Antony and Cleopatra

“ CLEOPATRA. You lie, up to the hearing of the gods. But if there be, or ever were, one such, It's past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff To vie strange forms with fancy: yet to imagine An Antony were nature's piece 'gainst fancy, Condemning shadows quite.
DOLABELLA. Hear me, good madam. Your loss is, as yourself, great; and you bear it As answering to the weight: would I might never O'ertake pursu'd success, but I do feel, By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites My very heart at root.
CLEOPATRA. I thank you, sir. Know you what Caesar means to do with me? ”

“ CLEOPATRA. I dare not, dear,— Dear my lord, pardon,—I dare not, Lest I be taken: not the imperious show Of the full-fortun'd Caesar ever shall Be brooch'd with me; if knife, drugs, serpents, have Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe; Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour Demuring upon me.—But come, come, Antony,— Help me, my women,—we must draw thee up; Assist, good friends.
ANTONY. O, quick, or I am gone.
CLEOPATRA. Here's sport indeed!—How heavy weighs my lord! Our strength is all gone into heaviness ”

“ Before all, it should be observed that moderns feel and interpret the romance of Antony and Cleopatra in a way very different from that of the ancients. From Shakespeare to De Heredia and Henri Houssaye, artists and historians have described with sympathy, even almost idealised, this passion that throws away in a lightning flash every human greatness, to pursue the mantle of a fleeing woman; they find in the follies of Antony something profoundly human that moves them, fascinates them, and makes them indulgent. ”

“ Octavian entered the open gates of Alexandria. Both Antony and Cleopatra sought to win him. Antony's messengers the conqueror refused to see; but he still used fair words to Cleopatra. The Queen had shut herself up in a sort of mausoleum built to receive her body after death, which was not approachable by any door; and it was given out that she was really dead. All the tenderness of old times revived in Antony's heart. He stabbed himself, and in a dying state ordered himself to be laid by the side of Cleopatra. ”

“ She loved Mark Antony with passionate ardour. He was the first man in the world, and yet he bowed before the supremacy of her will. The longing of the awakening heart, the burning ambition which already kindled the soul of the child, had alike found satisfaction, and the world beheld how the mortal woman, Cleopatra, for her lover and herself, could steep this meagre life with the joys of the immortals. He was grateful for them, and the most generous of men laid at the feet of the ‘Great Queen of the East’ the might of Rome and the kings of two quarters of the globe. ”

“ Later in the great plays the note of chastity is always clear and firm. In his women, purity is nobly depicted; in his men there appears no such attainment, but often a passionate abhorrence of vice. In only one play, "Antony and Cleopatra," it might superficially appear that there is a glorification of lawless love; but in the action of the story their lawlessness ruins Antony's and Cleopatra's fortunes; then, with the imminence of death, their passion, escaping from the thralldom of flesh, soars into a sublimation that redeems Antony's error and half transforms Cleopatra. ”

“ This extraordinary voluptuary, whose beauty and witcheries have interested mankind for almost twenty centuries, has been the subject of some thirty tragedies in various languages; and in Antony and Cleopatra—one of his greatest plays—Shakespeare, closely following the narratives of Plutarch and other classical writers, has invested her with a potency of charm unparalleled among literary creations. ”

“ Enter CLEOPATRA
Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!
CLEOPATRA. Why is my lord enrag'd against his love?
ANTONY. Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving
And blemish Caesar's triumph. Let him take thee
And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians;
Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot
Of all thy sex; most monster-like, be shown
For poor'st diminutives, for doits, and let
Patient Octavia plough thy visage up
With her prepared nails. Exit CLEOPATRA
'Tis well th'art gone,
If it be well to live; but better 'twere
Thou fell'st into my fury, for one death
Might have prevented many. Eros, ho! ”

