7. Antony and Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare, pp. 270-301

[5.1 -- Location: Caesar's camp outside Alexandria]

Octavius Caesar is a challenging role for an actor. On the one hand, the man became Augustus, giving his name to an era marked by peace and founding an empire that lasted more or less for a millennium and a half (if you count the "Holy" version of the Roman Empire). He's no insignificant figure and shouldn't be presented as one. But on the other hand, the play isn't about him. The actor who plays him needs to make his presence felt, to be a credible opponent to Antony but not a dominant figure, or even a terribly vivid one like Enobarbus. In the Trevor Nunn production, Corin Redgrave plays Caesar for the most part as a chilly prig, a man who, as Dorothy Parker said of Calvin Coolidge, seemed to have been weaned on a pickle. Ian Charleson, in the 1981 Jonathan Miller production, provides more complexity: still a figure of cold authority, but one capable of human feeling.

I mention this because in the absence of Antony and Enobarbus, Caesar becomes the dominant male figure in the last act, and he is charged with bringing the drama to a coherent close. In the first scene he is presented with Antony's bloody sword by Dercetus, who seems to hope that the act will win favor from Caesar. But for once Caesar isn't thinking about power -- he doesn't have to, since he's just won it absolutely. It allows him to speak generously of the fallen Antony and to cause Agrippa to note, with some surprise, that "Caesar is touched." Maecenas shrewdly knows why: Antony's death reminds Caesar of his own mortality even at achieving the summit of power. "We could not stall together / In the whole world," Caesar says, recognizing that either he or Antony had to be the one to fall, that they could not remain what they once were -- "Friend and companion" -- when they pulled the Roman state together after Julius Caesar's murder.

And now, even when he is in the midst of recognizing the implications of Antony's death, he has to set that aside to deal with the problem of Cleopatra, who has sent one of her people to Caesar to learn her fate. He dispatches Proculeius, the one of Caesar's aides whom Antony has told her to trust, to reassure her that "We purpose her no shame."

[5.2 -- Location: Inside Cleopatra's monument]

Once again, the flexibility of the Shakespearean stage comes into play. The concluding scene takes place supposedly inside the monument that presented so much difficulty in 4.15, what with the business of hauling Antony's body aloft. It was supposed to be an impregnable place of refuge, yet now it seems to be open to anyone who wants to wander in and out, including arresting officers and old men selling baskets of figs and snakes. This inconsistency, however, didn't bother Shakespeare's audience and it shouldn't bother us, as long as director and stage designer don't clutter things up too much.

Cleopatra renews her resolve "To do that thing that ends all other deeds" -- that is, commit suicide. But Proculeius enters to reassure her that she doesn't need to do that. She tells him that she will submit to whatever Caesar wants "If he please / To give me conquered Egypt for my son." He assures her, "I know your plight is pitied / Of him that caused it." But just as he is apparently winning her confidence, Gallus enters with soldiers and arrests her. Cleopatra draws a dagger, but Proculeius takes it from her and asks her, "Let the world see / His nobleness well acted, which your death / Will never let come forth."

Cleopatra is defiant: She will starve herself if necessary. "This mortal house I'll ruin, / Do Caesar what he can." She would rather rot on the banks of the Nile or be hanged from one of her obelisks ("My country's high pyramides") than be exhibited in triumph before "the shouting varletry / Of censuring Rome." Dolabella enters to relieve Proculeius and Gallus as guard to Cleopatra, but before he leaves, Proculeius says he will tell Caesar whatever she wants to say to him. Her reply is "Say I would die."

Dolabella tries to be gentle with her, but she wants only to speak about Antony, whom she now recalls as if she had dreamed him, bestriding the ocean like a colossus, shaking the spheres with his voice, in short, a characteristically extravagant (and beautiful) apotheosis, at the end of which she asks Dolabella, "Think you there was or might be such a man / As this I dreamt of?" When Dolabella replies, "Gentle madam, no," she replies:

You lie up to the hearing of the gods!
But if there be nor ever were one such,
It's past the size of dreaming. Nature wants stuff
To vie strange forms with fancy; yet t'imagine
An Antony were nature's piece 'gainst fancy,
Condemning shadows quite.

It's a beautifully late-Shakespearean speech in its valorizing of the imagination, but also in its affirmation that nature itself can challenge the things of the imagination. Prospero, too, will remind us that the things seen on the stage are just shadows and "the stuff that dreams are made on," but that they are no less valuable for being that.

