THE MAIN SOURCE of Antony and Cleopatra was, of course, Plutarch’s Life of Antonius. Shakespeare’s portrait of his hero is very close to Plutarch’s, much closer, indeed, than the Antony portrayed in Julius Caesar. He made use of almost every incident in the later years of Antony’s life, except the long, absorbing, but irrelevant, account of the Parthian campaign. One passage, contrasting Antony’s present luxuriousness with his former powers of endurance, is taken from Plutarch’s account of an earlier campaign. Another passage used by Shakespeare, describing the first meeting of the two lovers, refers to events before the opening of the play. Both these flashbacks are exceptionally full of verbal reminiscences, as a comparison will show:1
… and moreouer sent Hircius and Pansa, then Consuls, to driue Antonius out of Italy. These two Consuls together with Caesar, who also had an armye, went against Antonius that beseeged the citie of Modena, and there ouerthrew him in battell: but both the Consuls were slaine there. Antonius flying vpon this ouerthrowe, fell into great miserie all at once: but the chiefest want of all other, and that pinched him most, was famine. Howbeit he was of such a strong nature, that by pacience he would ouercome any aduersitie, and the heauier fortune lay vpon him, the more constant shewed he him selfe…. It was a wonderfull example to the souldiers, to see Antonius that was brought vp in all finenes and superfluitie, so easily to drinke puddle water, and to eate wild frutes and rootes: and moreouer it is reported, that euen as they passed the Alpes, they did eate the barcks of trees, and such beasts, as neuer man tasted of their flesh before.
Antony,
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow; whom thou fought’st against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink
The stale of horses and the gilded puddle
Which beasts could cough at. Thy palate then did deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;
Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou brows’d. On the Alps,
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on. And all this –
It wounds thine honour that I speak it now –
Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek
So much as lank’d not.
(I. iv. 55–71)
Although Shakespeare follows North’s translation very closely, his additions make all the difference: the lines about the ‘stale of horses and the gilded puddle’, the line about the stag, and the final phrase of the passage.
The Cydnus passage is put into the mouth of Enorbarbus at the moment in the play when Antony is to marry Octavia and desert Cleopatra. The tribute of the cynical soldier to the Queen’s enchantment, driving him to conceits which are not in the source, is a masterly dramatic stroke.2
Therefore when she was sent vnto by diuers letters, both from Antonius him selfe, and also from his frendes, she made so light of it, and mocked Antonius so much, that she disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the riuer of Cydnus, the poope whereof was of gold, the sailes of purple, and the owers of siluer, which kept stroke in rowing after the sounde of the musicke of flutes, howboyes, citherns, violls, and such other instruments as they played vpon in the barge. And now for the person of her selfe: she was layed vnder a pauillion of cloth of gold of tissue, apparelled and attired like the goddesse Venus, commonly drawen in picture: and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretie faire boyes apparelled as painters doe set forth god Cupide, with little fannes in their hands, with the which they fanned wind vpon her. Her Ladies and gentlewomen also, the fairest of them were apparelled like the nymphes Nereides (which are the mermaides of the waters) and like the Graces, some stearing the helme, others tending the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of the which there came a wonderfull passing sweete sauor of perfumes, that perfumed the wharfes side, pestered with innumerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge all alongest the riuers side: others also ranne out of the citie to see her comming in. So that in thend, there ranne such multitudes of people one after an other to see her, that Antonius was left post alone in the market place, in his Imperiall seate to geue audience: and there went a rumor in the peoples mouthes, that the goddesse Venus was come to play with the god Bacchus, for the generall good of all Asia.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description. She did lie
In her pavillion, cloth-of-gold, of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy out-work nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
Agr. O, rare for Antony!
Eno. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i’th’eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthron’d i’th’market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to th’air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.
(II. ii. 195–222)
The vivid opening lines are an addition of the poet. He also adds the description of the sails and the oars, ‘metaphysical’ hyperboles which ‘diffuse a tone of luxury and sensuousness throughout the passage’;3 and in these additions and in the last three lines of the passage4 the successive elements – the winds, the water, the air – are represented all as succumbing to the enchantment of love which breathes from the great Queen and her burning barge; and by this varied return on a single motive North’s inconsequential panorama is given an organic unity.
