George Bernard Shaw

“ Is Cleopatra then indeed a Queen, and no longer Caesar's prisoner and slave?
CLEOPATRA. Pothinus: we are all Caesar's slaves--all we in this land of Egypt--whether we will or no. And she who is wise enough to know this will reign when Caesar departs.
POTHINUS. You harp on Caesar's departure.
CLEOPATRA. What if I do?
POTHINUS. Does he not love you?
CLEOPATRA. Love me! Pothinus: Caesar loves no one. Who are those we love? Only those whom we do not hate: all people are strangers and enemies to us except those we love. But it is not so with Caesar. ”

“ APOLLODORUS. Good. Defend yourselves here until I send you a boat from that galley.
RUFIO. Have you wings, perhaps?
APOLLODORUS. Water wings, soldier. Behold!
He runs up the steps between Caesar and Britannus to the coping of the parapet; springs into the air; and plunges head foremost into the sea. CAESAR (like a schoolboy--wildly excited) . Bravo, bravo! (Throwing off his cloak) By Jupiter, I will do that too.
RUFIO (seizing him) . You are mad. You shall not.
CAESAR. Why not? Can I not swim as well as he?
RUFIO (frantic) . Can an old fool dive and swim like a young one? ”

“ CLEOPATRA. Is it true that when Caesar caught you on that island, you were painted all over blue?
BRITANNUS. Blue is the color worn by all Britons of good standing. In war we stain our bodies blue; so that though our enemies may strip us of our clothes and our lives, they cannot strip us of our respectability. (He rises.)
CLEOPATRA (with Caesar's sword) . Let me hang this on. Now you look splendid. Have they made any statues of you in Rome?
CAESAR. Yes, many statues.
CLEOPATRA. You must send for one and give it to me.
RUFIO (coming back into the loggia, more impatient than ever) . ”

“ LUCIUS. It is so. With this hand, that slew Pompey, I placed his head at the feet of Caesar.
CAESAR. Murderer! So would you have slain Caesar, had Pompey been victorious at Pharsalia.
LUCIUS. Woe to the vanquished, Caesar! When I served Pompey, I slew as good men as he, only because he conquered them. His turn came at last.
THEODOTUS (flatteringly) . The deed was not yours, Caesar, but ours--nay, mine; for it was done by my counsel. Thanks to us, you keep your reputation for clemency, and have your vengeance too.
CAESAR. Vengeance! Vengeance!! ”

“ CLEOPATRA. And you no longer believe that I long for your departure for Rome?
CAESAR. I no longer believe anything. My brains are asleep. Besides, who knows whether I shall return to Rome?
RUFIO (alarmed) . How? Eh? What?
CAESAR. What has Rome to show me that I have not seen already? One year of Rome is like another, except that I grow older, whilst the crowd in the Appian Way is always the same age.
APOLLODORUS. It is no better here in Egypt. The old men, when they are tired of life, say "We have seen everything except the source of the Nile." ”

“ Will you desert us because we are a parcel of fools? I mean no harm by killing: I do it as a dog kills a cat, by instinct. We are all dogs at your heels; but we have served you faithfully.
CAESAR (relenting) . Alas, Rufio, my son, my son: as dogs we are like to perish now in the streets.
APOLLODORUS (at his post behind Cleopatra's seat) . Caesar, what you say has an Olympian ring in it: it must be right; for it is fine art. But I am still on the side of Cleopatra. If we must die, she shall not want the devotion of a man's heart nor the strength of a man's arm. ”

“ Send us thy voice, Father Nile.
The death cry of a man in mortal terror and agony answers them. Appalled, the men set down their glasses, and listen. Silence. The purple deepens in the sky. Caesar, glancing at Cleopatra, catches her pouring out her wine before the god, with gleaming eyes, and mute assurances of gratitude and worship. Apollodorus springs up and runs to the edge of the roof to peer down and listen. CAESAR (looking piercingly at Cleopatra) . What was that?
CLEOPATRA (petulantly) . Nothing. They are beating some slave.
CAESAR. Nothing!
RUFIO. A man with a knife in him, I'll swear. ”

“ The Queen is only a child.
CAESAR. Just so: that is why we must not disappoint her. What is the present, Apollodorus?
APOLLODORUS. Caesar: it is a Persian carpet--a beauty! And in it are--so I am told--pigeons' eggs and crystal goblets and fragile precious things. I dare not for my head have it carried up that narrow ladder from the causeway.
RUFIO. Swing it up by the crane, then. We will send the eggs to the cook; drink our wine from the goblets; and the carpet will make a bed for Caesar.
APOLLODORUS. The crane! Caesar: I have sworn to tender this bale of carpet as I tender my own life. ”

“ And here at last is their sentinel--an image of the constant and immortal part of my life, silent, full of thoughts, alone in the silver desert. Sphinx, Sphinx: I have climbed mountains at night to hear in the distance the stealthy footfall of the winds that chase your sands in forbidden play--our invisible children, O Sphinx, laughing in whispers. My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, and part God--nothing of man in me at all. Have I read your riddle, Sphinx? ”

