SOURCE: Mills, L. J. “Cleopatra's Tragedy.” Shakespeare Quarterly 11, no. 2 (spring 1960): 147-62.

[In the following essay, Mills attributes Cleopatra's personal tragedy to her amoral, equivocal, and egoistic nature.]

Interpretations of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra have emphasized, with varying degrees of stress, one or another of the three principal themes in the play, which are, as summarized by John Munro:

… first, the East represented by Egypt and lands beyond versus the West represented by Rome; secondly, the strife in the Triumvirate who divided and governed the world, and the reduction of the three, Octavius, Lepidus and Antony, to one, Octavius; and thirdly, the love and tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. Of all these the last is dramatically dominant.¹

But among the commentators who regard the third theme as dominant there is much difference of opinion. Some write as if the play were entitled “The Tragedy of Antony”; for example, J. Middleton Murry:

… up to the death of Antony it is from him that the life of the play has been derived. She [Cleopatra] is what she is to the imagination, rather in virtue of the effects we see in Antony, than by virtue of herself. He is magnificent; therefore she must be. But when he dies, her poetic function is to maintain and prolong, to reflect and reverberate, that achieved royalty of Antony's.²

Others give Cleopatra more significance but yet make Antony central, as does Peter Alexander, who allots to Cleopatra a somewhat more distinct, more nearly self-contained personality than does Murry:

Antony dies while the play has still an act to run, but without this act his story would be incomplete. For Cleopatra has to vindicate her right to his devotion.³

Any interpreter, however, who concentrates on the tragedy of Antony is confronted with the difficulty pointed out by Robert Speaight:

… if you are thinking in terms of Antony's tragedy alone, and if you are trying to make his tragedy conform to a classical definition, then you may find it awkward to face a fifth act, in which only his heroic and fallen shadow is left to keep Cleopatra company.⁴

Moreover, such an interpreter overlooks the title of the play as it appears in the Folio: “The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra”, with the significant comma after “Anthonie.” The nature of the play Antony and Cleopatra, really in itself more than from the comma signal but given added emphasis by it, should be self-evident: the play presents the tragedy of Antony and then the tragedy of Cleopatra. Such recognition, however, does not obscure the fact that each tragedy gives significance to the other and increases its effect.

Judicially objective critics have granted Cleopatra more stature as a tragic figure in her own right than those who think of the play as Antony's tragedy. J. W. Mackail, for instance, though he does not point out that Cleopatra's tragedy differs from Antony's, says:

It is the tragedy not of the Roman world, but of Antony and Cleopatra: and of both of them equally. … Here, neither single name gives the central tone to the drama; Antony does not exist for the sake of Cleopatra (as one might put it), nor does Cleopatra exist for the sake of Antony: they are two immense and in a sense equivalent forces which never coalesce, and the interaction between them is the drama.⁵

And Virgil K. Whitaker, though insisting that “the tragic action of the play is centered upon Antony, who has so yielded himself to the passion of love that it has possessed his will and dethroned his judgment”, gives Cleopatra stature as a tragic figure: “Cleopatra, although she is developed almost as fully as he is, remains the seductress, and only at the end does she become a participant in a tragedy of her own.”⁶ “A tragedy of her own”—just what is it? “A question to be asked”, and answered.⁷

It is trite to remark that an audience's first impression of a character is very important; it is not commonplace to call particular attention to Cleopatra's first word in the play: “If”. It is obvious—or should be—that in saying “If it be love indeed, tell me how much”, she is following up a previous declaration, on Antony's part, of great love for her by teasing and bantering him. She is playful, but within her brief demand may be discerned one of her chief devices, contradiction.⁸ Immediately, by the entrance of the messenger from Rome, her tone changes; the contradictions become blunt, the taunts amazingly bold and affrontive. Antony's submitting to them proves that Philo's term “dotage” is not an exaggeration. That Cleopatra's contradictory behavior (as in I.ii.89-91; iii. 1-5) is calculated is obvious from her rejoinder to Charmian's warning: “Thou teachest like a fool. The way to lose him!” (I.iii.10).⁹ Simultaneously Cleopatra's constant fear is revealed: that Antony will leave her.

When Antony, having determined to break off with Cleopatra and return to Rome, goes to her to announce his departure, she perceives that he is in a serious mood and, surmising his intention, gives him no chance to talk. Six times she interrupts him when he starts to speak. In her tirades she taunts him (1) by references to his wife Fulvia, charging him with falsity to her; (2) by the accusation that he has treacherously betrayed her (Cleopatra); and (3) by recounting his compliments to her when he was wooing, practically calling him a liar. And when eventually Antony commands her to listen to him and hear his reasons for leaving, ending with a reference to Fulvia's death, she then accuses him of lying, of expecting her, like a child, to believe fairy tales. When he offers proof, the letter he has received, she then charges him with insensibility for not weeping over his wife's death and predicts that he would be equally unmoved by her death. And as he protests his love for her she begins one of her fainting spells but changes her mind; she is, she says, “quickly ill, and well”, as changeable as Antony is in his love. She mockingly urges him to produce some tears for Fulvia and pretend they are for her, ridicules him for not making a better show at weeping, and calls on Charmian to join her in laughing at Antony's rising anger.

