Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/127

Rh. Take only the first four lines that they speak as an example of the regal style of love-making.

The rich and poetical description of her person, beginning—

seems to prepare the way for, and almost to justify the subsequent infatuation of Antony when in the sea-fight at Actium, he leaves the battle, and "like a doating mallard" follows her flying sails.

Few things in Shakespear (and we know of nothing in any other author like them) have more of that local truth of imagination and character than the passage in which Cleopatra is represented conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence. "He's speaking now, or murmuring—Where's my serpent of old Nile?" Or again, when she says to Antony, after the defeat at Actium, and his summoning