Dusty:

Is Antony and Cleopatra a tragedy, as in the First Folio? Or a “Roman play” (along with Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and maybe Titus Andronicus)? Or a “late play” to be grouped with The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest (both considered comedies in the Folio). It has always seemed to me to be a play that, like the other late plays, goes into tragic territory but ultimately goes “beyond tragedy.”

1.1 The first scene has a strong frame. It’s almost as if Demetrius and Philo stand downstage (maybe even in front of the proscenium arch in a modern theatre) and, along with the audience, look upstage at Antony and Cleopatra. In this short scene they don’t interact with anybody else on stage — they are just observers. And theirs is a “Roman” point of view. Philo has already decided that Antony is in his dotage, and by the end of the scene Demetrius agrees with him. Do we agree? It might depend on the director, who could invite us to see something grand and outsize, even heroic, in Antony’s and Cleopatra’s manner. Or else could emphasize the luxury and sensuality. But it’s hard not to be stirred by Antony’s language (“Let Rome in Tiber melt . . . the nobleness of life/ Is to do thus”). Maybe the Roman standards do not apply: perhaps A and C are “peerless.” In order to understand them you need “new heaven, new earth.”

Does Cleopatra’s opening line recall Lear: “tell me how much [you love me].” Unlike Lear’s daughters, Antony avoids any direct answer. Cleopatra teasingly undercuts Antony, but I think we sense they are playing a love-game. Still, she persists, and insists that the messengers from Rome be heard. (She tries to take charge of the scene, but Antony ultimately prevails.) Again, a director might choose to have Cleopatra seem playful, or might have her put a sharp edge on her words.

1.2 This scene is surprising: it begins, as Shakespeare often does, with minor characters. But it stays with them much longer than it “needs” to. I’m not sure why we have so many lines devoted to Charmian and Iras, especially since they are not talking about Antony and Cleopatra. Maybe they are there to establish “Egypt” as a place of sexuality, fertility, cuckoldry. Also surprising because of the presence of Enobarbus. He is apparently Antony’s right-hand man, but here he seems more attached to Cleopatra’s court, even carrying out her commands. And he seems to have gone native, calling for wine and looking forward to a drunken night.

Then we get Antony, now listening to the messengers he had previously refused to receive. Now he is all business, and resolves to break off from Cleopatra. He uses the same language (“dotage”) that Philo had used in the previous scene. When Enobarbus reenters, it’s hard to get a fix on him. He is ready to provide for Antony’s “pleasure,”not ready to support Antony’s “Roman” mood. Is he being cynical in his “light answers”? What is his view of Cleopatra? He seems to be aware of her enchantments and her manipulative manner, but also to admire it, if ironically: “she hath such celerity in dying.” It’s not surprising that it is Enobarbus who in the next act speaks the famous lines about Cleopatra on her barge.

Antony gets a long speech to end the scene and to reestablish his authority, but there are still hints that he’s not in control: he knows that he will have to get Cleopatra’s “leave” in order to go to Rome.

Michael:

I share your uncertainty about the genre of A & C. To me it’s a tragedy without a tragic feel, and I too would put it closer to the romances. The ending seems almost triumphant, as if the protagonists have prevailed in death over their adversary.

That opening scene suggests a Roman QED. Philo and Demetrius lament what we see immediately confirmed. Antony’s language is grand, but can’t cancel out his unmanning and Cleo’s obvious influence. But the language may hold out other possibilities in how we take this. I think Cleo can have something of a sharp edge and still be playful — and in this she triumphs entirely over Antony. We might pity Antony if Cleo weren’t so fascinating and amusing. Who wouldn’t forget about Rome in such a world?

1.2 does nothing at all to advance the plot, and its languor and teasing let us know that we could waste hours in such a place. This is the Egypt where no one has “Roman” thoughts and all the sexy joking has no beginning or end. This is an Egypt where the drinking starts well before noon, and no one has much of anything to do. Antony professes complete objectivity in response to the messenger, which will contrast with Cleopatra’s impressive subjectivity in later responses. I like her reference to Antony’s being struck by a “Roman thought.”

Clearly Enobarbus has gone native and becomes a guide to and connoisseur of Egyptian excess. His disbelief when he first hears of Fulvia’s death will be repeated by Cleo’s “Can Fulvia die?”, which suggests she’s not so much a woman as a principle, perhaps a principle of Romanitas.

1.3. Cleo’s direction to Charmian shows her shrewd, almost instinctual manipulation of Antony, and when he appears, she plays him mercilessly. In fact, he can’t get a word in for 25 lines. She has some grand lines too: “Eternity was in our lips and eyes . . .” When she learns of Fulvia’s death, she turns this on Antony as a judgment on how he will treat her, wonderfully unfair but effective in stimulating a quarrel that she can control. As he insists on the necessity of his leaving, she speaks a Roman farewell, which may be ironic, but lets him leave.

1.4. The first Roman scene has Octavius talking in a rather pompous commanding fashion, speaking of himself in the third person, using the plural first person. What he says serves as further characterization of Antony and rounds out Caesar’s Roman disapproval of what he’s become. Lepidus tries to defend him, but Caesar expresses simple disgust. Caesar’s colorfully describes Antony’s previous life as a soldier. The disgusting diet of horse piss, muddy water, tree bark, and “strange flesh” that Caesar almost admires gives us a sense of what Antony could once do. But who can blame him for preferring his present fare?At the end of the scene Lepidus forecasts weakness in his appeal to Caesar.

