Study guide
The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra
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Overview
- Author
- William Shakespeare (1564–1616), principal playwright of the King's Men
- Genre
- Roman tragedy, in blank verse and prose
- Written
- About 1606–07; entered in the Stationers' Register by Edward Blount on 20 May 1608
- First printed
- In the First Folio of 1623; no quarto survives
- Source
- Plutarch's Life of Antony in Sir Thomas North's English version (1579), made from Jacques Amyot's French
- Setting
- Alexandria, Rome, Athens, Misenum, Syria and Actium, from about 40 to 30 BC
- Structure
- Five acts and, in modern editions, forty-two scenes, the most of any Shakespeare play
- Protagonists
- Mark Antony, one of the three triumvirs of Rome, and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
- Antagonist
- Octavius Caesar, the future Emperor Augustus
- Key ideas
- Rome and Egypt; love and empire; reputation and identity; excess and measure; theatre and truth
Context
Antony and Cleopatra was written in about 1606–07, after King Lear and Macbeth, and probably performed by the King's Men at the Globe. It was entered for publication in 1608 but first printed only in the First Folio of 1623. Shakespeare had already dramatised the murder of Julius Caesar and the battle of Philippi in Julius Caesar (1599), in which Antony is the young, brilliant orator; here he takes up the same man ten years later, in the last decade of his life.
His source was Plutarch's Life of Antony, read in Sir Thomas North's translation of 1579, which North had made from the French of Jacques Amyot. Shakespeare followed it closely, sometimes almost word for word, as in Enobarbus's description of Cleopatra's barge, but he compressed a decade of history into a few weeks of stage time and added characters, scenes and above all poetry (Bullough 1964) (Spencer 1964). Readers on Poetry Codex can compare the play with two English versions of the Life in the archive: the Dryden translation revised by Arthur Hugh Clough (Plutarch 1859) and the Loeb translation by Bernadotte Perrin (Plutarch 1920).
The story of Antony and Cleopatra was well known in the Renaissance. The Countess of Pembroke translated Robert Garnier's Marc-Antoine as Antonius (1592), and Samuel Daniel wrote a closet drama, The Tragedy of Cleopatra (1594), both in the Senecan manner. Roman writers had treated Cleopatra as a monster: Horace called her a fatal monster, and Virgil's Aeneid set her on the shield of Aeneas at the head of the Egyptian gods, defeated at Actium by Augustus. Shakespeare's play is written partly against this Augustan tradition (Bono 1984).
The play spans the Mediterranean world and moves between Egypt and Rome in rapid scenes. For the Jacobean audience the Augustan peace, in which Christ was born, had a providential meaning, and King James liked to be compared to Augustus. The play's Caesar is a figure of this historical destiny, but Shakespeare makes him cold and calculating, and the lovers' defeat feels like a victory of the imagination (Cantor 1976) (Miola 1983).
After the Restoration the play was replaced on the stage by John Dryden's All for Love (1678), a neoclassical version that obeys the unities. Shakespeare's text returned slowly, and only in the twentieth century did directors find ways to stage its forty-two scenes without breaks. Modern productions have explored its politics, its gender play and its representation of Egypt, and the role of Cleopatra has become one of the great tests for an actor.
Plot overview
Mark Antony, one of the three rulers of the Roman world, lives in Alexandria with Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. When news arrives that his wife Fulvia has died after rebelling against Octavius Caesar, and that Pompey threatens Rome from the sea, Antony leaves for Rome. There he patches up his quarrel with Caesar by marrying Caesar's sister Octavia, and the triumvirs make peace with Pompey at a drunken feast on his galley.
Antony soon returns to Egypt. Caesar removes Lepidus from power, and when Antony crowns Cleopatra and her children in Alexandria, he declares war. At Actium Antony insists on fighting at sea; Cleopatra's ships flee, and he follows her, losing the battle. Defeated and ashamed, he forgives her, but when Caesar's envoy Thidias seems to win her favour he has the messenger whipped. His friend Enobarbus deserts him and dies of remorse.
After a brief victory on land, Antony's fleet surrenders to Caesar and he believes Cleopatra has betrayed him. She hides in her monument and sends word that she is dead. Antony falls on his sword, and dying, is carried to her and hoisted into the monument, where he dies in her arms.
Caesar tries to keep Cleopatra alive so that she may be led in his triumph. She learns his intentions from Dolabella, deceives Caesar about her treasure, and has asps brought to her in a basket of figs. Dressed in her robe and crown, she dies, followed by her women Iras and Charmian. Caesar orders that she be buried beside Antony.
Scene by scene
Scene 1: Act I, Scene 1: Philo's frame and 'new heaven, new earth'
Act I, Scene 1 (the whole scene)
Summary
In Cleopatra's palace at Alexandria two of Antony's officers, Philo and Demetrius, watch their general. Philo complains that his 'dotage' has overflowed all measure: the eyes that once glowed over armies like Mars now bend upon a 'tawny front', and the soldier's heart cools a gipsy's lust. Antony and Cleopatra enter with her train, and Philo invites his companion to see in him 'the triple pillar of the world' turned into a strumpet's fool.
The lovers play a game of measuring love. A messenger arrives with news from Rome; Antony refuses to hear it, and Cleopatra mocks him with Fulvia's anger and the commands of the 'scarce-bearded Caesar'. Antony replies that Rome may melt into the Tiber, and leads her off to wander the streets at night. Demetrius is sorry to find the Roman rumour about Antony confirmed.
Analysis
The play opens with a Roman judgement before we have seen the lovers at all, and closes the scene with another. Between the two frames Antony and Cleopatra speak in a different language, hyperbolic, playful and boundless. Janet Adelman took this structure as the key to the whole play: the audience is constantly given reports and verdicts that the action then tests, and must decide whom to believe (Adelman 1973).
The language of measure ('o'erflows the measure') against the language of excess ('There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned') sets up the central opposition of the play. Rome counts, divides and judges; Egypt refuses to set a bourn. Neither voice is allowed to win outright.
Take but good note, and you shall see in him The triple pillar of the world transform’d Into a strumpet’s fool.
The Roman view of Antony, given before he speaks: one of the three rulers of the world reduced to a harlot's jester.
There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.
Antony's first line. Love that can be counted is poor; the lovers' idiom is one of limitless excess.
Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
Antony's grand dismissal of Rome. The image of an empire melting will return, darkly, as the play goes on.
Scene 2: Act I, Scene 2: The Soothsayer, and news of Fulvia's death
Act I, Scene 2 (the whole scene)
Summary
Cleopatra's women, Charmian and Iras, joke with a Soothsayer about their fortunes; he tells Charmian she will outlive the lady she serves, a prophecy that will come true in a way none of them imagines. Enobarbus orders wine. Cleopatra enters looking for Antony, observes that 'a Roman thought hath struck him', and leaves when he approaches.
Messengers bring Antony grave news: Labienus and the Parthians have overrun Asia, and his wife Fulvia, after making war on Caesar, has died at Sicyon. Antony is moved and ashamed: 'These strong Egyptian fetters I must break.' He tells Enobarbus they must leave, and Enobarbus answers with bawdy wit about Cleopatra's 'celerity in dying'. Antony explains that Pompey's rebellion at sea makes his return to Rome urgent.
Analysis
The scene sets the comic, sensual life of the Egyptian court against the abrupt arrival of history. Enobarbus's prose jokes cut against Antony's verse; he is both the most cynical and the most perceptive commentator in the play, and his remark that Cleopatra is 'cunning past man's thought' prepares for the ambiguity of her later 'deaths'.
Antony's response to Fulvia's death shows the oscillation that defines him. He wished her gone; now she is gone he wants her back. The pattern of desire turning into its opposite will govern his relation to Cleopatra, Rome and his own reputation.
You shall be more beloving than beloved.
The Soothsayer's riddling prophecy to Charmian, the first of several hints of the play's ending.
These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Or lose myself in dotage.
Antony repeats Philo's word 'dotage' against himself: in this mood he speaks Rome's language.
She is cunning past man’s thought.
Antony's judgement of Cleopatra, which Enobarbus at once turns into a joke about real passion.