“ Caesar you will not leave me alone, will you?
RUFIO. What! Not when the trumpet sounds and all our lives depend on Caesar's being at the barricade before the Egyptians reach it? Eh?
CLEOPATRA. Let them lose their lives: they are only soldiers.
CAESAR (gravely) . Cleopatra: when that trumpet sounds, we must take every man his life in his hand, and throw it in the face of Death. And of my soldiers who have trusted me there is not one whose hand I shall not hold more sacred than your head. (Cleopatra is overwhelmed. Her eyes fill with tears.) Apollodorus: you must take her back to the palace. ”

“ One last word, Caesar. Do not let yourself be seen in the fashionable part of Alexandria until you have changed your clothes.
CAESAR (calling over the sea) . Ho, Apollodorus: (he points skyward and quotes the barcarolle)
The white upon the blue above-- APOLLODORUS (swimming in the distance)
Is purple on the green below-- CAESAR (exultantly) . Aha! (He plunges into the sea.)
CLEOPATRA (running excitedly to the steps) . Oh, let me see. He will be drowned. (Rufio seizes her.) Ah--ah--ah--ah! (He pitches her screaming into the sea. Rufio and Britannus roar with laughter.) ”

“ And we nobles, consecrated to arms, descended from the gods!
PERSIAN. Belzanor: the gods are not always good to their poor relations.
BELZANOR (hotly, to the Persian) . Man to man, are we worse than the slaves of Caesar?
BEL AFFRIS (stepping between them) . Listen, cousin. Man to man, we Egyptians are as gods above the Romans.
THE GUARDSMEN (exultingly) . Aha!
BEL AFFRIS. But this Caesar does not pit man against man: he throws a legion at you where you are weakest as he throws a stone from a catapult; and that legion is as a man with one head, a thousand arms, and no religion. ”

“ Shall we leave Rome behind us--Rome, that has achieved greatness only to learn how greatness destroys nations of men who are not great! Shall I make you a new kingdom, and build you a holy city there in the great unknown?
CLEOPATRA (rapturously) . Yes, Yes. You shall.
RUFIO. Ay: now he will conquer Africa with two legions before we come to the roast boar.
APOLLODORUS. Come: no scoffing, this is a noble scheme: in it Caesar is no longer merely the conquering soldier, but the creative poet-artist. ”

“ CLEOPATRA (vehemently) . Listen to me, Caesar. If one man in all Alexandria can be found to say that I did wrong, I swear to have myself crucified on the door of the palace by my own slaves.
CAESAR. If one man in all the world can be found, now or forever, to know that you did wrong, that man will have either to conquer the world as I have, or be crucified by it. (The uproar in the streets again reaches them.) Do you hear? These knockers at your gate are also believers in vengeance and in stabbing. You have slain their leader: it is right that they shall slay you. ”

“ RUFIO. Psha! (Quite relieved, he goes up to the loggia and watches the preparations of the troops on the beach.)
CAESAR. Is that all?
THEODOTUS (unable to believe his senses) . All! Caesar: will you go down to posterity as a barbarous soldier too ignorant to know the value of books?
CAESAR. Theodotus: I am an author myself; and I tell you it is better that the Egyptians should live their lives than dream them away with the help of books.
THEODOTUS (kneeling, with genuine literary emotion: the passion of the pedant) . Caesar: once in ten generations of men, the world gains an immortal book. ”

“ And now I leave you; for ye are a dull folk, and instruction is wasted on you; and I had not spoken so much but that it is in the nature of a god to struggle for ever with the dust and the darkness, and to drag from them, by the force of his longing for the divine, more life and more light. Settle ye therefore in your seats and keep silent; for ye are about to hear a man speak, and a great man he was, as ye count greatness. ”

“ And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. (Fierce uproar. Cleopatra becomes white with terror.) Hearken, you who must not be insulted. Go near enough to catch their words: you will find them bitterer than the tongue of Pothinus. (Loftily wrapping himself up in an impenetrable dignity.) Let the Queen of Egypt now give her orders for vengeance, and take her measures for defense; for she has renounced Caesar. ”

“ Whilst the Romans still stood between the old Rome and the new, there arose among them a mighty soldier: Pompey the Great. And the way of the soldier is the way of death; but the way of the gods is the way of life; and so it comes that a god at the end of his way is wise and a soldier at the end of his way is a fool. So Pompey held by the old Rome, in which only soldiers could become great; but the gods turned to the new Rome, in which any man with wit enough could become what he would. And Pompey's friend Julius Caesar was on the side of the gods ”

“ CLEOPATRA. In pity--
CAESAR. Pity! What! Has it come to this so suddenly, that nothing can save you now but pity? Did it save Pothinus?
She rises, wringing her hands, and goes back to the bench in despair. Apollodorus shows his sympathy with her by quietly posting himself behind the bench. The sky has by this time become the most vivid purple, and soon begins to change to a glowing pale orange, against which the colonnade and the great image show darklier and darklier. RUFIO. Caesar: enough of preaching. The enemy is at the gate. ”