Antony turns to walk away. Then Cleopatra brings him back by the one appeal that just then could do it, a quavering “Courteous lord”. It is the first time in the play that she has spoken to him in anything like a complimentary fashion. Then she pretends to have something serious to say, or that she was going to say and has now forgot. Antony recognizes that she is playing for time, and she perceives his recognition.¹⁰ She has drawn on her coquette's kit for a variety of tools, and they have failed her, even her appeal to pity (her most effective, much used tool); Antony is going despite all she can do. But perhaps, if she says something kind, for once, it may eventually bring him back:

                                                  Your honour calls you hence;
Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,
And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword
Sit laurel victory, and smooth success
Be strew'd before your feet!

(I.iii.97-101)

Or something that may seem kind! Her reference to his honor is much belated; she makes another appeal to pity; and the sequence of s sounds and the concatenation of b's and f's and e's and t's in the last line may suggest, by the conceivable hissing and sneering, an unconscious extrusion of her essentially serpentine nature.

During Antony's absence Cleopatra's behavior is self-characterizing. She evinces no interest in the business he is engaged in; she is concerned as to what he may be thinking of her, is enveloped in thoughts physical and sensual, and reviews the list of her great lovers, “Broad-fronted Caesar”, “great Pompey”, “brave Mark Antony”. She revels in memories of her behavior to Antony—trickery in fishing, laughing him out of and into patience, dressing him in tires and mantles while she “wore his sword Philippan”, contrarieties all. She is aghast when the news comes that Antony has married Octavia and beats the messenger, but regains hope from the description he gives of her.

We do not see Antony and Cleopatra together again until just before the battle of Actium. Were it not for Enobarbus' description of her on the river Cydnus and his analysis of her charms (II.ii.195-245), there would be little about her in the first half of the play that to an objective reader is alluring. But even Enobarbus' account hints at Cleopatra's oppositeness, for he pictures Antony, “Enthron'd i' th' market place”, waiting for Cleopatra to appear before him, which she does not do, and accepting her refusal to dine with him and her counter-invitation “to come and suppe with her”.¹¹ The description follows closely the reconciliation scene between Antony and Octavius in which Antony, then at his best, is shown as firm master of himself and thus provides the background to contrast with his sorry self when manipulated by Cleopatra. But there is no such admirable background for Cleopatra; it is apparent that her tragedy will have to be of a distinctly different sort from Antony's. It cannot be a “tragic fall”, for there is nothing for her to fall from.

After Actium, where Antony at her urging has fought at sea, she offers as her reason for leaving the scene of the battle that she was afraid. But that reason does not satisfy everyone. E. E. Stoll, for instance, lists among various unanswered questions in Shakespeare's plays the query “Why does Cleopatra flee from the battle and Antony?”¹² Later he wonders whether in examining such a question as that, and about her later dealings with Thyreus and her responsibility in the second sea-fight, we may not be “then considering too curiously”.¹³ Certainly the question about her behavior at Actium exists and must be considered; but just as certainly it cannot be answered.¹⁴ Cleopatra's “I little thought / You would have followed” (III.xi.55-56), besides putting the blame on him, may reveal a more nearly true reason than her “fearful sails”: Is her leaving the battle at the critical point a test of Antony, to see whether the political leader or the lover is stronger in him? Does she fear that military success and political mastery would be a dangerous rival to her charms? And when Antony reproaches her with

                                                                                          You did know
How much you were my conqueror, and that
My sword, made weak by my affection, would
Obey it on all cause

(III.xi.65-68)

and she cries “Pardon, pardon!” is she really sorry? Her behavior to Thyreus soon after makes us wonder.

When Thyreus tells Cleopatra that

He [Caesar] knows that you embrace not Antony
As you did love, but as you fear'd him

(III.xiii.56-57)

she exclaims “O!” What does she mean by that? There are those who seem to know; e. g., G. L. Kittredge (note on l. 57):

Cleopatra's exclamation is meant to convey to Thyreus not only eager acceptance of Caesar's theory of her union with Antony, but also gratified surprise that Caesar should have shown so sympathetic an understanding of the case. All this she expresses in plain terms in her next speech: ‘He is a god,’ etc.

That interpretation implies that Cleopatra, suddenly perceiving a way out of the impasse, is deserting Antony and preparing to entangle Caesar in her “toils of grace”, through the pity for her that she hopes to inspire. But conceivably the “O!” may merely imply painful shock at the idea that anyone could even think she feared Antony and did not love him.¹⁵ If so, the idea of appealing to Caesar's pity may not occur at the moment but be suggested by Thyreus'

The scars upon your honour, therefore, he
Does pity, as constrained blemishes,
Not as deserv'd.

