A basket of vipers
Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” and the treacherous dilemma of trust
I’m reading through Shakespeare’s plays in an attempt to make sense of the world. Today I’m writing about “Antony and Cleopatra.” For a quick reference to posts on previous plays, click here. Next week, “Coriolanus.”
Trust is fundamental to every relationship, whether familial, local, or national. But even more, trust is essential for psychological well-being. A parent who abuses a child’s trust effectively traumatizes that child for life. Humans are social. There is no alternative to extending trust, however limited, regardless the risk.
In an opinion piece titled “The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Law,” Jesse Wegman explores the effects of a politicized judiciary that has traded public trust for ideological outcomes.
Professor McConnell recalled a recent exchange in one of his classes. “I said something to the effect of, ‘It’s important to assume that the people you disagree with are speaking in good faith.’ And a student raises his hand, and he asks, ‘Why? Why should we assume that people on the other side are acting in good faith?’ This was not a crazy person; this was a perfectly sober-minded, rational student. And I think the question was sincere. And I think that’s kind of shocking. I do think that some of the underlying assumptions of how a civil society operates can no longer be assumed.”
Shakespeare was also interested in an historical moment in which distrust poisoned the power bases of two forces battling for national control. Those thoughts give us the play Antony and Cleopatra.
Summary
This play announces with its name that it’s about relationships, so let’s start there.
Rome is being ruled by a triumvirate made up of Octavius Caesar (called Caesar in dialogue), Marc Antony, and Lepidus. Antony is an elder statesman while Caesar is young.
Antony is married to Fulvia1. Regardless, he spends much of his time in Greece and Egypt, carrying on an affair with Cleopatra. She’s not only the opulently-wealthy Queen of Egypt: she also controls much of the East and was previously involved romantically with Julius Caesar. Antony, a character we last saw in the play Julius Caesar, has built his reputation from his military successes and from using Julius Caesar’s murder to aggregate power.
As the play begins, several characters are grousing about how Antony is getting on in years and seems to be more interested in Cleopatra’s bed than in leading Rome. And indeed, his first scene is with a taunting, flirting Cleopatra who distracts him from receiving a messenger from Rome.
We learn that Fulvia has aligned with Pompey against Caesar. Fulvia dies, leaving Antony free to marry. Caesar calls Antony back to Rome to fend off an imminent attack by Pompey. Cleopatra isn’t happy with Antony, newly single, returning to Rome with its temptations, outside her control.
Back in Rome, the triumvirate finds common cause in defending Rome against Pompey. Caesar presses Antony on whether he supported his dead wife’s alliance with Pompey and they quarrel. Hoping to mediate, Lepidus suggests Antony marry Octavia, Caesar’s sister, since this marriage would knit the triumvirate more tightly. Antony embraces the idea; Caesar is less enthusiastic. In the end, Antony marries Octavia and Caesar issues Antony a warning to not betray Octavia.
In Egypt, Cleopatra is enraged to learn that Antony has remarried. She demands to know everything about this new wife, her new competitor.
In Egypt, Antony learns that Caesar is raising an army and decides he must also. He sends Octavia to Rome, telling her she must serve as an intermediary between himself and Caesar. When she arrives in Rome, Caesar tells her that Antony is unfaithful to her, to ensure she’s aligned with him against Antony.
Caesar imprisons Lepidus, who later dies, leaving Antony and Caesar as rivals for leading Rome. Antony has no means to fight Caesar without Cleopatra, who has unimaginable wealth and a powerful navy. Against the wishes of his advisors, Antony decides to wage a sea battle against Caesar at Actium. During this historic battle, Antony watches as Cleopatra’s ships flee. He orders his ship to follow them, leading to a catastrophic defeat.
Antony asks Caesar for mercy: he wants to live out his life in Egypt or Athens. Caesar denies this request but agrees to hear a plea from Cleopatra, on the condition that she banish and kill Antony.
Antony sends Caesar a challenge for a duel using swords, which Caesar brushes off. Instead, he sends troops to take Antony. He orders the men who’d defected from Antony to serve in the vanguard. This strategy serves two purposes: Antony must face those who’d betrayed him, while it expedites the death of those who’d previously defied Caesar.
Amazingly, the battle goes well for Antony, who leads a victory celebration in Alexandria. He receives intelligence that Caesar is preparing for sea battle, so Antony does the same. Caesar, however, is playing him. Antony watches his own ships desert him, and he blames Cleopatra for the betrayal. He vows to kill her.
Cleopatra retreats to her monument, where she can hide in safety with her attendants. Acting on advise from one of them, Cleopatra sends word to Antony that she has died by her own hand.
