Cleopatra

by Harold Bloom

  The dialogue between Cleopatra and Thidias, Octavius Caesar’s ambassador, shows the Egyptian queen at her insidious power of dissembling:

  Cleopatra:     Caesar’s will?

  Thidias: Hear it apart.

  Cleopatra:     None but friends. Say boldly.

  Thidias: So haply are they friends to Antony.

  Enobarbus: He needs as many, sir, as Caesar has,

  Or needs not us. If Caesar please, our master

  Will leap to be his friend. For us, you know

  Whose he is we are, and that is Caesar’s.

  Thidias:              So.

  Thus then, thou most renowned: Caesar entreats

  Not to consider in what case thou stand’st

  Further than he is Caesar.

  Cleopatra:      Go on: right royal.

  Thidias: He knows that you embrace not Antony

  As you did love, but as you feared him.

  Cleopatra:           Oh!

  Thidias: The scars upon your honor therefore he

  Does pity, as constrainèd blemishes,

  Not as deserved.

  Cleopatra:  He is a god and knows

  What is most right. Mine honor was not yielded,

  But conquered merely.

  Enobarbus: [aside]  To be sure of that,

  I will ask Antony. Sir, sir, thou art so leaky

  That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for

  Thy dearest quit thee.         [Exit Enobarbus]

  Thidias:      Shall I say to Caesar

  What you require of him? For he partly begs

  To be desired to give. It much would please him

  That of his fortunes you should make a staff

  To lean upon; but it would warm his spirits

  To hear from me you had left Antony

  And put yourself under his shroud,

  The universal landlord.

  Cleopatra:     What’s your name?

  Thidias: My name is Thidias.

  Cleopatra:       Most kind messenger,

  Say to great Caesar this in deputation:

  I kiss his conquering hand. Tell him I am prompt

  To lay my crown at ’s feet, and there to kneel

  Tell him from his all-obeying breath I hear

  The doom of Egypt.

  act 3, scene 13, lines 46–78

  There is dark irony in the suggestion by Thidias that the Egyptian queen abandon Antony and seek shelter under the shroud of the universal landlord, who is both Octavius and death. By the doom of Egypt she means her destiny yet ironically that is death. In the face of fortune at war with wisdom, the wise survivor will desire whatever fortune will grant and thus the vicissitudes of experience may be tempered by sagacity.

  Thidias:       ’Tis your noblest course.

  Wisdom and fortune combating together,

  If that the former dare but what it can,

  No chance may shake it. Give me grace to lay

  My duty on your hand.         [He kisses her hand]

  Cleopatra: Your Caesar’s father oft,

  When he hath mused of taking kingdoms in,

  Bestowed his lips on that unworthy place,

  As it rained kisses.

  act 3, scene 13, lines 78–86

  Antony and Enobarbus enter to find Cleopatra allowing her hand to be kissed by the enemy emissary. What ensues is a detonation of the dying old lion:

  Antony:     Favors? By Jove that thunders!

  What art thou, fellow?

  Thidias:      One that but performs

  The bidding of the fullest man, and worthiest

  To have command obeyed.

  Enobarbus: [aside]    You will be whipped.

  Antony: [Calling for Servants]

  Approach, there!—Ah, you kite!—Now, gods and devils!

  Authority melts from me of late. When I cried ‘Ho!’,

  Like boys unto a muss kings would start forth

  And cry ‘Your will?’—Have you no ears? I am

  Antony yet.

       [Enter Servant followed by others]

  Take hence the jack and whip him.

  Enobarbus: [aside] ’Tis better playing with a lion’s whelp

  Than with an old one dying.

  act 3, scene 13, lines 86–96

  It scarcely helps the wretched Thidias that he further provokes Antony by calling Octavius the fullest man or best and most fortunate and far more worthy to be of aid. In fullest fury Antony with the one word “kite” skewers Thidias as a screech owl, a bird of prey, and Cleopatra as a whore. In the obsolete sense, muss was a game in which you threw down small objects and then scrambled for them. The outcry: “I am Antony yet” contains grief, desperation, and savagery.

  Antony:      Moon and stars!

  Whip him. Were’t twenty of the greatest tributaries

  That do acknowledge Caesar, should I find them

  So saucy with the hand of she here—what’s her name

  Since she was Cleopatra? Whip him, fellows,

  Till, like a boy you see him cringe his face

  And whine aloud for mercy. Take him hence.

  Thidias: Mark Antony—

  Antony:       Tug him away! Being whipped,

  Bring him again. This Jack of Caesar’s shall

  Bear us an errand to him.

  act 3, scene 13, lines 96–105

  He slashes at the Queen with the caustic “what’s her name / Since she was Cleopatra?” Terrible sadism is caught up in the order to whip Thidias until he contracts in pain. It is also sadistic rhetoric as Antony calls Cleopatra a boggler, shifty as a shying horse. The Herculean hero’s misery carries him to the image of his eyes seeled or blinded by the gods. They laugh at him while he struts to his self-destruction.

  Antony: You were half blasted ere I knew you. Ha?

  Have I my pillow left unpressed in Rome,

  Forborne the getting of a lawful race,

  And by a gem of women, to be abused

  By one that looks on feeders?

  Cleopatra: Good my lord—

  Antony: You have been a boggler ever.

  But when we in our viciousness grow hard—

  O misery on’t!—the wise gods seel our eyes,

  In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us

  Adore our errors, laugh at ’s while we strut

  To our confusion.

  Cleopatra:    Oh, is’t come to this?

  Antony: I found you as a morsel, cold upon

  Dead Caesar’s trencher; nay, you were a fragment

  Of Gnaeus Pompey’s, besides what hotter hours,

  Unregistered in vulgar fame, you have

  Luxuriously picked out. For I am sure,

  Though you can guess what temperance should be,

  You know not what it is.

  Cleopatra:      Wherefore is this?

  Antony: To let a fellow that will take rewards

  And say ‘God quit you!’ be familiar with

  My playfellow, your hand, this kingly seal

  And plighter of high hearts! Oh, that I were

  Upon the hill of Basan, to outroar

  The hornèd herd! For I have savage cause,

  And to proclaim it civilly were like

  A haltered neck which does the hangman thank

  For being yare about him.

  act 3, scene 13, lines 106–33

  His contempt for the Egyptian queen hardly could go beyond the nastiness of calling her a scrap of meat cold upon Julius Caesar’s platter and the leftover of Pompey’s gorging. Her bewilderment is uncharacteristic but overwhelming. With his gift for salient anachronism, Shakespeare invokes the great bulls of Bashan.

  Many young bulls have compassed me: mighty bulls of Bashan have closed me about.


  They gape upon me with their mouths, as a ramping and roaring lion.

  Psalm 22:12–13, Geneva Bible

  The implication is that Antony sees himself as a horned beast or cuckold. He roars civility away lest he be as one, about to be hanged, who thanks the hangman for being handy and quick. Shakespeare entertained no illusions about Antony. Plutarch, who hated Antony, nevertheless seems accurate enough in his depiction of Roman savagery. The historical Mark Antony was a bloodthirsty butcher. If he differed at all from the cold and calculating Octavius Caesar, it was in passion, hedonistic excess, and the relish he tasted in sadism. Anyone who reads Cicero, as I do frequently, is horrified that the magnificent orator, philosopher, and prose stylist was slaughtered by Antony’s soldiers in revenge for the speeches in which he had excoriated their leader. Mark Antony rejoiced in displaying the severed head and hands of Cicero in the Roman Forum.

  You can of course observe that Shakespeare’s Antony is after all his own creation. Capacious as always, Shakespeare shows us more than enough to alienate us from both Antony and Cleopatra, but that is not his way. They do not move us either to empathy or to sympathy. And yet their imaginative largeness wounds our consciousness. Falstaff beguiles me to the heart of loss. I feel within me the anguish of his rejection by Hal. And how can one not lament the diminishment of joy and vitality when we move from the two parts of Henry IV to the brilliant yet hollow Henry V?

  Shakespeare at his strongest still seems beyond our apprehension. I rarely can find words precise enough to surmise his stance in regard to his major protagonists. I come to assume he shares the appreciation of their high style of speech and existence he induces in us. They live and move and have their being in realms touching the limits of the human. Antony is a Bacchus or Dionysus as well as a Hercules. The Egyptian Dionysus was Osiris and Antony dies the death of Hercules scattered into the sparagmos of Dionysus-Osiris. Isis was the Egyptian Aphrodite or Venus, a role made flesh in Cleopatra. She gathers the limbs of Osiris for his rebirth. Though Cleopatra finally has a vision of a reunion with Antony in the Elysian Fields as she dies, are we convinced?

  For a lifetime I have pondered Shakespeare’s perspectivism and wonder if ever I can comprehend it. His incredible sweep and agile otherseeing (to call it that) always return me to the realization I cannot get outside of him. All of us repose within his benign containment. The miracle of his Rosalind in As You Like It is that her clarity and normative temperament happily prevent us from any ironic perspective we might seek to gain power over her. She is herself the compass of her world.

  It is palpable that Shakespeare affords us many ironic perspectives in regard to Cleopatra and Antony. If we can see what they cannot, that privilege does not diminish their shared appreciation of each other. Is that mutual esteem a sublime form of love or is it two opulent grandees seeking their reflections in the eyes of the other?

  Except for Shakespeare and Plato, the poet who best knew the essence of love was Shelley:

  The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.

  “On Love”

  By that High Romantic test we would have to say that Cleopatra loves Cleopatra and Antony loves Antony. But who can say of anyone that they are not in love? Cleopatra and Antony betray each other, return, and always Cleopatra is tempted to betray again. She is a queen whose throne is in jeopardy. Reality abandons him. From grandeur he is reduced to grandiosity.

  Yet they never lose their supreme interest for us. Shakespeare’s endless art heaps wonder upon wonder. Personality triumphs in Falstaff and Cleopatra. If character is fate, then in a harsh sense there can be no accidents. Personalities suffer accidents; characters endure fate.

  The test for a strong personality is to surmount accidents. Antony falls away from personality and meets the fate inherent in his character. Falstaff is broken, but only after his marvelous personality dissipates. Cleopatra, perhaps the strongest of all Shakespeare’s personalities, dies upward into a sublime beyond as Hamlet did. Yet he rests in silence. Cleopatra’s apotheosis achieves divinity. The water and soil of the Nile and Egypt are purged. She becomes fire and air.

  Only Shakespeare could convince us that she does not vanish into Isis the mystery. She is Cleopatra still. That rare spirit of amorous dalliance is also the difference that enduring personality enhances between the Egyptian queen and her lost Antony. She knows not loss nor the death of illusion. For her, desire can never fail.

  The contrast with Antony hardly could be greater. His courage transmutes into wounded desperation. One of his low points is the message he tells the wretched Thidias to deliver to Octavius:

  Antony:       Get thee back to Caesar.

  Tell him thy entertainment. Look thou say

  He makes me angry with him; for he seems

  Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am,

  Not what he knew I was. He makes me angry,

  And at this time most easy ’tis to do’t,

  When my good stars, that were my former guides,

  Have empty left their orbs and shot their fires

  Into th’abysm of hell. If he mislike

  My speech and what is done, tell him he has

  Hipparchus, my enfranchèd bondman, whom

  He may at pleasure whip, or hang, or torture,

  As he shall like, to quit me. Urge it thou.

  Hence with thy stripes, begone!

  Cleopatra:         Have you done yet?

  Antony: Alack, our terrene moon is now eclipsed,

  And it portends alone the fall of Antony.

  Cleopatra: I must stay his time.

  Antony: To flatter Caesar, would you mingle eyes

  With one that ties his points?

  Cleopatra:        Not know me yet?

  Antony: Coldhearted toward me?

  act 3, scene 13, lines 142–61

  It is sorrowful to call Antony ignoble, but what else can we say when he suggests that Octavian requite the suffering of Thidias by whipping, hanging, torturing, or what you will, one Hipparchus, Antony’s freedman who was going over to the enemy. The brutality mixes with the pitiful lament that his stars have shot their fires into the abyss. Cleopatra, patiently awaiting the ebbing of his fury, listens to his double plaint that the eclipsed moon foretells demise and that Isis, goddess of the moon, as Cleopatra has withdrawn her love for him.

  Her protestations satisfy him and enhance his lust for the final battle:

  Antony: I will be treble-sinewed, hearted, breathed,

  And fight maliciously. For when mine hours

  Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives

  Of me for jests; but now, I’ll set my teeth

  And send to darkness all that stop me. 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.

  Cleopatra:        It is my birthday.

  I had thought t’have held it poor, but since my lord

  Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.

  Antony: We will yet do well.

  Cleopatra: [to Charmian and attendants] Call all his noble captains to my lord.

  Antony: Do so. We’ll speak to them, and tonight I’ll force

  The wine peep through their scars. Come on, my queen,

  There’s sap in’t yet. The next time I do fight

  I’ll make Death love me, for I will contend

  Even with his pestilent scythe.

  act 3, scene 13, lines 181–97

  His call for another festive night is tempered by the beautiful: “All my sad captains.” It is Cleopatra’s birthday and the sap of life rises again in Antony. We hear in Enobarbus the accents of farewell:

  Now he’ll outstare the lightning. To be furious

  Is to be frighted ou
t of fear, and in that mood

  The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still

  A diminution in our captain’s brain

  Restores his heart. When valor preys on reason,

  It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek

  Some way to leave him.

  act 3, scene 13, lines 198–204

  Ironic old warrior as he is, Enobarbus rightly knows that reasonable courage in battle was the foundation of Antony’s past glory. The fresh heart of the great captain is purchased at the cost of a diminishment in mind. Most loyal of Antony’s followers, he now despairs and resolves on desertion. The dying music of Antony’s glory reverberates in this abandonment.

  CHAPTER 9

  The God Hercules Withdraws

  Approaching his end, Antony moves us through his pathos, if perhaps a touch too self-pitying:

  Antony: Well, my good fellows, wait on me tonight;

  Scant not my cups, and make as much of me

  As when mine empire was your fellow too,

  And suffered my command.

  Cleopatra: [aside to Enobarbus] What does he mean?

  Enobarbus: [aside to Cleopatra]

  To make his followers weep.

  Antony:        Tend me tonight;

  May be it is the period of your duty.

  Haply you shall not see me more, or if,

  A mangled shadow. Perchance tomorrow

  You’ll serve another master. I look on you

  As one that takes his leave. Mine honest friends,

  I turn you not away, but, like a master

  Married to your good service, stay till death.

  Tend me tonight two hours, I ask no more,

  And the gods yield you for’t!

  Enobarbus:       What mean you, sir,

  To give them this discomfort? Look, they weep,

  And I, an ass, am onion-eyed. For shame,

  Transform us not to women.

  Antony:        Ho, ho, ho!

  Now the witch take me if I meant it thus!

  Grace grow where those drops fall! My hearty friends,

  You take me in too dolorous a sense,

  For I spake to you for your comfort, did desire you

  To burn this night with torches. Know, my hearts,