(ll.58-60)

It is doubtful whether one is justified in saying that “All this she expresses in plain terms in her next speech”, inasmuch as Thyreus' statement comes between her “O!” and “her next speech”. Or, perhaps, the previous lines should be taken into consideration; Thyreus says,

                                                                                                    Caesar entreats
Not to consider in what case thou stand'st
Further than he is Caesar,

(ll.53-55)

which seems to promise noble treatment, with possible emphasis on the good will of Caesar the man. If the idea of attempting to entangle Caesar has already occurred to her, her enthusiastic “Go on. Right royal!” is flattery intended to be relayed to Caesar. But then Thyreus'

He knows that you embrace not Antony
As you did love, but as you fear'd him

is definitely cooling, and her “O!” may involuntarily escape her, indicating sudden awareness of Caesar's realization that she “embraced” Antony because of his power more than for love of the man himself and thus is on guard against any designs she might have on him now that he has conquered Antony. If that is the situation, then Thyreus' speech suggesting Caesar's pity for the scars upon her honor “as constrained blemishes, / Not as deserv'd” arouses hope and prompts her flattering and pity-inviting

                                                                                He is a god, and knows
What is most right. Mine honour was not yielded
But conquer'd merely,

(ll. 60-62)

a bare-faced lie, as Enobarbus recognizes.

Whatever the significance of the “O!” it is soon obvious that Cleopatra proceeds to cajole Thyreus,¹⁶ hoping thereby to make him a friend in court. But whether she is actually deserting Antony and staking all on a hope of ensnaring Caesar or is planning a deep deception of Caesar it is impossible to tell. Nor is her behavior to Antony clear when he enters unexpectedly and in fury orders punishment to Thyreus and condemns her. She attempts to defend herself with four questions: “O, is't come to this?” “Wherefore is this?” “Have you done yet?” and, after a parenthetical “I must stay his time”, “Not know me yet?” What does she mean by the fourth question? She probably intends for Antony to understand that she was just temporizing, meeting Caesar's suspected treachery with pretended submission. When Antony, still pained by what he is sure is betrayal of him, asks, “Cold-hearted toward me?” she breaks out in impassioned speech:

                                                                                Ah, dear, if I be so,
From my cold heart let heaven engender hail,
And poison it in the source, and the first stone
Drop in my neck; as it determines, so
Dissolve my life! The next Caesarion smite!
Till by degrees the memory of my womb
Together with my brave Egyptians all,
By the discandying of this pelleted storm,
Lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of Nile
Have buried them for prey!

(III.xiii.158-167)

Actually her plea that, if her heart is cold, from it hail, poisoned in its source (her heart), should be “engendered” only to fall in her neck, melt, and in melting dissolve her life, is basically nonsense. For if there were enough poison in the source, her heart, to kill her when, incorporated into hail, it was carried to her neck and then caused her life to dissolve, she would have been dead long ago. To say nothing of the amount of poison it would take to dispose of Caesarion and “my brave Egyptians all”! She has created a barrage of words that by the excess of emotion and the deficiency of sense seem to denote complete devotion to Antony but which by the very excesses reveal the opposite. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Her speech is not the bald lie that she tells Antony when later she sends him word that she has killed herself, but there is deception, masked by the barrage of words and the vehemence of her utterance.¹⁷

What a narrow escape that was for her! She has convinced Antony (“I am satisfied”) but not Enobarbus; for him it is the last straw. He knows that Antony is now lost, for “When valour preys on reason, / It eats the sword it fights with” (ll. 199-200). Though Enobarbus speaks only of Antony, he reveals his interpretation of Cleopatra's behavior in the crisis.

Antony declares that he will fight Caesar again, gains Cleopatra's “That's my brave lord”, and joins with her in anticipation of her birthday festivities. The next morning she playfully helps Antony don his armor and kisses him as he departs for battle. She comments to Charmian, “He goes forth gallantly”, and expresses a wish

                                                            That he and Caesar might
Determine this great war in single fight!
Then Antony—but now—

(IV.iv.36-38)

Since she apparently thinks Antony will be defeated, she is surprised at his victorious return:

                                                                                                              Lord of lords!
O infinite virtue, com'st thou smiling from
The world's great snare(18) uncaught?

(IV.viii.16-18)

Though she thus compliments Antony in exaggerated terms and rewards Scarus extravagantly (“An armour all of gold”, l. 27), she hardly discloses her real thoughts. Nor is it certain that she did not betray Antony in the second sea-fight. Antony is sure: “This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me!” (IV.xii.10) and he is exceedingly bitter about the “triple-turn'd whore” that

Like a right gypsy hath at fast and loose
Beguil'd me to the very heart of loss!

He calls for Eros, but Cleopatra appears, having mistakenly thought, perhaps, that Antony was summoning her by calling on the deity of love (Eros), and is met by “Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!” In innocence or seeming innocence she asks, “Why is my lord enrag'd against his love?” Then at Antony's threats she leaves. Exclaiming that he is “more mad / Than Telamon for his shield” (xiii. 1-2), she sends Mardian to Antony:

Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself.
Say that the last I spoke was ‘Antony’
And word it, prithee, piteously. Hence, Mardian,
And bring me how he takes my death.

(IV.xiii.7-10)

The lie, with the appeals for pity—“I have slain myself” (for love of Antony), “piteously”—is her final deception of Antony. Knowledge about how he takes her death may be intended to provide her with a clue as to possible appeasement of his wrath, but the lie is the climax of all her tricks, and ironically causes his death. Though it be argued that she did not betray Antony, his thinking she did is understandable, in the light of her behavior throughout the play up to the time of the second sea-fight.