Most striking of all, perhaps, is the suggestion that Cleopatra was more beautiful than Venus herself. Plutarch mentions that Antonius was reputed to be descended from Hercules, that Cleopatra dressed as the goddess Isis, and that there was a rumour after the first meeting of the lovers that Venus was come to play with Bacchus ‘for the general good of all Asia’. Shakespeare makes use of all these suggestions of divinity, but mainly indirectly. Antony refers to the death of Hercules when he is himself meditating suicide; the mysterious music under the earth is said to signify the departure of Hercules from Antony; and Cleopatra is termed ‘our terrene moon’.
The character of Enobarbus is virtually Shakespeare’s creation. Plutarch tells us little about him except that
he being sicke of an agewe when he went and tooke a little boate to goe to Caesars campe, Antonius was very sory for it, but yet he sent after him all his caryage, trayne, and men: and the same Domitius, as though he gaue him to vnderstand that he repented his open treason, he died immediately after.
This was before the battle of Actium. In the play Enobarbus refuses to desert even after this battle. It is not until the end of Act III that he decides to leave his master. He is still present when Antony says farewell to his servants (IV. ii), and Antony’s commendation of their loyalty has therefore a note of unconscious irony. Shakespeare makes Enobarbus die, not of an ague, but of a broken heart.
A number of other works have been suggested as subsidiary sources of the play. It has been argued,5 for example, that in his treatment of Cleopatra’s death Shakespeare was influenced by Chaucer’s treatment of her as one of love’s martyrs, and also by the ode of Horace celebrating the battle of Actium (I. 37).6 There Cleopatra’s courage and nobility are portrayed by an admiring enemy, and Horace shows her determination to avoid being exhibited in a Roman triumph:
Quae generosius
perire quaerens nec muliebriter
expavit ensem nec latentis
classe cita reparavit oras;
ausa et iacentem visere regiam
voltu sereno, fortis et asperas
tractare serpentes, ut atrum
corpore combiberet venenum,
deliberata morte ferocior;
saevis Liburnis scilicet invidens
privata deduci superbo
non humilis mulier triumpho.
But although Shakespeare was doubtless acquainted with this poem, and certainly acquainted with Chaucer’s, he could have developed independently from Plutarch’s account his presentation of Cleopatra’s suicide.
Professor Ernest Schanzer in Shakespeare’s Appian (1956) and again in The Problem Plays of Shakespeare (1963) has convincingly argued that Appian was another source. The fifth book of Appian’s history deals with events up to the death of Sextus Pompeius. The passages relating to Lucius, Antony’s brother, in the play can hardly be based on Plutarch alone, for he does not make clear, as Shakespeare and Appian both do, that Lucius had republican sympathies. Antony asks Octavius:
Did he not rather
Discredit my authority with yours,
And make the wars alike against my stomach,
Having alike your cause?
(II. ii. 52–5)
Appian, but neither Goulard nor Plutarch, shows that Lucius was fighting against the triumvirate for the restoration of the republic: he never claimed to be fighting in Antony’s name, and Antony is justified in claiming that he had the same cause as that of Octavius. But Fulvia, on the other hand, as Appian makes clear, used Antony’s grievances as her justification for her wars, although her real motive was the desire to get him to return to Italy, so as to detach him from Cleopatra. The different war-aims of Lucius and Fulvia are thus reflected in the play. As Antony states, ‘my brother never/Did urge me in his act’ (II. ii. 49–50); and Fulvia ‘To have me out of Egypt made wars here’ (II. ii. 99). The last point, however, is made by Goulard in his life of Octavius, as well as by Appian.
The borrowings from Appian, relating to Sextus Pompeius, are equally significant, and they are fully discussed by MacCallum.7 Plutarch mentions very briefly Sextus Pompeius’ inroads on Italy. Appian gives this account of his followers:
Out of Italy all things were not quiet, for Pompey, by resorte of condemned Citizens, and auntient possessioners, was greatly increased, both in mighte, and estimation: for they that feared their life, or were spoyled of their goodes, or lyked not the present state, fledde all to hym … beside a repayre of yong men, desirous of gayne and seruice, not caring vnder whome they went, bycause they were all Romanes, sought vnto him.
(Schanzer, Shakespeare’s Appian, Bk v, 76–7)
This appears to be the source of two passages in the play:8
The condemn’d Pompey,
Rich in his father’s honour, creeps apace
Into the hearts of such as have not thriv’d
Upon the present state, whose numbers threaten;
And quietness, grown sick of rest, would purge
By any desperate change …
(I. iii. 49–54)
and ‘flush youth revolt’ (I. iv. 52). The verbal parallel (‘present state’) and the absence of any such account in Plutarch are fairly conclusive.
