William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (465 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

Tags: #Drama, #Literary Criticism, #Shakespeare

BOOK: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
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Exit, leaving the basket
Enter
⌈
Iras
⌉
with a robe, crown, and other jewels
 
CLEOPATRA
Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have
Immortal longings in me. Now no more
The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.
Charmian and Iras help her to dress
 
Yare, yare, good Iras, quick—methinks I hear
Antony call. I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act. I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath. Husband, I come.
Now to that name my courage prove my title.
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. So, have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.
She kisses them
 
Farewell, kind Charmian. Iras, long farewell.
Iras falls and dies
 
Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch,
Which hurts and is desired. Dost thou lie still?
If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world
It is not worth leave-taking.
CHARMIAN
Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say
The gods themselves do weep.
CLEOPATRA This proves me base.
If she first meet the curled Antony
He’ll make demand of her, and spend that kiss
Which is my heaven to have.
She takes an aspic from the basket and puts it to her breast
 
Come, thou mortal wretch,
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie. Poor venomous fool,
Be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak,
That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass
Unpolicied!
CHARMIAN O eastern star!
CLEOPATRA
Peace, peace.
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?
CHARMIAN
O, break! O, break!
CLEOPATRA
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle.
O Antony!
She puts another aspic to her arm
 
Nay, I will take thee too.
What should I stay—
She dies
 
CHARMIAN
In this vile world? So, fare thee well.
Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies
A lass unparalleled. Downy windows, close,
And golden Phoebus never be beheld
Of eyes again so royal. Your crown’s awry.
I’ll mend it, and then play—
Enter the Guard, rustling in
 
FIRST GUARD Where’s the Queen?
CHARMIAN Speak softly. Wake her not.
FIRST GUARD
Caesar hath sent—
CHARMIAN
Too slow a messenger.
She applies an aspic
 
O come apace, dispatch! I partly feel thee.
FIRST GUARD
Approach, ho! All’s not well. Caesar’s beguiled.
SECOND GUARD
There’s Dolabella sent from Caesar. Call him.
⌈
Exit a Guardsman
⌉
 
FIRST GUARD
What work is here, Charmian? Is this well done?
CHARMIAN
It is well done, and fitting for a princess
Descended of so many royal kings.
Ah, soldier!
She dies
Enter
Dolabella
 
DOLABELLA
How goes it here?
SECOND GUARD All dead.
DOLABELLA
Caesar, thy thoughts
Touch their effects in this. Thyself art coming
To see performed the dreaded act which thou
So sought’st to hinder.
ALL
A way there, a way for Caesar!
Enter Caesar and all his train, marching
 
DOLABELLA (to Caesar)
O sir, you are too sure an augurer.
That you did fear is done.
CAESAR
Bravest at the last,
She levelled at our purposes, and, being royal,
Took her own way. The manner of their deaths?
I do not see them bleed.
DOLABELLA (to a Guardsman) Who was last with them?
FIRST GUARD
A simple countryman that brought her figs.
This was his basket.
CAESAR
Poisoned, then.
FIRST GUARD
O Caesar,
This Charmian lived but now; she stood and spake.
I found her trimming up the diadem
On her dead mistress; tremblingly she stood,
And on the sudden dropped.
CAESAR
O, noble weakness!
If they had swallowed poison, ’twould appear
By external swelling; but she looks like sleep,
As she would catch another Antony
In her strong toil of grace.
DOLABELLA
Here on her breast
There is a vent of blood, and something blown.
The like is on her arm.
FIRST GUARD
This is an aspic’s trail,
And these fig-leaves have slime upon them such
As th’aspic leaves upon the caves of Nile.
CAESAR Most probable
That so she died; for her physician tells me
She hath pursued conclusions infinite
Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed,
And bear her women from the monument.
She shall be buried by her Antony.
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous. High events as these
Strike those that make them, and their story is
No less in pity than his glory which
Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall
In solemn show attend this funeral,
And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see
High order in this great solemnity.
Exeunt all, soldiers bearing Cleopatra ⌈
on her bed
⌉
,
Charmian, and
Iras
 
