CLEOPATRA   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.             (5.2.278-287)

I am fire and air, declares Cleopatra, magnificently; my other elements—water, her Nile, her liquid inconstancy, that Egyptian wine; earth, her body, the heaviness of melancholy—I give to baser life. I’m transcendent, a creature of light, of pure spirit, she says; I’m already half transformed, beyond my own mortality. So, have you done? Are you finished? she asks Charmian and Iras. There’s time built in for pauses, to allow for their dressing of her to proceed in a stately manner, not a rush. If you’re finished, if I’m ready, come then, and take the last warmth of my lips. Another moment of sensuality (and another glance back at Romeo and Juliet? Juliet’s heart-rending ‘thy lips are warm’, on kissing Romeo’s body). And another anticipation not only of the chill of death, but of marble. It’s an intimate moment, these women huddled together, just the three of them, for the last time. Farewell, kind Charmian(and she is, and wise, and witty). Iras, long farewell, farewell for all time, as she thinks. And then Iras collapses, dead—there’s no explanation. Have I the aspic in my lips? wonders Cleopatra. Is my own kiss as fatal as the bite of a serpent? Rather, it seems that Iras has died of grief, gently, without words. (Or she has somehow killed herself.) Dost fall? Perhaps she’s supported by Charmian, conducted to the ground as if she’s simply fainted, fallen asleep. It emboldens Cleopatra: if thou and nature can so gently part, if that’s all death is, so swift, so softly unremarkable, then the stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired. I can’t fear death if it’s so tender, the kind of pain that pleases. (Stroke is blow, but here it’s also a caress.) Cleopatra is approaching death in a kind of erotic fervour, burning, ecstatic, aroused; she is preparing to melt and dissolve.