“Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall: here is my space.”
Written late in Shakespeare’s career, perhaps in 1606 or early 1607 (after completing Macbeth but before finishing Coriolanus), in Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare once again turns our attention to Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch as his chief source for the great Roman tragedy of Mark Antony and Cleopatra –a tale of mythic lovers ensnared in an ill-fated affair at the dawn of the Roman Empire. Antony and Cleopatra rounds out Shakespeare’s trilogy on several key junctures in the history of Rome, a trilogy which begins in the 6th century BC with Coriolanus, a play which occurs at the rise of the ancient Roman Republic, a small, austere classical republican polis. Next in the trilogy, Shakespeare proceeds forward several centuries with Julius Caesar to the point at which Rome begins to reject republican rule and Roman crowds start to hail the rule of one man, even amidst civil strife –the most profound political assassination of the classical world. However, in spite of a noble effort to assassinate an ascendant demagogue, Rome’s old nobility and its enviable brand of self-governance will never again return. The republic seems to be on an irreversible decline toward a uniquely modern form of political organization –a universalist worldwide empire.
Now, in Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare sheds light on the fruits of the conspirators’ failure in Julius Caesar –a failure to reclaim the spirit of the republic– as Rome is shown to have devolved into an enormous Empire ensconced in endless luxury and earthly delights, boasting a remarkable level of prosperity, and geographically spanning the known world from Italy to Greece, Egypt to Syria (with relatively few scenes in the play actually taking place in Rome itself). This expansive global polis, a universal cosmopolitan political community which unites the notion of “cosmos” and “polis,” demonstrates how quickly Rome has become a vast, decadent regime. People within the Roman Empire are shown to be wayward, epicurean, and pampered –they are a “slippery people whose love is never linked to the deserver till his deserts are past.” The character of Rome is further demonstrated in the formal presentation of the play. Antony and Cleopatra stands apart as a wildly experimental play with a somewhat nonlinear plot, filled with private dreams, and grand flights of lyric poetry. It gives us a strong sense of exotic and strange disorientation. Scenes move fluidly from Egypt to Greece, as all places are in a state of becoming Roman and Hellenized. In Aristotelian terms, Coriolanus gave us a better sense of being, and Antony and Cleopatra shows us a state of becoming. Unlike the lean, invigorated civic ethos found among the Plebians in Coriolanus, by the time of Mark Antony, we hardly see any Plebians anymore. Instead, we see courtiers serving in the court of triumvirs (for an example of the distinction, contrast the opening scene of Antony and Cleopatra with that of Coriolanus or Julius Caesar, the latter of which both feature Plebians grumbling about the state of political affairs). Absent the governance of a tribunate to serve the Plebians, an uneasy second triumvirate has been formed between Mark Antony, Octavius Caesar, and Lepidus. However, politics now seems to be debased under the bloat of Empire –there is neither glory nor honor in politics, for who would wish to hold so lowly an office as Caesar? As Cleopatra says,“’Tis paultry to be Caesar. Not being Fortune, he’s but Fortune’s knave, a minister of her will” (5.2.2-4). If it is true that a political regime produces certain kinds of people (i.e. people living under an aristocratic regime being broadly distinct from people living under a democratic regime), then the Roman Empire produces subjects, not citizens.
In Antony and Cleopatra, Rome is also pervaded by a sense of defeatism. There is a growing awareness that the best days of Rome are in the past, even as widespread peace and easy riches proliferate throughout the Empire. With corrupt leaders and a hedonistic citizenry, Shakespeare shows us a post-heroic world, a tragic outgrowth of a vanishing Homeric ethos. Romans are now burdened with a sense of world weariness, almost to the point of exhaustion, as characters stand atop a limitless empire, with an “infinite” horizon which has absorbed all other cultures, while Rome also realizes that there are no worlds left to conquer (a la Alexander the Great). Additionally, despite being the lone imperial military behemoth, the experience of war is now entirely remote for most Romans, even as war persists in the East where Parthia remains one of the last standing enemies of Rome (for reference, contrast this conflict with the Volscis in Coriolanus). However, as Rome’s external enemies begin to disappear across the world, the Empire has succumbed to internal conflicts, or self-conquest, as the triumvirate dissolves and the rule of one Caesar arises.