Scene 3: Act I, Scene 3: Cleopatra's contrariness and Antony's farewell
Act I, Scene 3 (the whole scene)
Summary
Cleopatra instructs Charmian to report her in whatever mood will cross Antony's: if he is sad, she is dancing; if merry, she is sick. Charmian advises her to give way to him, and Cleopatra scorns the advice. When Antony enters she will not let him speak, accusing him of falseness to Fulvia and so, by implication, to her.
He tells her Fulvia is dead and shows her the letters. Instead of grief she sees in his dry eyes an image of how her own death would be received. She mocks his anger as play-acting, then softens, unable to say what she means: 'Sir, you and I must part, but that's not it.' She wishes him well, and he leaves with a paradox of their union.
Analysis
Cleopatra's tactics are deliberate theatre, and she tells us so. Yet the scene does not reduce her to a manipulator: the broken line 'O, my oblivion is a very Antony, / And I am all forgotten' suggests real loss behind the performance. Critics have long argued whether her changeability is calculation, passion or both (Rackin 1972).
Her memory of their first days, 'Eternity was in our lips and eyes', is the play's first claim that love creates its own time. It is spoken in anger, as a reproach, which is typical of how the play tests its own grandest statements.
If you find him sad, Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick.
Cleopatra stages her moods; her art of contradiction keeps Antony's attention.
Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows’ bent; none our parts so poor But was a race of heaven.
Cleopatra's memory of love's beginnings, turned into an accusation.
Our separation so abides and flies That thou, residing here, goes yet with me, And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee.
Antony's parting paradox: in separation each stays with the other.
Scene 4: Act I, Scene 4: Caesar in Rome
Act I, Scene 4 (the whole scene)
Summary
In Rome Octavius Caesar reads Lepidus the news from Alexandria: Antony fishes, drinks and wastes the night in revels, and is 'not more manlike / Than Cleopatra'. Lepidus defends him mildly. A messenger reports that Pompey is strong at sea and that discontented Romans flock to him; the pirates Menecrates and Menas raid the coasts of Italy.
Caesar recalls Antony as he once was, a general who after defeat at Modena endured famine in the Alps, drank the stale of horses and ate strange flesh without complaint. He wishes Antony would return to that hardness and leave his lascivious wassails. The triumvirs agree to meet and raise forces.
Analysis
Caesar's first appearance shows a cold, efficient and censorious mind. His contempt for the 'common body', which follows whichever leader is rising, reveals a politician who understands the fickleness of the people and means to master it. Paul Cantor reads the play as a study of the passage from republican virtue to imperial politics, in which Caesar represents the new order (Cantor 1976).
Yet his Alps speech is the warmest thing he says about Antony, and it celebrates Roman endurance as admiration rather than rivalry. Rome's ideal of manhood is defined by what the body can deny itself; Egypt's by what it can enjoy (Kahn 1997).
This common body, Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, To rot itself with motion.
Caesar's view of the people: a reed drifting with the tide. The play's imagery of melting and flux begins in politics.
Thou didst drink The stale of horses and the gilded puddle Which beasts would cough at.
Caesar remembers Antony's heroic endurance in the Alps, a picture taken from Plutarch.
Scene 5: Act I, Scene 5: 'Where's my serpent of old Nile?'
Act I, Scene 5 (the whole scene)
Summary
Cleopatra, bored without Antony, asks Charmian for mandragora so she may sleep away the time he is gone. She teases the eunuch Mardian about his lack of desire, and wonders what Antony is doing at this moment, envying the horse that bears him.
Alexas arrives with a pearl from Antony and a message that he will 'piece her opulent throne with kingdoms'. Cleopatra is delighted. When Charmian praises Julius Caesar, Cleopatra threatens her, and dismisses her past love for Caesar as the folly of her 'salad days'. She resolves to send a messenger to Antony every day.
Analysis
Cleopatra's imagination does what the stage cannot: it shows us Antony on horseback in Rome through her desire. The famous self-description 'serpent of old Nile', which she attributes to Antony, joins her to the river, its fertility and its creatures, and anticipates the asp of the last act (Adelman 1973).
The scene reminds us that Cleopatra has a history with Roman generals: Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great both loved her. She is not simply Antony's lover but a queen who has survived Rome by attracting it.
O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!
Cleopatra's erotic envy turns a Roman military image into one of desire.
Or murmuring “Where’s my serpent of old Nile?” For so he calls me.
Cleopatra identifies herself with the Nile and its serpents.
My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, To say as I said then.
Her phrase for the youthful affair with Julius Caesar has entered the language.
Scene 6: Act II, Scene 1: Pompey at Messina
Act II, Scene 1 (the whole scene)
Summary
Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey the Great, confers with the pirates Menas and Menecrates. He is confident: the people love him, the sea is his, and Antony is idling in Egypt. He prays that Cleopatra's charms will keep Antony there.
Varrius brings news that Antony is expected in Rome at any hour. Pompey is shaken, but takes comfort in thinking that his rising has drawn Antony from the 'lap of Egypt's widow'. He hopes the triumvirs will quarrel among themselves.
Analysis
Pompey is a man of hopes and good intentions who lacks his father's force. He sees the same situation Caesar sees but reads it optimistically, and his sense of timing will fail him at the crucial moment in 2.7.
His words show how widely Cleopatra's reputation has travelled: to every Roman she is a witch, a 'salt' and dangerous woman, and her power is described in terms of magic.
Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both; Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts; Keep his brain fuming.
Pompey's prayer that Cleopatra's sensual power will keep Antony out of the war.
Scene 7: Act II, Scene 2: The meeting in Rome and the barge speech
Act II, Scene 2 (the whole scene)
Summary
At Lepidus's house Antony and Caesar meet, with Enobarbus and Maecenas in attendance. Caesar accuses Antony of encouraging the wars of Fulvia and his brother, and of slighting his messenger and breaking his oath to send aid. Antony answers that Fulvia acted without him and that he neglected rather than denied his duty. When Enobarbus bluntly suggests they settle their quarrel later, he is silenced.
Agrippa proposes that Antony marry Octavia, Caesar's widowed sister, to bind the two men in kinship. Antony agrees, and they make ready to face Pompey. Left alone with Agrippa and Maecenas, Enobarbus describes Cleopatra's first meeting with Antony at Cydnus: her barge burning on the water, her beauty beggaring description. He predicts that Antony will never leave her.
Analysis
The marriage is pure policy, and the scene makes it look like a treaty clause. Agrippa's offer comes while Antony's love for Cleopatra is still alive, and Enobarbus's speech immediately undermines it.
Shakespeare took the barge speech almost word for word from Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Life of Antony, but he turned prose into extraordinary verse and gave it to the hardened soldier Enobarbus (Bullough 1964) (Spencer 1964). Coming from a Roman sceptic, the speech makes Cleopatra's magic believable. Its paradoxes (the fans that warm what they cool, the appetite that grows where it is fed) are the play's poetics of excess.
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned on the water.
The opening of Enobarbus's description of Cleopatra at Cydnus, adapted from North's Plutarch.
For her own person, It beggared all description
Words fail before Cleopatra; the description proceeds by saying it cannot describe.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety.
Enobarbus's verdict on why Antony will never leave her: she outlasts time and habit.
Scene 8: Act II, Scene 3: Octavia and the Soothsayer's warning
Act II, Scene 3 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony promises Octavia that, though the world may part them, he will keep his conduct in square from now on. When she leaves, the Egyptian Soothsayer, who has followed him to Rome, warns him to return to Egypt: Antony's guardian spirit is noble and unmatchable, but becomes afraid when near Caesar's.
Antony admits that Caesar beats him at every game of chance, at dice, at cockfights and quail-fighting. Alone, he decides to go back to Egypt: he will make the marriage for peace, but his pleasure lies in the East. He sends Ventidius to Parthia.
Analysis
The scene compresses the whole tragedy into a few lines. Antony's intentions shift as soon as his new wife has left the stage, and the Soothsayer gives a supernatural explanation for a political fact: Caesar's luck, or fortune, always outweighs Antony's.
The theme of fortune is central to Plutarch, and Shakespeare uses it to raise the question whether Antony falls because of his choices or because the world has turned against him (Miola 1983).
