I have not the slightest doubt that Shakspeare's Cleopatra is the real historical Cleopatra--the "Rare Egyptian"--individualized and placed before us. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of irregular grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized, mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant impersonation of classical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and gipsy sorcery. What better proof can we have of the individual truth of the character than the admission that Shakspeare's Cleopatra produces exactly the same effect on us that is recorded of the real Cleopatra? She dazzles our faculties, perplexes our judgment, bewilders and bewitches our fancy; from the beginning to the end of the drama, we are conscious of a kind of fascination against which our moral sense rebels, but from which there is no escape. The epithets applied to her perpetually by Antony and others confirm this impression: "enchanting queen!"--"witch"--"spell"--"great fairy"--"cockatrice"--"serpent of old Nile"--"thou grave charm!"[68] are only a few of them; and who does not know by heart the famous quotations in which this Egyptian Circe is described with all her infinite seductions? Fie! wrangling queen! Whom every thing becomes--to chide, to laugh, To weep; whose every passion fully strives To make itself, in thee, fair and admired. Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety:-- For vilest things Become themselves in her. And the pungent irony of Enobarbus has well exposed her feminine arts, when he says, on the occasion of Antony's intended departure,-- Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly: I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment. ANTONY. She is cunning past man's thought. ENOBARBUS. Alack, sir, no! her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report; this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove. The whole secret of her absolute dominion over the facile Antony may be found in one little speech:-- See where he is--who's with him--what he does-- (I did not send you.) If you find him sad, Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick! Quick! and return. CHARMIAN.