The play opens in Alexandria as Mark Antony neglects his Roman triumvirate duties in order to pursue his wild, amorous affections for Cleopatra in Egypt. Once a great warrior “though daintily brought up,” at least he managed to destroy his enemies “with patience more than savages could suffer.” But Antony is now chided for merely chasing a “gipsy’s lust” and for being a “libertine” and an “amorous surfeiter,” as well as a “strumpet’s fool.” He “fishes, drinks, and wastes the night in revel” and yet remains “abstract of all faults.” While he pursues Cleopatra, Antony is privately despised by his aides. In this respect, he comes to embody the character of the Roman Empire –a colossus whose star has faded while busying himself with indulgences, grasping at vain appetites and entertainments. Indeed, Antony’s appetites are many. He professes his boundless “infinite” love of Cleopatra, a “love of Love,” a complete devotion to eros and all its accompanying unruly frivolities. In the same way that the Empire knows no limits, so too does Antony’s erotic love have an expansive quality to it. Eros reigns supreme under an Imperial political regime. Here, unlike in Shakespeare’s earlier Roman plays, we are presented with the appearance of lyric poetry. Poetry flourishes in the erotic climate of the Empire, and Romans are now more easily persuaded by impassioned rhetoric, rather than appeals to reason. Poetry is granted permission to spread under the protection of the Empire, a luxury not afforded the hardened Romans in Coriolanus’s day. Whereas moderation was once highly regarded in ancient Rome, the Empire now encourages new extremes among the populace –Romans are now almost exclusively devoted to private delights. The private supersedes the public in this world. In other words, politics is now made subordinate to a myriad of erotic activities, and people are generally satisfied by something other than political life. It should be noted that Rome’s global cosmopolitanism has brought unparalleled wealth and peace to antiquity, however it has also corrupted the soul and character of its people. Whatever once characterized Rome as a unique polis in the world has disappeared. Things now seem fluid, and boundaries are erased. To buttress this astonishing transformation, Shakespeare uses vivid poetic imagery –like dripping ice, the rushing Tiber, or Egypt melting into the Nile—all of which serve to introduce a uniquely modern idea that the world is gradually slipping away, or dissipating into an “infinite” unknown. The world now feels disorienting, confused, even bewildering to many characters in the play. Concepts like “infinity” are regularly mentioned as the horizon of Rome has been broadened to the furthest extent possible. Consider the following remarks by Cleopatra:
“Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space!
Kingdoms are clay! Our dungy earth alike
Feeds the beasts as man. The nobleness of life
Is to do thus, when such a mutual pair
And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless” (1.134-41).
Shakespeare’s femme fatale, Cleopatra, is depicted as a bewitching woman, a deadly enchantress of “infinite variety.” She is a Macedonian Greek who presently rules Egypt from the Ptolemaic line extending back to the age of Alexander the Great (her death in 30 BC at the play’s end marks the end of the Ptolemaic rule in Egypt). Cleopatra’s protean and elusive nature is described as “cunning beyond men’s thought” and filled with great passions “greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report.” She is entirely untrustworthy –one moment allying herself with a lover, the next betraying and deceiving him, while flirting with courtiers, turning on a dime with the whims of her heart. Perhaps a man like Coriolanus would easily reject such a reckless, untamed love affair with a woman like Cleopatra, however Antony seems incapable of controlling himself. Such is the nature of eros, fickle and wanton. Like the moral corruption of Rome, there is also something lacking in Antony which draws him to the exotic tempestuousness of a woman like Cleopatra. Consider the following reflections by Enobarbus (Antony’s comrade) on Cleopatra:
“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish” (2.2.245-250).
