[
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.
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