Dolabella struggles to return Cleopatra from the exaltations of her grief and back to reality, admitting that through her he feels "a grief that smites / My very heart at root." His sympathy seems to touch her, and she asks, "Know you what Caesar means to do with me?" When he expresses reluctance to say, she gets to the devastating truth:

CLEOPATRA 
     He'll lead me, then, in triumph.
DOLABELLA 
     Madam, he will. I know't. 

A beautifully economical statement of her worst fear, and one crowned by the arrival of Caesar himself, whose question, "Which is the Queen of Egypt?" seems unnecessarily rude but may just be a way of stating the fact that they have not been formally introduced -- after all, Caesar acknowledges that she is still a queen.

She kneels and when he bids her rise, she does so, emphasizing that her acts are done out of formal obedience, a recognition of her status, rather than genuine respect. He maintains his air of authority, to the extent of warning her against suicide:

                                          if you seek
To lay on me a cruelty by taking
Antony's course, you shall bereave yourself
Of my good purposes, and put your children
To that destruction which I'll guard them from
If thereon you rely.

In other words, if she makes him look cruel, then he will be cruel. It is a reminder to her that she is a prisoner of war.

Before he can leave, she hands him an inventory of her treasure, and calls her treasurer, Seleucus, as witness to its accuracy. But Seleucus testifies that she has left half of what she owns off the list, causing her to denounce him angrily. She claims that what she kept off the list were items that she intended to give as gifts, including to Caesar's wife, Livia, and to Octavia. Caesar assures her that she can keep the items and that she shouldn't worry about anything: "Feed and sleep. / Our care and pity is so much upon you / That we remain your friend; and so, adieu."

When he has gone, she reveals to Charmian that she knows he was just trying to talk her out of committing suicide, and she whispers to Charmian what we will later recognize as the instructions for summoning the peddler with the snakes. Charmian leaves as Dolabella enters to tell her that Caesar is preparing to return to Rome by way of Syria, and that he will send her and her children ahead of him. "Make your best use of this," he advises.


When he leaves, she tells Iras that they will be exhibited to "Mechanic slaves / With greasy aprons, rules and hammers" and "In their thick breaths, / Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded / and forced to drink their vapour." Shakespeare, as an actor, presumably knows something about the "thick breaths" exhaled by a crowd. As Wilders points out, he refers to the bad breath of the mob in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus also. And here he adds one of his cleverest, most recursive in-jokes:

                                         The quick comedians
Extemporally will stage us and present
Our Alexandrian revels; Antony
Shall be brought drunken forth; and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness
I'th' posture of a whore.

Charmian returns and Iras is sent to "fetch / My best attires. I am again for Cydnus / To meet Mark Antony.... Bring our crown and all." There's a noise outside and a guardsman says "a rural fellow" wants to bring her some figs. She tells him to bring the man in, and he returns with the Clown, which the note glosses as "a word regularly used for a countryman or rural labourer."

When the guardsman leaves, she asks the Clown if he has "the pretty worm of Nilus. He assures her that "his biting is immortal. Those that do die of it do seldom or never recover." He leaves, wishing her "joy o'th' worm." Iras brings the robe and crown and jewels, and Charmian helps Iras dress Cleopatra. She speaks to Antony, "Husband, I come!" and proclaims, "I am fire and air; my other elements / I give to baser life." Fire and air are the aspiring elements, the ones associated with the realm of the spirit, as earth and water are with the body.

She kisses Charmian and Iras, and the latter falls dead, perhaps, as Enobarbus did, from grief. Cleopatra interprets it as a sign that death is easy: "If thou and nature can so gently part, / The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch / Which hurts and is desired." It's notable that the erotic element of dying is invoked here: After all, this is Cleopatra's Liebestod. She also frets that if Iras sees Antony first, "He'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss / Which is my heaven to have."

She takes the asp and puts it to her breast, calling on it to "Be angry and dispatch" -- the note observes that Plutarch indicated that Cleopatra stuck the serpent with "a spindell of golde" to make it angry and more eager to bite. Charmian calls out, "O eastern star!" referring to Venus and to Cleopatra, who hushes her: "Dost thou not see my baby at my breast / That sucks the nurse asleep?" She takes another asp, which bite her on her arm, and dies, saying "What should I stay --." Charmian completes the sentence: "In this vile world?" She notices that Cleopatra's crown is crooked, as bends to straighten it as the guard enters to announce Dolabella's return. Charmian takes up an asp for herself and dies.

