CW: suicidal ideation

 

CLEOPATRA   How do you, women?

What, what, good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian?

My noble girls! Ah, women, women! Look,

Our lamp is spent, it’s out. Good sirs, take heart;

We’ll bury him, and then what’s brave, what’s noble,

Let’s do’t after the high Roman fashion,

And make death proud to take us. Come, away.

This case of that huge spirit now is cold.

Ah, women, women! Come. We have no friend

But resolution, and the briefest end.

Exeunt bearing off Antony’s body      (4.16.84-93)

 

Cleopatra’s been riffing, at least in part, on what it is to be a woman, ultimately powerless whether a queen or a milkmaid, and now she turns to her own women, her faithful companions and servants, Charmian and Iras. Her friends. How do you, women? How are you? The implication is that they’re weeping: what, what, good cheer! Come on; don’t cry. Why, how now, Charmian? Oh, love. Cleopatra, for once, is full of compassion; she wants to comfort and reassure, even as she’s at rock bottom. My noble girls. Come on, we can do this. (The juxtaposition of noble and girls, the lofty and the familiar, the magnificent and the simply human, is telling here.) They’re her girls, and she’s responsible for them. Ah, women, women. Resignation. This is where we are. Our lamp is spent, it’s out. Antony is the lamp, perhaps, but mostly Cleopatra’s saying, it’s time, and, time’s up. It’s getting dark. Good sirs—not a gendered term in early modern usage; come on, girls, take heart. Courage. We’ll bury him (almost beside the point, what happens to Antony now) and then what’s brave, what’s noble—we too can be brave and noble, even though we’re Egyptian women—and that which is brave and noble here is death—let’s do it after the high Roman fashion, Egyptian women though we be, we too can choose to die by suicide, as stoic as the great Romans. And we’ll make death proud to take us. Defiant, unbowed, glorious. Come, away. We’ve got to go, we’ve got to do this now. Besides, this case of that great spirit now is cold. Antony’s gone, truly gone; this isn’t really him any more. Ah, women, women!My servants—and, all of us, a sisterhood. Come. We have no friend, no one on our side, no one now who will protect us—except resolution, our own firm resolve and courage—and the briefest end. A swift, fearless death, without a moment’s hesitation.

 

Antony’s body has to be carried from the stage, unless there’s a helpful blackout—so once again the women have to lift him up, however awkwardly, lovingly, exhaustedly, tenderly. Antony, redeemed (at least a little) in death, by the soaring, exultant, rhetoric of his lover, and her courage, a performance which is only possible in turn through the support of her women.