-43_Rodogune-Act One-Scene-3.htm

Cleopatra’s antechamber in the palace.
Cleopatra seated, Rodogune.

CLEOPATRA

It is their horsehooves ride into my heart.
It shall be done. What have I any more
To do with hatred ? Parthian Rodogune,
Have you forgotten now your former pomps
And princely thoughts in high Persepolis,
Or do your dreams still linger near a throne ?

RODOGUNE

I think all fallen beings needs must keep

Some dream out of their happier past, — or else

How hard it would be to live!

CLEOPATRA

O, if some hope survive
In the black midst of care, however small,
We can live, then only, O then only.

RODOGUNE

Hope!

I have forgotten how men hope.

CLEOPATRA

Is your life hard
In Syrian Antioch, Rodogune, a slave
To your most bitter foemen ?

RODOGUNE

Not when you speak
So gently. Always I strive to make it sweet
By outward harmony with circumstance
And a calm soul within that is above

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My fortune.

CLEOPATRA

Parthian, you have borne the hate
My husband’s murder bred in me towards all
Your nation. When I felt you with my heel,
I trampled Tigris and Euphrates then
And Parthia suffered. Therefore I let you live
Half-loving in your body my revenge.
But these are cruel and unhappy thoughts
I hope to slay and bury with the past
Which gave them birth. Will you assist me, girl?
Will you begin with me another life
And other feelings ?

RODOGUNE

If our fates allow
Which are not gentle.

CLEOPATRA

My life begins again,
My life begins again in my dear sons
And my dead husband lives. All’s sweetly mended.
I do not wish for hatred any more.
The horrible and perilous hands of war
Appal me. O, let our peoples sit at ease
In Grecian Antioch and Persepolis,
Mothers and children, clasping those golden heads
Deep, deep within our bosoms, never allow
Their going forth again to bonds and death.
Peace, peace, let us have peace for ever more.

RODOGUNE

And will peace take me to my father’s arms ?

CLEOPATRA

Or else detain you on a kingly throne.  

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There are happier fetters.

RODOGUNE

If it must be so!

CLEOPATRA

Art thou insensible or fear’st to rise ?
I cannot think that even in barbarous lands
Any called human are so made that they prefer
Serfhood and scourge to an imperial throne.
Or is there such a soul?

RODOGUNE

Shall I not know
My husband first?

CLEOPATRA

I did not ask your choice,
But gave you a command to be obeyed
Like any other that each day I give.

RODOGUNE

Shall I be given him as a slave, not wife ?

CLEOPATRA

You rise, I think, too quickly with your fate.
Or art thou other than I saw or thou
Feignedst to be? Hast thou been all this while
Only a mask of smooth servility,
Thou subtle barbarian ?

RODOGUNE

Speak not so harshly to me
Who spoke so gently now. I will obey.

CLEOPATRA

Hop’st thou by reigning to reign over me  

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Restoring on a throne thy Parthian soul?

RODOGUNE

What shall I be upon the Syrian throne
Except your first of slaves who am now the last,
The least considered? I hope not to reign
Nor ever have desired ambitious joys,
Only the love that I have lacked so long
Since I left Parthia.

CLEOPATRA

Obey me then. Remember,
The hand that seats thee can again unthrone.

RODOGUNE

I shall remember and I shall obey.

She retires to her station.

CLEOPATRA

Her flashes of quick pride are quickly past.
After so many cruel, black and pitiless years
Shall not the days to come conspire for joy?
The Queen shall be my slave, a mind that’s trained
To watch for orders, one without a party
In Syria, with no will to take my son from me
Or steal my sovereign station. O, they come!
Slowly, my heart! break not with too much bliss.

Eunice comes in swiftly.

EUNICE

Am I the first to tell you they have come?

CLEOPATRA

O girl, thy tongue rain joy upon the world,
That speaks to me of heaven!

Cleone enters.  

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CLEONE (to Eunice)

They are more beautiful than heaven and earth.

(to Cleopatra)

Thy children’s feet are on the palace stairs.

