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The extract is from B. Shaw's play "Caesar and Cleopatra".

CAESAR [cutting her short] I speak to the Queen. Be silent. [To Cleopatra] Is this how your servants know their places? Send her away; and do you [to the slave"] do as the Queen has bidden. [The slave lights the lamps. Meanwhile Cleopatra stands hesitating, afraid of Ftatateeta].

Why does do appear twice?

Andrew Leach
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user170800
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2 Answers2

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This is simply a more emphatic (and verbose) form of the second-person imperative: do + you + bare infinitive, which last is in this case another do. This form allows for extra verbal as well as physical emphasis (in performance) on the redirection of Caesar’s speech from Cleopatra to the Nubian slave; this imperative is addressed to the latter.

OED s.v. do v.:

  1. trans As periphrastic auxiliary in imperatives.
    a. With an affirmative imperative: adding emphasis or urgency to an entreaty, exhortation, or command. Also formerly (in a command) with a second personal pronoun preceding the main verb. Originally with the main verb in the imperative . . . ; from later Middle English onwards, with the main verb in the undifferentiated base form, usually taken as infinitive.
    . . .
    1684 J. Bunyan Pilgrim's Progress 2nd Pt. ii. 144 Pray do you go along with us, I will be your Conductor.
    . . .
    1871 E. Eggleston Hoosier School-master xvi. 127 Now, Shocky,..do you run ahead.
Brian Donovan
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    Rather than more verbose, it is more emphatic, with similar meaning to "make certain you do as the queen has bidden." – Wlerin May 16 '16 at 18:09
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    Thanks, @Wlerin; adjustment made, though this form is also more verbose. – Brian Donovan May 16 '16 at 18:18
  • This is related to the common modern phrase, "Yes, please do!", isn't it? – hBy2Py May 16 '16 at 19:22
  • To some extent, yes, @Brian. But OED categorizes that differently on the grounds that in that case do is substituting for a main verb, rather than serving as auxiliary to a main verb explicitly included in the construction. – Brian Donovan May 16 '16 at 20:16
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It's a misprint. See Project Gutenberg's text:

CAESAR (cutting her short). I speak to the Queen. Be silent. (To Cleopatra) Is this how your servants know their places? Send her away; and you (to the slave) do as the Queen has bidden. (The slave lights the lamps. Meanwhile Cleopatra stands hesitating, afraid of Ftatateeta.) You are the Queen: send her away.

Andrew Leach
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    -1. As I learned to my chagrin after adopting cheap Gutenberg-based print texts for my classes, Project Gutenberg is not always to be trusted. In the present case, two Penguin print editions (single play 1951, and in Three Plays for Puritans 1946 with "Definitive text prepared under supervision of Dan H. Laurence") both agree with OP's version with do twice. – Brian Donovan May 16 '16 at 17:46
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    Google's scan of the 1906 edition reads "and do you (to the slave) do as the Queen has bidden". It is far more likely the Gutenberg e-text is either in error or based on a modernised version rather than that this is a misprint. – Wlerin May 16 '16 at 18:21
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    Years ago I had an online discussion with a contributor to the Gutenberg project. S/he talked about using scanners and OCR, and this was a time when OCR was pretty lousy (I don't know how much better it's gotten). If that's a possible source for Gutenberg texts, I wouldn't trust them as a source, in general. – user1359 May 16 '16 at 20:26
  • The typo in the Gutenberg edition could be a deliberate edit or a mistake in OCR scanning of a page to text. In either case, the author's text as originally published should always stand. Errors can be reported to Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Readers'_FAQ#R.26._I.27ve_found_some_obvious_typos_in_a_Project_Gutenberg_text._How_should_I_report_them.3F Suggestions about errors seem to be received well according to this forum: https://forum.librivox.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=60012 – John D May 16 '16 at 18:31
  • It is a pity if it is a misprint. I took the quotation from the book "Three plays for puritans" being the 3rd volume of his collected plays. It was printed by HERBERT S. STONE & CO in Chicago. – user170800 May 17 '16 at 11:03