Thy dæmon—that thy spirit which keeps thee—is Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, Where Caesar’s is not.
The Soothsayer's warning: Antony's genius is great, but it shrinks in Caesar's presence.
I will to Egypt: And though I make this marriage for my peace, I’ th’ East my pleasure lies.
Antony decides in the same scene in which he is betrothed.
Scene 9: Act II, Scene 4: The triumvirs' officers hasten to Misenum
Act II, Scene 4 (the whole scene)
Summary
Lepidus bids farewell to Agrippa and Maecenas, who are hurrying to join Antony and Caesar. He will follow by a longer route, and they expect to reach Mount Misenum before him.
Analysis
A brief transitional scene that keeps the military movement going. Lepidus is already lagging behind the two men who matter, a small sign of his weakness in the triumvirate. Johnson complained that such quick shifts of place leave the play without art of connection; modern critics see the rapid movement as part of its vision of a whole world in motion (Granville-Barker 1930).
Trouble yourselves no further. Pray you hasten Your generals after.
Lepidus sends the others ahead; he will not keep up.
Scene 10: Act II, Scene 5: Cleopatra and the messenger
Act II, Scene 5 (the whole scene)
Summary
In Alexandria Cleopatra calls for music, then billiards, then fishing, and remembers the day she tied a salt fish on Antony's hook and the night she put her tires and mantles on him and wore his sword. A messenger arrives from Italy. She offers him gold to say Antony is well, but he hesitates, and finally tells her Antony has married Octavia.
Cleopatra strikes him, drags him by the hair and draws a knife. Charmian intervenes. Cleopatra recovers enough to question him again, curses him for telling the truth, and sends Alexas to learn Octavia's age, looks and height. She is torn between longing and rage.
Analysis
The scene is both comic and painful. Cleopatra's memory of exchanging clothes with Antony, so that he wears her garments and she his sword, sums up what Rome fears in Egypt: the confusion of gender and the softening of the soldier (Kahn 1997).
Her violence shows the queen's absolute power over a servant who cannot defend himself, while her wish that Egypt might melt into the Nile echoes Antony's 'Let Rome in Tiber melt'. In both lovers great feeling expresses itself as the wish to dissolve the world.
I drunk him to his bed, Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst I wore his sword Philippan.
Cleopatra remembers dressing Antony in her clothes and wearing his sword, a playful exchange of gender.
My bluest veins to kiss, a hand that kings Have lipped, and trembled kissing.
She offers the messenger her hand for good news; royal favour is a gift of the body.
Melt Egypt into Nile, and kindly creatures Turn all to serpents!
Cleopatra's curse, the Egyptian counterpart of Antony's 'Let Rome in Tiber melt'.
Scene 11: Act II, Scene 6: The treaty at Misenum
Act II, Scene 6 (the whole scene)
Summary
The triumvirs meet Pompey at Misenum. Pompey recalls that his father was avenged by Julius Caesar and that Antony took his father's house; the triumvirs offer him Sicily and Sardinia if he will rid the sea of pirates and send wheat to Rome. He accepts, and the leaders agree to feast one another, beginning on Pompey's galley.
Enobarbus and Menas, old acquaintances of the sea, talk frankly. Menas thinks Pompey has laughed away his fortune. Enobarbus predicts that Octavia's marriage, which seems to bind Antony and Caesar, will in the end destroy their friendship, because Antony will go back to his 'Egyptian dish'.
Analysis
The official business is conducted in courteous formulas, while the real truth is spoken in prose by two subordinates. Enobarbus understands politics better than anyone on stage.
Pompey's reminder that he is his father's son and that Julius Caesar was once the lover of Cleopatra keeps the past of Roman civil war in view: the treaty is a pause in a long cycle of conflict.
will be the very strangler of their amity.
Enobarbus foresees that the marriage will become the cause of war.
Scene 12: Act II, Scene 7: The feast on Pompey's galley
Act II, Scene 7 (the whole scene)
Summary
Servants joke that Lepidus has drunk too much and is a mere name among the great. At the feast Antony entertains Lepidus with mock descriptions of Egypt and its crocodile. Menas draws Pompey aside and offers to cut the cable and murder the three rulers of the world, making Pompey lord of all.
Pompey refuses, but only because Menas asked first: had it been done without his knowledge, he would have approved it afterwards. Menas resolves to leave a master who will not take his fortune. Lepidus is carried off drunk, Antony leads an Egyptian Bacchanal, and Caesar, who dislikes the drinking, leaves for the shore.
Analysis
The galley scene is the play's comic centre and a sharp political lesson. The three men who rule the world are vulnerable, drunk and at the mercy of a pirate. Pompey's answer shows a morality of appearances, honour that cares only about reputation, and it seals his ruin (Cantor 1976).
Antony's description of the crocodile ('It is shaped, sir, like itself') is a joke at Lepidus's expense, but also a comment on Egypt itself, which cannot be translated into Roman terms. Caesar's reluctance to drink marks him as the one man who never lets go.
It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth.
Antony's mock description of the crocodile: Egypt can only be described as itself.
Ah, this thou shouldst have done And not have spoke on ’t!
Pompey rejects Menas's offer, not because it is wrong but because he has been told of it.
Who seeks, and will not take when once ’tis offered, Shall never find it more.
Menas's judgement on Pompey's lost chance.
Scene 13: Act III, Scene 1: Ventidius in Syria
Act III, Scene 1 (the whole scene)
Summary
Ventidius, Antony's lieutenant, has defeated the Parthians and enters in triumph with the body of the king's son Pacorus. His officer Silius urges him to pursue the fleeing enemy and win more glory. Ventidius refuses: a subordinate who achieves too much wins his captain's envy rather than thanks. He will report his victory in Antony's name.
Analysis
This scene, often cut in performance, shows the cost of empire and the logic of power. The real work of war is done by lesser men, and they must take care not to outshine the great. It also shows that Antony's fortunes are still strong while he is away from Egypt (Miola 1983).
Who does i’ th’ wars more than his captain can Becomes his captain’s captain; and ambition, The soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice of loss Than gain which darkens him.
Ventidius's cool reasoning about the politics of military success.
Scene 14: Act III, Scene 2: Octavia leaves Rome
Act III, Scene 2 (the whole scene)
Summary
Agrippa and Enobarbus mock Lepidus's extravagant praise of both Antony and Caesar, comparing him to a beetle between two wings. Caesar takes leave of his sister, warning Antony to treat her well, since she is the 'piece of virtue' set between them as the cement of their love.
Octavia weeps and whispers to her brother. Enobarbus and Agrippa remark, with a soldier's irony, that Antony too once wept over the dead Julius Caesar and the dead Brutus. The party departs for Athens.
Analysis
The scene is about tears: Octavia's genuine ones, Caesar's restrained ones, and Antony's, which Enobarbus treats as part of his rhetoric. Octavia's silence, torn between her brother and her husband, makes her the most passive and most sympathetic victim of Roman policy.
Her image of the swan's down feather at the full of the tide is one of the play's many pictures of balance and flux, of a will that cannot move either way.
Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can Her heart inform her tongue—the swan’s-down feather, That stands upon the swell at the full of tide, And neither way inclines.
Antony's description of Octavia's divided state.
Scene 15: Act III, Scene 3: Cleopatra questions the messenger about Octavia
Act III, Scene 3 (the whole scene)
Summary
Cleopatra summons the messenger she beat in 2.5 and asks about Octavia. Eager now to please, he reports that she is not as tall as Cleopatra, low-voiced, dull of tongue and shuffling in her walk, with a round face and a low forehead, and that she is a widow of about thirty.
Cleopatra is delighted and rewards him. She decides that Octavia is 'nothing' and that Antony cannot stay with her long.
Analysis
The scene is comic, but it shows the political intelligence of a queen who must judge her rival from reports. The messenger has learnt from his beating what to say; truth in this play is always shaped by the power of the listener. Adelman calls the play's world one of rumour and report, where the audience must judge as Cleopatra does here (Adelman 1973).
She creeps. Her motion and her station are as one.
The messenger's unflattering report of Octavia's walk, which Cleopatra rewards.
