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William Shakespeare, c.1606–1607
Comprehensive A-Level notes covering plot through the Rome/Egypt opposition, character profiles, thematic essays, Jacobean and classical context, verbatim quotations from the First Folio with analysis, symbolic patterns, and exam question plans with comparative angles for paper-2 and coursework essays.
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The play opens in Alexandria with Philo lamenting that Antony's “captain's heart” has become “the bellows and the fan / To cool a gypsy's lust.” Antony and Cleopatra flirt and quarrel; Antony refuses to hear messengers from Rome until news of his wife Fulvia's death and Pompey's rebellion compels him to return. Cleopatra alternately mocks and pines for him. In Rome, Octavius Caesar criticises Antony's dissolution to Lepidus. Back in Egypt, Cleopatra recalls her past affairs (“my salad days”) and dispatches messengers to Italy. The act establishes the play's dialectic structure: every Egyptian scene of revelry is followed by a Roman scene of political calculation.
Key Moments
Antony arrives in Rome and is reconciled with Caesar through a politically expedient marriage to Caesar's sister Octavia. Enobarbus, in the celebrated “barge” speech, describes Cleopatra's first meeting with Antony at Cydnus and predicts that “he will to his Egyptian dish again.” The triumvirs negotiate peace with Pompey aboard his galley; the drunken feast that follows reveals the precariousness of Roman alliances when Menas offers to murder all three rulers and is refused. In Egypt, Cleopatra learns of Antony's marriage and beats the messenger. The act juxtaposes Roman political theatre with Egyptian emotional volatility.
Key Moments
Antony returns to Cleopatra. Caesar removes Lepidus from the triumvirate and renews war. Antony, against the counsel of Enobarbus and his soldiers, fights Caesar at sea to please Cleopatra. At the battle of Actium, Cleopatra's flagship flees and Antony follows “like a doting mallard,” abandoning his fleet. The defeat is catastrophic. Antony rages at Cleopatra, then forgives her. He sends Cleopatra's schoolmaster as ambassador to Caesar; Caesar sends Thidias, who flatters Cleopatra. Antony has Thidias whipped and challenges Caesar to single combat. Enobarbus begins to question his loyalty: “I'll seek some way to leave him.”
Key Moments
Antony wins a brief land victory but is defeated again at sea when his fleet surrenders. Believing Cleopatra has betrayed him, he vows to kill her. Strange music in the streets signals that “the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, / Now leaves him.” Enobarbus, having defected to Caesar, dies of grief: “O Antony!” Cleopatra, terrified, sends word that she is dead. Antony, hearing this, asks his servant Eros to kill him; Eros kills himself instead, and Antony falls on his own sword but botches the wound. He is hauled up to Cleopatra in her monument and dies in her arms with Roman dignity recovered. Cleopatra laments that “the crown o' the earth doth melt” and resolves to die “after the high Roman fashion.”
Key Moments
Caesar tries to manipulate Cleopatra so she will live to grace his Roman triumph. Cleopatra plays for time, dreaming of Antony as a colossal demi-god in her great speech to Dolabella. Dolabella warns her that Caesar intends to display her in Rome. She prepares for death with theatrical splendour, putting on her royal robe and crown. A clown brings the asp in a basket of figs. Cleopatra applies the asp to her breast, imagining the bite as a lover's kiss; Iras dies first, Charmian after. Caesar enters, finds the women dead, and orders that the lovers be buried together: “No grave upon the earth shall clip in it / A pair so famous.” Caesar's control over the political world is complete, but Cleopatra has eluded his triumph through the theatre of her death.
Key Moments