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IEB ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA SUMMARY OF THEMES AND SYMBOLS MINI-ESSAY PREPARATION (ONLY DOCUMENT YOU NEED TO PREPARE FOR PAPER 2 MINI-ESSAY QUESTION)$8.81
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A comprehensive summary of Antony and Cleopatra themes and symbols and quotes to accompany each theme. This format is formulated specifically to answer the IEB English Home Language Paper 2 Mini-Essay Question.
→ Love
o The play opens with two soldiers discussing how deeply Antony has fallen in love with Cleopatra, followed by
a playful , flirty exchange between the lovers in which she asks him to quantify his love for her and he maintains
it cannot be measured, insisting that ‘[t]here’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned’.
o Their love is continuously questioned, tested and dominates the events of the play. While they are apart,
Antony sends Cleopatra gifts and declarations of true love and she spends her time in lovesick longing, writing
him love letters. She flies into a jealous rage when she learns that he has married Octavia and beats the
messenger. Later, Antony is furious when he discovers her flirting with Caesar’s emissary and insists the man
be whipped.
o During the war with Caesar, Antony’s love for Cleopatra makes him behave most uncharacteristically: he makes
poor military decisions and even shamefully leaves the battle to follow her. Ultimately, it is the news of her
apparent death that breaks his heart and lends him to resolve he needs to kill himself and she feels similar
grief-stricken compulsion after he has died in her arms.
→ “His delights were dolphin like”- This refers to Antony’s oscillation between his love for Cleopatra and his
subsequent failures and his Roman general reputation that has seen many compare him to the Roman God
Mars.
o The play opens with Demetrius and Philo, openly criticizing their great leader and general, who had fought like
Mars, the god of war, on the battlefield, but is now ‘the bellows and the fan/ To cool a gypsy’s lust’. They grieve
the sight of the ‘triple pillar of the world/transformed/Into a strumpet’s fool’.
o Antony, himself ruefully acknowledges how deeply in love he has fallen and how much it is affecting his
behaviour, ‘These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,/Or lose myself in dotage’.
o Antony’s love for Cleopatra clearly affects his decision-making throughout the play: when he follows Cleopatra
and leaves the battle of Actium. Antony declares, ‘Egypt, thou knew’st too well/ My heart was to thy rudder
tied by th’ strings,/And thou shouldst tow me after’. Antony’s love for Cleopatra seems genuine as he is quick
to forgive her and make up with a kiss, despite the seriousness of the defeat and his shameful actions as a
soldier.
o Enobarbus is shocked by Antony’s actions and maintains that the ‘itch of his affection should not then/Have
nicked his captainship’. Antony’s subsequent mood swings and bravado convince Enobarbus that there has
been a ‘diminution on our captain’s brain’.
o Antony’s love for Cleopatra distracts him from his official duties throughout the play as well. Antony argues, in
the opening scene of the play, argues that money and power mean nothing and that the highest objective in
life to which people can aspire is to give themselves completely to love: ’Here is my space./Kingdoms are clay.
Our dungy earth alike/Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life/is to do thus; when such a mutual pair/And
such a twain can do’t’. He suggests it is a mistake to waste time that could be enjoyed and spent indulging in
pleasurable activities with disagreements and negative discussions: ‘Now for the love of Love and her soft
hours,/Let’s not confound the time with conference harsh./There’s not a minute of our lives should
stretch/Without some pleasure now’.
o After Antony has been defeated by Caesar, however, Antony seems unsure of quite how he let his heart lead
him to such complete and utter ruin: ‘[h]ere I am Antony,/Yet cannot hold this visible shape’. At the same time,
though, his love for Cleopatra appears unwavering and genuine. The moment he learns of her apparent death,
he forgives her for betraying him and resolves to kill himself since living without her is torture: ‘I will o’ertake
thee, Cleopatra, and/Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now/All length is torture. Since the torch is out,/Lie
down and stray no further’.