I.5. Is it something of a relief to return to Egypt and Cleo’s languor? She clearly wants to think of nothing but Antony, but enters into Egyptian banter with Charmian and Mardian. I’m not sure I quite understand what Cleo says about Mardian’s “freer thoughts” not flying forth of Egypt because he lacks physical desire. But he has affections and passions nevertheless, and thinks of Venus and Mars. She takes pleasure in thinking that she was a “morsel for a monarch” for Julius and enjoyed Pompey’s attentions. Alexas delivers the pearl and Antony’s high-flown promises. Cleo’s highly subjective sensibility emerges in how she imagines Antony’s “well divided disposition.” She can create what she wants out of an entire flatness. And we learn of her epistolary excess in suggesting she may “unpeople Egypt” in sending posts to Antony. Wonderful phrase “salad days, /When I was green in judgment, cold in blood.”

Dusty:

I think 1.3 would be difficult for the actor who plays Cleopatra, in part because Cleopatra herself play-acts, as we know from the opening lines. You would think they would stabilize the scene, let us know that Cleopatra is pretending to be angry in order not to lose him. But I think it’s hard to follow Cleopatra’s shifting moods, and probably hard for the actor to convey them. She teases Antony about requiring Fulvia’s “leave,” which recalls Antony in an earlier scene saying he will need Cleopatra’s “leave” in order to go to Rome. She calls him “the greatest liar” in the world, a neat contrast to the “common liar” who speaks ill of Anthony in Rome. In all things Antony is above the “common.”

When in the scene does she realize that she has gone too far? Is it about 80-86, when Antony, angry himself, speaks sharply and shortly: “. . . no more . . . Now, by my sword, . . . I’ll leave you, lady”?

1.4 is structured like 1.2, with messengers coming in to report news. Caesar’s judgment of Antony is mixed: he begins with censure of Antony the libertine and ends with admiration of Antony the soldier.

1.5 gives us a closer look at Cleopatra, who is here not play-acting. The scene induces us to reconsider our emerging views of both her and Antony.

Dusty:

2.1 Pompey gives thumbnail sketches of his three adversaries, Antony, Caesar, and Lepidus. He misjudges Antony, thinking him just a libertine, but when he imagines the “cloyless sauces” of Cleopatra’s Epicurean cooks, he anticipates Enobarbus’s famous line. Again we have messengers, serving to suggest the expanse of the world that Pompey is fighting for (and that Shakespeare is representing), and the speed with which Antony moves from one part of the world to another: in 1.3 he leaves Egypt, in 1.4 and 1.5 he is en route, but not expected in Rome, and in 2.1 he is expected in Rome at any hour.

2.2 My editor notes that the Folio text is thought to have been corrupted, and that various emendations have been offered to make sense of it. I found the ebb and flow of this scene hard to follow, as Antony and Caesar jockey for position. As in 1.3, it’s a scene which begins in opposition, even quarreling ,between the two main participants, and ends in agreement. Antony’s insistence on his “honour” seems to be genuine. He’s more than a libertine. And he’s more focused on honour than the politician Caesar. But Antony turns out to be a bit of a politician himself, carefully excusing his conduct as negligence rather than denial, and quickly agreeing to Agrippa’s proposal of a political marriage — he later says it’s for “my peace” as opposed to “my pleasure.” Lepidus keeps trying to make peace between Antony and Caesar: he’s clearly outclassed by them.

The latter part of the scene, after the big boys leave, is almost a separate scene. Maecenas seems to be eager for news from Egypt, which leads to Enobarbus’s famous account of Cleopatra on the Nile. I find it difficult to read Enobarbus here. In the earlier part of the scene he seemed to be sardonically and bluffly commenting on the political maneuvering between Antony and Caesar, expressing a soldier’s impatience (“Thou art a soldier only”) with wrangling between allies when there is a clear enemy to be fought. But in the latter part of the scene he registers a real appreciation of Cleopatra’s wiles. (Is he playfully heating the blood of the two Romans?) It’s interesting to note that his descriptions seem to win over Agrippa, the one who had proposed the marriage with Octavia: his tongue is hanging out as he imagines Cleopatra. It’s Maecenas who has to remind him that Antony will have to leave Cleopatra for Octavia, who will “settle” him.

The scene continues to unsettle simple moral (Roman) judgments. Just as Antony’s faults were “spots of heaven” (1.4), Cleopatra “makes defect perfection” and “the vilest things become themselves in her.”

The short 2.3, in which Antony leaves Octavia, is a sharp contrast with 1.3, in which Antony leaves Cleopatra. She is very submissive. Antony’s explanation of his departure is ambiguous: on the one hand he appeals to the demands that “the world” makes on him, but then tells Octavia to pay no attention to “the world’s report.” The entrance of the soothsayer surprised me. What’s he doing in Rome? I thought he was strongly associated with Egypt, and with Cleopatra. But here he foretells Antony’s fortune, introducing the idea that Antony has a “demon,” some sort of guardian spirit, who may or may not be able to protect him. This seems to suggest that there are more forces in play than the character of the human antagonists: there is “natural luck” which seems to favor Caesar. This looks ominous for Antony. His solution is to go to Egypt, as the soothsayer had suggested. But that means offending Caesar and the political marriage he has just made.

