Shakespeare presents Antony, Cleopatra, and Caesar as committed only to their Images in Antony and Cleopatra

The language Shakespeare uses in Antony and Cleopatra is concerned overwhelmingly with image and display. As Enobarbus describes the first meeting of the lovers we are drawn in to a world of colour and wealth, ‘The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,/ Burned on the water’. Cleopatra herself is described in even more majestic – even divine – terms, ‘o’erpicturing’ the goddess Venus. Antony himself is ‘the crown of the earth’, whose eyes ‘glowed like plated Mars’, while Caesar is ‘a Jove’, whose ascendancy will bring ‘the time of universal peace’ – an allusion, Rene Weis suggests, to the everlasting kingdom of Christ. However, it is debatable as to whether the characters themselves share the intent of the grand words surrounding them, and if they are as committed to image as this quotation suggests.

Antony, in fact, seems to surrender his public image completely for Cleopatra’s sake. The play opens with a comment on the received view, Antony has become a ‘strumpet’s fool’. Indeed, he is willing to sacrifice Rome and his worldly status in virtue of his love for Cleopatra, ‘let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch/ Of the ranged empire fall’. Only absolute political necessity can draw him from Egypt, and even then he recognises that ‘i’th’East my pleasure lies’. His marriage to Octavia angers Cleopatra greatly, but it was enacted only to placate Caesar and is soon rendered useless as he returns promptly to Egypt. Furthermore, his heroic image [he was said by Plutarch to have been like Hercules] is damaged by his preferences, Caesar mocks him as ‘womanly’ while even Antony himself cries at Cleopatra’s servant ‘O, thy vile lady! She has robbed me of my sword!’ In a sense, it appears that Antony has been unmanned by his com...

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...d me my robes, put on my crown’ – shows her determination to make a memorable final tableau. On the other hand, and more likely given the divine undertones and implications in the language, she seeks Antony in a life beyond death, realising that life and politics – those ‘baser elements’ – are trivial compared to everlasting love.

A conclusion can now be established. Antony is positively unconcerned with display, he sacrifices image and politics alike for the love of his Egyptian queen. Caesar is centred on image – the very nature of his role in power demands it, and his highly rhetorical speeches are testament to this aspect of his character. Cleopatra seems to develop as the play progresses from a character more comparable to Caesar to truly Antony’s lover, ultimately sacrificing the most precious gift – life itself – in favour of an afterlife in his company.