What would be—to return to Cleopatra's entrance and exit for a moment—the impression on an audience of Cleopatra's behavior? Antony's brief but vivid description of the fleet's surrender and his repeated charge that Cleopatra has betrayed him, plus remembrance of what happened at Actium, may well make an audience suspicious of her when she appears. And her exit, following immediately upon Antony's detailed picture of her as the captive of Caesar and the victim of Octavia's wrath, may well give the definite impression that her self-interest has been and is the force that motivates her action. She does not even think of fainting or of attempting to kill herself in disproof of Antony's accusation. And her question “Why is my lord enrag'd against his love?” is colored by her accustomed plea for pity. Altogether, whether or not she betrayed Antony to Caesar is left an unanswered question, like the motives for her behavior at Actium.

There are some obvious facts. Cleopatra, to satisfy her ego, must have as her lovers the world's greatest. The outcome of the war between Antony and Octavius, since it is for world mastery, will determine which will emerge as the greater. Suppose Antony should win: he will certainly be immersed in state affairs and neglect her. Suppose Octavius should win: then there is the question as to whether she can ensnare him. Her equivocal behavior to Antony and her flirting with Caesar through Thyreus may reflect her uncertainty.

Yet there can be no doubt that Cleopatra has love, of a sort, for Antony, and when he, dying, is brought to her in the monument it is the realization of his personality as a man, her lover, and her belated recognition of the stalwart Roman qualities he represents (emphasized by the pride in them shown in his dying speech) that for the moment overshadow everything else. Even though self-pity is not completely absent—“Noblest of men, woo't die? / Hast thou no care of me?” (IV.xv.59-60)—she is genuine in lamenting that “The crown o' th' earth doth melt”, and she is quite humbled:

No more but e'en a woman, and commanded
By such poor passion as the maid that milks
And does the meanest chares.”

(ll. 73-75)

Some appreciation of Antony's worth, now that he is no more, comes to her:

                                                                                                              It were for me
To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods,
To tell them that this world did equal theirs
Till they had stol'n our jewel.

(ll. 75-78)

But there is no admitting, apparently no perception, of the fact that she is responsible for his defeat and death. Her self-pity, her concentration on self, makes it impossible for her to see the situation objectively. If she could see it objectively, she would not be Cleopatra. It is her very Cleopatra-ness that is the basis for her ultimate tragedy. If she were a Juliet she would kill herself immediately for love of Antony, not merely talk about suicide. The fact that she does not act but talks precludes any interpretation of her tragedy as a love tragedy, even though there is pathos in her

                                                                      what's brave, what's noble,
Let's do it after the high Roman fashion
And make death proud to take us.

(ll. 86-88)

She has learned something; she has gained unconsciously some insight into what virtue, Roman virtue as embodied in Antony, is. There is no sneering now at “a Roman thought” (I.ii.87). But though she knows no “friend / But resolution and the briefest end”, she is yet a long way from declaring “Husband, I come”; her tragedy is by no means yet manifest.

When we next see her (V.ii) some time has elapsed; she still talks of suicide, but not of “the briefest end”: “My desolation does begin to make / A better life.” Better than what? Since she immediately speaks of Caesar and his subjection to Fortune, she will show a “life” superior to his by doing that which ends all the influence of Fortune. Is it unconscious irony that she uses the word “life” in speaking of the ending of her life? Her whole speech (ll. 1-8) is of herself in relation to Caesar, and she does not attempt suicide until the Roman guardsmen make a move to capture her. Meanwhile she has parleyed with Proculeius and through him made a bid for pity from Caesar—“a queen his beggar”—and professes “A doctrine of obedience”. But she adds, significantly, “and would gladly / Look him i' th' face” (ll. 31-32).

When she is prevented from killing herself (not for love of Antony but to forestall capture) she moans,

                                                            Where art thou, death?
Come hither, come! Come, come, and take a queen
Worth many babes and beggars.

(ll. 46-48)

The real reason for her attempted suicide is made plain by her outburst after Proculeius' “O, temperance, lady!”:

Sir, I will eat no meat; I'll not drink, sir;
If idle talk will once be necessary,
I'll not sleep neither. This mortal house I'll ruin,
Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I
Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court
Nor once be chastis'd with the sober eye
Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up
And show me to the shouting varlotry
Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt
Be gentle grave unto me! Rather on Nilus' mud
Lay me stark-nak'd and let the waterflies
Blow me into abhorring! Rather make
My country's high pyramides my gibber
And hang me up in chains!

(V.ii.49-62)

Proculeius had been commended to her by Antony (IV.xv.47-48), but he has proved untrustworthy. When Dolabella follows and attempts to gain her confidence by “Most noble Empress, you have heard of me?” (V.ii.71), she tests him: “You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams; / Is't not your trick?” He does not understand what she means, and is puzzled as she pours out an elaborate eulogy of Antony (ll. 79 ff.). She glorifies Antony's power and bounty and wins Dolabella's sympathy to the degree that he answers truthfully her question as to what Caesar intends to do with her: lead her in triumph in Rome.¹⁹ She has told Dolabella that she “dreamt there was an Emperor Antony” and asked whether “there was or might be such a man / As this I dreamt of”. It appears that she was giving him an opportunity to assure her that Caesar, now Emperor, is such a man;²⁰ since he did not respond affirmatively, she puts her direct question. Immediately after his answer, Caesar enters.

