Note D
Shakespeare, it seems clear, imagined Cleopatra as a gipsy. And this, I would suggest, may be the explanation of a word which has caused much difficulty. Antony, when ‘all is lost,’ exclaims (IV. x. 38):
O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,—
Whose eye beck’d forth my wars, and call’d them home,
Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,—
Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose,
Beguil’d me to the very heart of loss.
Pope changed ‘grave’ in the first line into ‘gay.’ Others conjecture ‘great’ and ‘grand.’ Steevens says that ‘grave’ means ‘deadly,’ and that the word ‘is often used by Chapman’ thus; and one of his two quotations supports his statement; but certainly in Shakespeare the word does not elsewhere bear this sense. It could mean ‘majestic,’ as Johnson takes it here. But why should it not have its usual meaning? Cleopatra, we know, was a being of ‘infinite variety,’ and her eyes may sometimes have had, like those of some gipsies, a mysterious gravity or solemnity which would exert a spell more potent than her gaiety. Their colour, presumably, was what is called ‘black’; but surely they were not, like those of Tennyson’s Cleopatra, ‘bold black eyes.’ Readers interested in seeing what criticism is capable of may like to know that it has been proposed to read, for the first line of the quotation above, ‘O this false fowl of Egypt! haggard charmer.’ [Though I have not cancelled this note I have modified some phrases in it, as I have not much confidence in my suggestion, and am inclined to think that Steevens was right.]
1 As this lecture was composed after the publication of my Shakespearean Tragedy I ignored in it, as far as possible, such aspects of the play as were noticed in that book, to the Index of which I may refer the reader.
2 See Note A.
3 ‘Now whilest Antonius was busie in this preparation, Octavia his wife, whom he had left at Rome, would needs take sea to come unto him. Her brother Octauius Cæsar was willing vnto it, not for his respect at all (as most authors do report) as for that he might haue an honest colour to make warre with Antonius if he did misuse her, and not esteeme of her as she ought to be.’—Life of Antony (North’s Translation), sect. 29. The view I take does not, of course, imply that Octavius had no love for his sister.
4 See Note B.
5 The point of this remark is unaffected by the fact that the play is not divided into acts and scenes in the folios.
6 See Note C.
7 See Note D.
8 Of the ‘good’ heroines, Imogen is the one who has most of this spirit of fire and air; and this (in union, of course, with other qualities) is perhaps the ultimate reason why for so many readers she is, what Mr. Swinburne calls her, ‘the woman above all Shakespeare’s women.’