Mark Antony (Antony and Cleopatra)
Play
Summary
Mark Antony is one of the three rulers of the Roman world and the play's tragic hero — a man of legendary military valour and colossal personal magnetism who has surrendered himself to Egypt and to Cleopatra. The play opens with his Roman identity already eroding: he neglects wars and politics for pleasure, and every attempt to recover his Roman self is undone by his return to Cleopatra. He loses the Battle of Actium through sheer infatuation, follows Cleopatra's retreating ships, and is mocked even by his own soldiers. His botched suicide — he falls on his sword but does not die immediately — and his death in Cleopatra's arms constitute one of Shakespeare's most complex tragic endings: ruined and yet, in the lovers' own vision, gloriously transcendent.
Notable Quotations
"Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch / Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space. / Kingdoms are clay." *(1.1)*
"I am Antony yet." *(3.13)*
"Unarm, Eros; the long day's task is done, / And we must sleep." *(4.14)*
"I am dying, Egypt, dying; only / I here importune death awhile, until / Of many thousand kisses the poor last / I lay upon thy lips." *(4.15)*
"The miserable change now at my end / Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts / In feeding them with those my former fortunes / Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world." *(4.15)*
Cross-references
- Antony and Cleopatra — the play
- Tragedies
- character_mark_antony_jc — his earlier incarnation in Julius Caesar
- character_cleopatra — the great love who destroys and glorifies him
- character_octavius_caesar — his rival and ultimate conqueror
- character_enobarbus — his loyal lieutenant and plain-spoken conscience