What a picture do those lines give of her:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.
What a spirit and fire in her conversation with Antony's messenger
who brings her the unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia! How
all the pride of beauty and of high rank breaks out in her promised
reward to him:
--There's gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss!
She had great and unpardonable faults, but the beauty of her death
almost redeems them. She learns from the depth of despair the
strength of her affections. She keeps her queen-like state in the
last disgrace, and her sense of the pleasurable in the last moments
of her life. She tastes a luxury in death. After applying the asp,
she says with fondness:
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle.
Oh Antony!
It is worth while to observe that Shakespeare has contrasted the
extreme magnificence of the descriptions in this play with pictures
of extreme suffering and physical horror, not less striking--partly
perhaps to excuse the effeminacy of Mark Antony to whom they are
related as having happened, but more to preserve a certain balance
of feeling in the mind.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133