It is, perhaps, worth noting here that Shakespeare lends Cleopatra, as he afterwards lent Coriolanus, his own delicate senses and neuropathic loathing for mechanic slaves with " greasy 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 from head to foot
I am marble-constant; now the fleeting moon
No planet is of mine."

The scene with the clown who brings the "pretty worm" is the solid ground of reality on which Cleopatra rests for a breathing space before rising into the blue:

"Cleo. Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me. Now no more

The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip.-
Yare, yare, good Iras! quick.-Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself

To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after-wrath. Husband, I come.
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements

I give to baser life.'

The whole speech is miraculous in speed of mounting emotion, and when Iras dies first, this Cleopatra finds again the perfect word in which truth and beauty meet:

"This proves me base:

If she first meet the curlèd 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 venomous fool,
Be angry, and despatch. O, could'st thou speak,
That I might hear thee call great Caesar, ass
Unpolicied!"

The characteristic high temper of Mary Fitton breaking out again-" 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 balm, as soft as air, as gentle,—
O, 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 from the ignominy of certain of her actions: she is woman at once and queen, and if she cringes lower than other women, she rises, too, to higher levels than other women know. The historical fact of her self-inflicted death forced the poet to make false Cressid a Cleopatra— and his wanton gipsy-mistress was at length redeemed by a passion of heroic resolve.

The majority of critics are still debating whether 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 makes Cleopatra, who was a fair Greek, gipsy-dark like his sonnet-heroine. He says, too, of the "dark lady" of the sonnets:

"Whence hast thou this becoming of things 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 same words:

"Vilest things,

Become themselves in her."

Antony, too, uses the same expression:

"Fie, wrangling queen!
Whom everything becomes-to chide, to laugh,
To weep; whose every passion fully strives
To make itself, in thee, fair and admired."

These professors have no distinct mental image 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. Ninety-nine poets and dramatists out of a hundred would have followed Plutarch and made Cleopatra's love for Antony the mainspring of her being, the causa causans of her self-murder. But Shakespeare does not do this; he allows the love of Antony to count with her, but it is imperious pride and hatred of degradation that force his Cleopatra to embrace the Arch-fear. And just this same quality of pride is attributed to the "dark lady." Sonnet 131 begins:

"Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,

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As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel.”

Both are women of infinite cunning and small regard for faith or truth; hearts steeled with an insane pride, and violent tempers suited with scolding slanderous tongues. Prolonged analysis is not needed. A point of seeming difference between them establishes their identity. Cleopatra is beautiful, "a lass unparalleled," as Charmian calls her, and accordingly we can believe that all emotions became her, and that when hopping on the street or pretending to die she was alike bewitching; beauty has this magic. But how can all things become a woman who is not beautiful, whose face some say "hath not the power to make love groan," who cannot even blind the senses with desire? And yet the "dark lady" of the sonnets who is thus described, has the "powerful might" of personality in as full measure as Egypt's queen. The point of seeming unlikeness is as convincing as any likeness could be; the peculiarities of both women are the same and spring from the same dominant quality. Cleopatra is cunning, wily, faithless, passionately unrestrained in speech and proud as Lucifer, and so is the sonnetheroine. We may be sure that the faithlessness, scolding, and mad vanity of his mistress were defects in Shakespeare's eyes as in ours; these, indeed, were "the things ill" which nevertheless became her. What Shakespeare loved in her was what he himself lacked or possessed in lesser degree that dæmonic power of personality which he makes Enobarbus praise in Cleopatra and which he praises directly in the sonnet-heroine. Enobarbus says of Cleopatra:

"I saw her once

Hop forty paces through the public street,

And, having lost her breath, she spoke and panted,
That she did make defect perfection,

And, breathless, power breathe forth."

One would be willing to wager that Shakespeare is here recalling a performance of his mistress; but it is enough for my purpose now to draw attention to the unexpectedness of the attribute "power." The sonnet fastens on the same word:

"O, from what power hast thou this powerful might With insufficiency my heart to sway?"

In the same sonnet he again dwells upon her 66 strength": she was bold, too, to unreason, and of unbridled tongue, for, "twice forsworn herself," she had yet urged his "amiss," though guilty of the same fault. What he admired most in her was force of character. Perhaps the old saying held in her case: ex forti dulcedo; perhaps her confident strength had abandonments more flattering and complete than those of weaker women; perhaps in those moments her forceful dark face took on a soulful beauty that entranced his exquisite susceptibility; perhaps but the suppositions are infinite.

Though a lover and possessed by his mistress Shakespeare was still an artist. In the sonnets he brings out her overbearing will, boldness, pride-the elemental force of her nature; in the play, on the other hand, while just mentioning her "power," he lays the chief stress upon the cunning wiles and faithlessness of her whose trade was love. But just as Cleopatra has power, so there can be no doubt of the wily cunning-" the warrantise of skill ”—of the sonnet-heroine, and no doubt her faithlessness was that "just cause of hate " which Shakespeare bemoaned.