It is through the glorified Antony of her dream that the audience is made aware of the fact that Cleopatra now has gained some conception of the worth of Antony. But that is in retrospect; she indicated no such recognition while Antony was alive. The idealization of Antony in the dream contrasts with the unideal realism of her treatment of him while he lived. (Dramatically, the idealized Antony comes between the deceitful Proculeius and the cold, unmalleable Caesar. Cleopatra's acquired recognition of Antony's excellence cannot be left to the very end of the play but must be made evident, for it is vital to the formation of her tragedy.) But she is in many ways still the former Cleopatra; she schemes, and uses a new device to arouse pity for herself. There is no admission of responsibility for what has happened, no hint of a sense of guilt. And she obviously has not given up hope of a future if one can be contrived that is not shameful to her. That future depends on what she can gain from Caesar.

Since she is still alive and has not become penitent nor admitted—even realized—any responsibility for the dire situation she is now in, it is inevitable that she should carry on. Indeed the force of momentum, not checked by a change in character, leads the audience to anticipate an attempt to captivate Caesar: Julius Caesar, Pompey, Antony; and now Octavius is Caesar, the world's greatest.²¹ And it is to be expected that she will use the old tools, or rather the most effective one, the appeal to pity.²² When Caesar enters, she kneels to him:

                                                                                Sir, the gods
Will have it thus. My master and my lord
I must obey;

(V.ii.115-117)

then

                                                                                          Sole sir o' th' world,
I cannot project mine own cause so well
To make it clear; but do confess I have
Been laden with like frailties which before
Have often sham'd our sex.

Caesar's response gives her little encouragement, ending as it does with a threat:

If you apply yourself to our intents,
Which towards you are most gentle, you shall find
A benefit in this change; but, if you seek
To lay on me a cruelty by taking
Antony's course, you shall bereave yourself
Of my good purposes, and put your children
To that destruction which I'll guard them from
If thereon you rely.

There follows the Seleucus incident. Whether she is providing for herself if she should have a future or, as some think, tries to convince Caesar by the planned exposure of her concealing half her wealth that she has no intention of following “Antony's course”, or has contrived the whole thing as a means of eliciting pity, she unquestionably utilizes it for the latter purpose:

O Caesar, what a wounding shame is this,
That thou vouchsafing here to visit me,
Doing the honour of thy lordliness
To one so meek, that mine own servant should
Parcel the sum of my disgraces by
Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar,
That I some lady trifles have reserv'd,
Immoment toys, things of such dignity
As we greet modern friends withal; and say
Some nobler token I have kept apart
For Livia and Octavia—must I be unfolded
With one that I have bred? The gods! It smites me
Beneath the fall I have. …
Be it known that we, the greatest, are misthought
For things that others do; and, when we fall,
We answer others' merits in our name,
Are therefore to be pitied.

(V.ii.159-171; 176-179)

But her flattery, her profession of complete subjection to him, and her tearful appeals for pity have no effect on the astute Caesar, who answers her by the royal “we” and to her final, more quaveringly piteous “My master and my lord”, says bluntly, “Not so. Adieu.” She has done her best, but her practised methods, particularly the previously much-used pleas for pity, do not touch Caesar. And when he leaves she is vehement in her outburst—“He words me, girls, he words me”, and adds “that I should not / Be noble to myself!”²³ There is nothing left for her but to fall back on her resolution. The confirmation by Dolabella of what he had already told her about Caesar's intentions and his specification of a time limit,

                                                                                          Caesar through Syria
Intends his journey, and within three days
You with your children will he send before,

(V.ii.200-202)

incites her to immediate action. She describes vividly to Iras the exhibition Caesar would make in Rome of Iras and herself (she would no doubt include Charmian if she were then present) and applauds Iras' determination to pluck out her eyes rather than see it—

                                                                                                    Why, that's the way
To fool their preparation, and to conquer
Their most absurd intents.

Caesar having proved to be untouched, she reverts to the scene of her conquest of Antony:

Show me, my women, like a queen. Go fetch
My best attires. I am again for Cydnus,
To meet Mark Antony.

(ll.227-229)

With an implied confession of dillydallying, she declares:

My resolution's plac'd, and I have nothing
Of woman in me. Now from head to foot
I am marble-constant. Now the fleeting moon
No planet is of mine.(24)

(ll.238-241)

In her final moments, as she carries out her resolution, Cleopatra has “immortal longings”, hears Antony call, gloats over outwitting Caesar, addresses Antony as “husband”, shows jealousy in her fear that Iras may gain the first otherworld kiss from Antony, sneers at Caesar again, speaks lovingly to the asp at her breast,²⁵ and dies with “Antony” on her lips and with a final fling of contempt for the world. But, it should be noted, she does not “do it after the high Roman fashion”, nor with the singleness of motive that actuated Antony, whose tragedy gains ironical poignancy because he thought Cleopatra—really the lying Cleopatra—had anticipated him in nobility (IV.xiv.55-62).