Scene 16: Act III, Scene 4: Antony and Octavia in Athens
Act III, Scene 4 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony complains to Octavia that Caesar has made war on Pompey, read his will in public, and spoken of Antony coldly. Octavia begs him not to believe everything and laments her position between brother and husband, praying for one and then the other.
Antony allows her to go to Rome as a mediator, while he raises an army against Caesar. He tells her to choose which of them is in the right, since each is at fault.
Analysis
The marriage is already failing, and Octavia's speech about a prayer that destroys itself expresses her impossible position. Antony's appeal to honour ('If I lose mine honour, / I lose myself') uses the Roman language of reputation even as he moves towards Egypt (Miles 1996).
A more unhappy lady, If this division chance, ne’er stood between, Praying for both parts.
Octavia's lament: she must pray for both sides in a quarrel that will destroy one.
If I lose mine honour, I lose myself
Antony equates his identity with his reputation.
Scene 17: Act III, Scene 5: Lepidus deposed
Act III, Scene 5 (the whole scene)
Summary
Enobarbus and Eros exchange news. Caesar, having used Lepidus in the war against Pompey, has accused him of treachery and imprisoned him. Pompey has been murdered by one of Antony's officers. Antony walks in the garden, furious.
Analysis
The world, once divided among three, is now divided between two, and conflict between them is inevitable. Enobarbus's image of the world as a pair of jaws grinding everything between them is the play's bleakest political metaphor.
Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps, no more, And throw between them all the food thou hast, They’ll grind the one the other.
Enobarbus sees the world reduced to two rival jaws.
Scene 18: Act III, Scene 6: Caesar hears of the Donations of Alexandria
Act III, Scene 6 (the whole scene)
Summary
Caesar tells Maecenas and Agrippa that in Alexandria Antony and Cleopatra sat publicly on golden thrones; he proclaimed her queen of Egypt and of lower Syria, Cyprus and Lydia, and made kings of his sons by her. Cleopatra appeared in the dress of the goddess Isis.
Octavia arrives without a train, as a market-maid would, to mediate. Caesar tells her she has been deceived: Antony has returned to Cleopatra and is assembling the kings of the East for war. He welcomes her with grief and anger.
Analysis
The scene shows Caesar's propaganda. The spectacle of Isis, which Cleopatra uses to display her divine kingship, is in Roman eyes the mark of an Eastern whore. Michael Lloyd traced how Shakespeare's Cleopatra draws on the cult of Isis, the goddess of the Nile and of rebirth (Lloyd 1959).
Octavia's simple entry gives Caesar the injury he needs. His anger may be real, but it also serves his cause: he will now make war on Antony as the protector of his wronged sister.
In th’ habiliments of the goddess Isis That day appeared
Cleopatra's appearance as Isis, reported by Caesar as a scandal.
He hath given his empire Up to a whore, who now are levying The kings o’ th’ earth for war.
Caesar's verdict: Antony has handed the Eastern empire to Cleopatra.
Scene 19: Act III, Scene 7: Before Actium
Act III, Scene 7 (the whole scene)
Summary
Near Actium Cleopatra insists on taking part in the war, and Enobarbus tells her bluntly that her presence will distract Antony. Antony announces that Caesar has crossed the Ionian sea with surprising speed, and decides to fight at sea, because Caesar dares him to.
Enobarbus, Canidius and a veteran soldier beg him to fight on land, where he is strong, rather than at sea with ill-manned ships. He refuses. Canidius and the soldier lament that their leader is led by a woman.
Analysis
The decision to fight by sea is the turning point of Antony's career, and the scene makes it look like wilfulness and vanity. Plutarch attributes the decision to Cleopatra's influence, and Shakespeare keeps that suggestion while giving it to Antony's own pride (Bullough 1964).
Cleopatra's claim that she will appear 'for a man' in the war continues the theme of gender exchange. The soldier's appeal to his wounds sets the honest body of the Roman soldier against the 'rotten planks' of the fleet.
By sea, by sea.
Antony's fatal decision, repeated as a challenge to Caesar's dare.
O noble emperor, do not fight by sea. Trust not to rotten planks.
The veteran soldier's plea, which Antony ignores.
Scene 20: Act III, Scene 8: Caesar's orders
Act III, Scene 8 (the whole scene)
Summary
Caesar orders Taurus not to give battle on land until the sea fight is over. Everything depends on the throw.
Analysis
One of the play's shortest scenes, it shows Caesar's discipline: he commands with economy, and his whole speech is strategy.
Strike not by land; keep whole; provoke not battle Till we have done at sea.
Caesar's concise orders, a contrast to Antony's impulsive style.
Scene 21: Act III, Scene 9: Antony places his squadrons
Act III, Scene 9 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony orders Enobarbus to position the squadrons on the hill where they can see the number of Caesar's ships and act accordingly.
Analysis
Paired with 3.8, this tiny scene sets the two commanders side by side before the battle. The rapid cuts between camps are almost cinematic, and Harley Granville-Barker argued that on the Elizabethan stage they flowed without pause (Granville-Barker 1930).
Set we our squadrons on yon side o’ th’ hill In eye of Caesar’s battle
Antony's orders before the battle.
Scene 22: Act III, Scene 10: The flight at Actium
Act III, Scene 10 (the whole scene)
Summary
Enobarbus enters in despair: Cleopatra's flagship, the Antoniad, has turned and fled with sixty sails. Scarus arrives, furious: the battle was evenly balanced until Cleopatra fled like a cow stung by a gadfly, and Antony, like a doting mallard, flew after her.
Canidius reports that the fleet is lost and that he will go over to Caesar with his legions. Enobarbus, though his reason tells him otherwise, decides to follow Antony's 'wounded chance'.
Analysis
We do not see the battle; we hear about it from soldiers who are ashamed of their general. Their language is coarse and animal, the opposite of Enobarbus's barge speech, and it shows what Antony's love looks like from the Roman point of view.
Scarus's phrase that they have 'kissed away / Kingdoms and provinces' joins the erotic and the political at the moment of catastrophe.
The greater cantle of the world is lost With very ignorance. We have kissed away Kingdoms and provinces.
Scarus's lament: half the world thrown away for kisses.
She once being loofed, The noble ruin of her magic, Antony, Claps on his sea-wing and, like a doting mallard, Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.
Antony's flight described in an animal image of desire.
Scene 23: Act III, Scene 11: Antony's shame
Act III, Scene 11 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony, crushed by shame, tells his attendants to take his treasure and make peace with Caesar. He recalls that at Philippi Caesar never drew his sword, while he himself defeated Cassius and Brutus. Cleopatra is led to him by Eros and her women, and he reproaches her for knowing that his heart was tied to her rudder.
She begs his pardon. He forgives her: one of her tears is worth all that has been won and lost. He has sent the schoolmaster to Caesar to ask for terms. He calls for wine and food.
Analysis
The scene shows Antony at his lowest and most generous. His contrast between himself and Caesar at Philippi suggests that Caesar's power comes from political skill rather than courage, and that Antony belongs to a heroic world that is passing away (Miles 1996).
His forgiveness is the decisive choice of the play: he values Cleopatra's love above his reputation, though he has just declared that his reputation is everything.
I have offended reputation, A most unnoble swerving.
Antony's confession of shame.
Egypt, thou knew’st too well My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’ strings, And thou shouldst tow me after.
He blames Cleopatra in a naval image drawn from the battle itself.
Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates All that is won and lost.
His forgiveness: one tear is worth the world.
Scene 24: Act III, Scene 12: Antony's schoolmaster before Caesar
Act III, Scene 12 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony's former schoolmaster comes as ambassador to Caesar's camp. Antony asks to live in Egypt or, failing that, as a private man in Athens; Cleopatra asks that her children may inherit Egypt. Caesar refuses Antony outright and promises Cleopatra fair treatment if she will drive Antony out or kill him.
Caesar sends Thidias to win Cleopatra from Antony, telling him to promise whatever she wants, since even vestal virgins break when they are in want.
Analysis
Antony's humiliation is measured by the size of his messenger: he who once sent kings now sends a schoolmaster. Caesar's cynical view of women, and his confidence that Cleopatra can be bought, will be tested in the last act.
