Antony and Cleopatra Summary: Shakespeare's Tragedy of Love, Power and Empire
What Antony and Cleopatra is about
Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, first performed around 1607 by the King's Men at either the Blackfriars Theatre or the Globe. It first appeared in print in the First Folio of 1623, under the title The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra. Shakespeare drew his material from Thomas North's 1579 English translation of Plutarch's Lives, and the play is sometimes read as a sequel to Julius Caesar.
The story follows Mark Antony, one of the three triumvirs ruling the Roman Republic alongside Octavius and Lepidus. Antony has abandoned his soldierly duties in Alexandria, held there by Egypt's queen, Cleopatra. Rome has problems he is ignoring, including the rebellion and death of his third wife, Fulvia. Octavius calls him back to help fight Sextus Pompey and the pirates Menecrates and Menas. Cleopatra begs him to stay. He swears his love and leaves anyway.
In Rome, the triumvirs patch up their quarrel. Agrippa proposes that Antony marry Octavius's sister, Octavia, to seal the bond. Antony agrees. From that political marriage the play spirals outward: a truce with Sextus Pompey, a drunken party on his galley, broken agreements, Lepidus imprisoned, and Antony back in Alexandria crowning himself and Cleopatra as rulers of Egypt and the eastern third of Rome's territory. War with Octavius follows, and with it the sea battle at Actium.
The structure is restless. Scenes jump between Egypt and Rome, and the language shifts with them: sensual and imaginative in Alexandria, austere and practical in Rome. Critics have never quite agreed on what kind of play it is. History, tragedy, comedy, romance and problem play have all been argued for. The one safe description is that it is a Roman play.
The main characters
Antony is a great soldier who has stopped behaving like one. He swings between Roman duty and Egyptian pleasure, and the play refuses to let either side win cleanly. A soothsayer warns him that he will always lose if he fights Octavius, which turns out to be true in more ways than one.
Cleopatra is widely considered one of Shakespeare's most complex and fully developed female characters. Enobarbus gives her the line that has followed her ever since: "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety." She is also vain and theatrical enough to provoke scorn. When she hears of Antony's marriage she takes furious revenge on the messenger, then calms down only once her courtiers assure her that Octavia is plain. Shakespeare gives her both the absurdity and the grandeur, which is why critical responses to her have been so famously divided.
Octavius Caesar is the antagonist, the triumvir who leaves the party early and sober while everyone else drinks. He becomes the first emperor of the Roman Empire. Enobarbus, Antony's long-serving lieutenant, is the play's clearest-eyed observer. He knows Octavia can never satisfy Antony after Cleopatra. He argues, correctly, that Antony should fight Octavius on land rather than at sea. He is ignored.
The themes
Love and power are set against each other and neither is allowed to be simple. Antony's passion for Cleopatra costs him a battle, an army and an empire, yet the play never writes it off as mere weakness. After Actium, ashamed of following Cleopatra's fleet off the field, he still says "Give me a kiss; even this repays me."
Ambition runs in a colder register through Octavius. He imprisons Lepidus, breaks the truce with Sextus and wins by being consistently less distracted than his rival. Honour appears in strange places. Menas suggests that Sextus kill all three triumvirs and take Rome for himself, and Sextus refuses because it would be dishonourable. The chance never comes again.
Loyalty gets the play's most painful scene. Enobarbus deserts to Octavius. Antony, instead of seizing the goods left behind, sends them after him. Enobarbus, overwhelmed by that generosity and ashamed of himself, dies of a broken heart.
How it ends
Skip this section if you want the ending fresh. Antony loses the land battle as his troops desert. He denounces Cleopatra as a traitor and resolves to kill her. To win him back she sends word that she has died with his name on her lips, then locks herself in her monument. The plan fails. Antony decides his own life is worthless and asks his aide Eros to run him through. Eros kills himself instead. Antony wounds himself badly but does not die at once, learns Cleopatra is alive, and is hoisted up into the monument to die in her arms. With Egypt defeated, Cleopatra is taken captive by Octavius, and she takes her own life.
Why it still matters
The play holds its place because it refuses to settle. It will not say whether Antony is a fool or a hero, whether Cleopatra is a manipulator or a great queen, or whether the world well lost was worth losing. That refusal is the point, and it keeps the arguments going four centuries on. The verse carries it too, especially Enobarbus on Cleopatra's charms, which is among the most quoted passages Shakespeare wrote. For readers coming from Julius Caesar, it is the other half of the story: what the Roman world became once Caesar was gone.
