He is never able to reconcile the two, and their fundamental incompatibility are emphasized by the commentary provided by Philo and Demetrius. When Antony and Cleopatra appear before us, they are beautiful in their excess. They are a grand, godlike couple, a handsome Roman general and a magnificent queen, playful and exuberant, and conscious of their glamour. Youth is not part of their glamour; both are middle-aged. Their beauty is one of ripeness and maturity, and Antony revels in his Egyptian life as rest from a lifetime of fighting wars. Antony proudly proclaims, "We stand up peerless" (1.1.39), and within a certain realm he's right. But the world where they stand up peerless is a different one that Rome's world of duty, war, and ambition. The couple's beautiful language and delight in one another make no great impression on Philo and Demetrius, who can't understand Antony's shirking of his duties.
Scene Two contrasts the incredible gaiety and liveliness of Cleopatra's court with a dour, though not humorless, Soothsayer. The play touches on the theme of fate for the first time here. Playfully seeking some kind of entertainment from the Soothsayer, the servants of Cleopatra make bawdy jokes and tease each other, even as the Soothsayer, in words whose meaning only becomes clear later, foretells the maids' deaths. The gay and frivolous world of Cleopatra's palace seems an unfit place to speak of death, and this scene drives home how grim historical necessity will put an end to this Eastern world of fun and play.
The beginning of that process follows immediately. As the servants and Cleopatra exit, Antony enters with messengers and finally hears the news he has been avoiding. Antony sees the price of his neglect of his duties, and he is immediately remorseful, owning up to his faults and encouraging the messenger to tell him all bad news without fear. This scene makes an interesting juxtaposition with later scenes (2.5 and 3.3) where Cleopatra takes bad news out on the messenger. One of Antony's most outstanding qualities is his capacity for remorse. His sincere emotional response to his own failures is in marked contrast to Octavius' detached machinations. Antony's remorse leads, at least temporarily, to renewed resolve.
Enobarbus' response to Anthony's new resolve is cynical, cutting, and strangely light considering the gravity of the news. He seems to mock Cleopatra's intense emotions, warning of what she'll do when she hears news of Antony's departure: "I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment" (1.2.143-4). Yet he defends her, with an undetermined degree of irony, from the charge of insincerity. His lightness leaves much open to the actor's interpretation: does he believe Cleopatra's sincerity, or is he speaking with deep irony? His response to Fulvia's death is strangely light: although at first he seems shocked (Antony needs to tell him the news three times), he quickly becomes cynical, telling Antony that Fulvia's death would only be sad if there were no other women left on earth. While this might be a real bit of misogyny on Enobarbus' part, it also refers to Antony's relationship with Cleopatra. He mocks Antony a few lines later, saying with sly innuendo that though the business in Rome cannot do without him, the sexual business he has started with Cleopatra can't do without him either. Enobarbus speaks in prose, and his talk with Antony is bold and plain. Their familiarity with each other shows a relationship not between master and subject, but between two soldiers and old friends, even if Antony is his superior. That kind of equality is part of Rome's tradition of citizenship, as well as a function of military service together, not possible to the same degree between Cleopatra and one of her subjects.