Women are not In their best fortunes strong, but want will perjure The ne’er-touch’d vestal.
Caesar's cynical view of women as he sends Thidias to Cleopatra.
Scene 25: Act III, Scene 13: Thidias whipped; 'one other gaudy night'
Act III, Scene 13 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony sends Caesar a challenge to single combat, and Enobarbus reflects in an aside that Antony's judgement has gone. Thidias arrives and tells Cleopatra that Caesar knows she embraced Antony from fear, not love. She seems to accept, offering her hand to be kissed. Antony enters, has Thidias whipped, and turns on Cleopatra with fury, calling her a morsel cold upon dead Caesar's trencher.
Cleopatra protests that if she is cold-hearted towards him, may heaven turn her and her children to hail. Antony is reconciled, resolves to fight again by land, and calls for one more gaudy night of feasting. Enobarbus, seeing his master's valour prey on reason, resolves to leave him.
Analysis
This long scene is a rehearsal of the play's pattern of suspicion, rage and reconciliation. Cleopatra's dealings with Thidias remain ambiguous: is she negotiating for herself or merely playing for time? The play gives us no inner view, which is why critics remain divided on her loyalty (Adelman 1973).
Antony's rage at the whipped messenger recalls Cleopatra's beating of the messenger in 2.5: the two lovers are alike in temper. His recovery is magnificent but, to Enobarbus, self-destructive. The scene ends the third act with the old Antony restored in spirit, just as his practical cause collapses.
I see men’s judgments are A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them
Enobarbus's aside on Antony's challenge: misfortune corrupts judgement.
Let’s have one other gaudy night. Call to me All my sad captains. Fill our bowls once more Let’s mock the midnight bell.
Antony's defiance of defeat with one more feast.
It is my birthday. I had thought t’have held it poor, but since my lord Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.
Cleopatra's response to his restored spirit: their identities depend on each other.
When valour preys on reason, It eats the sword it fights with.
Enobarbus decides to leave Antony.
Scene 26: Act IV, Scene 1: Caesar laughs at the challenge
Act IV, Scene 1 (the whole scene)
Summary
Caesar receives Antony's challenge to single combat and laughs at it: he has many other ways to die. He orders the battle for the next day, noting that many of Antony's men have come over to him.
Analysis
Caesar's contempt for the 'old ruffian' shows the difference between the generations and their values. Single combat belongs to heroic epic; Caesar wins by numbers and policy.
Let the old ruffian know I have many other ways to die; meantime Laugh at his challenge.
Caesar's dismissal of Antony's challenge.
Scene 27: Act IV, Scene 2: Antony's farewell supper
Act IV, Scene 2 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony learns that Caesar will not fight him in single combat. He shakes hands with his servants and asks them to attend him tonight, since tomorrow they may serve another master or he may be a mangled shadow. They weep. Enobarbus protests that he is making them 'onion-eyed', and Antony turns the scene into good cheer.
Analysis
The scene recalls the Last Supper, and Antony appears at his most humane. Whether he is sincere or skilfully working on his followers' emotions, Enobarbus's ironic commentary keeps us aware of both possibilities.
Tend me tonight; May be it is the period of your duty.
Antony's farewell to his servants, who may not serve him again.
Scene 28: Act IV, Scene 3: Hercules leaves Antony
Act IV, Scene 3 (the whole scene)
Summary
Soldiers on watch hear strange music under the earth and in the air. One of them interprets it: the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, is now leaving him.
Analysis
In Plutarch the departing god is Bacchus, Antony's model in his Eastern revels; Shakespeare substitutes Hercules, the god of strength and Antony's legendary ancestor (Bullough 1964). The change makes the omen a sign that the hero's martial power is leaving him. The mystery of the music, heard only by common soldiers, is one of the play's most haunting effects.
’Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, Now leaves him.
A soldier's interpretation of the strange music. In Plutarch the departing god is Bacchus.
Scene 29: Act IV, Scene 4: Cleopatra arms Antony
Act IV, Scene 4 (the whole scene)
Summary
At dawn Cleopatra helps Eros arm Antony, fumbling with the buckles. Antony is cheerful; he wishes she could see him fight. A soldier and captains arrive; Antony kisses Cleopatra and goes out to battle like a man of steel.
Analysis
The arming scene unites love and war, Egypt and Rome, in a ceremony of domestic intimacy. It answers the earlier image of Cleopatra wearing Antony's sword: now she helps him put on his armour, and her clumsiness is part of the tenderness.
This morning, like the spirit of a youth That means to be of note, begins betimes.
Antony greets the day of battle with youthful energy.
Scene 30: Act IV, Scene 5: Enobarbus's desertion
Act IV, Scene 5 (the whole scene)
Summary
A soldier tells Antony that Enobarbus has gone over to Caesar, leaving his chests and treasure behind. Antony orders the treasure to be sent after him with a gentle letter, and blames his own fortunes for corrupting honest men.
Analysis
Antony's generosity is the most devastating response he could make, and it will break Enobarbus's heart. His view that his fortunes, not Enobarbus, are to blame recalls Enobarbus's own remark that judgement is a parcel of fortune.
O, my fortunes have Corrupted honest men!
Antony forgives Enobarbus and blames his fortune.
Scene 31: Act IV, Scene 6: Enobarbus receives the treasure
Act IV, Scene 6 (the whole scene)
Summary
Caesar orders that the deserters be placed in the front of the battle, so that Antony may seem to spend his fury on himself. He predicts a universal peace. Enobarbus reflects that Caesar does not trust deserters. A soldier brings Antony's treasure and his gentle message. Enobarbus declares himself the villain of the earth and resolves to die in a ditch.
Analysis
Caesar's prophecy of universal peace refers to the Pax Augusta, the era in which, Christian readers knew, Christ was born. Many critics see in Caesar a figure of historical destiny, though the play hardly makes him attractive (Cantor 1976) (Miola 1983).
Enobarbus's collapse shows that reason, which made him leave Antony, cannot survive Antony's magnanimity. His fate is a judgement on the Roman calculation he has represented.
The time of universal peace is near.
Caesar foretells the Augustan peace.
I am alone the villain of the earth, And feel I am so most.
Enobarbus's remorse at Antony's generosity.
Scene 32: Act IV, Scene 7: Antony's forces drive Caesar back
Act IV, Scene 7 (the whole scene)
Summary
Agrippa orders a retreat. Antony and Scarus enter, Scarus wounded but cheerful. Eros reports that the enemy is beaten. Antony promises Scarus tenfold reward for his courage.
Analysis
The battle goes well for a moment, and the scene shows Antony and his men full of soldierly humour. Scarus's joke about his wound is the language of the camp, close and comradely.
I had a wound here that was like a T, But now ’tis made an H.
Scarus's soldierly joke: his wound has widened, and 'H' puns on 'ache'.
Scene 33: Act IV, Scene 8: Antony's triumphant return
Act IV, Scene 8 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony returns to Alexandria in triumph, thanking his soldiers and asking them to tell the queen of their deeds. Cleopatra enters, and he greets her as the day of the world, asking her to embrace his armed neck. He presents Scarus to her, and she promises him armour of gold. They march through Alexandria with trumpets.
Analysis
The reunion is one of the play's moments of glory, a love that is not opposed to war but crowned by it. It is brief and illusory, and its effect is heightened by our knowledge of what is to come.
O thou day o’ th’ world, Chain mine armed neck. Leap thou, attire and all,
Antony greets Cleopatra in the language of victory and embrace.
Scene 34: Act IV, Scene 9: The death of Enobarbus
Act IV, Scene 9 (the whole scene)
Summary
At night sentries in Caesar's camp overhear Enobarbus praying to the moon. He calls on night to witness his repentance, begs Antony's forgiveness, and dies of a broken heart. The sentries carry him away.
Analysis
Enobarbus's death is the first of the four great deaths of the play, and it has no physical cause: he dies of grief and shame. The Roman realist is killed by feeling, which is the play's sharpest comment on the limits of reason (Adelman 1973).
O sovereign mistress of true melancholy, The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,
Enobarbus addresses the moon in his dying speech.