“ With the marriage, Cleopatra seeks to steady her wavering power; Antony, to place the valley of the Nile under the Roman protectorate. How then was the famous romance born? The actual history of Antony and Cleopatra is one of the most tragic episodes of a struggle that lacerated the Roman Empire for four centuries, until it finally destroyed it, the struggle between Orient and Occident. During the age of Cæsar, little by little, without any one's realising it at first, there arose and fulfilled itself a fact of the gravest importance ”

“ CAESAR. Be't so: declare thine office.
EUPHRONIUS. Lord of his fortunes he salutes thee, and Requires to live in Egypt: which not granted, He lessens his requests; and to thee sues To let him breathe between the heavens and earth, A private man in Athens: this for him. Next, Cleopatra does confess thy greatness; Submits her to thy might, and of thee craves The circle of the Ptolemies for her heirs, Now hazarded to thy grace.
CAESAR. For Antony, I have no ears to his request. The queen Of audience nor desire shall fail ”

“ Nothing whatsoever is known of the stage history of Antony and Cleopatra in Shakespeare's own day. It must have been extraordinarily difficult to find a youth, even among the excellent young actors of the period, who could 'boy' the 'greatness' of Cleopatra. ”

“ Antony and Cleopatra.—It is not Antony’s passion for Cleopatra which ruins him. He has not the cohesion which obtains success. He is loose-bonded. Cæsar is his complete foil and contrast. Cæsar exists dramatically to explain Antony. Antony’s challenge to single combat and the speeches he makes to his servants are characteristic. The marriage to Octavia, more than his Egyptian slavery, shows his weakness. There is a line in Plutarch which I wish Shakespeare had used. ”

“ Nay, ’tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors
Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers
Ballad us out o’ tune. 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.
IRAS.
O the good gods!
CLEOPATRA.
Nay, that’s certain.
IRAS.
I’ll never see’t, for I am sure mine nails
Are stronger than mine eyes.
CLEOPATRA.
Why, that’s the way
To fool their preparation and to conquer
Their most absurd intents.
Enter Charmian. ”

“ ENOBARBUS. Under a compelling occasion, let women die: it were pity to cast them away for nothing; though, between them and a great cause they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment: I do think there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying.
ANTONY. She is cunning past man's thought.
ENOBARBUS. Alack, sir, no: her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love: we cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears ”

“ But this Cleopatra was mistress of such happy phrases and such witty conversation, with such wanton ways and seductive graces, that Antony did forget all else for love of her.
Plutarch doth assure us, speaking of sundry quips and tricks of tongue she was used to make such pretty play withal, that Mark Antony, when he would fain imitate her, was in his bearing (albeit he was only too anxious to play the gallant lover) like naught so much as a common soldier or rough man-at-arms, as compared with her and her brilliant ways of talk. ”

“ A Hebe, sweet in years and looks, filled the wine cups of the King and Queen. Antony, lifting his, hesitated on the draught. His eyes, already inflamed, sought his partner’s, half covertly, half challengingly. Cleopatra laughed, and putting her glass to her full lips, drank. She followed a formula in doing so, conceding it agreeably to the very madness of his passion. He was haunted, since his defeat, with the thought that she would poison him to save herself. And yet he loved her. ”

“ Thus, after having chained in her embrace the two greatest generals that the Roman empire had produced, Julius Cæsar and Mark Antony, at the periods when they were respectively arbiters of the world’s fate, perished Cleopatra by her own hand.
Cleopatra was a voluptuous and extravagant woman, and in one of the feasts she gave to Antony at Alexandria, she melted pearls into her drink to render the entertainment more sumptuous and expensive. She was fond of appearing dressed as a goddess; and she advised Antony to make war against the richest nations, to support her debaucheries. ”

“ CLEOPATRA.
What is’t you say?
ENOBARBUS.
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 Photinus, an eunuch, and your maids
Manage this war.
CLEOPATRA.
Sink Rome, and their tongues rot
That speak against us! A charge we bear i’ th’ war,
And, as the president of my kingdom, will
Appear there for a man. Speak not against it.
I will not stay behind.
Enter Antony and Canidius. ”

