by Harold Bloom
Sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it;
Sir, you and I have loved, but there’s not it;
That you know well. Something it is I would—
Oh, my oblivion is a very Antony,
And I am all forgotten.
act 1, scene 3, lines 71–92
This moment, in a play of endless wonders, stands out for its transition from Cleopatra’s theatricality to her all-too-human shock at what is happening to threaten her joy. “How this Herculean Roman does become / The carriage of his chafe” again invokes “become” to her dismay. For once her wit fails and she reaches for what she cannot find. There is a world of cognitive music in her bewilderment:
Oh, my oblivion is a very Antony,
And I am all forgotten.
“Oblivion” is a rich word here, since her momentary confusion is primal and passionate. Performative art abandons her and a woman in love dreading loss scarcely seems Cleopatra of Egypt. She forgets herself and is flooded by the anxiety that he may forget her. An uncharacteristic stasis dominates, as Shakespeare moves on to the great world in contention.
After an interlude with Octavius Caesar censuring Antony for his lascivious carousals in Alexandria, the future Augustus is alarmed by the threat of the younger Pompey and his piratical followers. Suddenly needing Antony’s generalship and his troops, the politic Octavius cries out for the Herculean hero to return to himself. We bear this as best we can, since this bureaucrat is hard to enjoy.
Life flows back with the bereft Cleopatra surmising the present state of her absent lover:
Oh, Charmian,
Where think’st thou he is now? Stands he or sits he?
Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?
Oh, happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!
Do bravely, horse, for wot’st thou whom thou mov’st?
The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm
And burgonet of men.
act 1, scene 5, lines 19–25
“Do” carries sexual implication. Antony holds up half the earth and is the arm and steel helmet of mankind. The metric moves erotically, the questions and exclamations set up a rhythm of exultant longing. In that coursing we meditate on the whole Cleopatra and find that she is endless. Like Falstaff and Hamlet, and like Shakespeare, her capaciousness is infinite. Like Juliet, her love is like the bounty of the sea. The more she gives, the more she has. We neither admire her nor find her repellent. Her peregrine spirit quests beyond our intense feeling with and for her. Vistas to which we cannot stretch forth our hands abide with her on a farther shore.
He’s speaking now,
Or murmuring, ‘Where’s my serpent of old Nile?’
For so he calls me. Now I feed myself
With most delicious poison. Think on me,
That am with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black
And wrinkled deep in time. Broad-fronted Caesar,
When thou wast here above the ground, I was
A morsel for a monarch. And great Pompey
Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow;
There would he anchor his aspect, and die
With looking on his life.
act 1, scene 5, lines 25–35
Her sexual longing identifies her with Antony’s steed and the “most delicious poison” presages the manner of her dying. A curious realism informs her sense of her dark coloring, burned by the sun of Egypt, and of her aging toward meridian. Recollections of Julius Caesar and of Pompey the Great (Shakespeare’s departure from history) bring back her pride.
She surges into an ecstasy that sets Antony above Julius Caesar:
Cleopatra: Did I, Charmian,
Ever love Caesar so?
Charmian: Oh, that brave Caesar!
Cleopatra: Be choked with such another emphasis!
Say, ‘the brave Antony.’
Charmian: The valiant Caesar!
Cleopatra: By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth
If thou with Caesar paragon again
My man of men.
Charmian: By your most gracious pardon,
I sing but after you.
Cleopatra: My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,
To say as I said then. But, come, away,
Get me ink and paper.
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I’ll unpeople Egypt.
act 1, scene 5, lines 69–81
It has become too familiar: “My salad days, / When I was green in judgment.” In this play it evokes nostalgia for what was, for what is, and what soon must pass into oblivion.
CHAPTER 5
Antony and Octavia: A Sacrifice to Roman Power
Because Octavius and Antony need to ally against the younger Pompey and his mastery of the sea, they make a pact by which Octavia, the sister of Octavius Caesar, and Mark Antony marry each other. She is reduced to an unhappy expedient. Uneasy always in the presence of Octavius, Antony has his forebodings confirmed by an uncannily accurate soothsayer:
Antony: Now, sirrah: you do wish yourself in Egypt?
Soothsayer: Would I had never come from thence, nor you thither!
Antony: If you can, your reason?
Soothsayer: I see it in my motion, have it not in my tongue;
But yet hie you to Egypt again.
Antony: Say to me, whose fortunes shall rise higher,
Caesar’s or mine?
Soothsayer: Caesar’s.
Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side.
Thy daemon—that thy spirit which keeps thee—is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
Where Caesar’s is not; but, near him, thy angel
Becomes afeard, as being o’erpowered. Therefore
Make space enough between you.
Antony: Speak this no more.
act 2, scene 3, lines 10–24
“But, near him, thy angel / Becomes afeard, as being o’erpowered” plays again upon “becoming.” Antony recognizes the menace. His vitality diminishes in the presence of Octavius Caesar. A personality so magnetic and exuberant cannot compete with a colorless but oncoming presage of future empire.
Soothsayer: To none but thee; no more but when to thee.
If thou dost play with him at any game,
Thou art sure to lose; and of that natural luck
He beats thee ’gainst the odds. Thy luster thickens
When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit
Is all afraid to govern thee near him;
But, he away, ’tis noble.
Antony: Get thee gone.
Say to Ventidius I would speak with him.
[Exit (Soothsayer)]
He shall to Parthia.—Be it art or hap,
He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him,
And in our sports my better cunning faints
Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds;
His cocks do win the battle still of mine
When it is all to naught, and his quails ever
Beat mine, inhooped, at odds. I will to Egypt;
And though I make this marriage for my peace,
I’th’East my pleasure lies.
act 2, scene 3, lines 25–41
Antony’s language hesitates and stumbles. He is mystified yet convinced that his genius wanes in competition with Octavius. We could not conceive that Cleopatra ever might fear the power of another woman.
Roman behavior has to be heartless. It measures men and women as means to the end of accumulating power. Octavius professes love for his sister yet exploits her for his Machiavellian purposes. Antony, sublime hedonist, plays politics with this dubious marriage and lusts for Cleopatra.
Directly before the
ominous soothsaying, Shakespeare places the farewell of the newly married couple:
Antony: The world and my great office will sometimes
Divide me from your bosom.
Octavia: All which time
Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers
To them for you.
Antony: Good night, sir. My Octavia,
Read not my blemishes in the world’s report.
I have not kept my square, but that to come
Shall all be done by th’ rule. Good night, dear lady.
Good night, sir.
Octavius: Good night.
act 2, scene 3, lines 1–9
This is another phase of Antony’s long decline. He does not mean what he says and we know it. And yet there is always a touch of compassionate grandeur:
Antony: No further, sir.
Octavius: You take from me a great part of myself;
Use me well in’t.—Sister, prove such a wife
As my thoughts make thee, and as my farthest bond
Shall pass on thy approof.—Most noble Antony,
Let not the piece of virtue, which is set
Betwixt us as the cement of our love
To keep it builded, be the ram to batter
The fortress of it; for better might we
Have loved without this mean, if on both parts
This be not cherished.
Antony: Make me not offended
In your distrust.
Octavius: I have said.
Antony: You shall not find,
Though you be therein curious, the least cause
For what you seem to fear.
act 3, scene 2, lines 23–36
Octavius is grim and accurately suspicious. Antony embraces the lie. You cannot choose between them in terms of morality. They have none. But Antony wins us perpetually because he is large. A lost grandeur makes him a noble ruin, not of Cleopatra but of his own designing.
Antony: So the gods keep you,
And make the hearts of Romans serve your ends!
We will here part.
Octavius: Farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well.
The elements be kind to thee, and make
Thy spirits all of comfort! Fare thee well.
Octavia: [weeping] My noble brother!
Antony: The April’s in her eyes; it is love’s spring,
And these the showers to bring it on.—Be cheerful.
Octavia: [to Octavius] Sir, look well to my husband’s house; and—
Octavius: What, Octavia?
Octavia: I’ll tell you in your ear. [She whispers]
Antony: Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue—the swan’s down feather,
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.
act 3, scene 2, lines 36–50
With all his hypocrisy in this marriage, we along with Antony are touched by his perceptiveness. Antony’s sorrow is real enough but hollow. Too torn to speak aloud, Octavia in Antony’s eyes becomes the feather of a swan that floats at full tide and can move neither up nor downstream. Octavius fights to hold back tears, doubtless for outward show, and Antony embraces him in a false farewell. Enobarbus the ironist deprecates both the sorrow of Octavius and the tears Antony summoned at the deaths of Julius Caesar and of Brutus.
Enobarbus: [aside to Agrippa] Will Caesar weep?
Agrippa: [aside to Enobarbus] He has a cloud in ’s face.
Enobarbus: [aside to Agrippa] He were the worse for that, were he a horse;
So is he, being a man.
Agrippa: [aside to Enobarbus] Why, Enobarbus,
When Antony found Julius Caesar dead,
He cried almost to roaring; and he wept
When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.
Enobarbus: [aside to Agrippa] That year indeed he was troubled with a rheum.
What willingly he did confound he wailed,
Believe’t, till I wept too.
act 3, scene 2, lines 51–59
We will see Octavia only twice after this. She is pathetic when Antony in Athens rids himself of her by sending her back to her brother. Returning to Rome the pathos augments, accompanied by the fury of Octavius Caesar:
Octavius: No, my most wrongèd sister. Cleopatra
Hath nodded him to her. He hath given his empire
Up to a whore, who now are levying
The kings o’th’earth for war. He hath assembled
Bocchus, the King of Libya; Archelaus,
Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, King
Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas;
King Malchus of Arabia; King of Pont;
Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, King
Of Comagene; Polemon and Amyntas,
The Kings of Mede and Lycaonia,
With a more larger list of scepters.
Octavia: Ay me, most wretched,
That have my heart parted betwixt two friends
That do afflict each other!
Octavius: Welcome hither.
Your letters did withhold our breaking forth
Till we perceived both how you were wrong led
And we in negligent danger.
act 3, scene 6, lines 67–84
The true accent of Octavius is heard in the cold comfort he offers to Octavia:
Cheer your heart.
Be you not troubled with the time, which drives
O’er your content these strong necessities,
But let determined things to destiny
Hold unbewailed their way.
act 3, scene 2, lines 84–88
The Roman victor rings in those phrases. He cheers only his own heart with the prospect of a total triumph. Our pleasure is in the East with Cleopatra, whose personality now expands in a continuous crescendo.
CHAPTER 6
I That Do Bring the News Made Not the Match
Antony and Cleopatra is a brilliant kaleidoscope, a montage of shifting fortunes, places, personalities, excursions into the empyrean. The Serpent of Old Nile returns in two scenes that Shakespeare subtly divides, in which Cleopatra receives with fury the news of Antony’s remarriage and then turns her cunning to meet the crisis:
[Enter a Messenger]
Cleopatra: Oh, from Italy!
Ram thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears,
That long time have been barren.
Messenger: Madam, madam—
Cleopatra: Antonio’s dead! If thou say so, villain,
Thou kill’st thy mistress; but well and free,
If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss—a hand that kings
Have lipped, and trembled kissing.
[She offers him gold, and her hand to kiss]
Messenger: First, madam, he is well.
Cleopatra: Why, there’s more gold. But sirrah, mark, we use
To say the dead are well. Bring it to that,
The gold I give thee will I melt and pour
Down thy ill-uttering throat.
act 2, scene 5, lines 23–35
Antony and Cleopatra, doubtless because of its vastness and space and length of time, depends upon messengers. Breaking bad news to Cleopatra is a very dangerous occupation. She is perfectly capable of pouring molten gold down the unhappy messenger’s throat.
Messenger: Good madam, hear me.
Cleopatra: Well, go to, I will.
But there’s no goodness in thy face, if Antony
Be free and healthful—so tart a favor
To trumpet such good tidings! If not well,
Thou shouldst come like a Fury crowned with snakes,
Not like a formal man.
Messenger: Will
’t please you hear me?
Cleopatra: I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak’st.
act 2, scene 5, lines 36–43
That monitory blow would be the least the unfortunate messenger should fear. To punish in advance has a sadistic element, yet that is a component in Cleopatra’s sexual ferocity.
Cleopatra: Yet if thou say Antony lives, is well,
Or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him,
I’ll set thee in a shower of gold and hail
Rich pearls upon thee.
Messenger: Madam, he’s well.
Cleopatra: Well said.
Messenger: And friends with Caesar.
Cleopatra: Thou’rt an honest man.
Messenger: Caesar and he are greater friends than ever.
Cleopatra: Make thee a fortune from me.
Messenger: But yet, madam—
Cleopatra: I do not like ‘But yet’; it does allay
The good precedence. Fie upon ‘But yet’!
‘But yet’ is as a jailer to bring forth
Some monstrous malefactor. Prithee, friend,
Pour out the pack of matter to mine ear,
The good and bad together. He’s friends with Caesar,
In state of health, thou say’st, and, thou sayst, free.
Messenger: Free, madam? No, I made no such report.
He’s bound unto Octavia.
Cleopatra: For what good turn?
Messenger: For the best turn i’th’ bed.
act 2, scene 5, lines 44–60
Blurting out the truth, he risks his life, and probably knows it.
Cleopatra: I am pale, Charmian.
Messenger: Madam, he’s married to Octavia.
Cleopatra: The most infectious pestilence upon thee!
[Strikes him down]
Messenger: Good madam, patience.
Cleopatra: What say you? [Strikes him]
Hence,
Horrible villain, or I’ll spurn thine eyes
Like balls before me! I’ll unhair thy head!
[She hales him up and down]
Thou shalt be whipped with wire and stewed in brine,
Smarting in ling’ring pickle!
Messenger: Gracious madam,
I that do bring the news made not the match.