Shakespeare converts them at last to ideal lovers and it is as such, thanks to him, that they will live forever.
... the pretty worm of Nilus.. .
Now must come the suicide.
Actually, the method used is a mystery. The Roman guards left behind by Octavius Caesar were surely impressed with the fact that Cleopatra must be kept alive. Cleopatra must therefore have succeeded in hiding something small and unnoticeable, prepared for such a contingency.
Her body was found virtually unmarked except for what seemed to be a puncture or two on her arm. It had to be poison then, but administered how? Was it the puncture of a poisoned needle which she had kept hidden in her hair? Or was it a poison snake?
The poison snake is much more unlikely and is, indeed, rather implausible, but it is exceedingly dramatic and, whether true or not, is accepted by all who have ever heard of Cleopatra. If they have heard only one thing of her, it is her method of suicide by snake.
She prepares for that suicide as though she were meeting her lover once again, and indeed, she expects to, in Elysium. She demands that she be dressed in her most splendid gowns as on that occasion when she met Antony for the first time:
Show me, my women, like a queen: go fetch
My best attires. I am again for Cydnus,
To meet Mark Antony.
- Act V, scene ii, lines 227-29
A peasant is brought in now with the gift of a basket of figs for her. It is this, partly, which makes the tale of the poison snake implausible. Would anyone have been allowed in to see her under the circumstances? Would he have failed to undergo a search if he were passed through? Is it conceivable that the basket of figs would have been unexamined?
Yet that is the tale that Plutarch reports as one possibility. He also talks of poisoned needles and poisoned razors.
Cleopatra asks the peasant:
Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there,
That kills and pains not?
- Act V, scene ii, lines 243-44
He does! The "pretty worm" is the asp, or Egyptian cobra, whose venom works quickly and painlessly. What's more, the creature was worshiped, as so many dangerous animals were in Egypt, and the coiled head of the cobra was worn on the headdress of the Pharaohs. A death by cobra bite was a royal death; it was rather like being bitten by a god.
Cleopatra is now ready. She says to her ladies in waiting:
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.
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:
- Act V, scene ii, lines 280-87
And yet not all is pure love of Antony. There is some relish in feeling that she is depriving Octavius of his final victory. For as the asp is biting her, she says to it:
O couldst thou speak,
That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass
Unpolicied!
- Act V, scene ii, lines 306-8
It is well done...
Cleopatra dies. Her lady in waiting Iras is already dead of heartbreak, and Charmian (whom early in the play the soothsayer had predicted would outlive her mistress) is applying the asp to her own arm. In come the Roman soldiers, but too late.
Gaping at the dead Cleopatra, they get the significance of it at once. One of the soldiers cries:
... All's not well: Caesar's beguiled.
- Act V, scene ii, line 323
Then, when the same soldier angrily asks Charmian whether this sort of thing was well done, she answers proudly, just before dying:
It is well done, and fitting for a princess
Descended of so many royal kings.
- Act V, scene ii, lines 326-27
... an aspic's trail...
Octavius arrives to witness the defeat of what he planned as his crowning victory. They puzzle out the manner of her suicide. There is a swelling and a spot of blood on Cleopatra's breast and the soldier who had questioned Charmian now says:
This is an aspic's trail; and these fig leaves
Have slime upon them...
- Act V, scene ii, lines 350-51
It is an old superstition that snakes are slimy. They are not. Some snake-like sea creatures are slimy-lampreys, eels, salamanders. Snakes, however, are perfectly dry to the touch.
... another Antony
It falls to the cold Octavius to give Cleopatra her final epitaph. Even he is moved as