“ RUFIO. Well, he can swim a bit and fence a bit: he might be worse, if he only knew how to hold his tongue.
CAESAR. The gods forbid he should ever learn! Oh, this military life! this tedious, brutal life of action! That is the worst of us Romans: we are mere doers and drudgers: a swarm of bees turned into men. Give me a good talker--one with wit and imagination enough to live without continually doing something! ”

“ APOLLODORUS. Well, Centurion; and has not the lighthouse been within the Roman lines since Caesar landed there?
CLEOPATRA. Yes, yes. Answer that, if you can.
CENTURION (to Apollodorus) . As for you, Apollodorus, you may thank the gods that you are not nailed to the palace door with a pilum for your meddling.
APOLLODORUS (urbanely) . My military friend, I was not born to be slain by so ugly a weapon. When I fall, it will be (holding up his sword) by this white queen of arms, the only weapon fit for an artist. ”

“ It is in this sense that I have represented Caesar as great. Having virtue, he has no need of goodness. He is neither forgiving, frank, nor generous, because a man who is too great to resent has nothing to forgive; a man who says things that other people are afraid to say need be no more frank than Bismarck was; and there is no generosity in giving things you do not want to people of whom you intend to make use. ”

“ RUFIO. Yes, five good ships, and a barge laden with oil grappled to each. But it is not my doing: the Egyptians have saved me the trouble. They have captured the west harbor.
CAESAR (anxiously) . And the east harbor? The lighthouse, Rufio?
RUFIO (with a sudden splutter of raging ill usage, coming down to Caesar and scolding him) . Can I embark a legion in five minutes? The first cohort is already on the beach. We can do no more. If you want faster work, come and do it yourself?
CAESAR (soothing him) . Good, good. Patience, Rufio, patience.
RUFIO. Patience! Who is impatient here, you or I? ”

“ You have seen severed heads before, Caesar, and severed right hands too, I think; some thousands of them, in Gaul, after you vanquished Vercingetorix. Did you spare him, with all your clemency? Was that vengeance?
CAESAR. No, by the gods! Would that it had been! Vengeance at least is human. No, I say: those severed right hands, and the brave Vercingetorix basely strangled in a vault beneath the Capitol, were (with shuddering satire) a wise severity, a necessary protection to the commonwealth, a duty of statesmanship--follies and fictions ten times bloodier than honest vengeance! ”

“ Hear me, ye women who adorn yourselves alluringly and conceal your thoughts from your men, leading them to believe that ye deem them wondrous strong and masterful whilst in truth ye hold them in your hearts as children without judgment. Look upon my hawk's head; and know that I am Ra, who was once in Egypt a mighty god. Ye cannot kneel nor prostrate yourselves; for ye are packed, in rows without freedom to move, obstructing one another's vision ”

“ Then the old Rome, like the beggar on horseback, presumed on the favor of the gods, and said, "Lo! there is neither riches nor greatness in our littleness: the road to riches and greatness is through robbery of the poor and slaughter of the weak." So they robbed their own poor until they became great masters of that art, and knew by what laws it could be made to appear seemly and honest. And when they had squeezed their own poor dry, they robbed the poor of other lands, and added those lands to Rome until there came a new Rome, rich and huge. ”

“ Britannus rushes to the parapet and looks along the mole. Caesar and Rufio turn to one another with quick intelligence.)
CAESAR. Come, Rufio.
CLEOPATRA (scrambling to her knees and clinging to him) . No, no. Do not leave me, Caesar. (He snatches his skirt from her clutch.) Oh!
BRITANNUS (from the parapet) . Caesar: we are cut off. The Egyptians have landed from the west harbor between us and the barricade!!!
RUFIO (running to see) . Curses! It is true. We are caught like rats in a trap.
CAESAR (ruthfully) . Rufio, Rufio: my men at the barricade are between the sea party and the shore party. ”

“ RUFIO (hastening to look) . It is true. The Egyptian army! Crawling over the edge of the west harbor like locusts. (With sudden anger he strides down to Caesar.) This is your accursed clemency, Caesar. Theodotus has brought them.
CAESAR (delighted at his own cleverness) . I meant him to, Rufio. They have come to put out the fire. The library will keep them busy whilst we seize the lighthouse. Eh? (He rushes out buoyantly through the loggia, followed by Britannus.)
RUFIO (disgustedly) . More foxing! Agh! (He rushes off. A shout from the soldiers announces the appearance of Caesar below) . ”

“ He follows her, the bucina sounding louder as they steal across the desert. The moonlight wanes: the horizon again shows black against the sky, broken only by the fantastic silhouette of the Sphinx. The sky itself vanishes in darkness, from which there is no relief until the gleam of a distant torch falls on great Egyptian pillars supporting the roof of a majestic corridor. At the further end of this corridor a Nubian slave appears carrying the torch. Caesar, still led by Cleopatra, follows him. ”

“ However, nobody need deny Caesar a share, at least, of the qualities I have attributed to him. All men, much more Julius Caesars, possess all qualities in some degree. The really interesting question is whether I am right in assuming that the way to produce an impression of greatness is by exhibiting a man, not as mortifying his nature by doing his duty, in the manner which our system of putting little men into great positions (not having enough great men in our influential families to go round) forces us to inculcate, but by simply doing what he naturally wants to do. ”