OPPOSITIONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
OPPOSITIONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra is aptly named, not just because the play centers around these two characters, but also because it encompasses the play's fixation on the lovers' oppositional relationship. On the surface level, Antony embodies the Roman ideals of a good, noble man, while Cleopatra represents the hyper-sexualized, dangerous Eastern woman. However, upon further examination both Antony and Cleopatra display complicated internal conflicts that effectively reverse these polar positions repeatedly throughout the play. In this way, the opposition between Antony and Cleopatra that exists on a simple, interpersonal level is echoed by more complicated, internal conflicts within each of these characters on a deeper, more individual level. The tension between the title characters creates the love that draws them together at the same time as it drives them further apart, thus establishing yet another layer of antagonistic relationships within the play. The importance of these oppositional relationships is underlined most starkly in Act II.2. In particular Enobarbus' speech describing Cleopatra's beauty functions as one of the greatest statements of the play's conflicting themes. This speech reflects the antagonistic nature of the play's central relationships through the invocation of equivalent antagonistic relationships between the violent descriptors used to depict Cleopatra.
Throughout the play, Shakespeare establishes a love-hate relationship between Antony and Cleopatra. In doing so, there are times when the lovers are characterized as stark opposites of each other as well as instances where these characterizations are reversed. The Romans, represented by Caesar, define Antony as a strong, rational Roman general who has unwillingly been seduced by a vile Egyptian temptress. However, throughout the play, Antony struggles to live up to this reputation. As audience members, we, like the Romans, begin the play thinking of Antony as a victorious Roman general, not as Cleopatra's lover. This characterization is immediately attacked in the play's opening scene. Here, Antony abandons the cold, calculating rationalism of warfare and declares that he will love Cleopatra through all obstacles, even if that means letting, "Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch/ Of the ranged empire fall!" (Antony and Cleopatra, I, 1, lines XXXV-XXXVI). Antony's declaration effectively rejects his duties for the state and embraces Cleopatra's passion.
However, in the very next scene Antony contradicts these unexpected sentiments by expressing guilt over neglecting his stately duties. Throughout the remainder of the play, Antony vacillates between his passion for Cleopatra and his love for the Roman Empire. Eventually, he commits suicide to save his own honor and subsequently clings to the Roman rules for proper male behavior. However, not even the taking of his own life can mask his fascination with Cleopatra's passion and sensuality. In the end he may have saved his honor, yet his internal struggles throughout the play demonstrate the internal battles that raged within him.
Even greater oppositional relationships exist within Cleopatra. She can be charming and seductive, she can be domineering, rude and abusive or she can be weak and dependent. Her behavior at any given moment is either reflective of her irrational passionate true feelings or of her manipulative, more rational acting skills. Due to her consummate acting abilities, it is incredibly difficult to determine when Cleopatra's behaviors stem from an authentic source. Is she a beautiful goddess or a dangerous whore, a manipulative, power-hungry ruler or a woman deeply in love? This ambiguity effectively establishes Cleopatra's character as an indefinable ...
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Even greater oppositional relationships exist within Cleopatra. She can be charming and seductive, she can be domineering, rude and abusive or she can be weak and dependent. Her behavior at any given moment is either reflective of her irrational passionate true feelings or of her manipulative, more rational acting skills. Due to her consummate acting abilities, it is incredibly difficult to determine when Cleopatra's behaviors stem from an authentic source. Is she a beautiful goddess or a dangerous whore, a manipulative, power-hungry ruler or a woman deeply in love? This ambiguity effectively establishes Cleopatra's character as an indefinable mix of opposing relationships.
At the same time, the Romans do not hesitate to characterize Cleopatra in purely one-dimensional terms. To them, she represents dangerous Eastern sensibilities that threaten to undermine the very patriarchal, dominant structure that has won them the world. Subsequently, they can see her only in sexualized terms. On the surface level, even Enobarbus' overtly praising speech exemplifies this Roman sexualized view of Cleopatra. Though he deifies her, he does so in strictly physical terms. However, further investigation reveals a second, more conflicted layer of meaning entwined within his language. This meaning reflects the oppositional relationship between Antony and Cleopatra as well as between the worldviews they represent and within their individual charaters.