Michael:

I think those teenage boy actors must have been very skilled. I saw Mark Rylance play Cleo effectively, but his age worked against him, and one never forgot it was Mark Rylance playing Cleo. The other royal actor, Richard II, is also, I think, a prized role for performers. My sense is that Cleo plays Antony like an instrument, knowing exactly when and how to tease and appease.

In 2.2 I find the diplomatic jockeying for position interesting for its development of another side of Antony; he doesn’t apologize or give in to Caesar, but manages to retain his position. He’s far more deft than the timid Lepidus, who is reduced to half lines and silence. It’s clear that the matter of Octavia has been worked out in advance by Agrippa and Caesar, maybe Maecenas as well, and her transfer is a cold-blooded political move. In the end of the scene, with Enobarbus, Agrippa, and Maecenas, the emphasis on the paradox that E. wraps around Cleo — especially in the famous account out of Plutarch of Cleo’s barge, suggests that there’s no end of her, no containing her. The two Romans seem to be salivating in their unwilling appreciation. Enobarbus reveals himself as a partisan or connoisseur of things Egyptian, especially Cleo, as if he’s half in love with her himself. His lines that “Age cannot wither her nor custom stale/ Her infinite variety” caps the insistent paradox. I would guess that the earlier insistence on his soldiership rather grounds his appreciation of what Cleo is.

2.3 gives us Octavia as the opposite of Cleo, submissive and pious. I guess the soothsayer has traveled with Antony, useful here in defining the direction of things and Antony’s inimical relation to Caesar.

2.5 wonderfully insists on Cleo’s pure subjectivity. She has made Antony entirely Egyptian in her tricks and pranks. I don’t think we get a full account of the fishing joke, when Antony had been paying a servant to put fish on his hook, and Cleo, discovering this, got a diver to put a salted fish on his hook. The messenger can’t win, though he first rakes in Cleo’s gold with his report, but then is beaten mercilessly when he reveals the marriage, even to the point of threatened death. It seems a comic scene, but with the purpose of developing the utterly subjective character of Cleo.

2.6 Another scene of political negotiating, but one perhaps showing a certain pettiness and instability in it all. They’ve all exchanged hostages, but Pompey is upset at the death of his father and the ingratitude of the triumvirate. But it turns out that the offer of Sardinia and Sicily and his agreement to send wheat to Rome will almost buy him off. Except that Antony hasn’t thanked him for accommodating Antony’s mother. Once Antony mends this, all is forgiven. The following exchange between Enobarbus and Menas pulls back the curtain on this, if we needed that. E. acknowledges that beneath the supposed diplomacy, they are all gangsters, and Pompey has just proved less astute. He also indicates that Antony “will to his Egyptian dish again.” (Is this where our slang use of “dish” derives?) .

2.7 blends the comedy of Lepidus’s drunkenness with the underlying violent potential of Menas’ suggestion to Pompey that he could cut the anchor cable, put out to sea, and kill the whole lot of them. Pompey is annoyed and regretful that Menas has told him of the plan, but he must now reject it for the sake of “honor”; if he had simply done it without Pompey’s approval, it would have been accepted. So this whole drinking session rests on this unstable decision of Menas’ to reveal the plan to Pompey. Pompey is just an inadequate gangster, and Menas will turn away from him. The exchange between Lepidus and Antony about the crocodile seems obliquely about Cleopatra, at least in its verbal subjectivity. Among the triumvirate, the reaction to the drinking seems telling. Lepidus is simply dead drunk, Caesar declines more drink, and only Antony seems able to carry on. The silliness of Enobarbus’s round dance between the great factors of the world seems to pull the carpet from any sense that the political world has more seriousness or dignity than an Alexandrian feast. After all have left, only Enobarbus and Menas are left, and the latter is simply disgusted.

Did you ever see the Janet Suzman/Richard Johnson film version of the play? I think Patrick Stewart was Enobarbus, at least I always think of Patrick Stewart when I read E’s lines. This may be the best film version version; I think it was directed by Trevor Nunn.

Dusty:

I saw a wonderful production in Oxford in 1966. I think Patrick Stewart was the Enobarbus. I’ve not seen Rylance or Suzman.

I am quite persuaded by your comment that the proposed marriage between Octavia and Antony was “worked out in advance” and that it exposes the underlying politics. Also by your comments about the drinking scene (2.6), which further exposes the realities underlying the lofty claims made by and about “Rome” in the play. I’m still puzzled by Enobarbus. Why is he so candid with Menas?

2.5 is full of sexual innuendo, even from the Messenger. (If he feels permitted to make sexual jokes, then all pretense of decorum at Cleo’s court must have been abandoned.) It would be difficult not to play the scene for laughs, and the net effect is to undercut the claims for “Egypt” — making it look trivial and degraded. 2.7 also has its share of comedy, especially concerning the drunken Lepidus. Maybe the steeliness of Caesar reminds us that, as you say, these are gangsters. Is Antony able to match Lepidus glass for glass, and still maintain his composure?
It’s notable that Cleo’s “Melt Egypt into Nile!” recalls Antony’s “Let Rome in Tiber melt” In his case he, already half an Egyptian himself, says he would give up “Rome” for her. She is ready to abandon her own Egypt.

When Menas abandons Pompey at the end of 2.7, do we get a foreshadowing of 4.3, when Hercules is said to “leave” Antony?