Love is not of political pre-eminence in Antony and Cleopatra, rather it leads people to a life of chaotic personal twists and turns which ultimately end in tragedy, at least for those who sacrifice themselves for love alone. Self-sacrifice for the greater good of the Republic, once so uniquely characteristic of the old regime, has vanished in Rome and has been replaced by a personal desire to die for love. Shakespeare suggests there is something deeply tragic about such an ignoble death. Whereas valor was once held to be the chiefest virtue in Rome (see Coriolanus), love is now held to be the chiefest virtue under the weight of Empire. And in Antony and Cleopatra, we are confronted with Antony’s infinite brand of love –as limitless as the Empire itself– and its deeply troubling nature. The only way to prove full devotion to such an infinite brand of love is by means of suicide. The way to gain the complete trust of a lover is by losing your life (here, we see a new acceptance of loss and defeat justified for the sake of love). The tragedy of these two mythic lovers forces us to consider a sorrowful display of the ultimate sacrifice –to give up everything for love– a nihilistic passion which replaces the old Roman virtue of victory (or the ancient understanding of immortality).
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Caesar was skeptical of lean and hungry intellectuals like Cassius, and instead, he favored surrounding himself with satiated erotic companions like Mark Antony who preferred to spend time feasting, enjoying music, and engaging in sexual acts. And now, in spite of their public declarations, leaders like Antony and Cleopatra are permitted to extend their love of celebrity and gossip (rather than glory). They do not desire a retiring private life, and live almost as if mere cogs in an imperial machine, pleasuring themselves to all manner of erotic endeavors (and ribald jokes) while people across the empire seem relegated to the role of mere spectators, including the rulers. Far away in Persia, the Parthians are steadily being conquered by Roman General Ventidius, while Antony remains entirely absent from the field of battle, instead gorging himself at the court of Alexandria. He cannot even be summoned by his “shrill-tongued” wife Fulvia, when she launches a war with Lucius (Antony’s brother) against Caesar –this remarkable uprising shockingly ranks among his lower priorities. However, it is only after the rebellion fails, and Fulvia is killed in Sicyon (a Greek city in the northern Peloponnesus northwest of Corinth), that Antony finally decides to return home to settle the conflict within the triumvirate. While believing Fulvia’s death is ultimately for the best, Antony nevertheless blames himself (“Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know, my idleness doth hatch”). However, instead of avenging his wife and brother, Antony simply makes peace with his fellow triumvir, Octavius Caesar. And in the course of negotiations, Antony breaks his pledge of limitless love to Cleopatra by readily agreeing to marry Caesar’s sister, Octavia, thereby preserving the fragile politics within the triumvirate (being “forever knit together” with Caesar and his family).
Nevertheless, problems persist within the Empire. Sextus Pompey (son of Pompey the Great) leads a rebellious band of pirates on the high seas against Rome, but instead of hunting down and destroying these unruly pirates, the ruling triumvirate merely bargains with Pompey –offering him the regions of Sicily and Sardinia in exchange for peace. What follows is a debauched celebration aboard Pompey’s barge in the harbor at Mount Misenum filled with drunken revelry and an “Egyptian bacchanal.” It is a reminder that Romans are now fascinated with sexual feasts of indulgence, like Egyptian bacchanals, and they live like tourists drawn to the exotic allure of cultural attractions. Rome now looks eastward for its guiding star. Indeed, various new religions and cults are adopted and incorporated into the empire, including the cults of Isis and Mithras. This great relaxing of mores and a broad shift eastward is later more fully realized under Constantine’s adoption of Christianity and the relocation of the empire’s capital to Constantinople. However, this process cultural degradation is complex. Rome’s globalized world offers a two-way street. As Rome incorporates more Eastern religions into its own culture, it also manages to Romanize, or Hellenize, those same religions. A globalized Empire does two things: it influences the cultures it absorbs, while also being influenced by those very same cultures. The conquests of Rome have paradoxically conquered Rome. This can be seen in the sudden arrival of eunuchs and soothsayers, the latter of which portend future events from “nature’s infinite book of secrecy” –a further demonstration of the ways in which Romans have succumbed to a kind of passive submission to vague supernatural whims.
