"
It is as if Antony were forgotten, clean wiped from her mind. The whole
scene is a libel upon Cleopatra and upon womanhood. When betrayed, women
are faithless out of anger, pique, desire of revenge; they are faithless
out of fear, out of ambition, for fancy's sake--for fifty motives, but
not without motive. It would have been easy to justify this scene. All
the dramatist had to do was to show us that Cleopatra, a proud woman and
scorned queen, could not forget Antony's faithlessness in leaving her to
marry Octavia; but she never mentions Octavia, never seems to remember
her after she has got Antony back. This omission, too, implies a slur
upon her. Nor does she kiss Caesar's "conquering hand" out of fear.
Thyreus has told her it would please Caesar if she would make of his
fortunes a staff to lean upon; she has no fear, and her ambitions are
wreathed round Antony: Caesar has nothing to offer that can tempt her,
as we shall see later. The scene is a libel upon her. The more one
studies it, the clearer it becomes that Shakespeare wrote it out of
wounded personal feeling.
Pages:
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440