o
, → The Serpent of the Old Nile: Cleopatra
o Cleopatra’s first words in the play are to petition Antony to describe his love for her: ‘If it be love indeed, tell
me how much’ and, from that point, she continually seeks reassurance and commitment from him. She
appears insecure in her position as his mistress and taunts Antony regarding his ‘false’ love for Fulvia and the
influence his wife should have over him: ‘What, says the married woman you may go?/Would she had never
given you leave to come./Let her not say ‘tis I that keep you here./I have no power upon you. Hers you are’.
o Throughout the play, she teases, baits and artfully manipulates Antony to keep his interest and test his
feelings for her; for example, instructing Alexas ‘[i]f you find him sad,/Say I am dancing; if in mirth,
report/That I am sudden sick’. When Antony insists that he must leave for Rome, she seems to take it
personally and as a sign that he has lost interest in her. She appears to feel rejected and dismisses his
entreaties, suggesting he could not leave if he still found her irresistible and truly loved her: ‘When you sued
staying,/Then was the time for words. No going then!/Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows’
bent; none our parts so poor/But was a race of heaven. They are so still,/Or thou, the greatest soldier of the
world,/Art turned the greatest liar.
o Cleopatra struggles to find the words to say goodbye genuinely and suggests that he will not forget her as
easily as she forgets her words: ‘O, my oblivion is a very Antony,/And I am all forgotten’.
Is Cleopatra’s love for Antony genuine and constant?
o She regularly exhibits the anxiety and insecurity often associated with a vulnerable, sensitive lover, but what
motivates these expressions? Is Cleopatra ‘in love’ or ‘in love with the idea of being in love’? Her fondness for
theatrics and melodramatics makes the task of determining her reasons even harder.
o After each military defeat, she appears to start considering her options and her future rather quickly,
entertaining Caesar’s emissaries and even praising Caesar. Yet she whiles away the time Antony is absent
reminiscing about the time they spent together, writing him love letters and imagining what he is doing; for
example, when she sigs and asks Charmian, ‘Where think’st thou he is now? Stands he or sits he?/Or does he
walk? Or is he on his horse?/O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!’.
o Her jealous rage in reaction to Antony marrying Octavia could be a telling sign of her love or she could see his
marriage as her inability to keep Antony enthralled and thus keep her power?
o Her affections for Antony seem to be self-serving at times, but her expression of sorrow and grief at his death
appears sincere: ‘Shall I abide/In this dull world, which in thy absence is/No better than a sty?...nothing is left
remarkable beneath the visiting moon’. She also hastily grabs a snake to prevent Iras from meeting Antony in
the afterlife first and stealing kisses that should be hers.
o Does she commit suicide because she cannot stand to be without Antony or that she cannot stand the
thought of being humiliated by Caesar and paraded as his trophy? Nevertheless, her final moments are spent
thinking about Antony: ‘Husband, I come!’.
‘Let Rome in Tiber melt and
the wide arch/Of the ranged
empire fall. Here is my
space’-Antony
→ Traditional interpretations of the play suggest that Shakespeare represents the East (Egypt) as sensual,
decadent and In the context of the patriarchal society that Shakespeare wrote in, these qualities would have
also been defined as East = feminine and West = Masculine. But, on closer examination of the text, are these
binaries really so easily defined? Here are some things to think about: more emotionally driven, while the West
(Rome), is stringent, structured, cold and driven by reason or intellect.
→ This emphasis makes sense as the success and strength of Rome lay in its powerful army and skilled soldiers.
→ In contrast to Rome, Egypt was an old, established and largely stable civilization by the time the Romans
encountered it. The nation had been unified under its first king some 3000 years earlier and enjoyed peace and
prosperity for much of the time afterwards. Alexandria was a prosperous centre of trade and commerce.
Resources were abundant, life was relaxed for the inhabitants of the city and the arts were flourishing. It is
perhaps easy to see why the Romans came to associate Egyptian opulence and sensuousness with a love of
pleasure, luxury and moral laxity, which the Romans disliked.
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