Antony and Cleopatra quotes and analysis

Philo: “Dotage […] o’erflows the measure” re. Antony

• Anchors the Roman perspective of a masculine rejection of a feminised East

• Symbolic representation of Antony’s love as fluid

Caesar: “Leave your lascivious wassails […] wound thine honour” re. Antony

• Characterising Antony’s time in Egypt as leisure

• Further develops the contrast between Roman duty and Egyptian hedonism

• Accentuates the Eastern and Western values

Cleopatra faking her own death

• She is fully aware of the pain that will come, demonstrating her thanatos rationale

• Generally, Antony becoming more decadent and theratrical

• Cleopatra taking a more structured position, traceable to Roman traits

• Distinction beteween values of Egypt and Rome are not binary

  • Shakespeare is challenging the values of his binary era

Philosophies of Sigmund Freud

• Pleasure principle > reality principle in both Antony and Cleopatra

Antony: “Thou would have to find out new heaven, new earth""

• Submission to the pleasure principle

• Describes his passion for Cleopatra as boundless

• Establishes the external performance he will be required to maintain, and how that may ruin him later

Antony embracing death as much as a “bridegroom” to a “lover’s bed”

• Metaphorically contradicting his valiant character

• Shows evidence of Antony’s Eros and Thanatos drive

Scarus: Antony is “valiant” but also “dejected”, where his “fortunes give him hope and fear / Of what he has and has not"

• External perspective of Antony’s everchanging duty and desire

• The play tries to dress him as a solider of values

• But is complacent with the urges of passion

• Idealising how it is difficult to combine contrasting drices and how it will fail, and the confusion that will unfold

Cleopatra: “If it be love indeed, tell me how much”

• Imperative language subverting Roman order

• Frames Cleopatra’s viewpoint as not only emotional but also political

• Something that Antony must always perform and prove

Canidius: “Our leader’s led, / And we are women’s men”

• Wordplay and inversion of gender roles signifying how patriarchal Roman identity has been emasculated by Egyptian influence

• Acts as a turning point for how passion is no longer a private matter but instead can dictate the outcome of battles and politics

Cleopatra: “squeaking Cleopatra boy […] i’ me’ the posture of a whore”

• Meta-theatre, mentioning the male-actors on the Jacobean stage

• Refusing to allow Rome to control her narrative as a defeated “whore”

• Cleopatra turns passion into her own form of duty, able to subvert Roman reason