When Antony is sent to Cleopatra’s monument after finding out that she is still alive, there is a sense of a double irony as she was not dead and he was dying.
As Cleopatra eventually gives Antony his kiss which he asked for as his death wish, he dies.
Cleopatra’s death at the end of the play is the result of a climatic build-up. Her death is to show courage which relates to being a Roman quality. After faking her death to see what her lover Antony’s reaction would be, she commits suicide to defeat Caesar and join Antony. Five minutes after he has died, she feels like she has melted away.
She becomes convinced that now Antony is gone, Caesar will show her off as a trophy and she will become part of a Roman pageant. This scares her immensely and she begins to sulk. Her stubbornness, strong will and single mind comes into play and this shows her powerful side. Cleopatra is a proud woman and is not afraid to kill herself as she doesn’t want to continue with her life anymore.
Her actually death takes place in her monument away from the reach of Caesar. She puts on her best clothes to give the impression that she is going to do this properly unlike Antony who had done so with his suicide.
She uses the asp (snake) to show the symbol that her life was about to be untangled for itself and speaks of how she is jealous of those who have already died. It is not until she is half way through a sentence that she dies. This gives the end of the play a sudden twist as there is no way of knowing what else was about to be said by the queen and shows a less traditional aspect to the end of a morality play.
There is a define sense of death with honour in Antony and Cleopatra and is portrayed strongly in the suicides of all three characters in some form.
However it can be argued that Antony does not have this honour because of the fact that he had already attempted two times to kill himself by falling of the sword and failed and Enobarbus can be said to be dishonourable because he stabbed himself of a broken heart and felt that escapism was the only way to end his guilt. The only argument that is clearly apparent for Cleopatra being seen as dishonourable is when she faked her own suicide to see what her lover’s reaction would be.
All three characters have different divisions in their attitudes to death and the death situations and this is made clear in all three separate death scenes. But none of the suicides are planned with great thought except Cleopatra’s who felt she must die in dignity by dressing up and using snakes as a symbolic reference to dispatch its venom rather than stabbing herself.
Smaller characters in the play do not have much focus on their deaths unlike Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus who are able to conduct powerful, meaningful speeches before their deaths.
Characters such as Eros and Charmian, who are close friends to Antony and Cleopatra exit with little recognition.
For example, Eros is shown to be honourable in refusing to kill Antony when he asks him to. He ends his life by turning the sword on himself with his back to Antony before trying to kill Antony himself. Eros speaks of his death by saying; ‘Thus I do escape the sorrow / Of Antony’s death’. This character shows his loyalty to Antony until the end of his time in the play.
Charmian too shows her commitment to the queen as her maidservant by killing herself after the death of Cleopatra. She speaks of the world as ‘vile’ and sees no hope for the future now Cleopatra has killed herself, so she applies an asp to herself also. Her last words resort back to showing her admiration to the queen and suggests she is most royal by stating; ‘It is well done, and fitting for a princess / Descended of so many royal kings…’
These few words show how Shakespeare is acknowledging her reign and her powerful impact on peoples’ lives, and used Charmian as an example to show this in her death even though the focus did not remain on her afterwards.
Throughout Antony and Cleopatra, different characters act to the news of peoples’ deaths in interesting ways. When Antony’s first wife Fulvia dies,
His reaction to her death was to know where she had died. It meant he had back the freedom he had previously wanted and was now able to marry Cleopatra but Antony now did not want to. There is hardly any reference to Fulvia in the play apart from Act 1 when her death is announced then soon forgotten by Antony. Cleopatra however asks why he married her but chose not to love her. This question asked by the queen proved Fulvia’s little existence to Antony and the audience may have been surprised about this.
For Caesar, the death of Antony and Cleopatra changes his attitudes and this is made apparent in the last speech which is carried out by Caesar himself. As he delivers his speech, it seems as though he is now different. It steps back on how the audience has previously perceived Caesar as a somewhat negative figure which causes friction between the two main characters.
Shakespeare draws the tragedy around this last significant speech as it gives the choice of pity or terror with the idea that the world can be re-built after the deaths of a great warrior and the queen of Egypt. It also emphasises that there is no loss on their part because Cleopatra will be with her Antony for eternal life in a happier place;
‘She shall be buried by her Antony’.
This part can be said to be connected with the ending in Hamlet with the funeral narration.
In this play, Shakespeare creates the sense of death as going somewhere better then where they are stationed now. This was because he wrote his plays around Christian beliefs in the 1600s which meant that there was meant to be a life after death. Perhaps this idea meant that the play Antony and Cleopatra wasn’t so much an emphasis into a tragedy but shown as a basis of something better to come out of their lives in Rome and Egypt after the wars and disloyalty of people throughout the story.
It is noticeable to see how the beginning of the play differs to the end of the play on attitudes to death. The use of the fortune teller (soothsayer) in Act II, Scene 3 makes it seem that Antony is in control of a great force. The soothsayer tells Antony that he has a guiding spirit which is courageous and unmatchable, but fearful towards Caesar, so he should be wary of his limitations. Antony does not listen to his advice and it isn’t until later when he loses the second battle he begins to struggle maintaining his successful image, which he feels is fading away. His attitudes change after this, as he goes from believing he can beat Caesar to feeling defeated in war. This is when he becomes scared of death and his earlier strong, fearless character has disappeared. The soothsayer also predicts the deaths of others.
This tragedy reflects on three main criteria: war, love and betrayal which all connect with death. The men who fought for Antony and Caesar died in both battles on land and sea, Antony and Cleopatra died in the end for each other so love was the cause for their deaths, and the betrayal of friends such as Enobarbus leaving Antony to join Caesar’s army all contrast to create the tragedy itself. There is not one main factor that can be used to explain the suicides of each character, especially for Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus as they saw dying as achieving different things.
The message of this tragedy has many definitions such as escapism, pain, suffering, gloom and death itself. But perhaps the main is the fall of a great man which is Antony himself. He was a great leader and was admired for his achievements. He had to be high up for it to be a tragic fall in the play.
Each three main death scenes had their own purposely built moments, and Shakespeare must have deliberately chosen to do this.
The death parts are built up, which starts with Enobarbus who is the first to die, and his reason for doing so was because he was heart broken, downbeat and felt guilty.
The second is taken one step higher with Antony’s death having two parts. The tension rises however when he dies in the middle of a line.
But these two suicides are the climatic build up to Cleopatra’s death which is planned with props for the stage and a long death speech.
It can be said that her suicide was the dramatic finale with the two suicides of the other main characters being looked upon as not as important because of how her death was prepared and ended the play.
This love-tragedy by Shakespeare sees the heroine as centre of attention like many other of his plays, so this is why she deserves to die with the dignity that Antony and Enobarbus did not.