CLEOPATRA

O no! not of the palace but my heart;

I feel their tread ascending. Be still, be still,
Thou flutterer in my breast. I am a queen
And must not hear thee.

Thoas and Melitus enter bringing
in Antiochus and Timocles.

THOAS

Queen, we bring her sons

To Cleopatra.

CLEOPATRA

I thank you both; approach.
Why dost thou beat so hard within to choke me?

She motions to them to stop and
gazes on them in silence.

TIMOCLES

This is my mother. She is what I dreamed!

EUNICE

O high inhabitants of Greek Olympus,
Which of you all comes flashing down from heaven
To snare us mortals with this earthly gaze,
These simulations of humanity ?

CLEOPATRA

Say to the Syrians they shall know their king
In the gods’ time and hour. But these first days
Are for a mother.  

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THOAS

None shall grudge them to thee,
Remembering the gods’ debt to thee, Cleopatra.

Thoas and Melitus leave the chamber.

CLEOPATRA

My children, O my children, my sweet children!
Come to me, come to me, come into my arms.
You beautiful, you bright, you tall heart-snarers,
You are all your father.

TIMOCLES

Mother, my sweet mother!
I have been dreaming of you all these years,
Mother!

CLEOPATRA

And was the dream too fair, my child ?
O strange, sweet bitterness that I must ask
My child his name!

TIMOCLES

I am your Timocles.

CLEOPATRA

You first within my arms! O right, ’tis right.
It is your privilege, my sweet one. Kiss me.
O yet again, my young son Timocles.
O bliss, to feel the limbs that I have borne
Within me! O my young radiant Timocles,
You have outgrown to lie upon my lap:

I have not had that mother’s happiness.

TIMOCLES

Mother, I am still your little Timocles
Playing at bigness. You shall not refuse me
The sweet dependent state which I have lost  

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In that far motherless Egypt where I pined.

CLEOPATRA

And like a child too, little one, you’ld have
All of your mother to yourself. Must I
Then thrust you from me ? Let Antiochus,
My tall Antiochus have now his share.

RODOGUNE

He is all high and beautiful like heaven
From which he came. I have not seen before
A thing so mighty.

ANTIOCHUS

Madam, I seek your blessing; let me kneel
To have it.

CLEOPATRA

Kneel! O, in my bosom, son.
Have you too dreamed of me, Antiochus ?

ANTIOCHUS

Of great Nicanor’s widow and the Queen
Of Syria and my sacred fount of life.

CLEOPATRA

These are cold haughty names, Antiochus.
Not of your mother, not of your dear mother ?

ANTIOCHUS

You were for me the thought of motherhood,
A noble thing and sacred. This I loved.

CLEOPATRA

No more ? Are you so cold in speech, my son ?

O son Antiochus, you have received

Your father’s face; I hope you have his heart.  

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Do you not love me ?

ANTIOCHUS

Surely I hope to love.

CLEOPATRA

You hope!

ANTIOCHUS

O madam, do not press my words.

CLEOPATRA

I do press them. Your words, your lips, your heart,

Your radiant body noble as a god’s

I, I made in my womb, to give them light

Bore agony. I have a claim upon them all.

You do not love me ?

ANTIOCHUS

The thought of you I have loved,
Honoured and cherished. By your own decree
We have been to each other only thoughts;

But now we meet. I trust I shall not fail
In duty, love and reverence to my mother.

EUNICE

His look is royal, but his speech is cold.

RODOGUNE

Should he debase his godhead with a lie ?
She is to blame and her unjust demand.

CLEOPATRA

It is well. .My heart half slew me for only this!

O Timocles, my little Timocles,

Let me again embrace you, let me feel

My child who dreamed of me for eighteen years  

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In Egypt. Sit down here against my knee
And tell me of Egypt, — Egypt where I was born,
Egypt where my sweet sons were kept from me!
Dear Egypt, hateful Egypt!

TIMOCLES

I loved it well because it bore my mother,
But not so well, my mother far from me.