Antony expresses indignation at Pompey’s murder (III. V. 18–19). Plutarch does not mention the murder; Goulard states that it was carried out by Antony’s commandment; Appian, however, tells us:
There bee that saye, that Plancus and not Antony, did commaunde hym to dye, whyche beeyng president of Syria, had Antonyes signet, and in great causes wrote letters in hys name. Some thynke it was done with Antonyes knowledge, he fearyng the name of Pompey, or for Cleopatra, who fauoured Pompey the great.
Appian at least allows the possibility of Antony’s innocence.
There is some evidence that Shakespeare had read Antonie, the Countess of Pembroke’s translation of Garnier’s Marc Antoine.9 The clearest parallel was pointed out by John Dover Wilson.10 In the Argument, it is said that Antony ‘for knitting a straiter bond of amitie betweene’ him and Octavius ‘had taken to wife Octavia’. Agrippa in Shakespeare’s play in proposing the marriage uses a similar phrsae:
To hold you in perpetual amity,
To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts
With an unslipping knot, take Antony
Octavi’a to his wife.
(II. ii. 129–32)
In a later scene Enobarbus prophesies that
You shall find the band that seems to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity.
(II. vi. 116–18)
The verbal links are substantial: ‘knitting’/‘knit’; ‘bond’/‘band’; ‘amity’; ‘take to wife’.
In the first scene of Antonie the hero speaks of breaking from Cleopatra:
Thou breakest at length from thence, as one encharm’d
Breakes from th’enchaunter –
(79–80)
lines which, as Professor Schanzer has shown,11 may well have suggested the line:
I must from this enchanting Queen break off.
(I. ii. 125)
One chorus in Antonie describes the operations of the Nile, mentioning ‘Nilus’ mire’, the ‘fatt slime’ left behind, and the resulting rich harvest:
making therby greatest growe
busie reapers ioyfull paine,
when his flouds do highest flow.
Shakespeare likewise speaks of ‘Nilus’ slime’ and ‘Nilus’ mud’, and mentions also that the greater the flood the greater is the harvest:
The higher Nilus swells
The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman
Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,
And shortly comes to harvest.
(II. vii. 20–3)
Cleopatra’s lines –
Thy eies, two Sunnes, the lodging place of loue,
Which yet for tents to warlike Mars did serue –
(1941–2)
and the line describing Cleopatra –
Her beamy eies, two Sunnes of this our world –
(715)
may have suggested the opening speech in Shakespeare’s play:12
Those his goodly eyes,
That o’er the files and musters of the war
Have glow’d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front …
(I. i. 2–6)
and also the description of Antony in the last scene:
His face was as the heav’ns, and therein stuck
A sun and moon …
his rear’d arm
Crested the world.
(V. ii. 79 ff.)
Finally, as MacCullum noted,13 the lines at the very end of Antonie –
A thousand kisses, thousand thousand more
Let you my mouth for honors farewell giue –
(1997–8)
spoken by Cleopatra about the dead Antonius, resemble words spoken by the dying Antony in Shakespeare’s play:
until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.
(IV. xv. 19–21)
There is stronger evidence that Shakespeare made use of Daniel’s Cleopatra and his Letter from Octavia. The latter poem, which first appeared in 1599, has an Argument containing an account of Antony’s marriage to Octavia:14
For Antonie hauing yet vpon him the fetters of Ægypt, layd on by the power of a more incomparable beauty, could admit no new Lawes into the state of his affection, or dispose of himselfe, being not himselfe, but as hauing his heart turned Eastward, whither the poynt of his desires were directed, toucht with the strongest allurements that ambition, and a licentious soueraignty could draw a man vnto: could not truly descend to the priuate loue of a ciuill nurtred Matron, whose entertainment bounded with modesty, and the nature of her education, knew not to clothe her affections in any other colours, then the plaine habit of truth.
So, in the play, Antony exclaims:
These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
Or lose myself in dotage.
(I. ii. 113–14)
Later on, when the marriage with Octavia has been arranged, Antony says:
though I make this marriage for my peace,
I’th’East my pleasure lies
(II. iii. 40–1)
Maecenas refers to Octavia’s modesty (II. ii. 245) and Enobarbus points out that since she ‘is of a holy, cold, and still conversation’ (II. vi. 119), Antony ‘will to his Egyptian dish again’.