Dusty:

Act 3 speeds up the action: none of the first six scenes is 100 lines, and four of them are under 50. And we are rushed around the Mediterranean world, from Syria to Rome to Egypt to Athens, and back to Rome. I can imagine a production in which each scene takes place at a different part of the stage, each of which is lit for a few lines and then goes dark. And each scene has a couple of quick points to make. In each case, I think the effect is to make us think less well of the principals.

3.1 tells us Ventidius is the coming man, also that military glory, whether Antony’s or Caesar’s, is not all that it appears: V. knows that it’s important not to outshine your superior officer. (He seems to be more savvy than Menas, who put his commanding officer in an awkward position.)

3.2 makes clear that Octavia is being used, and that the relationship between Antony and Caesar is more important to them both than either’s relationship to Octavia. When Antony says to Caesar “I’ll wrestle with you in my strength of love [for Octavia],” the wrestling counts more than the love. Textual editors say there is some question about whether the lines “thus I let you go, and give you to the gods” are spoken by Caesar to Octavia, or Antony to Caesar.

3.3 seems a reprise of 2.5. In the interim the Messenger has got wise, and knows what Cleopatra wants to hear. Again it seems to be asked to be played for laughs. And isn’t the net effect to make “Egypt” seems shallow, if not worse?

3.4 gives us Antony’s appeal to “honour”: “if I lose mine honour,/ I lose myself.” That might incline us to prefer Antony to cold-blooded Caesar, who clearly wants only power. But it seems that “honour” is not something that you earn by honorable actions but something that other people “pay” you. He is insulted that Caesar “could not/But pay me terms on honour.” It’s as if they’re mafiosi demanding “respect” from each other.

At this point in the play the action is really speeded up: in 3.4 Caesar is reported to be warring against Pompey. By 3.5 Pompey is already dead and Lepidus sidelined. In 3.6 Octavia, who left Athens at the end of 3.4, is already in Rome.

3.6 develops the idea that the surviving triumvirs are busy consolidating their own power. And just as Antony was insulted when Caesar did not pay him his due, now Caesar is insulted that Antony has made grants of Caesar’s share of the booty to others. Caesar pretends to be concerned about Octavia, offering a feeble excuse of why he did not come out to meet her. He appeals to necessity (the tyrant’s plea) and to “destiny.” Nothing in his mouth about honor.
I wonder if you share my view that Act 3 makes us question everybody. Interesting that in none of the first six scenes are Antony and Cleopatra on the stage together. That sets up 3.7.

Michael:

Yes, Act 3 seems to put everything up for grabs. Lepidus is discarded, Pompey is murdered (or we learn he has been), Antony has gone back to Cleo (we learn), Octavia has gone back to Rome, Antony decides, foolishly, to fight at sea. And by the end, Antony has lost the battle of Actium, and Cleo has seemed to be about to betray him. But at the very end of the act, Cleo swears she has not and will not betray him, and Antony seems to rally for one final battle. But nobody seems certain to us.

Enobarbus seems key. At 3.12 he has a couple of asides in which he points out how futile it is to hope that Caesar will respond to Antony’s request for single combat and doubts the wisdom of following such a foolish leader as Antony. But the conclusion of the latter he seems to ask himself whether following the fallen leader will conquer the conqueror and “earn a place in the story.” As he leaves, he has lost faith in Cleo, believing that she is negotiating with Thidias. And having lost this trust, he sees no objective reason to stay with Antony.

At 3.10 everything has been lost: Cleo has turned tail and sailed off from the battle and Antony has foolishly followed her. Enobarbus will, at this point, still follow Antony, though he knows it’s unreasonable.

In defeat Antony appears magnanimous in 3.11, giving up his treasure to his followers, who respond with loyalty, even though they have no reason to. The Egyptian court arrives at just this wrong point. Curiously Antony is less angry with Cleo than with himself and seems inclined to admit his fault in following her, even that she knew he would follow. Clearly a big scene as Cleo pleads for pardon. Again, Antony has one of those grand lines: “Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates/ All that is won and lost.” Their kiss, he says, repays him. He calls for wine and food and suggests, perhaps Enobarbus-like, that Fortune is most scorned after she has offered the worst blows.

The schoolmaster proves a most inept ambassador, giving up his proposals even before they’re rejected. This is when Caesar decides to send Thidias to secure Cleo’s surrender. In 3.13 Enobarbus blames only Antony and indicates his doubts about the wisdom of continuing to follow him. Thidias seems successful in persuading Cleo of her willingness to go over to Caesar; it’s wonderful that Thidias calls Caesar, apparently without irony on his part, “the universal landlord.” Antony seems to enact Cleo’s subjectivity toward messengers when he has Thidias whipped for kissing Cleo’s (offered) hand. Now he’s genuinely angered by her and offers the nasty insult that he found her as “morsel cold upon dead Caesar’s trencher; nay, you were a fragment of Gneius Pompey’s.” Angrily sending Thidias back, he seems to continue the Cleo-like subjectivity by complaining that Caesar sees him for what he is, not what he was. She says she must wait out his anger, then asks if he doesn’t yet know her, and insists she is entirely loyal. Since this comes just after the negotiations with Thidias, the audience is faced with a choice between believing what she says now and what we’ve seen before the beating of Thidias. Antony says he is satisfied and plans another gaudy night. Is it really Cleo’s birthday? Since Antony is Antony again, she will be Cleo.