Scene 35: Act IV, Scene 10: Preparations for the sea fight
Act IV, Scene 10 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony decides to fight Caesar's fleet at sea, since Caesar's land forces will not engage. He places his infantry on the hills.
Analysis
Antony again chooses the sea, despite Actium. The play does not explain his decision, which seems to follow fortune rather than reason.
I would they’d fight i’ th’ fire or i’ th’ air; We’d fight there too.
Antony's defiance: he will fight in any element.
Scene 36: Act IV, Scene 11: Caesar's plan
Act IV, Scene 11 (the whole scene)
Summary
Caesar decides to remain quiet on land unless attacked, and to send his best troops to the valley.
Analysis
A short scene that again pairs Caesar's calm against Antony's defiance.
But being charged, we will be still by land, Which, as I take’t, we shall
Caesar's quiet strategy.
Scene 37: Act IV, Scene 12: The fleet yields; 'All is lost'
Act IV, Scene 12 (the whole scene)
Summary
Scarus reports that swallows have built in Cleopatra's sails, an ill omen. Antony watches the fleet and sees it surrender to Caesar without a fight. He believes Cleopatra has betrayed him, and when she enters he drives her away with threats and curses.
Alone, he feels the shirt of Nessus upon him, comparing himself to Hercules in his dying agony, and swears that the witch shall die.
Analysis
Antony's rage is total. His wild images of betrayal and dogs fawning on Caesar show a mind that has lost its centre, and his comparison of himself to Hercules, poisoned by his wife's gift, recalls the omen of 4.3.
Whether Cleopatra really betrayed him, Shakespeare does not say. Plutarch reports the fleet's surrender, and the play leaves the question open, as it leaves her loyalty in 3.13 (Bullough 1964).
All is lost! This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me.
Antony's cry as the fleet surrenders.
The hearts That spanieled me at heels, to whom I gave Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets On blossoming Caesar
His image of followers melting like sugar onto Caesar.
The shirt of Nessus is upon me.
Antony compares himself to Hercules poisoned by the shirt of Nessus.
Scene 38: Act IV, Scene 13: Cleopatra goes to the monument
Act IV, Scene 13 (the whole scene)
Summary
Cleopatra, terrified, asks her women for help. Charmian advises her to lock herself in her monument and send word to Antony that she is dead. Cleopatra sends Mardian with the message, telling him to report that her last word was 'Antony' and to say it piteously.
Analysis
The false report of her death is the last and most dangerous of Cleopatra's performances. It springs from fear rather than calculation, but it proves fatal, and it raises the question how far her theatre is responsible for Antony's end.
Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself. Say that the last I spoke was “Antony”, And word it, prithee, piteously.
Cleopatra sends the false report of her death.
Scene 39: Act IV, Scene 14: Antony's death wound
Act IV, Scene 14 (the whole scene)
Summary
Antony asks Eros whether he has seen clouds that take the shapes of dragons, bears and castles, then dissolve; he is like such a cloud, unable to hold his shape. Mardian brings word that Cleopatra has died with his name on her lips. Antony takes off his armour: the long day's task is done. He will follow her and outdo her in death.
He asks Eros to kill him, but Eros kills himself instead. Antony falls on his sword and botches the wound. The guard will not finish him. Diomedes arrives with news that Cleopatra is alive in the monument, and Antony asks to be carried to her.
Analysis
The cloud speech is one of Shakespeare's greatest meditations on identity. Antony, whose being has always depended on his reputation, now sees himself as vapour, a shape that 'the rack dislimns'. The image recalls the play's language of melting and dissolution (Charney 1961).
His death is messy and slow, a soldier's failure even in suicide, and yet he imagines it as a lover's wedding and a reunion in Elysium, where they will outdo Dido and Aeneas. Shakespeare's reversal of Virgil, in which Aeneas leaves Dido for Rome, signals that this hero chooses love over empire (Bono 1984).
Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish, A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendant rock,
The opening of Antony's cloud speech.
Unarm, Eros. The long day’s task is done, And we must sleep.
Antony takes off his armour on hearing of Cleopatra's death.
Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll hand in hand, And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze. Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops, And all the haunt be ours.
Antony imagines a reunion in Elysium that outshines Virgil's lovers.
I will be A bridegroom in my death and run into’t As to a lover’s bed.
He imagines death as marriage.
Scene 40: Act IV, Scene 15: The death of Antony in the monument
Act IV, Scene 15 (the whole scene)
Summary
Cleopatra and her women are in the monument when the dying Antony is brought below. She will not come down for fear of capture, and with her women she hauls him up to her. He asks for wine, advises her to trust only Proculeius among Caesar's men, and dies asking to be remembered as the greatest prince of the world, a Roman by a Roman valiantly vanquished.
Cleopatra faints and recovers. The world, she says, has lost all its distinction: the soldier's pole is fallen. She is no more than a woman, moved by the same passions as a milkmaid. She resolves to die after the high Roman fashion.
Analysis
The hoisting of Antony is a strange, physical piece of staging, at once ridiculous and moving. Cleopatra's refusal to come down, out of fear of Caesar, shows her will to survive even at this moment.
Her lament transforms Antony into a cosmic figure. The world has become flat and unremarkable without him. Her claim to be 'no more but e'en a woman' and her resolve to die like a Roman bring together the two worlds of the play, which seem only now to have found a common language (Adelman 1973) (Miles 1996).
I am dying, Egypt, dying.
Antony's last words to Cleopatra, which he repeats.
The crown o’ th’ earth doth melt.—My lord! O, withered is the garland of the war,
Cleopatra's lament over the dead Antony.
And there is nothing left remarkable Beneath the visiting moon.
Without Antony the world has lost its distinction.
Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion And make death proud to take us.
Cleopatra resolves on a Roman death.
Scene 41: Act V, Scene 1: Caesar hears of Antony's death
Act V, Scene 1 (the whole scene)
Summary
Dercetus brings Antony's bloody sword to Caesar and announces his death. Caesar weeps and praises his rival as a brother, a partner in empire and the arm of his own body. He blames the stars that made their two worlds incompatible.
A messenger from Cleopatra asks Caesar's intentions. Caesar sends Proculeius to assure her of kindness, but in private explains that he wants her alive, so that she may be led in his triumph at Rome.
Analysis
Caesar's grief is genuine, but it is also political theatre, staged before his council. His real interest in Cleopatra's life is revealed in an aside: her presence in his triumph would be his eternal glory. The last act is a struggle over who will control Cleopatra's story (Kahn 1997).
The breaking of so great a thing should make A greater crack.
Caesar's response to the news of Antony's death.
her life in Rome Would be eternal in our triumph.
Caesar's true motive for keeping Cleopatra alive.
Scene 42: Act V, Scene 2: Cleopatra's death
Act V, Scene 2 (the whole scene)
Summary
In the monument Cleopatra declares that her desolation begins to make a better life. Proculeius enters, and while he speaks to her Roman soldiers take her from behind. She draws a dagger, is disarmed, and swears she will never be shown to the shouting rabble of Rome. Dolabella takes charge; she tells him her dream of Antony as a colossus who bestrode the ocean. Moved, he confesses that Caesar will lead her in triumph.
Caesar arrives and threatens her children if she kills herself. She gives him a list of her treasure; her treasurer Seleucus reveals that she has kept back half, and she attacks him in fury. Caesar leaves assuring her of his kindness. Alone, she imagines Rome's actors staging her and Antony, and a boy playing her greatness 'in the posture of a whore'.
A Clown brings figs with asps hidden among them, and leaves her with a comic warning about the worm. Cleopatra dresses in her robe and crown, kisses her women, and Iras falls dead. She puts the asp to her breast and to her arm, calling Antony husband, and dies. Charmian dies beside her. Caesar arrives, admires her courage, and orders that she be buried with Antony.
Analysis
The final scene is a long and triumphant performance. Cleopatra's dream of Antony transforms him into a god, and her death transforms the Roman suicide into an Egyptian ceremony of love and royalty. Her fear of the 'squeaking' boy actor is a joke about the Jacobean stage, on which a boy was playing her, and a claim that the play has, against the odds, been true to her (Rackin 1972).
