great soul, but the haughty, tameless spirit of a wilful woman, unused to reverse or contradiction.

Her speech, after Antony has expired in her arms, I have always regarded as one of the most wonderful in Shakspeare. Cleopatra is not a woman to grieve silently. The contrast between the violence of her passions and the weakness of her sex, between her regal grandeur and her excess of misery, her impetuous, unavailing struggles with the fearful destiny which has compassed her, and the mixture of wild impatience and pathos in her agony, are really magnificent. She faints on the body of Antony, and is recalled to life by the cries of her women:

"Iras. Royal Egypt-empress!

Cleopatra. 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 sceptre at the injurious gods:
To tell them that our world did equal theirs

Till they had stolen our jewel. All's but naught;

* Cleopatra replies to the first word she hears on recovering her senses, "No more an empress, but a mere woman!"

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, is out.

We'll bury him, and then what's brave, what's noble,
Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,

And make death proud to take us."

But although Cleopatra talks of dying "after the high Roman fashion," she fears what she most desires, and cannot perform with simplicity what costs her such an effort. That extreme physical cowardice, which was so strong a trait in her historical character, which led to the defeat of Actium, which made her delay the execution of a fatal resolve till she had "tried conclusions infinite of easy ways to die," Shakspeare has rendered with the finest possible effect, and in a manner which heightens instead of diminishing our respect and interest. Timid by nature, she is courageous by the mere force of will, and she lashes herself up with highsounding words into a kind of false daring. Her lively imagination suggests every incentive which can spur her on to the deed she has resolved, yet trembles to contemplate. She pictures to herself all the degradations which must attend her captivity; and let it be observed, that those which she anticipates are precisely such as a vain, luxurious, and haughty woman would especially dread, and which only true virtue and magnanimity could despise. Cleopatra could have endured the loss of freedom; but to be led in triumph through the streets of Rome is insufferable. She could stoop to Cæsar with dissembling courtesy, and meet duplicity with superior art; but "to be chastised" by the scornful or upbraiding glance of the injured Octavia-"rather a ditch in Egypt!".

...

The death of Lucretia, of Portia, of Arria, and others

who died "after the high Roman fashion," is sublime according to the Pagan ideas of virtue, and yet none of them so powerfully affect the imagination as the catastrophe of Cleopatra. The idea of this frail, timid, wayward woman, dying with heroism from the mere force of passion and will, takes us by surprise. The Attic elegance of her mind, her poetical imagination, the pride of beauty and royalty predominating to the last, and the sumptuous and picturesque accompaniments with which she surrounds herself in death, carry to its extreme height that effect of contrast which prevails through her life and character. No arts, no invention, could add to the real circumstances of Cleopatra's closing scene. Shakspeare has shown profound judgment and feeling in adhering closely to the classical authorities; and to say that the language and sentiments worthily fill up the outline is the most magnificent praise that can be given. The magical play of fancy and the overpowering fascination of the character are kept up to the last: and when Cleopatra, on applying the asp, silences the lamentations of her "Peace! peace!

women

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,

That sucks the nurse to sleep?"

these few words-the contrast between the tender beauty of the image and the horror of the situation-produce an effect more intensely mournful than all the ranting in the world. The generous devotion of her women adds the moral charm which alone was wanting: and when Octavius hurries in too late to save his victim, and exclaims, when gazing on her, "She looks like sleep

As she would catch another Antony

In her strong toil of grace,"

the image of her beauty and her irresistible arts, triumphant even in death, is at once brought before us, and one masterly and comprehensive stroke consummates this most wonderful, most dazzling delineation.

I am not here the apologist of Cleopatra's historical character, nor of such women as resemble her: I am considering her merely as a dramatic portrait of astonishing beauty, spirit, and originality. She has furnished the subject of two Latin, sixteen French, six English, and at least four Italian tragedies; yet Shakspeare alone has availed himself of all the interest of the story, without falsifying the character. He alone has dared to exhibit the Egyptian queen with all her greatness and all her littleness—all her frailties of temper-all her paltry arts and dissolute passions- yet preserved the dramatic propriety and poetical colouring of the character, and awakened our pity for fallen grandeur, without once beguiling us into sympathy with guilt and error.

[From Verplanck's "Shakespeare." †]

Without laying much stress upon any particular theory of the precise date of this splendid historical drama, it is clear that all the testimonies and indications, internal and external, designate it as the production of a poet no longer young, and in the full maturity of mind, sympathizing with the feelings and character of advancing age, and rich in that knowledge of life which nature and genius alone cannot give.

Thus Juliet, Ophelia, Desdemona, Viola, and Portia are all within the natural range of a young poet's power of rep

*The Cleopatra of Jodelle was the first regular French tragedy; the last French tragedy on the same subject was the Cléopatre of Marmontel. For the representation of this tragedy, Vaucanson, the celebrated French mechanist, invented an automaton asp, which crawled and hissed to the life-to the great delight of the Parisians. But it appears that neither Vaucanson's asp nor Clairon could save Cléopatre from a deserved fate. Of the English tragedies, one was written by the Countess of Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sidney; and is, I believe, the first instance in our language of original dramatic writing by a female.

†The Illustrated Shakespeare, edited by G. C. Verplanck (New York, 1847), vol. iii. p. 6 of A. and C.

resentation. They are ideas of admirable general nature, varied, refined, adorned by fancy and feeling. But Cleopatra, as she appears in this tragedy, is a character that could not have been thus depicted but from the actual observation of life, or from that reflected knowledge which can be drawn from history and biography. To a modern author, such as Scott, biographical memoirs and literature could supply to a certain degree the want of a living model, even for such a personage as this "wrangling queen-whom every thing be

But

while "vilest things become themselves in her." But there was no such literary assistance accessible to Shakespeare. Plutarch had given the dry outline of the character, with some incidents which, to an ordinary poet, would have suggested nothing more, which in this drama have expanded themselves into scenes of living and speaking truth. all this, and all the minute finishing of the character, Shakespeare must have collected from his own observation of life, drawing the fragments from various quarters, perhaps from very humble ones, and blending them all in this brilliant historical impersonation of such individual truth, that there are few readers who do not feel, with Mrs. Jameson, that "Shakespeare's Cleopatra produces the same effect on them that is recorded of the real Cleopatra. She dazzles our faculties, perplexes our judgment, and bewitches our fancy; we are conscious of a kind of fascination, against which our moral sense rebels, but from which there is no escape."

Again, the manner in which the poet has exhibited the weakness of a great mind—of a hero past the middle stage of life, when "grey hath mingled with his brown," who is seen bowing his "grizzled head" to the caprices of a wanton who, like himself, begins to be "wrinkled deep in time,"