Only Enobarbus is skeptical and says the diminution of Antony’s brain seems to be what allows him to believe, to restore his heart. He will leave.

Michael:

In 4.1 Caesar sneers at Antony’s challenge to single combat, calling him, aptly enough, “the old ruffian.” In 4.2 Enobarbus even mocks, or seems to mock, Antony’s generosity toward his sorrowing men, suggesting that the encouragement to them is a trick to make them weep. Is it? In 4.3 the music “under the stage” is another of those significant uses of music in the late plays, here suggesting something preternatural. Hercules leaving Antony seems decisive.

4.4 seems upbeat, but I wonder if we sense there’s any hope in Antony’s arming for battle with Cleo’s help. Any hope seems drained by 4.5 when we learn that Enobarbus has deserted. But Antony’s generosity in sending his treasure after him is significant. And Enobarbus’s name ends the scene. By contrast in the following scene we learn that Caesar has put all of Antony’s revolted troops in the front lines “That Antony may seem to spend his fury/ Upon himself” and that Caesar has hanged “Great Herod” for his loyalty to Antony. And Enobarbus learns of Antony’s return of his treasure and says that “thought” will end his life. He’ll find a ditch where he can die.

But there are still nine more scenes and Enobarbus’d death, apparently by a broken heart, in Act 4. And still the question of Cleo’s loyalty to Antony. Do you want to pick up here? Does the play become philosophical after Antony’s death? Does Cleo become a sort of advocate of Anselm’s ontological proof?

Dusty:

Again, I am struck with how many separate short scenes there are in this big sprawling play. I think they may convey a sense of the size of the “world” — an oft-repeated word — as we jump from one part of the Mediterranean to another. Also that Antony and Cleopatra’s actions have wide consequences. But do the quick cuts from one scene to another prevent a build-up of intensity? Does the play go wide but not deep? (13 scenes in Act 3, 15 in Act 4.)
In 3.11 I found it odd that Antony was dismayed at the loss of his “honour” but then when Cleopatra asks forgiveness he quickly reverses course and is ready to give over everything for a kiss. At what point in the scene is the reversal? At line 69? Or is it prepared for as early as line 56, when he tells Cleo that she knows that his “heart” is “tied” to her “rudder.” Once he has said that, maybe his anger is dissipating.

Interesting that in 3.12 Antony has asked to live in Egypt, but if that’s not permitted, then it’s OK to live “a private man” in Athens. Does that mean without Cleopatra? He is not yet ready to die with her.

Does Cleopatra conspire with Caesar in 3.13, or is she just pretending to do so? Is she betraying Antony or just matching Caesar’s deception (in 3.12) with her own? Antony enters at a crucial moment and assumes that she has betrayed him. Once again he is outraged (at l. 85) and utters some crude comparisons (a morsel cold upon dead Caesar’s trencher). But he seems preoccupied with whipping Thidias, and then when Cleopatra proclaims her innocence Antony is quickly “satisfied” (167). Another reversal: has Antony lost his soldierly steadiness?

Enobarbus thinks that Antony’s “heart” is restored, but not his “brain” (3.13.198). He has been acting as choral commentator on Antony, but should be trust him? He himself swings from one position to another, thinking about leaving and then recovering his loyalty. We have a string of critical asides in this scene — 3.13.29, 3.13.41, 3.13.94, 3.13.195 — and more in 4.2 (14, 24) and in 4.6.

When Antony challenges Caesar to single combat, what are we to think? In a world of legions and navies and military strategy, it seems an anachronistic gesture. Caesar of course laughs at it, so Antony abandons the idea at the beginning of 4.2, but at the end of 4.4 Cleopatra still likes it.

Antony also talks about organizing his forces in the field, as if he plans for a traditional kind of warfare, and looks forward to victory. He talks a lot about death, ostensibly about the death-dealing he will do. “I’ll make death love me; for I will contend/ Even with his pestilent scycthe” (3.13). The primary meaning seems to be that, as my editor suggests, he will “equal the slaughter of even death’s scythe of pestilence, i.e., plague.” But if he makes death love him, does he also love death, or does he know that his real enemy is death? in 4.2 he will either live or “bathe my dying honour in the blood/ Shall make it live again.” And later in the scene he tells his soldiers that he will stay with them “till death.” Antony seems to know what is coming. He says he “expects” to win the next day’s battle, but mixes death into the expectation: “rather I’ll expect victorious life,/ Than death, and honour.” The surprising sequence of life-death-honour makes me wonder whether he is saying “life and honour” or “death and honour.”

In the next scene (4.3) music signals that the god Hercules leaves Antony, in another one of the play’s omens. Perhaps it also foretells that Enobarbus will leave Antony in 4.5. Ironically, he seems to have left just as Antony’s fortunes are looking up, and as he realizes how cruel Caesar is. In 4.7 and 4.8 Antony’s are doing well. He is the “lord of lords” (4.8.16), while Caesar is merely the “universal landlord.” (Compare Richard II, said to be merely “Landlord of England” and not a real king.) And he seems to combine military success, honour, and love too. He has it all. And yet somehow is not caught by “the world’s great snare” — i.e., war,, or whatever perils the world offers. But after Enobarbus’s suicide and some short battlefield scenes (in which Caesar outwits Antony by deciding to fight on land rather than sea), “all is lost” (4.12.10).
For a third time Antony denounces Cleopatra for having betrayed him. Apparently, we now find out, she did in fact conspire in Caesar back in 3.13. Is that how you read the surrender by the Egyptian fleet? This time it takes a lot — news of Cleopatra’s death — for him suddenly to turn once again to her, planning to join her by killing himself. His secondary motive is to avoid the dishonour of being paraded in Rome in Caesar’s triumph, just the fate Cleopatra seeks to avoid in 5.2 .But unlike Enobarbus he can’t finish himself off.