Caesar arrives too late. The woman who was to be the centrepiece of his triumph has escaped him, and his final speech gives her the glory he wanted for himself. Critics who see the play as a defeat of love by history must reckon with this ending, in which the lovers have the last word (Adelman 1973) (Bradley 1909).
His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm Crested the world
Cleopatra's dream of Antony as a colossus.
Antony Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness I’ th’ posture of a whore.
Cleopatra imagines her story staged in Rome, an allusion to the boy actor playing her.
Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have Immortal longings in me.
She dresses for death as a queen.
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep?
Cleopatra describes the asp as a nursing child.
It is well done, and fitting for a princess Descended of so many royal kings.
Charmian's last words, defending her mistress's death.
Characters
Rome / Egypt
- Mark Antony
- One of the three triumvirs who rule the Roman world after the death of Julius Caesar. A great soldier, generous and impulsive, he is torn between his Roman duty and his love for Cleopatra. His men adore him, his enemies respect him, and his own reputation haunts him. He loses the world at Actium, recovers briefly, and dies by his own hand, believing himself 'a Roman by a Roman / Valiantly vanquished'.
Egypt
- Cleopatra
- Queen of Egypt, former lover of Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. Witty, theatrical, jealous and brave, she is the most complex of Shakespeare's women. Romans call her a whore and a witch; her women and Enobarbus describe her as a wonder. Her moods change from scene to scene, and the play never lets us be sure what she really feels until her death, which she stages as a final triumph.
- Charmian
- Cleopatra's lively, witty waiting-woman, who jokes with the Soothsayer at the start and dies beside her mistress at the end, completing her work with a last proud speech.
- Iras
- Cleopatra's second waiting-woman. She dies first in the final scene, apparently of grief, after Cleopatra kisses her.
- Mardian
- Cleopatra's eunuch, whom she teases about his lack of desire, and who carries the false news of her death to Antony.
- Alexas
- An attendant of Cleopatra who brings her Antony's pearl. Plutarch reports that he later betrayed Antony.
- The Soothsayer and the Clown
- Two minor figures who frame the play: the Soothsayer prophesies the women's fortunes and warns Antony against Caesar's luck; the Clown brings the asps in a basket of figs and jokes about the worm.
Rome
- Octavius Caesar
- Julius Caesar's adopted heir and the future Emperor Augustus. Young, cold and efficient, he never drinks too much and never acts without calculation. He despises Antony's excess but admires his former courage, and grieves at his death. He wants Cleopatra alive for his triumph and is outwitted by her at the end.
- Octavia
- Caesar's sister, married to Antony to secure peace between them. Gentle, virtuous and quiet, she is caught between her husband and her brother, and her abandonment gives Caesar a reason for war.
- Lepidus
- The third triumvir, a weak and pliant man who tries to keep the peace between his partners. Drunk at Pompey's feast, he is later deposed and imprisoned by Caesar.
- Sextus Pompeius (Pompey)
- Son of Pompey the Great, who controls the sea and challenges the triumvirs. He makes peace at Misenum, refuses Menas's offer to murder his guests, and is later killed.
Rome / Antony's camp
- Domitius Enobarbus
- Antony's friend and lieutenant, a blunt soldier and the play's chief commentator. His witty prose and cynical asides deflate Antony's grandeur, yet he gives the most magnificent description of Cleopatra. After Actium he deserts to Caesar, and when Antony sends his treasure after him he dies of a broken heart.
Antony's camp
- Eros
- Antony's devoted servant, who kills himself rather than kill his master, showing Antony the way.
- Scarus
- A brave soldier who rages at the flight from Actium, fights heroically in the land battle, and is praised by Antony and Cleopatra.
- Canidius
- Antony's lieutenant-general on land, who after Actium deserts to Caesar with his legions.
Caesar's camp
- Agrippa, Maecenas, Dolabella and Proculeius
- Caesar's advisers and officers. Agrippa proposes the marriage with Octavia; Maecenas listens to Enobarbus's barge speech; Dolabella, moved by Cleopatra's dream, tells her the truth about Caesar's plans; Proculeius, whom Antony told her to trust, captures her.
Pompey's camp
- Menas
- A pirate in Pompey's service who offers to murder the triumvirs on the galley and leaves Pompey when he refuses.
Themes
Rome and Egypt
The play is built on the contrast of two worlds. Rome stands for duty, discipline, politics and measure; Egypt for pleasure, feeling, ease and excess. Romans see Egypt as decadent and feminine; Egyptians see Rome as cold and narrow. John Danby saw the play as a dialectic in which neither side is complete, while G. Wilson Knight saw Egypt as the realm of a transcendent love that surpasses Rome (Danby 1952) (Knight 1931).
Antony belongs to both worlds, and the play is the story of his division. The conflict is not only between two places but between two ways of valuing life, which the play refuses to reconcile until the end.
Love and empire
Antony gives up an empire for love, and the play asks whether this is folly or greatness. The language of the lovers turns love into a world of its own, larger than the political world: 'new heaven, new earth'. Yet their love is also political, since it unites two powers and threatens Rome.
The play never lets us forget the cost of their choice, but it makes the alternative, Caesar's empire without love, look poor.
Reputation, identity and the self
Antony's sense of himself depends on his honour and reputation. When he loses them, he feels himself dissolving like a cloud. Cleopatra's identity is also bound to Antony: 'since my lord / Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra'. The play shows selves made and unmade by the opinions of others and by their own performances (Miles 1996).
Theatre, report and truth
Much of the action happens offstage and reaches us through reports: messengers, soldiers, rumours and descriptions. Many of these reports contradict each other. Adelman argued that the play forces us to judge, as the characters do, on the basis of report, so that our belief in the lovers becomes an act of faith (Adelman 1973).
Cleopatra is a performer, and her moods, deaths and dreams are all staged. The play is aware of its own theatre, above all in her fear of being played by a boy actor in Rome.
Gender and power
Romans fear that Antony has been made effeminate, and Cleopatra's playful exchange of clothes with him becomes a symbol of the disordering of gender. Cleopatra rules as a woman in a world of male power, using both her body and her intelligence. Feminist critics have explored how the play both repeats and questions the Roman equation of masculinity with control (Kahn 1997) (Adelman 1992).
Fortune and history
Fortune is a constant presence, from the Soothsayer's warning to Caesar's 'universal peace'. Antony's decline follows the turning of fortune's wheel, and Caesar's success seems both earned and destined. The play sets the individual will against historical forces, and the lovers' deaths become a way of escaping fortune's power (Cantor 1976) (Barroll 1984).
Motifs
Melting and dissolving
Images of melting run through the play: Rome melting into the Tiber, Egypt into the Nile, followers who 'discandy' and melt their sweets on Caesar, the crown of the earth melting at Antony's death. They express both the lovers' boundless feeling and the dissolution of their power and selves (Charney 1961).
Measure and excess
The play opens with a dotage that 'o'erflows the measure' and is full of feasts, gifts and hyperbole. Rome counts and limits; Egypt overflows. The language of excess becomes the play's poetic method.
Messengers and reports
Messengers arrive constantly, bringing news that is welcome, terrible or false, and they are rewarded or beaten for it. The play's world is held together by report, and much of its truth is second-hand.
The world and its rulers
The characters speak of the world as an object that can be divided, kissed away or held in the hand. Antony is a 'triple pillar of the world', Caesar the 'sole sir o' th' world', and Cleopatra imagines Antony's arm cresting it.
Feasting and drinking
Egyptian banquets and the Roman galley feast show the pleasures of excess. Caesar's refusal to drink marks his control, Antony's 'gaudy night' his defiance.
Symbols
The Nile
The river that floods and fertilises Egypt stands for Cleopatra's world of abundance, mud and generation. Its serpents and crocodiles are both monstrous and life-giving, and Cleopatra calls herself 'serpent of old Nile'.
The asp
The serpent that kills Cleopatra is both death and child. Her image of the asp at her breast, 'my baby', turns death into motherhood and a final union with Antony.
Antony's sword and armour
Antony's sword, worn by Cleopatra in play, symbolises his Roman manhood. The arming scene, the removal of his armour and the sword brought to Caesar trace his rise and fall.