Octavia in Daniel’s poem (st. 2) imagines how her letter will reach Antony:
Although perhaps, these my complaints may come
Whilst thou in th’armes of that incestuous Queene,
The staine of Ægypt, and the shame of Rome
Shalt dallying sit, and blush to haue them seene:
Whilst proud disdainfull she, gessing from whome
The message came, and what the cause hath beene,
Will scorning say, Faith this comes from your Deere,
Now Sir you must be shent for staying heere.
This may have given a hint for Cleopatra’s words about the messengers from Rome in the first scene of the play:
Nay, hear them, Antony.
Fulvia perchance is angry….
Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt’s Queen,
Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine
Is Caesar’s homager. Else so thy cheek pays shame
When shrill-tongu’d Fulvia scolds.
(I. i. 19–20, 29–32)
In a later stanza (36) Octavia imagines Cleopatra’s wiles:
She armes her teares, the ingins of deceit
And all her batterie, to oppose my loue,
And bring thy comming grace to a retreit,
The power of all her subtilty to proue:
Now pale and faint she languishes, and strait
Seemes in a sound, vnable more to moue:
Whilst her instructed fellowes ply thine eares
With forged passions, mixed with fained teares.
This is a good description of the Cleopatra presented in I. iii, II. v, and in Act IV, and although Plutarch gives a similar account, Daniel’s is closer to Shakespeare’s.
It is probable that Shakespeare had read the earlier version of Cleopatra.15 There are a number of details common to both plays, which are not to be found in Plutarch. Daniel in his first act stresses Cleopatra’s determination to hoodwink Caesar by committing suicide. She is particularly concerned at the thought of Octavia watching her disgrace:
I that liu’d and raign’d a Queene,
Do scorne to buy my life at such a rate,
That I should vnderneath my selfe be seene,
Basely induring to suruiue my state:
That Rome should see my scepter-bearing hands
Behind me bound, and glory in my teares;
That I should passe whereas Octauia stands,
To view my misery, that purchas’d hers.
(63–70)
So in Shakespeare’s play Cleopatra tells Antony:
Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes
And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour
Demuring upon me.
(IV. xv. 27–9)
Later on, she tells Proculeius:
Know sir, that I
Will not wait pinion’d at your master’s court,
Nor once be chastis’d with the sober eye
Of dull Octavia.
(v. ii. 52–5)
Daniel makes Cleopatra say (50–4) that Caesar:
seekes to entertaine my life with wiles.
But Caesar, it is more then thou canst do,
Promise, flatter, threaten extreamity,
Imploy thy wits and all thy force thereto,
I have both hands, and will, and I can die.
The last line combined with several references to resolution – ‘For who can stay a minde resolu’d to die’ (1183); ‘For what I will I am resolu’d’ (1449–1450); ‘her resolution’ (1592) – to make Shakespeare’s line (IV. xv. 49):
My resolution and my hands I’ll trust …
and the last lines of Act IV:
we have no friend
But resolution, and the briefest end.
As Professor Farnham points out,16 Shakespeare follows Daniel in making Proculeius advise Cleopatra to sue for Caesar’s grace, in making her refer to the violation of her privilege of dying, and in having her send a message to Caesar, declaring that she wishes to die.
Cleopatra temporizes with Caesar and soothes his pleasure (89) for the sake of her children. Shakespeare makes Caesar threaten to kill her children if she commits suicide (v. ii. 130–1).
One scene in the play, where Seleucus accuses Cleopatra of lying about the amount of her treasure is sometimes misinterpreted by commentators. Plutarch makes it perfectly clear – and this was certainly Shakespeare’s intention also – that Cleopatra is acting a part:
Then she sodainly altered her speache, and prayed him to pardon her, as though she were affrayed to dye, and desirous to liue … and so he tooke his leaue of her, supposing he had deceiued her, but in deede he was deceiued him selfe.
This is reinforced by the marginal gloss: ‘Cleopatra finely deceiueth Octauius Caesar, as though she desired to liue’. In other words Cleopatra had fully determined on suicide: she pretended about the treasure to make Caesar believe she wished to live. The versions given by Daniel, by Jodelle in Cleopatre captive, and by Shakespeare are closely based on Plutarch’s account. Daniel is the only one of the four writers who does not suggest that Cleopatra was tricking Caesar:17
Alas, said she, O Caesar: is not this a great shame and reproche, that thou hauing vouchsaued to take the peines to come vnto me, and hast done me this honor, poore wretche, and caitife creature, brought into this pitiefull and miserable estate: and that mine owne seruants should come now to accuse me, though it may be I have reserued some iuells and trifles meete for women, but not for me (poore soule) to set out my selfe withall, but meaning to giue some pretie presents and gifts vnto Octauia and Liuia, that they making meanes and intercession for me to thee, thou mightest yet extend thy fauor and mercie vpon me?
Daniel has the following version of the speech (684–94):
Ah Caesar, what a great indignity
Is this, that here my vassall subiect stands
T’accuse me to my Lord of trechery?
If I reseru’d some certaine womens toyes,
Alas it was not for my self (God knowes),
Poore miserable soule, that little ioyes
In trifling ornaments, in outward showes.
But what I kept, I kept to make my way
Vnto thy Liuia and Octauins grace,
That thereby in compassion moouèd, they
Might mediate thy fauour in my case.
The corresponding passage in Jodelle’s play is as follows:18
CLE. | A! faux meurdrier! a! faux traistre! arraché |
| Sera le poil de ta teste cruelle. |
| Que pleust aux Dieux que ce fust ta cervelle! |
| Tien, traistre, tien. |
SEL. | O Dieux! |
CLE. | O chose detestable! |
| Un serf, un serf! |
OCT. | Mais chose émerveillable |
| D’un coeur terrible! |
CLE. | Et quoy, m’accuses tu? |
| Me pensois tu veufve de ma vertu |
| Comme d’Antoine? a a! traistre. |
SEL. | Retiens la, |
| Puissant Cesar, retiens la doncq. |
CLE. | Voila |
| Tous mes biensfaits. Hou! le dueil qui m’efforce |
| Donne a mon coeur langoureux telle force, |
| Que je pourrois, ce me semble, froisser |
| Du poing tes os, et tes flancs crevasser |
| A coups de pied. |
OCT. | O quel grinsant courage! |
| Mais rien n’est plus furieux que la rage |
| D’un coeur de femme. Et bien, quoy, Cleopatre? |
| Estes vous point ja saoule de le battre! |
| Fuy t’en, ami, fuy t’en. |
CLE. | Mais quoy, mais quoy? |
| Mon Empereur, est-il un tel esmoy |
| Au monde encor que ce paillard me donne? |
| Sa lacheté ton esprit mesme estonne, |
Comme je croy, quand moy, Roine d’ici,
De mon vassal suis accusee ainsi,
Que toy, Cesar, as daigné visiter,
Et par ta voix à repos inciter,
He! si j’avois retenu des joyaux,
Et quelque part de mes habits royaux,
L’aurois-je fait pour moy, las, malheureuse!
Moy, qui de moy ne suis plus curieuse?
Mais telle estoit ceste esperance mienne
Qu’à ta Livie et ton Octavienne
Des ces joyaux le present je feroy,
Et leurs pitiez ainsi pourchasseroy
Pour (n’estant point de mes presens ingrates)
Envers Cesar estre mes advocates.
(III. 244–78)
Shakespeare’s lines are as follows:
O Caesar, what a wounding shame is this,
That thou vouchsafing here to visit me,
Doing the honour of thy lordliness
To one so meek, that mine own servant should
Parcel the sum of my disgraces by
Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar,
That I some lady trifles have reserv’d,
Immoment toys, things of such dignity
As we greet modern friends withal; and say
Some nobler token I have kept apart
For Livia and Octavia, to induce
Their mediation, must I be unfolded
With one that I have bred?
(V. ii. 158–70)
Daniel reduces the violence of Cleopatra’s attack on her treasurer, and disposes of it in three lines; the epithet ‘ungrateful’, though a natural addition to Plutarch’s words, could have been suggested by ‘Voila/Tous mes biensfaits’; he uses Jodelle’s word, ‘vassal’; and he follows him in inverting Plutarch’s ‘unto Octavia and Livia’ and in using the pronoun ‘thy’:
à ta Livie et ton Octavienne …
Unto thy Livia and Octavias grace.