Dolabella enters to see what has happened, followed shortly by Caesar and his attendants. They are puzzled at the cause of the deaths -- presumably the snakes have made a retreat with all the commotion caused by the arrival of Caesar. He observes that Cleopatra "looks like sleep, / As she would catch another Antony / In her strong toil of grace." And he orders,

She shall be buried by her Antony.
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous.

_____

The 1974 Trevor Nunn production:



Because the previous clip omits the play's ending, here's a different clip from the same production:


The 1981 Jonathan Miller production, on which the Arden edition's editor, John Wilders, was a consultant:

6. Antony and Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare, pp. 225-270

[4.1 -- Location: Caesar's camp outside Alexandria]

Enraged by Antony's treatment of Thidias and the challenge to personal combat, not to mention by Antony's calling him "boy," Caesar prepares for "the last of many battles / We mean to fight."

[4.2 -- Location: Alexandria]

Enobarbus tells Antony that Caesar declines single combat, so he prepares for what he thinks may be his final battle, calling together the servants to say farewell: "Haply you shall not see me more, or if, / A mangled shadow. Perchance tomorrow / You'll serve another master." Enobarbus scolds him for making them weep, so Antony puts on a façade of "just joking" that cheers up no one.

[4.3 -- Location: Alexandria]

Soldiers on watch hear strange music -- "Music of hautboys is under the stage" -- and interpret it as the sound of Hercules abandoning Antony.

[4.4 -- Location: Alexandria]

Eros brings Antony his armor, and with a little impatient instruction -- "False, false! This, this!" -- he allows Cleopatra to help him put it on. His captains and soldiers enter and after a farewell kiss from Cleopatra he leaves with them.

[4.5 -- Location: Alexandria]

Antony meets the soldier who in 3.7 had urged him not to fight that battle at Actium by sea. "Would thou and those thy scars had once prevailed / To make me fight at land!" Antony tells him. The soldier agrees that if he had done so, there would not have been so many desertions, including, he now reveals to Antony, Enobarbus. Antony is startled by the news, and when he hears that Enobarbus left his personal belongings -- "his chests and treasure" -- he tells Eros to send it to him. He laments, "Oh, my fortunes have / Corrupted honest men!" and his last word before he makes his exit is "Enobarbus!"

[4.6 -- Location: Caesar's camp outside Alexandria]

Enobarbus, now on Caesar's side, hears him order that Antony be taken alive, and boast that "The time of universal peace" -- the pax romana -- "is near." A messenger arrives to say that Antony is on the battlefield, and Caesar orders that the men who used to be Antony's followers be put at the front of the soldiers in battle, "That Antony may seem to spend his fury / Upon himself."

Hearing this, Enobarbus reflects on Caesar's cruelty, having also learned that when Antony sent Alexas to negotiate with King Herod, Alexas switched sides and persuaded Herod to abandon Antony. "For this pains / Caesar hath hanged" Alexas. Enobarbus now realizes, "I have done ill," a fact that is confirmed when a soldier tells him that "Antony / Hath after thee sent all thy treasure, with / His bounty overplus. Wounded by this generous response to his treason, Enobarbus calls himself "the villain of the earth.... This blows my heart." Instead of going to fight against Antony, he resolves to "go seek / Some ditch wherein to die."

[4.7 -- Location: The battlefield outside Alexandria]

Antony's troops have won the battle, and he enters with the wounded Scarus, whom some identify as the soldier in 4.5. Scarus, as Wilders observes, replaces Enobarbus as Antony's battle-mate.

[4.8 -- Location: Alexandria]

Antony returns to Cleopatra in triumph, to rest and prepare for battle again the next morning. He praises Scarus and tells her to give him her hand to kiss. He orders the trumpeters to "blast ... the city's ear" -- the last triumphant moment for Antony in the play.

[4.9 -- Location: Caesar's camp outside Alexandria]

The sentries observe Enobarbus enter and overhear his last words:

                                                  O Antony, 

Nobler than my revolt is infamous, 

Forgive me in thine own particular, 

But let the world rank me in register 

A master-leaver and a fugitive. 

O Antony! O Antony!

He collapses, and the watchmen go to see about him. One thinks, "The hand of death hath raught him," but another believes, "He may recover yet."

[4.10 -- Location: the battlefield outside Alexandria]

Antony and Scarus look for places where they can observe the naval battle that Caesar has chosen to initiate.

[4.11 -- Location: the battlefield outside Alexandria]

Caesar observes that Antony's best forces have been diverted to the ships.

[4.12 -- Location: indefinite]

Antony chooses a new place to watch the sea battle, while Scarus reflects that the omens are not good for the battle, and that Antony seems uneasy about the prospects. Antony returns to proclaim, "All is lost!" and to blame the defeat on Cleopatra, whom he denounces when she appears. She will, he predicts, be forced to follow Caesar's chariot and have her face clawed by Octavia's nails. She leaves without responding, and he goes in search of Eros.

[4.13 -- Location: Alexandria]

Stung by Antony's anger, Cleopatra follows Charmian's advice that they retreat to the monument, one of several fortified tombs she had built in the city. She asks Mardian to go to Antony with word that she has committed suicide, and that her last word was "Antony."

[4.14 -- Location: Alexandria]

Distraught, Antony believes that he is disintegrating: "Here I am Antony, / Yet cannot hold this visible shape." Cleopatra, he tells Eros, has "false-played my glory / Unto an enemy's triumph." Mardian brings the false news of Cleopatra's death. Antony sends him away, and asks Eros to help him remove his armor, then to leave him alone for a while. He now vows his own suicide, imagining a reunion in the afterlife with Cleopatra where they will attract the other ghosts' attention away from Dido and Aeneas.

He calls Eros back and reminds him that "when I should see behind me / Th'inevitable prosecution of  / Disgrace and horror, that on my command / Thou then wouldst kill me. Do't. The time is come." Eros is reluctant, so Antony asks if he wants to see him exhibited in disgrace by Caesar. Eros pretends to agree to kill him, but instead kills himself. Antony then falls on his sword, but fails to kill himself. He calls out for the guard and asks them to finish the deed, but they refuse. One of the guards, Dercetus, picks up the sword and carries it off, planning to use it to curry favor with Caesar.

Finally, Diomedes enters, and when Antony begs him to kill him, tells Antony that he has come from Cleopatra, who has changed her mind about the decision to tell Antony that she is dead. Diomedes calls for the guard, who carry Antony to the monument.

[4.15 -- Cleopatra's monument]

Cleopatra and her attendants are "aloft," which some scholars interpret as the upper gallery of the Shakespearean stage, though the exact nature of the original staging of the scene is still a matter of controversy. Diomedes and the guard enter with the dying Antony, who is hoisted up to Cleopatra. North's Plutarch is the source of the detail about lifting Antony to the top of the monument, though by following it Shakespeare introduced some awkwardly complicated stage business. Line 19, "I am dying, Egypt, dying," is repeated at line 42, and there is some speculation that the intervening lines were written to allow a director some flexibility in staging, depending on how long it took to accomplish the hoisting.

Once aloft, Antony is concerned to prepare Cleopatra for dealing with Caesar, to trust no one but Proculeius, but Cleopatra isn't inclined to trust anyone. He speaks of being "a Roman by a Roman / Valiantly vanquished," and died. Cleopatra observes that "there is nothing left remarkable / Beneath the visiting moon," and faints. Iras thinks she has died, but Charmian revives her, and Cleopatra vows to bury Antony "after the high Roman fashion / And make death proud to take us."

_____

The 1974 Trevor Nunn production:






The 1981 Jonathan Miller production:

5. Antony and Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare, pp. 171-225

[3.1 -- Location: Syria]

In a scene frequently omitted, Ventidius boasts of his victory over the Parthians. Silius urges him to pursue the Parthians who have fled, but Ventidius is afraid that overreaching might offend Antony if it looks like he's becoming a more potent warrior than his general: "I could do more to do Antonius good, / But 'twould offend him, and in his offence / Should my performance perish." Antony, he notes, is on his way to Athens. 

[3.2 -- Location: Rome] 


Agrippa and Enobarbus talk jokingly about how the hung-over Lepidus sang the praises of  Antony and Caesar after the party on Pompey's ship. The triumvirate now enters, accompanied by Octavia, who is taking her leave from Caesar to go with Antony. It's clear that nobody is really happy with the political marriage of Antony and Octavia, but they're trying to put on a good show. 


[3.3 -- Location: Alexandria] 


Cleopatra makes amends with the messenger she abused for bringing the news of Antony's marriage. He assures her that Octavia isn't as tall as she is, and that she is "low-voiced," which Cleopatra is pleased to translate as "Dull of tongue and dwarfish." As for whether Octavia has "majesty in her gait," he opines that "She shows a body rather than a life, / A statue than a breather." Cleopatra observes, "The fellow has good judgement." He mentions that she's a widow and that he thinks she's thirty -- Cleopatra, Wilders notes, was "twenty-nine at this time, but Shakespeare seems to visualize her as older" -- and that her face is "Round, even to faultiness." Cleopatra gives him gold and sends him on his way with letters, assured that Octavia is "no such thing."  After all, she says, "The man hath seen some majesty, and should know." 


[3.4 -- Location: Athens] 


Antony is pissed off that Caesar has begun to "Wage new wars 'gainst Pompey," breaking the terms of the treaty as well as beginning to gain the upper hand in the triumvirate. Octavia tells him how upset it makes her to be torn in loyalty between her husband and her brother. He tells her, "If I lose mine honour, / I lose myself," but encourages her to try to mediate between him and Caesar, even though Antony is preparing to fight against him. 

[3.5 --Location: Alexandria] 

Eros tells Antony that not only has Caesar broken the truce with Pompey, who has been murdered, but he has also stripped Lepidus of his authority, reducing the rule of the empire from a triumvirate to a duo, Caesar and Antony, who are now battling each other for supreme power. The navy has been readied to sail against Caesar. 


[3.6 -- Location: Rome] 


Caesar reports to Maecenas and Agrippa that Antony has staged a great show of authority in Alexandria, appearing with Cleopatra and Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar, and his own offspring with her. He has made  Cleopatra queen not only of Egypt but also of "lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia" and put other lands in the charge of his sons. Cleopatra was dressed as Isis in this public spectacle. Maecenas and Agrippa suggest that the Roman people should be informed of Antony's arrogance. Caesar says that they already know it, but that Antony has spread accusations against Caesar for breaking the treaty with Pompey and depriving Lepidus of power. 


Octavia enters, and her brother chides her for not making a production of her return to Rome. She tells him that she asked Antony to let her come to Rome to try to make peace between them. He informs her that in the meantime, Antony has reunited with Cleopatra and are marshaling forces against him. She's not happy to hear that. 


[3.7 -- Location: Actium, on the northwest coast of Greece] 


Cleopatra has decided to join her forces with Antony's, and Enobarbus is trying to dissuade her. She'll be a distraction as well as a public-relations disaster: 

Your presence needs must puzzle Antony, 
Take from his heart, take from his brain, from's time 
What should not then be spared. He is already 
Traduced for levity, and 'tis said in Rome 
That Photinius, an eunuch and your maids 
Manage this war. 

Public opinion doesn't matter to her, of course. Antony enters with Canidius, discussing the news that Caesar has made a swift journey to Actium. Caesar is proposing a battle at sea instead of the hand-to-hand combat between him and Antony that Antony proposed. Antony accepts this challenge despite the warnings of Canidius and Enobarbus. The latter says that Antony's sailors are poorly prepared "muleteers, reapers, people / Engrossed by swift impress," whereas Caesar's are more skilled, having fought against Pompey. "No disgrace / Shall fall you for refusing him at sea, / Being prepared for land." Antony stubbornly insists, "By sea, by sea." Cleopatra interjects, "I have sixty sails, Caesar none better." 


A messenger arrives with news that Caesar has taken the town of Toryne, and a soldier enters to try once again to persuade Antony not to fight at sea. Antony ignores him and leaves with Cleopatra and Enobarbus. Canidius tells the soldier that he's right: fighting at sea when the land troops are better prepared is a bad idea. 


[3.8 Location: Actium] 


Caesar orders his lieutenant, Taurus, not to enter into a battle on land until the sea battle is done. 


[3.9 Location: Actium] 


Antony and Enobarbus establish their positions for observing the sea battle. 


[3.10 Location: Actium] 


The opposing armies cross the stage while the noise of the battle at sea is heard. Then Enobarbus enters in distress at seeing the Egyptian fleet leave the battle following the desertion of Cleopatra's ship, the Antoniad. Scarus enters to report, "We have kissed away / Kingdoms and provinces." The battle appeared equal until Cleopatra withdrew: "The breeze upon her, like a cow in June, / Hoists sails and flies." And when he saw this, Antony, "Leaving the fight in height, flies after her. / I never saw an action of such shame." Canidius enters to join in their lament, and to say that he is going to surrender his troops to Caesar: "Six kings already / Show me the way of yielding." Enobarbus tells him, "I'll yet follow / The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason / Sits in the wind against me." 


