"
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. 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 compel 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,
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.
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