The next scene (1.3) gives amazing characterization of Cleopatra: "If you find him [Antony] sad, / Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report / That I am sudden sick" (1.3.3-5). Cleopatra's emotions are often sincere, but she also knows how to use emotion for her own ends. Her relationship with Antony has something of the feeling of a game to it. She seeks to play him in a way that will keep him hers, and although she decries falseness in a man sees nothing wrong with keeping Antony on his toes with a few well-placed lies. Proclaiming she is faint several times, she goes through emotional changes at a dizzying speed: first she rails against Antony, saying she should never have trusted a man who was so faithless to his wife; then she hears news of Fulvia's death and says that as Antony seems unmoved by the loss of Fulvia, so will he be unmoved by the loss of Cleopatra; then she tells Antony to forgive her, and to be on his way, with her hopes for his success. Note that Cleopatra sees every bit of news only in terms of how it relates to her. Antony's departure, for reasons of vital importance to the empire, is seen as faithlessness to his love. Fulvia's death is evaluated not as news of death, but as a sign of the faithlessness of Antony's heart. Yet Cleopatra also recognizes Antony's duty, and in the end asks forgiveness for her ways. She lets him go, though not without commenting on her own (as she tells it) pitiful status: "Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly, / And all the gods go with you. Upon your sword / Sit laurel victory, and smooth success / Be strewed before your feet!" (1.3.98-101). Even as she relinquishes hold and asks forgiveness for her "becomings" (1.1.96), which means her graces but suggests the rapid changes of her emotional state, she cannot help but toss in a self-pitying note to elicit some response from Antony. Cleopatra has lived her life as the center of attention, as if life is a play in which she is the star. For the queen, even love has an element of performance, and Antony must proclaim his love to satisfy her.
Summary:
Scene Four. Caesar's house, in Rome. Octavius and Lepidus, followed by their train, discuss Antony. While Lepidus is inclined to defend Antony, Octavius condemns Antony's neglect of his duties. A messenger brings news that Sextus Pompeius' power by sea grows only greater. Lepidus and Octavius go their separate ways, to evaluate their capabilities before meeting tomorrow to discuss how to battle Pompey.
Scene Five. Cleopatra, attended by Charmian, Iras, and Mardian, languishes without Antony. Alexas arrives with news from Antony, assuring her of his continued devotion and that his martial endeavors will make her mistress of the East. Cleopatra seems delighted to have news from her lover, and asks Charmian if ever she loved Caesar so. When Charmian teases her mistress, saying that once Julius Caesar was considered to be a paragon of men, Cleopatra replies that those were "salad days," when she was green, and therefore younger and knew less.
Analysis:
In scenes three through five, we leap from Egypt to Rome to Egypt again. The concerns in these two places could not be more different. Note that when Romans speak to each other, the concern is over empire, duty, and politics. The theme of Rome versus Egypt becomes clear here. Octavius and Lepidus exhibit none of the sense of play seen in Egypt, where even servants play along wittily with their masters. Both scenes four and five show characters discussing Antony. Octavius and Lepidus evaluate him as a soldier, and Octavius condemns him roundly as a "man who is th'abstract of all faults / That all men follow" (1.4.8-9). When Cleopatra and her attendants speak of Antony, it is entirely within the context of her love affair with him.
The vast leaps in space constitute one of Antony and Cleopatra's famous characteristics. No other play of Shakespeare's makes such vast leaps, from one edge of the known world to the other, and back again. These leaps in space parallel the jumps in perspective: in scenes four and five, we get two completely different descriptions of Antony. While Lepidus praises Antony, defending him against Caesar's charges of moral failure, he does not use the same criteria of judgment as Cleopatra. These leaps in perspective help to create great portraits of character, even though the play that has more talk than action: while we don't see the kind of amazing drama of Macbeth or King Lear, we are treated to eloquent discussions of characters by other characters. Compare in 1.1 the difference between Philo's descriptions of Antony and Cleopatra and the description Antony and Cleopatra give themselves. Compare the Romans' different descriptions of Cleopatra. Enobarbus' description of Cleopatra in 1.2 is different from Philo's easy label of "strumpet" in 1.1. Antony describes her quite differently at different points in the play. Throughout the play, pay attention to the descriptions characters give other characters, and the portraits that emerge.
Shakespeare organizes the plot of Antony and Cleopatra around the conflict between East and West, Egypt and Rome. He immediately establishes this opposition in the opening scene, when two Roman soldiers pass judgment on their commander, Mark Antony, for surrendering his martial duties to the exotic pleasures of Cleopatra's Egypt. The battle is not merely between two geographically distinct empires but also between two diametrically opposed worldviews. As Philo and Demetrius lament Antony's decline, claiming that his "captain's heart" now serves as "the bellows and the fan / To cool a gipsy's lust," they illustrate a divide between a world that is governed by reason, discipline, and prudence, and another ruled by passion, pleasure, and love (I.i.6–10).