“ For years Cleopatra had been his inspiration, his passion, his lode-star; where else to fly he knew not, his old world was, all too deservedly, against him. Yet it was not now for joyance that he sought, though he followed her; he steeled his heart against her sorceries, and shut himself up in morbid communings with his own spirit. He would not see her and for some time it was in vain that her maidens pleaded with and tried to comfort him.
It seemed for the moment as if Cleopatra’s power, she who “governed men by change” had failed. Her heart cried out,
“Where is Mark Antony? ”

“ AGRIPPA.
Welcome, lady.
MAECENAS.
Welcome, dear madam.
Each heart in Rome does love and pity you.
Only th’ adulterous Antony, most large
In his abominations, turns you off
And gives his potent regiment to a trull
That noises it against us.
OCTAVIA.
Is it so, sir?
CAESAR.
Most certain. Sister, welcome. Pray you
Be ever known to patience. My dear’st sister!
[Exeunt.]
SCENE VII. Antony’s Camp near the Promontory of Actium. Enter Cleopatra and Enobarbus. ”

“ Though Antony was an able general, a man of capacity and great personal courage, yet he had so involved himself in the dissipations and luxuries of the Egyptian court, whose crowning star was Cleopatra, that he was no match for the graver and more calculating Augustus. The charms of Cleopatra had completely unmanned him, and smothered, in a measure, his ambition.
Time did not serve to rally him from the lethargy, hopeless and fatal, into which her spell had thrown him. The chains which bound him grew stronger and stronger, and his desire to break them weaker and weaker. ”

“ There are, moreover, in these tragedies unexpected accidents, which so affect even the hardest nature that calculations are cast aside, and the old loyalty resumes a temporary sway. Nor must we fail to insist again upon the traditions wherein this last Cleopatra was born and bred. She came from a stock whose women played with love and with life as if they were mere counters. To hesitate whether such a scion of such a house would have delayed to discard Antony and to assume another passion is to show small appreciation of the effects of heredity and of example. ”

“ What a great man of state does in his own house, his valet knows better than the historians of later times.
If for these reasons I have thought it prudent not to accept in my work the stories and anecdotes that the ancients recount of Antony and Cleopatra, without indeed risking to declare them false, it is, on the contrary, not possible to deny that Cleopatra gradually acquired great ascendency over the mind of Antony. The circumstance is of itself highly probable. ”

“ I have no respect for Antony, and but little admiration. I speak of such mad infatuation as a humiliating exhibition of human weakness. Any one under its fearful spell is an object of pity. But I have more sympathy for him than for Cleopatra, although she was doubtless a very gifted woman. ”

“ Cleopatra stepped out of her litter, from which she had been looking on at the scene. Many who had been applauding her son now prostrated themselves before her. Beautiful always, whether under the helmet that she wore in camp, or enveloped in the veil of Isis, she never failed to inspire admiration.
When he saw how much loyal devotion the Queen could still command, Antony was ashamed of his inaction. Besides, he could no longer stay away from her. Although his feeling for her was sometimes more like hate than love, she was necessary to him. ”

“ Antony, thou wouldst say,— ⁠112
Mess. O! my lord.
Ant. Speak to me home, mince not the general tongue;
Name Cleopatra as she is call'd in Rome;
Rail thou in Fulvia's phrase; and taunt my faults ⁠116
With such full licence as both truth and malice
Have power to utter. O! then we bring forth weeds
When our quick minds lie still; and our ills told us
Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile. ”

“ Enter Cæsar and his Army.
Cæs. But being charg'd, we will be still by land,
Which, as I take 't, we shall; for his best force
Is forth to man his galleys. To the vales, 12
And hold our best advantage! Exeunt.
Enter Antony and Scarus.
Ant. Yet they are not join'd. Where yond pine does stand
I shall discover all; I'll bring thee word
Straight how 'tis like to go. Exit.
Scar. ⁠Swallows have built 16
In Cleopatra's sails their nests; the augurers
Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly,
And dare not speak their knowledge. Antony
Is valiant, and dejected ”