Does she kill herself to be with Antony or to escape Caesar? It is the final question, to be placed along with others. Would she have killed herself if she could have added Caesar to her string of “greats”? Why did she leave the battle of Actium? Why did she urge Antony to fight at sea? Did she betray Antony in the second sea-fight? What was the meaning of her “O”? Why did she behave in such a way as to lose her country instead of preserve it? Did she ever really love Antony or did she love herself for having captivated him? Why did she tease, taunt, and cross Antony, very rarely saying anything kind to him? These questions, and others that could be asked, show that it was not accidental that the first word she speaks in the play is “If”. The appropriate symbol for her is a big interrogation point.

There is testimony, of course, by Antony and especially by Enobarbus, the clear-headed, cynical logician, as to her infinite variety. Somehow she has enchanted the world's greatest men, and she is beloved by her attendants, even to the death. But in her behavior throughout the play, from the effrontery of her appearing on the Cydnus to her wily proceedings with Octavius Caesar, there are repeated evidences that she is unaccountable. It is certain that Antony never penetrates her real character; he may call her gypsy and witch, but that is begging the question. How, in the face of and through his presentation of Cleopatra's behavior to Antony, does Shakespeare make of her a force powerful enough to bring about the downfall of the great Antony? Does he not supply the answer, paradoxically, by depicting her as the world's great question mark, alluring and magnetic because of all the unanswerable questions about her? Does he not imply that the secret of her charm lies in the fact that neither Antony nor we (including Shakespeare himself) can identify the secret of her charm? Such an interpretation was suggested by Gamaliel Bradford many years ago but apparently disregarded by most commentators on the play:

I have said that Cleopatra was mysterious. Perhaps it is an element of the art of Shakespeare to puzzle us a little, to make us feel that we cannot interpret him always conclusively. It detracts nothing from the truth of his characters that we cannot always determine what their motives are as we can with that poor little creature of Dryden. … I, at least, do not feel clear as to her good faith to Antony. That she loves him there is no doubt at all, loves him as she is capable of loving. But it is more than doubtful whether she kills herself for love of him or in sheer desperation to avoid the scorn and vengeance of Caesar. I greatly fear that if she had been confident of Caesar's favor, confident of reigning in Rome as she had reigned in Alexandria, Antony's poor dust might have tossed forgotten in the burning winds of Egypt. And yet, I do not know—who can know? That is precisely what gives the character its charm.²⁶

But whatever interpretation of Cleopatra's character may be given—and to survey all that has been said would demand a volume devoted to her—the final question remains: What is her tragedy? One can agree with Willard Farnham's statement (p. 174) that “It is part of her tragedy that with her subtlety she wins control of his [Antony's] force and by winning this control ruins him and herself”, but that is hardly the whole story. Nor is it satisfactory to become rhapsodic, to glorify Cleopatra beyond warrant, as J. Middleton Murry does:

Now [after Antony's death] in very deed, Cleopatra loves Antony: now she discerns his royalty, and loyalty surges up in her to meet it. Now we feel that her wrangling with Caesar and her Treasurer which follows is all external to her—as it were a part which she is still condemned to play ‘in this vile world’: a mere interruption, an alien interlude, while the travail of fusion between the order of imagination and love, and the order of existence and act is being accomplished: till the flame of perfect purpose breaks forth [V.ii.226-229 quoted]. No, not again for Cydnus: but now for the first time, indeed. For that old Cydnus, where the wonder pageant was, was but a symbol and preparation of this. That was an event in time; this is an event in eternity. And those royal robes were then only lovely garments of the body, now they are the integument of a soul. They must show her like a queen, now, because she is a queen, as she never was before.

(Pp. 375-376)

Much nearer to the text of the play and to all the evidence is E. E. Stoll:

… in [an] … audacious, sensuous key, for all her exaltation, she expresses herself on her deathbed. She is tenderer with her women, and stronger and more constant, than she has ever been; but her thoughts of Antony, though now an inviolable shade, are not celestial or Platonic. They are steeped in amorousness, and she is waiting, coiled on her couch. She loves him more than at the beginning; but neither now nor at his death is she, as Professor Schücking declares, “all tenderness, all passionate devotion and unselfish love”; nor does she quit life because it is not worth the living. On life she really never loosens her greedy grip. Her beauty she clutches to her dying bosom as the miser does his gold. Her robe and jewels are, even in death, assumed to heighten the impression of it upon Caesar—though only to show him what he has missed. She hears Antony mock him now, from over the bitter wave; and at the beginning of the scene she cried,

                                                                                                                                  go fetch
My best attires; I am again for Cydnus—

as one who, to please both him and herself, and vex their rival, would fain die at her best, reviving all the glories of that triumph. To an ugly death she could scarcely have brought herself; … the death which … she is choosing and devising [is] … an event, a scene, well-nigh an amour … she thinks the stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, which hurts and is desired … she is wrapped and folded up in sensuous imaginations to the end.²⁷

Indeed, to have Cleopatra glorified and transfigured is to forgive her treatment of Antony, to imply that it was well worth the destruction of the great Roman to bring about her regeneration. If the tragedy of Antony and the tragedy of Cleopatra are to interact to intensify each other, it is necessary not to have a transfiguration of Cleopatra; the poignancy of Antony's tragedy is intensified by Cleopatra's unregeneracy, and it increases the pathos and tragedy of Cleopatra that she is never penitent, not even conscious of the debacle she has wrought. That she does change somewhat, that she does attain some realization of what Antony was, is to be recognized. That she did not realize it earlier, and to a much greater degree, is her tragedy: the too little and the too late. Thus the tragedy of Cleopatra is different in kind from that of Antony; the play contains the tragedy of Antony and then the tragedy of Cleopatra.

