It is the only occasion in the play on which he makes Antony speak of
Cleopatra by her territorial name, and there is no warrant for the
usage in Plutarch. It is a stroke of sheer word-magic. It summons up
with a sudden magnificence all the mystery and splendour incarnated in
the woman for whom he has gambled away the world and all the earthly
glories that are fading into the darkness of death. The whole tragedy
seems to flame to its culmination in this word that suddenly lifts the
action from the human plane to the scale of cosmic drama.
Words of course have an individuality, a perfume of their own, but just
as the flame in the heart of the diamond has to be revealed by the
craftsman, so the true magic of a beautiful word only discloses itself
at the touch of the master. "Quiet" is an ordinary enough word, and
few are more frequently on our lips. Yet what wonderful effects
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats extract from it!
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun,
Breathless with adoration.
The whole passage is a symphony of the sunset, but it is that ordinary
word "quiet" which breathes like a benediction through the cadence,
filling the mind with the sense of an illimitable peace. And so with
Coleridge's "Singeth a quiet tune," or Keats's
Full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing.