Heine speaks of her contemptuously as a "kept
woman," but the epithet only shows how Heine in default of knowledge
fell back on his racial gift of feminine denigration. Even before she
enters we see that Shakespeare has not forgiven his dark scornful
mistress; Cleopatra is the finest picture he ever painted of Mary
Fitton; but Antony's friends tell us, at the outset, she is a "lustful
gipsy," a "strumpet," and at first she merely plays on Antony's
manliness; she sends for him, and when he comes, departs. A little later
she sends again, telling her messenger:
"I did not send you: if you find him sad,
Say, I am dancing; if in mirth, report
That I am sudden sick: quick, and return."
And when Charmian, her woman, declares that the way to keep a man is to
"cross him in nothing," she replies scornfully:
"Thou teachest, like a fool, the way to lose him."
She uses a dozen taunts to prevent her lover from leaving her; but when
she sees him resolved, she wishes him victory and success. And so
through a myriad changes of mood and of cunning wiles we discover that
love for Antony which is the anchor to her unstable nature.
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