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
 
All’s Well That Ends Well,
first printed in the 1623 Folio, is often paired with
Measure for
Measure. Though we lack external evidence as to its date of composition, internal evidence suggests that it, too, is an early Jacobean play. Like
Measure for Measure
, it places its central characters in more painful situations than those in which the heroes and heroines of the earlier, more romantic comedies usually find themselves. The touching ardour with which Helen, ‘a poor physician’s daughter’, pursues the young Bertram, son of her guardian the Countess of Roussillon, creates embarrassments for both of them. When the King, whose illness she cures by her semi-magical skills, brings about their marriage as a reward, Bertram’s flight to the wars seems to destroy all her chances of happiness. She achieves consummation of the marriage only by the ruse (resembling Isabella’s ’bed-trick’ in Measure for Measure) of substituting herself for the Florentine maiden Diana whom Bertram believes himself to be seducing. The play’s conclusion, in which the deception is exposed and Bertram is shamed into acknowledging Helen as his wife, offers only a tentatively happy ending.
Shakespeare based the story of Bertram and Helen on a tale from Boccaccio’s Decameron either in the original or in the version included in William Painter’s
Palace of Pleasure
(1566-7, revised 1575). But he created several important characters, including the Countess and the old Lord, Lafeu. He also invented the accompanying action exposing the roguery of Bertram’s flashy friend Paroles, a man of words (as his name indicates) descending from the braggart soldier of Roman comedy.
Versions of the play performed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mostly emphasizing either the comedy of Paroles or the sentimental appeal of Helen, had little success; but fine productions from the middle of the twentieth century onwards have shown it in a more favourable light, demonstrating, for example, that the role of the Countess is (in Bernard Shaw’s words) ‘the most beautiful old woman’s part ever written’, that the discomfiture of Paroles provides comedy that is subtle as well as highly laughable, and that the relationship of Bertram and Helen is profoundly convincing in its emotional reality.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
 
The Dowager COUNTESS of Roussillon
BERTRAM, Count of Roussillon, her son
HELEN, an orphan, attending on the Countess
LAVATCH, a Clown, the Countess’s servant
REYNALDO, the Countess’s steward
PAROLES, Bertram’s companion
 
 
 
The KING of France
LAFEU, an old lord
 
INTERPRETER, a French soldier
An AUSTRINGER
 
The DUKE of Florence
WIDOW Capilet
DIANA, her daughter
MARIANA, a friend of the Widow
 
Lords, attendants, soldiers, citizens
All’s Well That Ends Well
 
1.1
Enter young Bertram Count of Roussillon, his mother the Countess, Helen, and Lord Lafeu, all in black
 
COUNTESS In delivering my son from me I bury a second husband.
BERTRAM And I in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s death anew; but I must attend his majesty’s command, to whom I am now in ward, evermore in subjection.
LAFEU You shall find of the King a husband, madam; you, sir, a father. He that so generally is at all times good must of necessity hold his virtue to you, whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted rather than lack it where there is such abundance.
COUNTESS What hope is there of his majesty’s amendment?
LAFEU He hath abandoned his physicians, madam, under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.
COUNTESS This young gentlewoman had a father—O that ‘had’: how sad a passage ’tis!—whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. Would for the King’s sake he were living. I think it would be the death of the King’s disease.
LAFEU How called you the man you speak of, madam? COUNTESS He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbonne.
LAFEU He was excellent indeed, madam. The King very lately spoke of him, admiringly and mourningly. He was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.
BERTRAM What is it, my good lord, the King languishes of?
LAFEU A fistula, my lord.
BERTRAM I heard not of it before.
LAFEU I would it were not notorious.—Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gérard de Narbonne?
COUNTESS His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education promises; her dispositions she inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer—for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity: they are virtues and traitors too. In her they are the better for their simpleness. She derives her honesty and achieves her goodness.

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