4.14 is by far the longest scene in Act 4. I’ll turn back to you for 4.15 and Antony’s death. (Does the central figure die before the last act in any other Shakespeare play? Or is this play really about Cleopatra?)

Michael:

I feel the multitude of short scenes gives a sense of amplitude, as if we’re skipping over the Mediterranean world. I imagine they are to be projected by speakers from various parts of the stage to make the stage encompass the world.

Antony’s idea of single combat, crazy as it is in the context of navies and armies, seems to make him part of the old heroic world of epic, where his sensibilities are more directed. And this is altogether alien to Caesar.

Cleo’s loyalty to Antony is the major question. Every time he is overcome by Caesar, his response is that he’s been sold to Caesar by Cleo. In the sea battle the major question, entirely unanswered, is why Cleo turned and fled; we assume fear. But just as much a question is why Antony turned and followed. He blames her with the assumption that she should have known he would follow. At several more points the question becomes her loyalty to Antony, or her attempt to curry favor with Caesar. Is she really trying to curry favor, or is she playing a game to gain more time or to outsmart Caesar. We never learn the answer to this, do we? At one point (3.13) she responds to Antony’s rage with “Not know me yet?” and later, in response to Caesar (5.2), “he words me, girls, he words me . . .” Even when she feigns her death and essentially tricks Antony into dying, we’re given no certainty about her motivation or loyalty.

How does Enobarbus die? As far as I can tell, the play is silent on that. Antony has just returned his belongings, and E. is devastated by his generosity. The two soldiers who witness his death appear to be mystified by it. Is he overcome by the generosity and does he die of a broken heart?
4.15: Sh. has gone to some trouble to make this a difficult scene to stage. Cleo and her maids are “aloft,” so the wounded and dying Antony must be raised from the main stage by Antony’s guard and Cleo’s attendants. What could be more awkward? But he is finally raised. She vows she will not trust Caesar as long as she can trust her hands, presumably to kill herself. Is there a sexual pun in “the soldier’s pole is fall’n”? Cleo’s fainting appears momentarily a death, and it may reiterate her earlier false death. Her final words of the scene seem to vow her death.

Michael:

5.1 Decretas’ bringing Antony’s sword seems a betrayal, and he does betray by going over to Caesar, but it seems prudential. I wonder what we think of Caesar’s apparent tears for Antony; he and Maecenas and Agrippa make their tributes to Antony. He says to Proculeius that he won’t shame Cleo, but at the same time indicates that he will have her in his triumph and thus wants her alive. After Proculeius leaves, he says to Gallus that he’s instructed Dolabella to some unspoken mission. His mention of “his writings” seems to suggest hypocrisy in his proceedings.

5.2: the scene appears to underscore Caesar’s treachery and Cleo’s resolve to counter it. “‘Tis paltry to be Caesar, /Not being Fortune” forecasts what she does with Seleucus later in the scene. But she does attempt to negotiate with Proculeius, asking for the kingdom for her son, and hears his praise of Caesar, which we know will prove untrue. And does immediately with Gallus’ capture of Cleo. Proculeius’ attempt to excuse it and prevent her suicide simply confirms what we know of Caesar’s plans. Her exchange with Dolabella seems central to the way we’re to take the play. Her dream of “an Emperor Antony” moves into a higher realm, where mere fact and reality are left behind. (Her line about his dolphinlike delights that “showed his back above the element he lived in” always pops into my mind when I see dolphins.) What’s wonderful is her insistence that even imagining such an Antony “were nature’s piece ‘gainst fancy, condemning shadows quite.” Does this recall in some way Anselm’s ontological argument, greater to exist than not? Dolabella’s response is to pity and to tell her the truth, that Caesar will lead her in triumph. When Caesar and his retinue enter and he asks “which is the Queen of Egypt?” we might wonder if he is blind. Caesar’s nastiness, in spite of earlier praise of Antony, is confirmed in his saying that he’ll kill her children if she takes Antony’s course. And he’s about to leave when she begins the Seleucus demonstration. I assume she’s arranged this ahead of time, though we’re not sure if Seleucus is a knowing actor — perhaps not. In any case it makes her point that it’s paltry to be Caesar if he is ruled by fortune.

I feel the metatheatrical moment in which Cleo imagines the “quick comedians” extemporally staging her and her court, Antony brought drunken forth, and “some squeaking Cleopatra” boying her greatness in the posture of a whore must be another center of the play. It is of course an extraordinarily bold move, and must bespeak complete confidence in his boy actor, and indeed the effect of the play.

Dusty:

I agree that Antony’s proposal of single combat sounds like something out of Homer. But does it make him seem heroic, or out of touch?

