Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell.
I have chosen this passage not because of its singular beauty, but because
it is peculiarly to our present purpose. In the first place, Shakespeare,
by using both prose and verse--which he by no means always does under
similar circumstances--makes a clear formal division between what is poetry
and what is not. It is all magnificently contrived drama, but down to the
Clown's exit it is not poetry. The significance of the Clown does not
demand of Shakespeare's imaginative mood that highest activity that would
force him to poetry. The short dialogue has great excellence, but not this
kind of excellence. The fact that it occurs in what we call a poetic drama
does not make it poetry; its fine dramatic significance does not give it
poetic significance. We are living in a world of dramatic poetry, and
yet we have here a perfectly clear distinction between the drama and the
poetry, since we definitely have the one without the other. Then, when
Cleopatra begins her farewell speech, we have the addition of poetry and
a continuance of the drama. And this speech illustrates perfectly the
suggestion that the quality which is commonly said to be exclusively lyric
is the quality of all poetry.
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