IRAS                            O, the good gods!

CLEOPATRA  Nay, that’s certain.

IRAS I’ll never see’t! For I am sure my nails

Are stronger than mine eyes.

CLEOPATRA   Why, that’s the way

To fool their preparation and to conquer

Their most absurd intents.              (5.2.217-222)

O, the good gods! Iras expresses horror at the thought, and it’s also a prayer: heaven forfend! Let it not be so! But Cleopatra’s adamant: nay, that’s certain. No way around it; that’s what’s going to happen to us. Iras is defiant: I’ll never see it! For I’m sure my nails are stronger than mine eyes. I’ll scratch out my own eyes rather than be forced to look on such a thing. Cleopatra’s response—why, that’s the way to fool their preparation and to conquer their most absurd intents—can be amused, indulgent, and also ruefully sarcastic. Yes, that’s the way around it, blind yourself, so that you get one over the Romans, make all their preparations for such a triumph redundant, and frustrate all their ridiculous plans—like a child shutting their eyes and imagining that no one can see them anymore? That’ll show them. Is it that Iras still hasn’t quite worked out that the only way out now is death, that death is the only way to cheat Caesar of his triumph, for Cleopatra—and Iras herself, and Charmian too—to die, now, on their own terms? (Iras has, however, responded instinctively to Cleopatra’s evocation of spectacle; she sees defiance and resistance in terms of not being able to be made to watch…)