The “too little” involves a considerable pathetic element. Cleopatra, though appearing on the Cydnus as Venus, is really Isis in environment, interests, and obsessions. Of that the fertility connotations made obvious in the conversation of her companions Iras and Charmian with the Soothsayer (I.ii), the Nile imagery frequent in the play, and the trend of Cleopatra's own thoughts as revealed in her speeches give plentiful proof. Her basic interests show themselves in her imagination as she visualizes Antony in Rome (I.v.19 ff.). They permeate the glowing dream of Antony she describes to Dolabella, as she concentrates on Antony's power and his bounty (not on aspects of character and personal qualities). They suffuse her final speeches; “but even then what emerges is a state of trance, a vision of the divine lover Antony, filling Heaven and Earth, the kiss of the bridegroom, Love lifted to a higher plane among the Homeric gods, all an aspiration and a wild desire, the eagle and the dove.”²⁸ This last characterization of her vision is over-etherealized; a more moderate statement is Willard Farnham's:

If we are to understand that the love of Cleopatra for Antony, like her character, continues to be deeply flawed to the end of her life, we are nevertheless to understand that, like her character, it has its measure of nobility. If Cleopatra never comes to have a love for Antony to match his love for her, she at least comes to have magnificent visions of what it would be like to achieve such a love, and her climactic vision leads her to call him husband as she dies.

(P. 202)

To that extent we may credit Cleopatra with some ennobling; but it is just enough to intensify and illuminate her tragedy. “She's good, being gone; / The hand could pluck her back that shov'd her on”, said Antony (I.ii.130-131), on hearing of Fulvia's death. Cleopatra only after Antony's death comes to some realization of what he was; he's good, being gone. Only after he is wounded or dead does she call him “noble”; only in a sort of funeral hymn does she recognize his power and bounty. But she never feels any sense of guilt such as Antony confesses; there is no peccavi; there is no repentance, no consciousness even, of the need for remorse. She is no Othello; her tragedy can be only partial, not complete. The picture she imagines of rejoining Antony in another world could never become actual; she still would have considerable explaining to do.

Cleopatra's tragedy is inherent in her equivocality, in her utter self-interest, and in her complete ignorance of the existence of an unselfish love apart from the physical. She has had no comprehension of Roman virtues, no recognition of Antony's fundamental character, no appreciation of his courtesy and devotion to her. She gloried in his greatness as a soldier and as the most powerful of the triumvirs, not for his sake but for her own—and undermined both his military prowess and his power. She evinces, throughout the play, little concern about the country of which she is queen; she is woman, not queen, in her interests and behavior. She is as innocent of morality as Falstaff of honor. But she does learn something, through frustration and suffering, of what virtue—Roman virtue—means. It is pathetic and tragic that a beginning of anything other than sensual self-interest comes when there is neither the opportunity nor the time for growth to ensue. In that irony—in the too little and the too late—lies her tragedy. That is all the tragedy there is for her, but it is none the less profound, and gains poignancy through contrast to Antony's as his gains pathos through contrast to hers.

Notes

1. The London Shakespeare (N. Y., 1957), VI, 1213.

2. Shakespeare (London, 1936), p. 372.

3. Shakespeare's Life and Art (London, 1939), p. 178.

4. Nature in Shakespearian Tragedy (London, 1955), p. 123.

5. Approach to Shakespeare (Oxford, 1931), p. 90.

6. Shakespeare's Use of Learning: An Inquiry into the Growth of His Mind and Art (San Marino, 1953), p. 315.

7. The answer is hardly to be found in the multitudinous pages that have been written about her. An excellent summary of the varying, antithetical interpretations of Cleopatra is given in Daniel Stempel's “The Transmigration of the Crocodile”, Shakespeare Quarterly, VII (1956), 59-62.

8. Not all critics recognize the teasing; for instance, J. Dover Wilson:

   … when the lovers enter …, we learn from their lips that this same love is more spacious than ‘the wide arch of the ranged empire’, more precious than kingdoms or the whole ‘dungy earth’, and so boundless that it requires ‘new heaven, new earth’ to contain it.

   (Antony and Cleopatra, ed. Wilson, Cambridge, 1950, p. xviii);

   and Robert Speaight:

   But when Antony and Cleopatra enter upon the stage, lost to everything but each other, their rapture is almost liturgical, and we remember the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet.

   (Pp. 127-128)

   It is surely inaccurate to give the speeches of Antony and Cleopatra equal import, to fail to discriminate between the tone of her two lines and that of his two (I.i.14-17).