It’s interesting that we don’t know how Enobarbus dies in 4.9. But his language — “Throw my heart/ Against the flint and hardness of my heart” — suggests that he has a weapon, maybe a dagger. Interesting too that the sentinels who find him cannot tell whether he is dead or asleep, and if wounded whether “he may recover yet.” This becomes part of a pattern with the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra and even Iras, where the line between life and death is blurred. His death (“is he dead?”) is described as melting (“The crown o’ the earth doth melt”). Caesar says of Cleo and her women “I do not see them bleed.” Caesar thinks that the dead Cleopatra “looks like sleep.” (By contrast, Caesar thinks the death of Antony is a “crack.”) When Iras dies Cleopatra says that she and nature have parted “gently.”

You’re right about the heaving of Antony up into the monument in 4.15. It makes sense that Cleopatra would take refuge in some place where the Romans could not reach her. But in 5.1, said to be “A room in the Monument,” the Romans enter behind Cleopatra and seize her. Some refuge! The monument and the capture come from North’s Plutarch, which Shakespeare decides to follow. (Maybe he is thinking that the architecture of the Globe, with the balcony, makes it possible to stage the scene.) In my edition (Arden, ed. by Ridley) there is a long discussion in Appendix IV about staging the scene and critical discussions of the problem.) As for the awkwardness of lifting Antony, did Shakespeare have any interest in making the raising of Antony difficult to stage?

I’m not sure I understand your comparison of “nature’s piece ‘gainst fancy” with Anselm’s ontological proof: God is that which nothing greater can be imagined. I find her very difficult to follow, and suspect that Dolabella did too. She “dreamt” of her idealized Antony, but insists that such a man “might be.” Then retracts it by saying that if there were ever such a man, it would be more than “dreaming.” Fancy/imagination can create stranger forms than nature, but imagining Antony is “nature’s piece, ‘gainst fancy.” She appears to blur the line between dream and reality, fancy and nature. Is her Antony part of nature or part of her imagination?

Dolabella is also a bit of a puzzle. At the beginning of 5.1 he is an obedient servant of Caesar, following instructions to go to Antony and tell him to “yield.” For some reason Caesar at 5.1.69 calls for Dolabella, planning to send him to Cleopatra along with Proculeius, but then suddenly remembers that he has already sent him on other business. At 5.2. 65 Dolabella relieves Proculeius. Cleopatra was warned by Antony about Proculeius. It’s not clear to me why Cleopatra here launches into some of her most rapturous praise of Antony: “His legs bestrid the ocean . . . For his bounty/ There was no winter in it ” as well as the wonderful line you cite about Antony being “dolphin-like.” Dolabella seems a different sort of Roman, gentler, and ready to pity Cleopatra. Has he been instructed about what to say to her? When asked by Cleopatra what Caesar means to do with her, and he begins to reply, she guesses that “he’ll lead me then in triumph,” and at this point Dolabella concedes what he knows to be true. Why didn’t he lie, as Proculeius would have done? Dryden was apparently so interested in Dolabella’s conduct in Shakespeare that in All for Love he makes him a friend of Antony and would-be lover of Cleopatra.

The final scene makes a remarkable contrast to the numerous short scenes of Acts 3 and 4. At 364 lines, isn’t it the longest scene in the play, and provides dramatic intensity rather than geographical expansiveness. There are some odd moments. Why, when Caesar comes in a 112, does he say “Which is the Queen of Egypt”? You wonder if he is “blind.” Is Cleopatra dressed like her attendants, or in some kind of disguise, so as to trick Caesar? It’s odd but touching that after Cleopatra dies Charmian says she is “A lass unparalleled” — who would think of Cleopatra as a “lass,” but the line permits a nice pun: alas unparalleled. Is the clown who comes in with the asps meant to be simple or sly? And the scene, just before the clown enters and just after he leaves, also has some of Cleopatra’s most stirring lines: “I am again for Cydnus . . . I have immortal longings in me . . . Husband, I come . . . I am fire, and air.”

Michael:

I’m sure I’ve been influenced by Janet Adelman’s book, which I read a while ago and don’t remember with much specificity now. But I think she believed Cleo, and believed in Cleo, and this I can’t shake. It’s not of course Anselm’s argument that she advances, but a sort of analogue, it seems to me: if she can conceive of such an emperor Antony, then even if there were no possibility in hard fact, it’s “past the size of dreaming” — that is, goes beyond mere dreaming; nature wants the material to vie with the imagination (fancy). Yet even to imagine such an Antony is a part of nature and goes beyond mere imagination (ordinary imagination?). Does it sound a bit like Polixenes’ argument about the gillyvors: the art of creating the hybrid is itself a part of nature? The higher imagination of the seeming unreal is itself a part of nature? Of course the play doesn’t stop to explain this, which may not be explainable, and I agree it’s difficult to follow, and Dolabella doesn’t stop to consider it. But it seems a gesture to a kind of Platonism that privileges the imagination and thought over Aristotelian fact. I wish I had Adelman’s book to refer to; perhaps you do.

Dolabella seems to counter Proculeius, whom Antony had recommended, but who seems a tool of Caesar to capture Cleo. Dolabella tells her the truth instead. And he explains the suicide at the conclusion.

