Antony & Cleo
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Love often calls for sacrifice whether it be true or false. Likewise, duty often calls for a similar amount of sacrifice, whether it be true or false. In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare shows us a world that is in the midst of a major transformation. For the love of Antony and Cleopatra takes place against the backdrop of a major world upheaval. Not only do we have the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra by Octavius, but we have the defeat of the pagan world in order to pave the way for empire. Antony, Cleopatra and the rich, exotic pleasures of fertile Egypt represent a pagan world that is coming to and end. Octavius, Octavia and Rome represent the new world order of empire and, ultimately, Christianity. As G. Blakemore Evans (1392) suggests, “Shakespeare divides this world into Rome and Egypt, and under the main division subsumes a series of systemic antithesis: Virtue and Pleasure, empire and self-destruction, firmness and infirmity of purpose, solidity and instability, reason and passion, lucky winner and generous loser, the rising and the falling man; Caesar and Antony, Octavia and Cleopatra.” Yet, regardless of the outcome and who ends up on either side of the equation, Shakespeare illustrates that there is value within both the rich, pagan world of Egypt and the dutiful, order of Rome. This analysis will demonstrate the value inherent in both worlds, regardless of the dichotomy within Antony’s soul which is torn between hi
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m, when he is rational enough to go with his “Roman” thought, he succumbs to his pagan sensual appetites more like the small boy whom Octavius says deserves to be chided in Act I, Scene IV, “…’tis to be chid-/As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge,/Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,/And so rebel to judgment,” (I.iv. 30-33).
This is not to say that Shakespeare portrays Antony as being unfaithful to Rome or not being firmly aware of where his real “duty” lays. The tragedy of the character is that face that Antony cannot resist being impulsive and acting on his current feelings and emotions, i.e., his disregard for his wife, his seduction by Cleopatra’s feminine wiles, and his decision to turn and follow her in the midst of battle. The tragedy of Antony is that he does not understand what Octavius does-that this is not about some rebellious territory, some infidelity, or some contest between lust and duty-it is for the future of the entire world, indeed, perhaps for all of mankind. Antony loses his battle between duty to his country and the fulfillment of his own emotional needs because he becomes seduced by the peaceful, exotic, sensual Egyptian existence. It makes him myopic in the sense that he loses his
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Approximate Word count = 1473
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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