Enobarbus inadvertently invokes such antagonistic relationships through the use of violent language and imagery. He begins his speech by describing Cleopatra's throne as being "burnished" and as "burning" on the water (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCI-CCII). He goes on to describe the poop deck as being "beaten gold" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, line CCII). In these lines, Enobarbus holds Cleopatra up for praise by describing her in the context of a brilliant throne, yet he counterbalances these praises by choosing three words that create violent imagery. She may sit atop a shining barge, but the aesthetic beauty of this throne is so overwhelmingly powerful that it becomes painful to endure the sight of it. Beauty becomes its very opposite, unbearable ugliness. In this way, Enobarbus establishes an oppositional relationship within his own exaggerated diction.
He continues to do so as he further paints a picture of Cleopatra's ship, describing the sails as being "so perfumed that/The winds were lovesick with them" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCIII-CCIV). The purple sails and perfume establish Cleopatra's ship (and thus, Cleopatra herself) as being enchanting, seductive and royal. Yet, as with the last lines, her attractiveness becomes dangerous, causing the winds to not just fall in love with her sails but to also go so far as to become lovesick because of them. As in Antony and Cleopatra's broader relationship within the play, where love is established, so is psychological pain.
These images of pain continue along with the speech: "The oars were silver,/ Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke and made/The water which they beat to follow faster,/As amorous of their strokes" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCIV-CCVII). At first glance, Enobarbus seemly continues to create a magical feel to the scene by describing the oars as being magically silver. This mysticism reaches higher levels when the oars complete an anthropomorphosis, dancing to the tune of flutes. However, these fanciful descriptions are quickly countered by the violent word "beat" and the juxtaposition of the word "amorous" soon after. Here again love, even between inanimate objects, is associated with pain and gratuitous violence.
This oppositional and violent theme continues with descriptions of Cleopatra. Enobarbus claims, "For her own person,/ It beggared all description" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCVII-CCVIII). In the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "beggared" is defined as being "reduced to destitution or impoverished" (OED). This gives the word a violent and dramatic feel. Enobarbus could easily use a more generic term of praise and say something to the degree of, "Cleopatra's beauty was beyond words", yet instead he chooses a distinctly charged word. Cleopatra's domineering mystique seems to strip description of its power, rather than simply deny it.
However, the violence of her beauty is counteracted by the sheer divine power of her surroundings. She lies "In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue/ O'erpicturing that Venus where we see/ The fancy outwork nature" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCVIII-CCXI). Importantly, Enobarbus references Venus, the Roman goddess of beauty and sensual love. Venus, like Cleopatra, can be easily associated with pure love and pure lust. Both female figures represent these same oppositional sexual forces. Furthermore, the picture of this goddess is so astounding that it "outworks nature". Enobarbus effectively deifies Cleopatra by comparing her surroundings to those of a goddess who stands above nature.
He continues this deification by describing the boys that fan her as being pretty dimpled Cupids. However, he once again counteracts the role of the Cupids by saying that the wind they created, "did seem/ To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,/ And what they undid did" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCXI-CCXIV). The god-like Cupids that surround her create heat in the very cheeks they cool. They establish a sensuality and beauty by "undoing what they do". Similarly, the beauty of Cleopatra and Antony's relationship stems out of Cleopatra's beauty, yet it is the violent passion within this beauty that eventually destroys the relationship. In addition, Enobarbus' use of the phrase "undid did" works on a further, self-reflective level within the rules of his speech, where every description of beauty is tempered with an equal invocation of violence.