[3.11 Location: unspecific] 

The defeated Antony tells his followers to divide up the gold in his ship and to "make your peace with Caesar." He sits down alone. Cleopatra enters with Charmian, Iras and Eros, who urges her to go comfort Antony, who is recalling how at the battle of Philippi Caesar "kept / His sword e'en like a dancer" while he, Antony, was slaying Cassius and Brutus -- which is not quite how it happened, since Cassius and Brutus committed suicide. 

Cleopatra hesitates to approach him, and he rebukes her when he finally speaks to her. She claims that she was frightened by the battle, and didn't really think he would follow her. He replies, "Egypt, thou knewest too well / My heart was to thy rudder tied by th' strings / And thou shouldst tow me after." But after her pleas for pardon, he kisses her. 


[3.12 Location: Caesar's camp outside Alexandria] 


Because they have no one of distinction to send to talk to Caesar, Cleopatra and Antony have sent the schoolmaster for their children as their ambassador. He tells Caesar that Antony would like to remain in Egypt, but will accept being allowed to live as "A private man in Athens," and that Cleopatra would like for her children to rule over Egypt. Caesar denies Antony's request, and says he'll consider granting Cleopatra's if she will either banish Antony or kill him. After the schoolmaster-ambassador leaves, Caesar sends Thidias to try to turn Cleopatra against Antony. 


[3.13 Location: Alexandria] 

CLEOPATRA
      What shall we do, Enobarbus? 
ENOBARBUS                                                   Think, and die. 

As beautifully sad a bit of dialogue as Shakespeare ever wrote, as the two people closest to Antony contemplate the future. 


She asks who is to blame for what happened, and Enobarbus, perhaps rather surprisingly, blames Antony. He was a skilled soldier, who shouldn't have let his passion overwhelm his reason when she fled the battle. 

                               Why should he follow? 
The itch of his affection should not then 
Have nicked his captainship, at such a point, 
When half to half the world opposed....
                                 'Twas a shame no less 
Than was his loss, to course your flying flags 
And leave his navy gazing. 

The remarkable thing here is that Cleopatra trusts Enobarbus, recognizes his friendship to Antony and his honesty, and that she for once seems serious and thoughtful. 


Antony enters with the schoolmaster-ambassador and tells Cleopatra of Caesar's demand that she should "To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head, / And he will fill thy wishes to the brim / With principalities." He angrily challenges Caesar to hand-to-hand combat and exits with the ambassador to write a letter to that effect. In an aside, Enobarbus comments on the absurdity of Antony's challenge. And he begins to debate whether he should turn against Antony -- "The loyalty well held to fools does make / Our faith mere folly" -- or remain loyal -- "Yet he that can endure / To follow with allegiance a fallen lord / Does conquer him that did his master conquer, / And earns a place i'th' story." In some ways, Enobarbus is the real tragic figure in the play, because he is endowed with the most self-knowledge and awareness of the consequence of his actions. 


Thidias arrives to persuade Cleopatra to side with Caesar. He says that Caesar knows she didn't really love Antony, but just pretended to because she was afraid of him, and that he doesn't regard her as dishonored since she was compelled to take Antony's side. She plays along with this: "He is a god and knows / What is most right. Mine honour was not yielded / But conquered merely." Enobarbus, shocked by this apparent treachery on Cleopatra's part, leaves to find Antony, who is, he remarks, "so leaky / That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for / Thy dearest quit thee." 


Thidias continues, saying that "it would warm [Caesar's] spirits / To hear from me you had left Antony / And put yourself under his shroud, / The universal landlord." As Wilders notes, the word "shroud" here has "sinister overtones." Cleopatra sends her thanks to Caesar and offers Thidias her hand, just as Antony returns with Enobarbus. Outraged, Antony calls for servants and orders Thidias whipped "Till like a boy you see him cringe his face / And whine aloud for mercy." He then turns his anger on Cleopatra for her submissiveness to Caesar's envoy. The servants return with the whipped Thidias and Antony sends him off to Caesar. 


This done, Antony's anger begins to cool, and Cleopatra chides him for not really knowing her. They reconcile, and, as usual, decide to celebrate their reconciliation. Antony says, 

                                                      Come, 
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.

Everyone leaves except Enobarbus, who sees Antony falling into his old pattern: 

                                                 I see still 

A diminution in our captain's brain 

Restores his heart. When valour preys on reason, 

It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek 

Some way to leave him.