9. Citations and quotations are based on the Kittredge edition of Antony and Cleopatra (Boston, 1941).

10. Some critics have interpreted the “Courteous lord” speech differently; e.g., H. N. Hillebrand:

    Until now Cleopatra has been desperately trying, with all the battery of her wit and sarcasm, to stave off the moment of parting. When at last she sees that Antony is inflexible, that he is in fact on the point of strategic flight, she suddenly breaks, abandons her attack, and becomes wholly the unhappy, loving woman.

    (Antony and Cleopatra, “The Arden Shakespeare”, Boston, 1926, p. 145.)

    But she does not “abandon her attack”; she merely changes tactics.

11. North's Plutarch. “Antonius … sent to command Cleopatra to appeare personally before him, when he came into CILICIA, to aunswere vnto such accusations as were laide against her, being this: that she had aided Cassius and Brutus in their warre against him. … Therefore when she was sent vnto by diuers letters, both from Antonius himselfe, and also from his friendes, she made so light of it and mocked Antonius so much, that she disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the riuer of Cydnus,” etc.

12. Shakespeare Studies (N. Y., 1927), p. 29.

13. Poets and Playwrights (Minneapolis, 1930), p. 2.

14. Enobarbus, in saying to Cleopatra,

                                                                                    What though you fled
    From that great face of war whose several ranges
    Frighted each other?

    (III.xiii.4-6)

    is not concerned with arguing about her reason for leaving; he is condemning Antony for having followed her (ll. 6-12).

15. The Folio “Oh” followed by a period may suggest only a distressful moan; Thyreus goes on speaking as if he heard nothing. Maybe modern editors imply too much by inserting an exclamation point.

16. “And she gives Thyreus her hand to kiss. Perhaps she finds him rather good-looking; certainly she is musing on former, or on future, conquests” (Speaight, p. 142).

17. G. B. Harrison calls that speech “the first outburst of genuine emotion that she has yet shown”, and adds, “It is difficult to know at this point whether Cleopatra is loyal or false; probably she does not know herself” (Shakespeare's Tragedies, London, 1951, p. 218).

18. War, “all the snares the world can set” (M. R. Ridley, rev. ed. in the “Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare,” p. 171), or Caesar?

19. “Why, we may ask, should she be worried about what Caesar means to do with her if she has fully made up her mind to leave the dull world that no longer contains Antony?” (Willard Farnham, Shakespeare's Tragic Frontier: The World of His Final Tragedies, Berkeley, 1950, p. 198).

20. This Dolabella incident has been interpreted in various ways. For instance, G. S. Griffiths (“Antony and Cleopatra”, Essays and Studies … English Ass'n, XXXI (1946), 64): “Cleopatra turns this great engine of poetry on Dolabella, but it remains primarily an apology for suicide and a declaration of faith in a love, a person that has been and is no more in time.” And, more realistically, A. H. Tolman (“Act V of Antony and Cleopatra”, Falstaff and Other Shakespearean Topics, N. Y., 1925, pp. 166-167):

    This high-sounding praise of her last lover is wholly genuine. … But Cleopatra is an infinite coquette … she has never been able to ‘see an ambassador, scarcely even a messenger, without desiring to bewitch him’; and only death can put an end to her instinctive longing to fascinate men … Cleopatra is eloquent both because she is praising her beloved Antony, and because she is captivating Dolabella. Her rapturous words are about Antony, but they are also directed at her new admirer. … Dolabella … returns to declare his love, to give the queen the fullest possible information, and to take a last farewell.

    Most students of Shakespeare do not seem to realize the full force of this embryonic love-affair, acting itself out before us on the very brink of the grave.

21. “Each person [in a book or play] must behave in character; that means that he must do what from their [the readers'] knowledge of him they expect him to do” (Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, Chap. 72).

22. The sequence of seeing, pitying, and loving is explicitly stated, though by a woman for a man in this instance, in The Two Noble Kinsmen II. iv. 7, 11, 14-15:

    DAUGHTER.

    First, I saw him;

    … next I pitied him;

    … then I loved him,

    Extremely lov'd him, infinitely lov'd him.

    Cleopatra's envisioning this possible sequence is suggested by her words to Proculeius, V. ii. 30-32; she wishes, of course, to be in Caesar's presence that he may see and pity her:

                                                                                                        I hourly learn
    A doctrine of obedience, and would gladly
    Look him i' th' face.

23. Apparently “a desire to save herself from the ignoble fate that Caesar plans for her” (Farnham, Shakespeare's Tragic Frontier, p. 199). But is that really all she means?

24. Shakespeare here reflects the contemporary popularity of Virgil's “Varium et mutabile semper / Femina” (Aeneid, IV. 569-570).

25. “The asp, wriggling its way from the basket to her breast, carries more than its mortal sting; it bears the salt and savour of all that natural life whose passionate child Cleopatra had been. The asp is very much more than a theatrical convenience; it is the symbol of nature reclaiming one part of its own” (Speaight, p. 139).

26. “The Serpent of Old Nile”, Poet Lore, X (1898), 529-530.

27. Poets and Playwrights, pp. 14-16.

28. Griffiths, p. 42.