Enobarbus then moves into even greater levels of overly stated admiration for Cleopatra's beauty before counteracting such claims with equal levels of intimidation. He further compares her to an other-worldly creature by claiming that her gentlewomen are mermaids descended from the sea-god Nereus. These mermaids control the ship's destiny, surrounding the already God-like Cleopatra with a veil of even greater mysticism. This veil is perpetuated by the "strange invisible perfume" that "hits the sense/ Of the adjacent wharfs" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCXXII-CCXXIII). These lines reinstate the speech's violent theme by using the term "hits". This word instills the perfume with an air of aggressiveness. Furthermore, there is something unsettling about the invisibility of this "strange" perfume. Both within the general world of the play and within Enobarbus' speech a great deal of importance is placed on the power of sensual images. Because the Romans define Cleopatra through visual objectification, the perfume's absence of sight threatens Roman power against her.
Perhaps as a result of the violence Cleopatra instigates through deprivation, Enobarbus claims that "the city cast/ Her people out upon her" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCXXIII-CCXXIV). Though the people ostensibly "cast" themselves "upon her" in order to view her awe-striking beauty, there is once again violence in the way that the line is phrased, most notably in the word "cast" and in the phrase "out upon her". It is as if the people have been thrust upon an unwilling goddess. Cleopatra's beauty once again proves to be a conflicting force, drawing crowds to her side but doing so in a violent, ugly manner. In addition, the crowds abandon Antony to view Cleopatra, an action that has "made a gap in nature" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCXXVIII). This phrase is as ambiguous as the speech that precedes it, stating Cleopatra's divine position outside of nature at the same time as it implies the evils of such a position.
In this way, Enobarbus' speech aptly examines Cleopatra's oppositional and often contradictory nature as well as the conflicting worshipful and violent reactions that her beauty creates. However, at this point in the speech, Enobarbus begins to speak more directly about Antony and Cleopatra's power struggles, even as he masks such battles in fanciful language. Antony is abandoned in the marketplace because the people would rather observe Cleopatra. In addition, when Antony asks Cleopatra to join him for dinner, she counters his proposal with an invite of her own. In these matters of heart and lust, Cleopatra's feminine wiles triumph over Antony's male Roman sense of proper behavior. He must submit to Cleopatra's will because he is "courteous" and has never said "no" to a woman's request (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCXXXII-CCXXXIII). In caving in to Cleopatra's demands he submits to the very passions that he has repressed as a Roman general and that he longs to explore. At the same time, the audience knows that Antony remains a strong, Roman man, and will soon fight against his submission to Cleopatra's will by leaving Egypt and marrying Octavia. In fact, Antony's reassertion of power occurs earlier in Act II.2, only moments before Enobarbus' delivers his speech. In this way, even the scene itself is set up in a dichotomous manner, first establishing Antony's reaffirmed Roman manhood and then countering this re-definition with descriptions of his powerlessness against his Egyptian lover. Therefore, both Enobarbus' description of these early interactions between the protagonists as well as broader knowledge of Antony's behaviors effectively establishes Antony and Cleopatra's tussle for power.
These battles continue even as Enobarbus closes his speech by describing Cleopatra's acting skills. He claims that "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/ Her infinite variety. Other women cloy/ The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry/ Where she most satisfies" (Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, lines CCXLVI-CCXLIX). These final lines encompass the underlying and understated sentiment of the entire speech. Cleopatra's beauty and the passions it sparks only satisfy as much hunger as they create. Just like the fanning cupids that surround her, she "undoes" what she does.
Throughout his speech, Enobarbus describes Cleopatra in similar oppositional terms. Where she is beautiful she is violently ugly; where she satisfies she creates hunger; where she does she undoes. Cleopatra's conflicting nature becomes the basis for defining Antony and Cleopatra's equally oppositional relationship. The battles within her reflect Antony's personal struggles, as well as the greater wars within their relationship. Thus, the dualities within Enobarbus' speech reflect the oppositional relationships both within the play as a whole and within the greater context of Act II.ii. Antony and Cleopatra struggle to define themselves on intra- and inter-personal levels as well as within the greater societal sphere. Ultimately, they can never fully resolve the polar oppositions that exist both within and between them. This results in the physical and emotional violence that is both reflected and predicted in Enobarbus' speech.