_____

The 1974 Trevor Nunn production:


Thidias is played by the young Ben Kingsley:



The 1981 Jonathan Miller production:

3. Antony and Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare, pp. 85-124

[1.1 -- Location: Alexandria] 

Demetrius and Philo, two of Antony's followers, are complaining about how he has been ensnared by Cleopatra. She has turned him, Philo says, "Into a strumpet's fool." And as soon as he says this, they enter, followed by her ladies, Charmian and Iras. A messenger arrives with news for Rome, which irritates Antony, though Cleopatra urges him to hear what the man has to say: "Fulvia perchance is angry, or who knows / If the scarce-bearded Caesar" has sent some orders for Antony to take care of. Fulvia is, of course, Antony's wife, and Octavius Caesar is twenty-three years old. Antony is forty-two. 

Cleopatra fears the worst, or pretends to, taunting him with the possibility that he will have to leave her because "shrill-tongued Fulvia scolds." This naturally causes Antony to reassure here that he doesn't care if Rome falls: "Here is my space! / Kingdoms are clay!" But she persists in claiming that Antony really loves Fulvia -- he married her, didn't he? Which only makes Antony more determined to please her: Even though she says he should hear what the messengers have to say, he proposes that they concentrate on pleasing themselves: "There's not a minute of our lives should stretch / Without some pleasure now." They should dress up as common folk tonight and "wander through the streets and note / The qualities of people." He dismisses the messenger: "Speak not to us."

They leave, but Demetrius and Philo remain behind to comment that Antony's behavior only confirms what people are saying about him in Rome. They exit.

[1.2 -- Location: Alexandria.]

Enobarbus and some Roman officers enter, and Charmian and Iras return, along with Alexas, another of Cleopatra's attendants, and the eunuch Mardian. Charmian begs Alexas to bring in the soothsayer that he had earlier told Cleopatra about. Enobarbus orders the servants to bring some more wine. The soothsayer makes some ambiguous prophecies about Charmian's future. She wants him to prophesy that he will "be married to three kings in a forenoon and widow them all. Let me have a child at fifty to whom Herod of Jewry may do homage." She also wants him to predict that she'll marry Octavius Caesar, which would make her the equal of Cleopatra. But the soothsayer ventures only, "You shall outlive the lady whom you serve." This delights her: "I love long life better than figs." In fact, Charmian survives Cleopatra only by minutes, and the reference to figs foreshadows the basket in which the asps are concealed -- as well as being a bawdy pun: figs were commonly likened to male genitalia. 

Iras steps up to have her palm read, claiming it will predict only chastity, which Charmian scoffs at: It will predict chastity just as the flooding of the Nile predicts the famine of a bad harvest, i.e., not at all. The soothsayer says only that Iras's and Charmian's fortunes are the same. They chatter on about this and urge the soothsayer to predict that Alexas will have a series of wives, all of whom will cuckold him. They even pray to Isis that this will happen. Alexas says they're so eager to make him a cuckold that they'd prostitute themselves to bring it about. 

Enobarbus interrupts to say that Antony is coming, though in fact it's Cleopatra. It's up to the director to figure out what this mistake means: either that there's a lot of attendant noise before her arrival which Enobarbus misinterprets, or that he's alluding to the fact that Antony and Cleopatra have grown so close that the presence of one implies the presence of the other. In any case, Cleopatra is looking for Antony, who "was disposed to mirth, but on the sudden / A Roman thought hath struck him." She sends Enobarbus to look for him, but Antony enters right after Enobarbus's departure, accompanied by a messenger. Cleopatra, apparently ticked off because Antony is talking to the messenger after all, leaves with her retinue. 

The messenger tells Antony that Fulvia's troops had done battle with those of Antony's brother Lucius, but they had reconciled afterward and fought against Caesar, who won, and banished them from Italy. But the worse news is that Quintus Labienus, who was fighting against both Antony and Octavius, has conquered Asia Minor. What the messenger is reluctant to say is that Antony is being blamed for the loss because of his dalliance with Cleopatra. More messengers arrive, and one brings the news that Fulvia has died in the city of Sicyon in Greece. He gives Antony a letter with the details. 

Antony realizes that he has to leave Egypt: 

I must from this enchanting queen break off. 

Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know, 

My idleness doth hatch.

Enobarbus enters, and observes, "Why then we kill all our women" when they get the news that he and Antony are leaving. "Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly. I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment." Antony, after agreeing that "She is cunning past men's thought," wishes he had never seen her, and tells Enobarbus that Fulvia is dead. It takes Enobarbus a moment to realize that Antony is not joking, and then he tries to make light of it. But Antony is serious, resolved to take care of the problems back in Rome, which the messengers have persuaded him need his attention. Pompey, he tells Enobarbus, is also threatening Caesar, and the people are beginning to take Pompey's side. 