Roman multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism are both consequences of Empire, and they become the conditions that lead to the rise of Christianity, one of the many Eastern religions that spreads far and wide thanks to the technological reach and Pax Romana afforded by the Empire. Throughout the play, people seem ready to embrace a new transformative epoch, they now have “immortal longings,” and they seek a new narrative which explains the world as a cohesive whole, a worldwide rationale which helps to make sense of the disorienting cosmos and which answers the call of imperial “infinity.” The readiness for the emergence of Christianity (which will soon pervade the empire) is noticeably apparent in Antony and Cleopatra –though unlike other playwrights in his day, Shakespeare rather impressively avoided producing Christian stagings of biblical stories. However, in Shakespeare’s Roman plays, the conditions are ripe for a universal God who becomes the rallying cry for all the disparate groups in the Empire. In this way, monotheism arrives in the service of politics (consider Cleopatra’s dream of Antony as a divine emperor in the heavens ruling over “the little” people of the earth). For Rome, Christianity offers an alternative spiritual mirror of a worldwide empire premised on a newly emerging morality of martyrdom, humility, submissiveness, and an impoverishment of spirit. What was once considered beautiful and noble in classical antiquity, is now inverted in favor of an ethics of intention rather than deed. Indeed, unlike in Shakespeare’s earlier Roman plays, in Antony and Cleopatra we begin to see explicit Biblical references start to appear –Shakespeare peppers the play with apocalyptic imagery borrowed from the Book of Revelation and even the phrase “Herod of Jewry” is referenced at least four times in the play. Shakespeare points us to the arrival of a zealous new religion which will conquer all others in Rome, ending many thousands of years of human polytheism. As Constantine later notes some three centuries after the events of Antony and Cleopatra, the universalist Empire of Rome will require a universalist religion for its own preservation. People across the Empire at this time are beginning to demand more than the existing gods and cults can offer. They require something total, comprehensive, global, cohesive, and consistent across the known world. Whereas in the past, Rome encountered many different cities, each with its own unique gods which were incorporated into the greater pantheon of gods, now the insurgency of monotheism, propounded by Hebrews and Christians, declares a deep intolerance and disgust for the old gods, instead favoring one cosmic, infinite, otherworldly God who is the only God –all other gods are considered false, inferior, or even evil. In contrast to the classical virtues of Greece and Rome, holiness and martyrdom now serve to embolden and empower a new “way” as Rome itself becomes a symbol for the depraved, licentious world that has become fallen and immoral. In Antony and Cleopatra, many characters in the play adopt this strange new supernatural perspective, including Antony who hails a “new heaven, new earth” –as he joins the many Romans who are looking outward, listening to soothsayers and prophets of the future, gazing up at the skies hoping to find signs, contemplating the clouds as well as troubling notions of “infinity.” The ancient gods, which we find in Homer’s Iliad and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, were once confident, heroic gods who shared in the full range of joys and sorrows in life, and above all they were gods who were unafraid to laugh rather than weep. Sadly, in Rome there is a tacit acknowledgement that these laughing gods have reached their zenith. And Shakespeare seems to suggest that our modern notion of a single monotheistic God is born out of this soft soil and deep existential sorrow brought about by the declining Roman Empire. This emerging context invites a growing sense of asceticism, or a renunciation of “the flesh,” and a radical emphasis on a fabled otherworldly afterlife and a new concept of immortality in the modern sense. For example, the classical concept of the underworld in antiquity –a fairly nasty place—is reimagined in Christian mythology as our modern concepts of heaven and hell. Yet Shakespeare rightly laments this tragic washing away of the classical world in Antony and Cleopatra. The great and noble heroes of old, likes Hercules or Odysseus, were forever silenced in a desolate and somber twilight, and the natural human desire to create new heroes and mythologies –the likes of which allowed the world to sing with life and color, beauty and nobility– are now tragically muzzled (consider the moment in the play wherein Hercules is described as departing from Antony). This spiritual decline is embodied in a ghastly new monotheism –a God who weeps rather than laughs—who leads a morbid, apocalyptic ministry, surrounded by an unbridled mob, and who dies a hideous slavish death (according to ancient virtues) and gives birth to a long, lonely human age of sacred sorrow and holy separation which extends into the present-day. However, as in all of Shakespeare’s plays, the tragedy of this situation is more complex than a simplistic narrative marking the decline of classical civilization. Coriolanus was indeed a magnificent figure, but he was also fairly monolithic. Absent the moral quandaries imposed upon the world by Christianity, ancient heroes lack the complexity of modern inner turmoil. Hence why Shakespeare’s characters like Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello are more richly full of depth and wracked with internal conflict in ways Coriolanus could never be. His tragedy is distinctly unique to an older way of life. The newness of Christianity offers something original to humanity –it allows for deep existential consideration the likes of which the ancients could have never have experienced. For Shakespeare, the rise of Christianity merely grows alongside the corruption of classical antiquity. In this respect, he disagrees with thinkers like Machiavelli, Edward Gibbon, and Nietzsche who all blame the fall of Rome on the rise of Christianity. Instead, Shakespeare seems to suggest that Rome fell, in fact, due to a profound corruption of the Roman aristocracy which was itself a consequence of a bloated Empire. In turn, it was this corruption that gave birth to the rise of new religions like Christianity, rather than the other way around. It might well be said that political circumstances allow for various theological narratives to proliferate, and thus political philosophy, being of primary concern, is given paramount attention in Shakespeare’s plays, while theology is not. Perhaps this is why Nietzsche held Shakespeare in such high regard. It was, after all, Nietzsche’s sister who claimed that Nietzsche read Shakespeare (as well as Schilling, and Byron) and then became drawn to the idea of the übermensch.
At any rate, the characters in Antony and Cleopatra face a trail of traitorousness and broken promises leading many characters to switch allegiances throughout the play –Antony’s comrade and friend Enobarbus defects from Antony (he then promptly dies of remorse), Octavius and Lepidus double-cross Antony, but then in turn Octavius betrays Lepidus (Lepidus is imprisoned, leaving only two triumvirs left), while Octavius and Antony fall into a territorial disputes and eventual war. The conflict culminates in the Battle of Actium (31 BC) which quickly falls apart amidst mass Egyptian defections and superstitious rumors that spread about Antony claiming he has been abandoned by the divine protection of Hercules, and there is one final betrayal as Cleopatra flees “like a cow in June” from the heat of battle along with her weak forces (Antony laments “this foul Egyptian hath betrayed me”), but he soon follows Cleopatra and abandons his own fleet to ruin (“Our fortune on the sea is out of breath and sinks most lamentably”). Antony’s “love of Love” wins out in the end. While in hiding, Cleopatra issues a deceptive message that she has killed herself, hoping Antony will come rushing to her side, but instead Antony merely accepts the news of her death, and clumsily kills himself. It is a shameful event wherein “experience, manhood, honour, ne’er before did violate so itself.” It is in part a selfish act, and in part self-sacrificial. Antony’s death might be interpreted as praiseworthy in the modern sense, but abhorrent in the ancient sense. Appropriately, Antony orders his comrade Eros to run his sword through his chest, but instead Eros simply kills himself (even in death, Antony cannot harness the protean nature of eros), and Antony is forced to fall on his own sword, which merely mortally wounds him, leaving him painfully clinging to life.
Antony is then carried upward to Cleopatra’s monument where she has secluded herself. Antony is hoisted upward because she refuses to join her lover below out of fear of being captured by Octavius. As they embrace one finale time, Antony offers the following words, deluding himself into believing he dies a noble hero:
“The miserable change now at my end,
Lament nor sorrow at, but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I lived the greatest prince o’th’ world,
The noblest; and do now not basely die,
Not cowardly put off my helmet to
My countrymen; a Roman by a Roman
Valiantly vanquished. Now my spirit is going;
I can no more” (4.15.53-61).
Notably, rather than immediately killing herself in solidarity with her suicidal lover, Cleopatra lingers onward, continuing to have second thoughts, ceaselessly pondering her fate even as Octavius arrives (“she hath pursued conclusions infinite of easy ways to die”). Cleopatra stands fearful of being paraded through the streets of Rome like a “whore,” condemned to live the rest of her life as a slave under Octavius, and so after a feeble show-attempt at suicide with a dagger, she then somewhat hesitatingly dies by inflicting upon herself a basket of poisonous asps (one on her breast, the other on her arm), while her two maidens, Iras and Charmian, also die by her side. Curiously, the asps are brought to Cleopatra in a basket of figs (figs were previously mentioned earlier in the play by her maiden Charmian who professes to “love long life better than figs”). The figs are delivered by an unnamed bawdy rustic Clown who appears for a brief moment, speaking in double-entendres and malapropisms, commenting on the “pretty worm of the Nilus that kills and pains not.” Like the Clown in Othello, this Clown serves as a sudden and surprising disruptor of the play’s tragic momentum, appearing just when Cleopatra readies to end her life. In this scene, Shakespeare confronts us with a mixture of comedy and tragedy at the end of Cleopatra’s life, as her death marks the height of her pure devotion to selfish whims. At any rate, upon learning of the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, Caesar proclaims that “the time of universal peace is near” and he notes with “pity” and “solemnity” that a funeral ceremony will be held.
In earlier times, such as in the age of Coriolanus, the Roman family or household was often considered subordinate to the needs of the city, however by the time of Mark Antony, a host of new wild erotic passions have superseded all concerns of statecraft. Antony’s pitiable death for love might well be contrasted with Ajax’s death for honor as recounted in Sophocles’s Ajax –the former being an ignoble demise, the other a tragic heroic sacrifice. The tragic nature of Antony’s death is matched by an equally tragic, irreversible decline of the Roman Republic, and as with all of Shakespeare’s plays, Antony and Cleopatra reflects a profound interest in the nature of classical republicanism, as well as a certain distaste or skepticism toward monarchies and empires (in this way, Shakespeare shares a certain kinship with Machiavelli). Under monarchies and empires, the political regimes are often led by people of extreme character –either competent administrators or else vulgar celebrities. In Rome, good emperors like Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius or even Octavius might all be considered merely good administrators, whereas Mark Antony would likely fall in line with the likes of Nero and Caligula –that is to say, leaders of great passion with bottomless appetites and desires (Plutarch notes that Nero was actually a direct descendent of Mark Antony). Antony guided Rome more toward the world of Bacchus, orgies, eastern gods, and resurrected gods. His was erotic, rather than a thumotic leader.
While often neglected in our day, the ill-fated love affair of Antony and Cleopatra has long inspired the works of great thinkers like Virgil, Horace, and Chaucer –in fact, Virgil’s Aeneid was written early in Octavius’s reign, serving as a mode of propaganda to justify the Roman rule of one man, as if convincing Romans they were destined to rise from mere farmlands and swamps to dwell in magnificent ornate cities across the globe, all in the service of a grand plan –a divinely ordained destiny. For many people, the Roman Empire offered a remarkable degree of safety and security, a worldwide enclosure containing all cultures and peoples. And as the external battle turns inward, with few enemies left to conquer, Rome is faced with either merely enduring its own sufferings (i.e. turning the other cheek and loving its enemies) or else take up the hero’s challenge and avenge wrongdoers by taking up arms against a sea of troubles. We see this theme return again and again in Shakespeare. However, simplistic tales of good and evil –mere melodrama—are not Shakespeare’s chief object. His tragedies allow us to see both sides of serious things, while subtly reaffirming what is noble and life-affirming about the human experience. As a student of Renaissance humanism, Shakespeare is entranced by a new reappraisal of classical antiquity, an era which had so long faced revisionism and vandalism throughout medieval Europe, and he closely examines this tension in his tragedies. It was Hegel who suggested that what makes tragedy truly profound is the conflict between two chief Goods, and often in Shakespeare this conflict is best found in the tension between ancient and modern virtues, as well as public and private loyalties. In Antony’s case, he uneasily straddles this boundary between both his public and private life, an internal struggle over where his priorities should be focused, though he ultimately commits suicide in the service of his private life. His self-sacrifice for love is encouraged by eroticism and the softening spirit of the Roman Empire, and his demise also beckons the newly emerging morality which regards love as the chiefest virtue.
For this reading I used the impressive Arden edition of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra along with Paul Cantor’s excellent lectures.