CLEOPATRA

What was your life there ? your mornings and your evenings,

Your dreams at night, I must possess them all,

All the sweet years my arms have lost. Did you

Rising in those clear mornings see the Nile,

Our father Nile, flow through the solemn azure

Past the great temples in the sands of Egypt ?

You have seen hundred-gated Thebes, my Thebes,

And my high tower where I would sit at eve

Watching your kindred sun ? And Alexandria

With the white multitude of sails ? My brother,

The royal Ptolemy, did he not love

To clasp his sister in your little limbs ?

There is so much to talk of; but not now!

Eunice, take them from me for a while.

Take Rodogune and call the other slaves.

Let them array my sons like the great kings

They should have been so long. Go, son Antiochus;

Go, Timocles, my little Timocles.

ANTIOCHUS

We are the future’s greatness, therefore owe
Some duty to the grandeurs of the past.
The great Antiochus lies hardly cold,
Garbed for his journey. I would kneel by him
And draw his mightiness into my soul
Before the gloomy shades have taken away
What earth could hardly value.  

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EUNICE

This was a stab.
Is there some cold ironic god at work?

CLEOPATRA

The great Antiochus! Of him you dreamed ?

You are his nephew! Parthian, take the prince

To the dead King’s death-chamber, then to his own.

ANTIOCHUS

She was the Parthian! Great Antiochus,

Syria thou leav’st me and her and Persia afterwards

To be my lovely captive.

He goes out with Rodogune.

TIMOCLES (as he follows Eunice)

Tell me, cousin, —
I knew not I had such sweet cousins here, —
Was this the Parthian princess Rodogune ?

EUNICE

Phraates’ daughter. Prince, your mother’s slave.

TIMOCLES

There are lovelier faces then than Syria owns.

He goes out with Eunice.

CLEOPATRA

You gods, you gods in heaven, you give us hearts
For life to trample on! I am sick, Cleone.

CLEONE

Why, Madam, what a son you have in him,
The joyous fair-faced Timocles, yet you are sick!

CLEOPATRA

But the other, O the other! Antiochus!  

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He has the face that gives my husband back to me,
But does not love me.

CLEONE

Yet he will be king.
You said he was the elder.

CLEOPATRA

Did I say it?

I was perplexed.

CLEONE

He will be king, a man
With a cold joyless heart and thrust you back
Into some distant corner of your house
And rule instead and fill with clamorous war
Syria and Parthia and the banks of Indus
Taking our lovers and our sons to death!
Our sons! Perhaps he will take Timocles
And offer him, a lovely sacrifice,
To the grim god of battles.

CLEOPATRA

My Timocles! my only joy! Oh, no!

We will have peace henceforth and bloodless dawns.

My envoys ride today.

CLEONE

He will recall them.
This is no man to rest in peaceful ease
While other sceptres sway the neighbouring realms.
War and Ambition from his eyes look forth;

His hand was made to grasp a sword-hilt. Queen,
Prevent it; let our Timocles be king.

CLEOPATRA

What did you say ? Have you gone mad, Cleone ?  

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The gods would never bless such vile deceit.
O, if it could have been! but it cannot.

CLEONE

It must.
Timocles dead, you a neglected mother,
A queen dethroned, with one unloving child, —
Childless were better, — and your age as lonely
As these long nineteen years have been. Then you had hope,
You will have none hereafter.

CLEOPATRA

If I thought that,
I would transgress all laws yet known or made
And dare Heaven’s utmost anger. Gods who mock me,
I will not suffer to all time your wrongs.
Hush, hush, Cleone! It shall not be so.
I thought my heart would break with joy, but now
What different passion tugs at my heart-strings,
Cleone, O Cleone! O my sweet dreams,
Where have you gone yielding to pangs and fears
Your happy empire ? Am I she who left
Laughing the death-bed of Antiochus ?

She goes into her chamber.

CLEONE

We must have roses, sunlight, laughter. Prince,
Not cold, harsh light of arms. Your laurels, laurels!
We’ll blast them quickly with a good Greek lie.
Where he has gone, admire Antiochus,
Not here repeat him.

Curtain  

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