Clouds
Antony's clouds that change shape and vanish symbolise the instability of identity when reputation is lost.
Isis and Hercules
Cleopatra appears in the dress of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of rebirth; Antony is linked to Hercules, his ancestor, who leaves him before his fall. The two gods give mythic weight to the lovers (Lloyd 1959).
Critical debates
Transcendence or folly?
The central critical question is whether the lovers' love is a transcendent value that redeems their defeat or a self-indulgent folly. Romantic and early twentieth-century critics, above all G. Wilson Knight, saw the play as a vision of love that rises above the world (Knight 1931). Others, such as John Danby, saw a dialectic in which both Rome and Egypt are flawed and neither is endorsed (Danby 1952).
Janet Adelman argued that the play deliberately leaves us uncertain, offering the lovers' poetry and the Romans' judgements side by side and asking us to choose (Adelman 1973).
Cleopatra's sincerity and the boy actor
Is Cleopatra a calculating seductress or a woman who truly loves? Her dealings with Thidias and Seleucus have been read both ways. Phyllis Rackin showed how Shakespeare uses the boy actor playing Cleopatra, and her allusion to him, to challenge the audience's sense of what is natural and true (Rackin 1972).
Feminist critics have explored the play's representation of a woman with real power, and its use of Roman stereotypes of female sexuality (Loomba 1989) (Kahn 1997).
Is it a tragedy?
The play's episodic structure, comic scenes and the ending in which the lovers seem to triumph have led some critics to question whether it is a tragedy at all. Samuel Johnson complained that the events follow one another without art of connection. A. C. Bradley excluded it from his four great tragedies, finding its tragic effect less intense (Bradley 1909).
J. Leeds Barroll examined the play's relation to the traditions of tragedy, while Barbara Bono read it as a move towards tragicomedy and romance (Barroll 1984) (Bono 1984).
Structure and staging
The forty-two scenes and constant changes of place were once seen as faults. Harley Granville-Barker argued that on the bare Elizabethan stage they flow without pause, creating a sense of the whole world in motion (Granville-Barker 1930). Modern editors have studied the Folio's lack of scene divisions and the play's demands on staging, such as the hoisting of Antony into the monument (Wilders 1995) (Neill 1994) (Bevington 1990).
Race and Egypt
The Romans describe Cleopatra as 'tawny' and a 'gipsy', and she calls herself 'with Phoebus' amorous pinches black'. Critics have explored how the play draws on early modern ideas of race, colour and the East, and how it represents Egypt as a racial and sexual other (Hall 1995) (Loomba 1989).
Rome, empire and politics
Political critics have read the play as a study of the transition from Republic to Empire, with Caesar as the founder of a new order. Paul Cantor and Robert Miola explored Shakespeare's vision of Rome across his Roman plays, while Jonathan Dollimore read the play as a demystification of heroic virtue, in which the hero's identity depends on power (Cantor 1976) (Miola 1983) (Dollimore 1984).
Sources and transformation
The play's close dependence on North's Plutarch has led to detailed studies of how Shakespeare changed his source. Geoffrey Bullough and T. J. B. Spencer printed the relevant passages, showing where Shakespeare followed North closely and where he invented (Bullough 1964) (Spencer 1964). Comparison with the Greek text in the Loeb translation and with the Dryden–Clough version shows how much of the Renaissance image of Cleopatra comes from Plutarch himself (Plutarch 1920) (Plutarch 1859).
Key passages
There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.
Antony's first line asserts that true love cannot be measured, the creed of the lovers' Egypt against Roman measure.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety.
The cynical soldier's tribute to Cleopatra's endless capacity to surprise, which explains why Antony will return to her.
My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, To say as I said then.
Cleopatra dismisses her youthful love for Julius Caesar, revealing her history with Roman power.
Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates All that is won and lost.
After Actium Antony chooses Cleopatra's love over his lost empire.
It is my birthday. I had thought t’have held it poor, but since my lord Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.
Identity in this play is relational: Cleopatra can be herself only when Antony is himself.
That which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns and makes it indistinct As water is in water.
Antony sees his self dissolving like a cloud, the play's great image of lost identity.
Unarm, Eros. The long day’s task is done, And we must sleep.
Antony lays down his armour and his Roman identity, preparing for death.
And there is nothing left remarkable Beneath the visiting moon.
Cleopatra's lament for Antony makes his death a cosmic loss.
Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have Immortal longings in me.
Cleopatra prepares to die as a queen, turning death into a coronation.
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep?
The asp becomes a nursing child, and death becomes a gentle sleep.
Questions for study
How does the opening scene frame the lovers, and how does the play test Philo's judgement?
Compare Philo's language with Antony's and Cleopatra's, and think about the reports that follow.
What do Rome and Egypt stand for in the play, and does it favour either?
Look at Caesar's Alps speech, the galley feast and Enobarbus's barge speech.
Why does Shakespeare give the barge speech to Enobarbus?
Think about his character and how his cynicism makes the description more persuasive.
How does the play present Octavius Caesar, and is he a villain?
Consider his speeches about Antony and his treatment of Octavia and Cleopatra.
What is the significance of Enobarbus's desertion and death?
Think about the relationship between reason and loyalty.
How does Antony's sense of identity change after Actium?
Compare 3.11 with the cloud speech in 4.14.
Is Cleopatra loyal to Antony? Examine the evidence of 3.13, 4.12 and 5.2.
Consider Thidias, the surrender of the fleet, and Seleucus.
How does the play use reports and messengers to shape our view of events?
Consider the battle of Actium and Cleopatra's false death.
What does Cleopatra's fear of the 'squeaking' boy actor tell us about the play's awareness of itself as theatre?
Remember who played Cleopatra on Shakespeare's stage.
Is Cleopatra's death a defeat or a triumph?
Consider Caesar's plans, her preparations and Caesar's final speech.
Further reading
- Adelman, Janet. The Common Liar: An Essay on Antony and Cleopatra. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973.
- Adelman, Janet. Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest. New York and London: Routledge, 1992.
- Barroll, J. Leeds. Shakespearean Tragedy: Genre, Tradition, and Change in Antony and Cleopatra. Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1984.
- Bevington, David, ed. Antony and Cleopatra. By William Shakespeare. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
- Bono, Barbara J. Literary Transvaluation: From Vergilian Epic to Shakespearean Tragicomedy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984.
- Bradley, A. C. "Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra." In Oxford Lectures on Poetry. London: Macmillan, 1909.
- Bullough, Geoffrey, ed. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. 5, The Roman Plays: Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia University Press, 1964.
- Cantor, Paul A. Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1976.
- Charney, Maurice. Shakespeare's Roman Plays: The Function of Imagery in the Drama. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961.
- Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. Translated by John Dryden and others, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough. 5 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1859.
- Danby, John F. Poets on Fortune's Hill: Studies in Sidney, Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher. London: Faber and Faber, 1952.
- Dollimore, Jonathan. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984.
- Granville-Barker, Harley. Prefaces to Shakespeare: Second Series. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1930.
- Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995.
- Kahn, Coppélia. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
- Knight, G. Wilson. The Imperial Theme: Further Interpretations of Shakespeare's Tragedies, Including the Roman Plays. London: Oxford University Press, 1931.
- Lloyd, Michael. "Cleopatra as Isis." Shakespeare Survey 12 (1959): 88–94.
- Loomba, Ania. Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.
- Miles, Geoffrey. Shakespeare and the Constant Romans. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
- Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare's Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
- Neill, Michael, ed. The Tragedy of Anthony and Cleopatra. By William Shakespeare. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
- Plutarch. Lives. Vol. 9, Demetrius and Antony; Pyrrhus and Caius Marius. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Loeb Classical Library 101. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1920.
- Rackin, Phyllis. "Shakespeare's Boy Cleopatra, the Decorum of Nature, and the Golden World of Poetry." PMLA 87, no. 2 (1972): 201–212.
- Spencer, T. J. B., ed. Shakespeare's Plutarch: The Lives of Julius Caesar, Brutus, Marcus Antonius and Coriolanus in the Translation of Sir Thomas North. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964.
- Wilders, John, ed. Antony and Cleopatra. By William Shakespeare. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-21.