Shakespeare, in the corresponding scene, follows North’s translation closely. He transfers Cleopatra’s physical violence to another scene (II. v) where she maltreats the messenger from Rome. But the verbal parallels with North are sufficiently obvious: ‘shame’ (158); ‘vouche-saved’/Vouchsaving’ (159); ‘mine own servant’ (161); ‘trifles’ (164). Shakespeare also echoes two of Daniel’s words – ‘toys’ (165), ‘mediate’/‘mediation’ (169) – and he, like Daniel and Jodelle, stresses the ingratitude of Seleucus.
In one respect Shakespeare is closer to Jodelle than he is to North or Daniel. North does not put any abusive language into Cleopatra’s mouth; Daniel’s Cleopatra calls Seleucus a ‘vile, ungrateful wretch’, a ‘vassal’, and a ‘caitife’ – the last is transferred from Cleopatra’s words about herself. But Jodelle’s heroine calls Seleuque a variety of names – ‘faux meurdrier … faux traistre … un serf … ce paillard’ – and she refers to his ‘lâcheté’. So Shakespeare’s Cleopatra says:
O slave, of no more trust
Than love that’s hir’d! …
Slave, soulless villain, dog!
O rarely base!
(v. ii. 153–4, 156–7)
Plutarch makes a good deal of the fact that Dolabella ‘did beare no euil will vnto Cleopatra’ and of his warning that she was to be sent to Rome within three days. Daniel’s Dolabella expresses his admiration of Cleopatra to Octavius and sends her a love-letter with the information she wants. Shakespeare, more dramatically, makes Dolabella inform Cleopatra by word of mouth, but his love is not directly expressed. Daniel’s treatment, however, left one impression on Shakespeare. Cleopatra says (1094–6):
I thanke the man, both for his loue and letter;
The one comes fit to warne me thus before,
But for th‘other, I must die his debter.
So Shakespeare’s Cleopatra tells Dolabella:
I shall remain your debtor.
(v. ii. 204)
Daniel’s Cleopatra complains of the difficulty of suicide (1174–83):
But what haue I saue these bare hands to do it?
And these weake fingers are not yron-poynted:
They cannot pierce the flesh being put vnto it,
And I of all meanes else am disappointed.
But yet I must a way and meanes seeke, how
To come vnto thee, whatsoere I do,
O Death, art thou so hard to come by now,
That we must pray, intreate, and seeke thee too?
But I will finde thee wheresoere thou lie,
For who can stay a minde resolu’d to die?
There are similar passages in Shakespeare:
My resolution and my hands I’ll trust
(IV. xv. 49)
Quick, quick, good hands!
(v. ii. 39)
Where art thou, Death?
Come hither, come!
(v. ii. 46–7)
mine nails
Are stronger than mine eyes
(v. ii. 222–3)
The Messenger describes how Cleopatra decks herself for death:
Euen as she was when on thy cristall streames,
Cleare Cydnos, she did shew what earth could shew; …
Even as she went at first to meete her loue.
So goes she now at last againe to finde him.
But that first, did her greatnes onely proue,
This last her loue, that could not liue behind him.
(1447 ff.)
So Shakespeare’s Cleopatra declares:
I am again for Cydnus
To meet Mark Antony.
(v. ii. 227–8)
Daniel’s Cleopatra speaks several times of the easy death afforded by the asps –
That with one gentle touch canst free our breath
(1518)
thou best freest vs from our liues worst terror,
In sweetly bringing soules to quiet rest.
(1523–4)
That open canst with such an easie key
The doore of life; come gentle cunning thiefe…
(1534–5)
But still in one same sweet vnaltered cheare…
(1617)
Shakespeare’s Cleopatra describes her death
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle…
(v. ii. 309)
Daniel describes how Honour leads forth (1579–81)
Bright Immortalitie in shining armour:
Thorow the rayes of whose cleare glory, she
Might see lifes basenesse…
and Cleopatra speaks of ‘That enemy, base Life’ (1600). Shakespeare’s Cleopatra likewise contrasts her ‘immortal longings’ (v. ii. 280) with her baseness in dying after Iras (v. ii. 299).
The touch of the asp proves that the gold of Cleopatra’s love is pure (1612) as the death of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra makes her Antony’s wife. As Daniel’s Cleopatra dies (1651–4) –
in her sinking downe she wries
The Diademe which on her head she wore:
Which Charmion … espies,
And hastes to right it as it was before.
Charmian in the corresponding scene in Shakespeare’s play says:
Your crown’s awry;
I’ll mend it and then play.
(v. ii. 316–17)
The evidence that Daniel revised his play after seeing a performance of Shakespeare’s is much less conclusive. The date of the latter is not known, and it may have been written after the 1607 edition of Daniel’s play. Daniel in this revision presents the death of Cleopatra on the stage instead of describing it by messenger and he introduces Dircetus (as Garnier had done) to relate the death of Antony to Octavius. The account of the hoisting of his body into the monument may owe something to a stage performance:19
Shee drawes him vp in rowles of taffaty
T’a window at the top, which did allow
A little light vnto her monument.
There Charmion, and poore Eras, two weake maids
Foretir’d with watching, and their mistresse care,
Tug’d at the pulley, hauing n’other aydes,
And vp they hoise the swounding body there
Of pale Antonius showring out his blood
On th’vnder-lookers, which there gazing stood.
(244–52)
There are two fairly close parallels. Cleopatra, tugging on the pulley, is said to be heavier by her grief:
when shee a fresh renewes
Her hold, and with reinforced power doth straine,
And all the weight of her weake bodie laies,
Whose surcharg’d heart more then her body wayes.
In the same circumstances, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra cries:
How heavy weighs my lord!
Our strength is all gone into heaviness;
That makes the weight.
(IV. xv. 32–4)
Later in the same scene Dircetus quotes Antony’s warning:
And none about Octauius trust, said hee,
But Proculeius: he’s an honest man.
(280–1)
Shakespeare’s Antony likewise says:
None about Caesar trust but Proculeius.
(IV. xv. 48)
North’s version is not so close: ‘that chiefly she should trust Proculeius aboue any man else about Caesar’. There would seem to be no way of proving which poet was indebted to the other; but it is possible that Shakespeare imitated Daniel’s first version of Cleopatra and that Daniel then returned the compliment.
We are assured that the portrait of Cleopatra owes ‘more to a study of prostitutes than to a knowledge of how even the worst queens behave’. One of the scenes which occasioned this verdict is the one where Cleopatra questions the Messenger about Octavia, asking him the colour of her hair, her height, her voice, her gait, her age, and her face. It so happens that when Mary, Queen of Scots, sent James Melville to the English Court, Elizabeth asked a whole series of questions about her rival:20
Who, she asked, was the fairer, Mary or she? a question Melville tried to dodge by declaring that she was the fairest Queen in England and theirs the fairest Queen in Scotland. As Elizabeth was not to be put off, he replied that they were both the fairest ladies of their courts, but the Queen of England was whiter…. Next she wanted to know who was the higher. Mary was, answered Melville. Then is she over high, retorted Elizabeth; she herself being neither over high nor over low.
Questions followed about Mary’s skill in playing and dancing, and Elizabeth later demonstrated her own skill in both respects. When one considers, too, Elizabeth’s occasional acts of violence, one is bound to wonder whether Shakespeare was so ignorant of how queens, good or bad, behave.
Another critic, Daniel Stempel, thinks that ‘lass unparalleled’ is a sign that Cleopatra cannot rise above the vices of her sex; and, in commenting on her self-description, –
a woman, and commanded
By such poor passion as the maid that milks
And does the meanest chares –
(IV. xv. 73–5)
declares that the lines mean that she is ‘governed by no specifically noble passion’.21 Once again Elizabeth’s own words show that Shakespeare knew better than his critic. In a speech to Parliament in 1576, Elizabeth replied to a petition that she should take a husband:
If I were a milk-maid, with a pail on my arm, whereby my private person might be little set by, I would not forsake that poor and single state to match with the greatest monarch.
It is not, of course, claimed that Shakespeare had heard of Elizabeth’s enquiries about her rival, or even that he was echoing her speech to Parliament. It is merely suggested that in two scenes where Cleopatra’s conduct has been stigmatized as unregal, Shakespeare came uncannily close to contemporary examples of queenly behaviour – closer, indeed, than Samuel Daniel did in his statuesque portrait.
Michael Lloyd has shown22 that Shakespeare consulted Plutarch’s essay in his Moralia on Isis and Osiris and that he refreshed his memory of The Golden Asse with its account of the worship of Isis.
Finally, it may be mentioned that Dr Ethel Seaton pointed out some curious echoes of the book of Revelation.23 It is possible that the apocalyptic imagery was designed to raise the stature of the protagonists, but the echoes are more likely to have been unconscious.