Cleopatra

Play

Antony and Cleopatra

Summary

Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, is one of Shakespeare's most dazzling and theatrically inexhaustible creations — a ruler of supreme intelligence and magnetic unpredictability who holds Antony in thrall through the sheer multiplicity of her moods and her genius for making herself endlessly fascinating. She is vain, jealous, capricious, politically acute, and capable of breathtaking courage. Her death scene, in which she dresses in her royal robes, applies the asps to her breast, and cheats Octavius of his triumph, is among Shakespeare's greatest — transforming a defeated queen into an immortal. Enobarbus's description of her arrival at Cydnus remains the most celebrated portrait of her.

Notable Quotations

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety: other women cloy / The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry / Where most she satisfies." *(2.2 — Enobarbus describing her)*

"I am fire and air; my other elements / I give to baser life." *(5.2)*

"Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have / Immortal longings in me." *(5.2)*

"If it be love indeed, tell me how much." *(1.1)*

"Methinks I hear / Antony call; I see him rouse himself / To praise my noble act." *(5.2)*

"The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, / Which hurts and is desired." *(5.2)*

Cross-references

• Antony and Cleopatra — the play
• Tragedies
• character_mark_antony — the Roman general she loves and unmakes
• character_octavius_caesar — her conqueror, whose triumph she refuses
• character_charmian — her devoted attendant
• character_enobarbus — Antony's lieutenant, eloquent witness to her power