Cleopatra, however, is much more than the high-class prostitute that the Romans believe her to be. Often considered Shakespeare's strongest female character, Cleopatra is, first and foremost, a consummate actress. As her first scene with Antony shows, she conducts her affair with the Roman general in a highly theatrical fashion, her actions fueled as much by the need to create a public spectacle as by the desire to satisfy a private passion. Later, upon learning of Antony's plan to return to Rome, the queen shifts from grief to anger with astonishing speed. No sooner does she recover from a fainting spell than she rails at Antony for his inability to mourn his dead wife adequately. As he prepares to leave, Cleopatra says, "But sir, forgive me, / Since my becomings kill me when they do not / Eye well to you" (I.iii.96–98). Here, "becomings" refers not only to the graces that become or suit the queen but also to her fluid transformations, her many moods, and the many different versions of herself she presents. In Act I, scene i, Antony points to this mutability when he notes that Cleopatra is a woman "[w]hom everything becomes—to chide, to laugh, / To weep" (I.i.51–52). It is this talent for perpetual change that lends Cleopatra her characteristic sense of drama as well as her complexity.
Antony, meanwhile, seems to enjoy indulging in hyperbole as much as Cleopatra. When she tells him that his duties call him home, he declares:
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 beast as man.
(I.i.35–36)
His speech stands in marked contrast to the measured, unadorned speech of Philo and Demetrius and, later, Octavius Caesar. Antony delights in depicting himself in heroic terms—indeed, he occupies himself with thoughts of winning nobleness and honor—but already we detect the sharp tension between his rhetoric and his action.
From the beginning of the play, Antony is strongly attracted to both Rome and Egypt, and his loyalty vacillates from one to the other. In these first scenes, he goes from letting "Rome in Tiber melt" to deciding that he "must from this enchanting queen break off" (I.ii.117). His infatuation with the queen is not strong enough to overcome his sense of responsibility to Rome, and while Octavius Caesar, his efficient antagonist, has yet to appear onstage, the lengthy discussion of the strife between Fulvia, Caesar, and young Pompey reminds one of the political context of this love affair. Antony governs a third of the Roman Empire, which has endured decades of civil strife, and he and Caesar, though allies, are not true friends. Such an unstable situation does not bode well for the future of Antony's romance with the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra.
Here, as throughout the play, Enobarbus, Antony's most loyal supporter, serves as the voice of reason; he speaks plainly, in prose rather than verse. His estrangement from Antony increases as Antony's power wanes; for the moment, however, he represents Antony's connection to the West and his political duties. Enobarbus's blunt honesty contrasts sharply with Cleopatra's theatricality.
Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's best known later tragedies. Written about ten years after Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra portrays actual events and persons from Roman history, but unlike Julius Caesar it also embodies the love story of its title characters. For the historical background, plot and intimate details of the affair between the Roman general Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, Shakespeare drew upon the ancient Roman historian Plutarch's Lives; in fact, the description of Cleopatra upon her barge presented by the character Enobarbus in the play (II,ii, ll.190-225) is nearly a word-for-word translation of a passage from Plutarch.
In Antony, Cleopatra, and Augustus Caesar, Shakespeare depicts characters that are larger than life, all three of the main figures commanding "planetary" status as rulers of the world and instruments of its destiny. Antony and Cleopatra is a very involved play, featuring rapid shifts between Cleopatra's palace in Alexandria, Egypt and Antony's homeland in Rome, along with two major battlefield sequences. There are in fact thirteen scenes in Act III and fifteen in Act IV. While some nineteenth and early twentieth century critics complained about the awkward structure of the play, recent interpretation has argued that this relentless movement in the middle of the play creates dramatic tension and reinforces the global scope of what is occurring on stage.