I find the countryman, or clown, a wonderful invention, who malaprops like all Shakespeare’s rustics, but here seems to create a Cleopatra-like truth, maybe in spite of himself. The fact that the bite of asps is “immortal” and those who die of it “do seldom or never recover” gives her exactly what she wants. When he describes the “very honest” woman who experienced the asp “no longer than yesterday,” he seems to be describing Cleo exactly. The very honest woman was “but something given to lie, as a woman should not do but in the way of honesty.” Is that a challenge to think of Cleo as having lied and seemingly deceived only in the way of honesty or truth? What can we make of “but he that will believe all that they say shall never be saved by half that they do.” Puzzling. Does it invite us not to believe what is said, but think of being saved by what’s done? The clown is very solicitous of Cleo and wants her to be heedful of what the “worm” will do. When she asks if the asp will eat her, he gives the strange reply that the devil himself will not eat a woman, that a woman (again Cleo?) is “a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not.”

Even before she takes the asps, she dresses for her part and seems to respond to the clown when she says she has “immortal longings” in her. But then comes one of the strangest things in the play, an apparent scriptural allusion: “Now no more /The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.” This seems rather clearly to refer the passage in the synoptic gospels in which Jesus says (in the Geneva version), “Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mark’s version). This is all taking place in pre-Christian (though just barely) time, and Cleo can have no idea whom she is pre-quoting or alluding to. And of course she doesn’t look much like Jesus at all. (Full disclosure: I wrote an essay taking this up about ten years ago, “‘The Juice of Egypt’s Grape’: Plutarch, Syncretism, and Antony and Cleopatra” and argued that Shakespeare was reading Plutarch’s “On Isis and Osiris,” which had been recently translated in his Moralia.) As I recall, Plutarch is arguing that there is a conceptual identity among the divine powers of the world of a single God who appears in various traditions and in various guises. I suggested that the syncretism in the late romances may respond to this (in Pericles, Cymbeline, and Winter’s Tale as well and A & C). Several references to Cleo as the moon suggest an identification with Isis — and not Jesus. And I speculated that this interest in syncretism may have something to do with frustration about religious differences in the early 17th century, perhaps in particular arising from the Gunpowder Plot, both the threat and the bloody aftermath. What do you think? If the argument seems interesting, I can find the full version, but I don’t want to press it on you.

Interestingly, we don’t exactly know why Iras dies — as with Enobarbus — but assume, I guess, she’s had a preliminary go at the asps. The stage image of Cleo, crowned and robbed as she dies, must be impressive. Caesar’s final statement, “their story is /No less in pity, than his glory which Brought them to be lamented,” seems a bit self-promoting, but I guess he’s right: after all, he is Caesar Augustus.

Your further thoughts on the ending — and why it seems so uplifting in spite of being tragic?

Dusty:

I know Janet Adelman’s book. I read it in MS and sent her some comments. She gave me a signed copy, dated Oct. 10, 1973, a mere 47 years ago. I looked over her book last night. It’s beautifully written, under the influence, I think, of Maynard Mack. She talks about the reader’s belief and disbelief, and the power of poetry to compel belief. Yes, she “believes” Antony and Cleopatra, even though she admits that it requires a “leap of faith.” She also talks about elements of tragedy and romance, and finds the latter throughout. She argues that Antony and Cleopatra in Acts 4 and 5 carry us with them in their determination to escape, to be released from the “world,” and to reunite, converting their political-military defeat into victory. I remember that when I first read her book and first taught the play I was persuaded that the play does indeed celebrate a kind of victory over Rome and death.

But this time I found myself more troubled by Cleopatra’s repeated betrayals of Antony, and by her apparent readiness (and his, too) to deal with Caesar. Shakespeare seems to want us not to forget that when we get to the celebrated death scenes. It’s as if he wants us to hold both betrayal (and Antony’s military failures) and their liebestod in our minds at the same time.

Why else would he give the final speech in the play to Caesar. Maybe there are two ways to read the speech: 1) even Caesar is converted and can see A and C’s greatness, or 2) Caesar in very politic manner carefully says what ought to be said at a funeral, and reasserts his “Roman” view of Egypt. Everything might depend on how the actor recites the speech, where he pauses, what tones of voice he adopts. (Adelman does not mention his speech.) And what does Caesar actually say in praise? That Cleopatra studied and pursued “easy ways to die.” (That doesn’t sound heroic.) There is not in any earthly grave a pair so “famous.” (OED suggests that “famous” can have several meanings, including “the matter of common talk” — and we know there was lots of gossip about them in Rome — and even “notorious,” as earlier in the play when Menacrates and Menas are said to be “famous pyrates”). These are “high events” which “strike those that make them.” “Strike” seems a strong verb here — my editor says it means “afflict.” (Nothing here about A and C escaping and reuniting, except being “clipped” in a common grave.) And as I suggested earlier, Caesar then turns to his own “glory” and to the “solemn show” that his army will put on.

Cleopatra dies more than 50 lines earlier. I think the end of the play stays with me as much as the speeches of the dying lovers.

Michael:

Thanks for the account of Adelman’s book, which put me in mind of her argument about belief in the lovers over against the political world of Caesar. I tended to lean this way in my teaching of the play and suspect this explains what I’ve felt is the non-tragic sense of the ending. Yes, it’s interesting that the final moment is turned over to Caesar, but I wonder whether that dominates. I’m probably too susceptible to the high language (and sometimes puzzling poetry) of Cleo.

Anyway, it was a good exchange, and disagreement isn’t a bad way to leave the play.