[1.3 -- Location: Alexandria.] 

Cleopatra is still looking for Antony, and sends Alexas off to look for him -- but not to tell him that she's asking for him. "If you find him sad, / Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report / That I am sudden sick." Charmian advises her not to cross Antony, to give in to him, which Cleopatra says is "the way to lose him." When Antony enters, she pretends to be angry with him, berating him for being false to Fulvia, for breaking his marriage vows, which are signs that he will never be true to her. She tells him to leave, though she doesn't give him a chance to get a word in edgewise: 

Nay, pray you seek no colour for your going, 

But bid farewell and go. When you sued staying, 

Then was the time for words; no going then. 

Eternity was in our lips and eyes, 

Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor 

But was a race of heaven. They are so still, 

Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world, 

Art turned the greatest liar.

Antony is baffled by this outburst, but persists in telling her that the situation in Rome demands his attention. And moreover, Fulvia is dead. And he gives her the letter to prove it. 

But for Cleopatra it's still all about her. Why, she asks, is Antony not more upset by this news? "Now I see, I see, / In Fulvia's death how mine received shall be." He assures her that whatever she wants him to do, he'll do it. She pretends for a moment that she's about to faint -- "Cut my lace, Charmian, come!" -- and then quickly recovers. She plays him for all it's worth, pretending weakness and absent-mindedness: 

Courteous lord, one word: 

Sir, you and I must part, but that's not it; 

Sir, you and I have loved, but there not it; 

That you know well. Something it is I would -- 

Oh, my oblivion is a very Antony, 

And I am all forgotten. 

He begins to see through all this, however, so she decides to be straightforward. She tells him to go, and wishes him victory. And he vows that even though he's leaving, they will not really be separated. 

[1.4 -- Location: Rome] 

Octavius and Lepidus are reading a letter from Alexandria about Antony's infatuation with Cleopatra. Caesar is more swift to judge Antony: "You shall find there / A man who is the abstract of all faults / That all men follow." Lepidus argues that Antony is basically a good man, despite his faults. A messenger enters with disturbing news about the popular enthusiasm for Pompey, who is "strong at sea." Another messenger reports that Pompey has allied himself with the pirates Menecrates and Menas, who are terrorizing the Italian coast. This only fuels Caesar's anger at Antony. He recalls what a great warrior Antony once was before he began indulging in "lascivious wassails": 

Though daintily brought up, ...

                                              Thou didst drink 

The stale of horses and the gilded puddle 

Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign 

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge. 

Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets, 

The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps, 

It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh 

Which some did die to look on. And all this -- 

It wounds thine honour that I speak it now -- 

Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek 

So much as lanked not. 

So he and Lepidus get ready to take on Pompey themselves, with or without Antony's help.

[1.5 -- Location: Alexandria] 

Antony has gone, and Cleopatra asks Charmian for a sleeping potion so she can sleep through the period of his absence. She inquires of the eunuch Mardian about his desires, but she mostly thinks of what Antony is doing. "He's speaking now / Or murmuring 'Where's my serpent of old Nile?' / For so he calls me." She thinks about Julius Caesar, too, when she was "A morsel for a monarch." 

Alexas, who has been with Antony, enters, and gives her a pearl that Antony kissed and sent to her. She asks if Alexas met any of her messengers on the way, and he says he encountered twenty of them: "Why do you send so thick?" She asks for ink and paper to send more messages. She asks, "Did I, Charmian, / Ever love Caesar so?" and threatens to choke Charmian when she replies, "O that brave Caesar!" Charmian teases her with more praise of Caesar at the risk of receiving "bloody teeth / If thou with Caesar paragon again / My man of men!" She praised Caesar, she says, in "My salad days, / When I was green in judgement, cold in blood, / To say as I said then." And calls for more ink and paper, vowing to "unpeople Egypt" by sending so many messengers. 

_____

Trevor Nunn's 1974 Royal Shakespeare Company production, with Richard Johnson as Antony and Janet Suzman as Cleopatra, Patrick Stewart as Enobarbus, Corin Redgrave as Octavius: 

Jonathan Miller's 1981 television production, with Colin Blakely as Antony and Jane Lapotaire as Cleopatra, Emrys James as Enobarbus, Ian Charleson as Octavius: