Antony and Cleopatra: A one sided love story?
Antony and Cleopatra’s love was strange. In many ways it was the most intense, passionate and interesting romantic story to come out of the ancient world. But, at the same time it was also a love built upon deceit and ulterior motives. Shakespeare reveals through his play that their love was strong but not symmetrical. There are scenes where both Antony and Cleopatra used their love for one another, for political or personal gain. Although the difference is that Antony sacrificed his country for Cleopatra and only regretted his actions once he realized he was betrayed. Cleopatra meanwhile used Antony’s infatuation with her as a way to feed her self esteem, gain political power, and eventually give birth to a strong male heir. Cleopatra was quick to exchange sex and company with a foreigner, to gain a shield against the assertive Octavius. While often subject to the throngs of physical passion with Antony, she hardly ever expresses love, without some kind of string attached. Antony meanwhile, turned his back on his fellow Romans, to tend to the love that he was feeling for Cleopatra. Antony’s love-blinded following of Cleopatra to Egypt, eventually led to his death, and the end of a very one sided, but powerful relationship. Shakespeare focuses on this disparity in their relationship greatly within the text, to display a complex love story, and explain the political motives of the rulers of the Roman republic.
Cleopatra’s beauty and exoticiness basically intoxicated Antony. In the first scene, upon hearing that a message arrived from Rome, he’s quick to dismiss it and demand that the world admit what a perfect couple Cleopatra and him are, with much hyperbole. “Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall. Here is my space.” “On pain of punishment, the world to weet. We stand up peerless.” Cleopatra however instantly mutters under her breath plans to deceive him. “I’ll seem the fool I am not. Antony will be himself.” Cleopatra uses her beguiling beauty to influence Antony and his political decisions. She later tells her chairman that it would be foolish not to contradict Antony.
When Antony wants to return to Rome to tend to the funeral of his dead wife Fulvia, Cleopatra guilt trips him into confesses that his heart will remain in Egypt. “Why should I think you can be mine, and true — Though you in swearing shake the thronèd gods — Who have been false to Fulvia?” Antony can’t help but feel like he needs to excuse his departure, a move that would be obvious for any other Roman to a foreign queen. He professes his love for her yet again, not moments after learning of his wife’s demise, “The strong necessity of time commands. Our services awhile, but my full heart. Remains in use with you.” After succumbing to Cleopatra’s claims of a “false love,” Anthony then puts himself in Cleopatra’s complete control by putting his departure under the restrictions of her wishes. “Quarrel no more, but be prepared to know. The purposes I bear, which are or cease. As you shall give th’ advice. By the fire. That quickens Nilus’ slime, I go from hence. Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war. As thou affects.” Antony ends up leaving for Rome reluctantly, but not without his love for Cleopatra affirmed and the soothing supportive words still embedded in his memory. “Let us go. Come. Our separation so abides and flies. That thou, residing here, goes yet with me, And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee. Away!”
Now it’s worth noting that Cleopatra does hold some degree of affection for Antony. She shows it frequently through her genuine passion when they’re embraced, as well as the conversations she has with her chairman. When she’s away from Antony she calls for a drug that would put her into a deep sleep. “That I might sleep out this great gap of time. My Antony is away” Cleopatra certainly misses her lover, but it seems that Cleopatra isn’t in love with Anthony, but rather just in love with, well men in general. While she thinks out loud to her chairman about what she envisions Antony doing, she mentions two former lovers in her second breath. “Caesar with your broad forehead, when you were alive, I was the perfect young consort for a king. And powerful Pompey used to stare at me as if he were frozen in time.” Cleopatra certainly cares about Antony, but not much more than she cares about herself, sex and gaining power. She does hold Antony in a higher regard than her former lovers Caesar and Pompey, and snaps at her chairman when she says, “splendid Caesar.” “By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth, If thou with Caesar paragon again, My man of men.” Cleopatra shows instances of genuine love in these scenes, but her ulterior motives aren’t quite made clear yet.
In Rome, Antony agrees to marry Octavia, but not out of any romantic desire. Antony simply wants to develop closer ties and stronger trust with Caesar, and is still very much thinking of Cleopatra and how she’ll take the news of his new marriage. Enobarbus sees that the marriage is a sham, and predicts that because of Antony’s love for Cleopatra, his union with Octavia won’t last. “When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart upon the river of Cydnus.” Enobarbus then goes on to say that Antony will never leave Cleopatra and that her age won’t ever wither her. How could Octavia compete for Antony’s heart?
According to those closest to him, Antony is completely blinded with love for Cleopatra. However, Cleopatra, who recounts putting a dress on Antony and donning his armor and sword, is focused on leadership. When she finds out about Antony’s new union with Octavia she reacts violently, but not completely out of romantic jealousy. Cleopatra is more jealous of the fact that Antony might think Octavia is more beautiful than her. Cleopatra is also angry that Antony married Octavia because more political power goes to Caesar’s family instead of hers.
Antony agrees to marry Octavia because he wants to strengthen his hold on the empire and escape Egyptian “dotage” but he still can’t rid himself of the obsession he has for Cleopatra. The paradoxical nature of Antony’s infatuation is illustrated well in the following lines. “His captain’s heart,Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst. The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper, And is become the bellows and the fan. To cool a gipsy’s lust.” Evidence that Antony’s marriage with Octavia is built soley on formalities is illustrated when Antony calls his love for Cleopatra as “poison’d hours,” and Enobarbus saying, “. . if you borrow one another’s love for the instant, you may, when you hear no more words of Pompey, return it again: you shall have time to wrangle in when you have nothing else to do.” Antony is clearly in love with Cleopatra, but is having problems abandoning his Roman image to fully dedicate himself to it.
Antony and Cleopatra lie brilliantly and passionately with one another. They are caught up in physical passions, but very much are following the ambitions of their respective lands, Rome and Egypt. It’s very clear that in order for their love to have a future, one of them must abandon their world. Antony throughout the play grapples with his conflict between his duties to Rome and his love for Cleopatra. However Cleopatra makes it clear that their love, while great, is simply a means to an end. At the end of the Battle of Actium, it’s apparent that Cleopatra, while fleeing the battlefield, cares more about Egypt and her nobility, than her romance with Antony. Her fleeing ships served as a symbol for Cleopatra’s changeability and wavering sentiments towards Antony. After feeling betrayed by his love, the love that he sacrificed his status, his army and his country for, Antony attempts to gather what little honor he has left, through the act of suicide. Antony gives up on Cleopatra after the Battle of Actium, and decides that he wants to be a Roman again. “If I lose my honor, / I lose myself. Better I were not yours / Than yours so branchless.” He takes his own life to restore the braveness and valiance of his former, Roman self.
Cleopatra, throughout the play is cast as a gipsy, slave, Egyptian dish, whore and wrangling queen. Shakespeare wanted us to look at her character though a deceptive lens. Cleopatra uses her exoticness and sexaulity as a tempting weapon. Enobarbus even said that the queen did not walk through the streets, but rather, “Hop[ped] forty paces . . . And having lost her breath, she spoke and panted, That she did make defect perfection,And breathless, pour breath forth.” Cleopatra is a complex woman, full of the perfect combination of all things, beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice. Her romance with Antony is an attempt to preserve this image and protect her from Caesar who just wants to capture her, parade her through the streets and reduce her into simply a whore. Cleopatra’s goals throughout the play is to prevent Caesar from stripping her political power and personal role in society to nothing more than an attraction for Romans. To do this, the “love” that she claims to have for Antony needs to be less intimate and more public. Cleopatra wants the world to know of their relationship, which seems more like a power move, and less like a expression of affection. When Antony expresses his initial feelings of love, Cleopatra instantly wants to put a measure on it. “If it be love indeed, tell me how much. I’ll set a bourn how far to be beloved.”
Antony and Cleopatra’s union is not your typical love story. They both have their reasons for loving one another, but most seem to be tied to some political desire. While it can be argued that Antony initially was fueled by intense and genuine feelings of love for Cleopatra, he still found it hard to abandon his Roman identity for it. When it came down to it, Antony chose Rome, by taking his own life in a way that’s Roman, instead of fleeing with Cleopatra. Cleopatra on the other hand, wanted their love to take the main stage in the public arena. By linking their love to a claim of a “new heaven and new earth,” Cleopatra merged private intimacies and emotions with politics and affairs of state. In order for their love to mean something, everyone in the world had to see it. Her reasons for maintaining a romance with Antony were fueled simply by personal and political security and ambition. After all, Antony wasn’t the first Roman she seduced to gain influence. Their love was not symmetrical and both had different degrees of passion and alternative motives. While Antony killed himself to both preserve his Roman honor and see Cleopatra in the after-life, Cleopatra killed herself solely to escape the fate of Caesar turning her into a war trophy.