In Shakespeare's tragedy/history/Roman play Antony and Cleopatra, we are told the story of two passionate and power-hungry lovers. In the first two Acts of the play we are introduced to some of the problems and dilemmas facing the couple (such as the fact that they are entwined in an adulterous relationship, and that both of them are forced to show their devotion to Caesar). Along with being introduced to Antony and Cleopatra's strange love affair, we are introduced to some interesting secondary characters.
One of these characters is Enobarbus. Enobarbus is a high-ranking soldier in Antony's army who it seems is very close to his commander. We know this by the way Enobarbus is permitted to speak freely (at least in private) with Antony, and often is used as a person to whom Antony confides in. We see Antony confiding in Enobarbus in Act I, Scene ii, as Antony explains how Cleopatra is "cunning past man's thought" (I.ii.146). In reply to this Enobarbus speaks very freely of his view of Cleopatra, even if what he says is very positive:
...her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her; if it be she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.
(I, ii, 147-152) After Antony reveals that he has just heard news of his wife's death, we are once again offered an example of Enobarbus' freedom to speak his mind, in that he tells Antony to "give the gods a thankful sacrifice" (I.ii.162), essentially saying that Fulvia's death is a good thing. Obviously, someone would never say something like this unless they were in very close company.
While acting as a friend and promoter of Antony, Enobarbus lets the audience in on some of the myth and legend surrounding Cleopatra. Probably his biggest role in the play is to exaggerate Anthony and Cleopatra's relationship. Which he does so well in the following statements:
When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.
(II.ii.188-189) The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were
silver,
(II.ii.193-197) And, for his ordinary, pays his heart For what his eyes eat only.
(II.ii.227-228) Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety....
(II.ii.237-238) In these passages, Enobarbus turns Antony's and Cleopatra's meeting into a fairy tale and leads the audience into believing the two are inseparable. His speeches in Act II are absolutely vital to the play in that this is what Shakespeare wants the audience to view Antony and Cleopatra. Also, in these passages, Cleopatra is described as irresistible and beautiful beyond belief-another view that is necessary for us to believe in order to buy the fact that a man with so much to lose would be willing to risk it all in order to win her love.
Quite possibly, these passages may hint that Enobarbus is himself in love with Cleopatra. After all, it would be hard to come up with such flowery language if a person were not inspired. Enobarbus may be lamenting his own passions vicariously through the eyes of Antony. This would be convenient in questioning Enobarbus' loyalty, which becomes very important later on in the play (considering he kills himself over grief from fearing he betrayed his leader). The loyalty of Enobarbus is indeed questionable. Even though we never hear him utter a single disparaging remark against Antony, he does admit to Menas that he "will praise any man that will praise me" (II.iii.88), suggesting that his honor and loyalty may just be simple brown-nosing.
Shakespeare probably fashioned Enobarbus as a means of relaying information to the audience that would otherwise be difficult or awkward to bring forth from other characters (such as Cleopatra's beauty and the story of her betrayal of Caesar), but he also uses him as way to inject some levity and humor in the play, showing the characters eagerness to have a good time. Evidence of this comes in Enobarbus' affinity for drunkenness. In both Act I and Act II Enobarbus purports the joys of drink:
Bring in the banquet quickly: wine enough Cleopatra's health to drink.
(I.ii.13-24) Mine, and most of our fortunes, tonight, shall be-drunk to bed.
(I.ii.47-48) He even caps off Act II with a song for Bacchus and a request for drunken celebration.
In short, Enobarbus is used as any good secondary character should be; he relays information between characters, exposes other characters and their traits, gives background information, and lets the audience in on his surroundings and the general moods and beliefs of the times he lived in. He is not just used as a database however, through his speeches and his actions we find a fully developed person, someone with thoughts, motives, and feelings all his own-a character who can't be summed up in just a few sentences.