When Antony receives the news, he decides to kill himself. He asks his faithful servant to kill him, but the servant kills himself instead. Antony picks up the sword and stabs himself, but it’s not a wound grave enough for immediate death. While dying, he receives word from Cleopatra that news of her death was a ruse and that she’s alive. He asks to be taken to her. He arrives at her monument but dies.
Cleopatra is determined to end her own life, refusing to be taken as a war trophy. She arranges for a basket of figs to be brought to her. Embedded in the figs are deadly asps. She brings an asp to her breast, then her arm. She dies. Her attendants do the same. Caesar arrives to find the gruesome tableau.
Thoughts
This is a frustrating play for anyone who wants sympathetic characters and endings with some measure of hope. Other Shakespearean tragedies extend a breath of hope when the final staging of dead bodies is mourned by a sympathetic character: Horatio at the end of Hamlet; Kent and Edgar in King Lear, the promise of future king Fleance in Macbeth. Surveying the dead bodies of Marc Antony, Cleopatra, and her assistants, we’re left with Octavius Caesar.
CAESAR
[….] Our army shall
In solemn show attend this funeral,
And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see
High order in this great solemnity.
-Act 5 Scene 2
Caesar has lied incessantly through the play. No doubt he intends to put on a ‘solemn show.’ Caesar can be counted on only to do what’s best for Caesar.
Cleopatra is the most intriguing character, as she was in life. Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life paints a portrait that’s stunning in its detail.
Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world.
She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a son with Caesar and—after his murder—three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.
Shakespeare’s Cleopatra is courageous, wealthy, powerful, beautiful, alluring, and strong-willed. But the play also highlights traits that are commonly used to disparage women: she’s intensely jealous of other women, bitchy, cruel, quick to change her mind.
The play accurately depicts Cleopatra’s decision at Actium, but it frames her act as a betrayal: she deserted Antony, who was caught off-guard. Her decision forced a defeat that wasn’t forgone. (Not all historians agree2.) It’s hard to see a strategic genius in the play’s characterization of Cleopatra. She’s temperamental and selfish. She’s more strategic than Antony, but such a low bar is an insult.
It’s not about whom to like, but whom to trust
The common thread winding through the play is the absence of trust. Poor Lepidus, who attempts to keep the triumvirate together, is imprisoned and dies for his efforts. Antony marries Octavia despite knowing his own intentions to return to Cleopatra. Cleopatra trusts no one with the exception of her female attendants and eunuch (a man un-manned). Caesar is neither trusting nor trustworthy. He offers his sister to Antony, knowing Antony will be unfaithful to her and planning to use Antony’s unfaithfulness as a wedge for increasing his own power. He too is cruel, bitchy, and quick to change his mind—qualities in male leaders that aren’t damning attributes. He tricks Antony and tries to trick Cleopatra, and he’s denied that only by Cleopatra’s suicide.
A triumvirate is a dicey political configuration to execute well. At that level of authority, the nice guys have mostly been winnowed out. Those who remain have been selected for their ability to be ruthless and calculating in seeking power for themselves. Antony was the idiot useful to Caesar until Antony’s wife Fulvia became annoying. Lepidus’ use was helpful only in maintaining peace between Caesar and Antony; he became redundant when the two more powerful men committed to be adversaries. While the triumvirate started as a political expedient, it had outlived its usefulness by the time depicted in this play.
The impossibility of surviving a viper pit
The basket of vipers, hidden amongst fig stems and leaves, proves the perfect metaphor for the play’s rampant betrayal of trust. Cleopatra doesn’t trust Caesar to treat her well:
CLEOPATRA
[….] Know, sir, that I
Will not wait pinioned at your master’s court,
Nor once be chastised with the sober eye
Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up
And show me to the shouting varletry
Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt
Be gentle grave unto me; rather on Nilus’ mud
Lay me stark naked, and let the waterflies
Blow me into abhorring; rather make
My country’s high pyramides my gibbet,
And hang me up in chains.
-Act 5 Scene 2
Appalled, one of Caesar’s men responds to her: “You do extend / These thoughts of horror further than you shall / Find cause in Caesar.” Cleopatra knows that Caesar can’t be trusted. Being vanquished, she’ll be paraded through the streets of Rome and vilified.
As she puts an asp to her breast, she urges it on:
CLEOPATRA
Come, thou mortal wretch,
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie. Poor venomous fool,
Be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak
That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass
Unpolicied!
-Act 5 Scene 2
Cleopatra and Antony diverge in the last acts of the play. Antony finds himself left with only one attendant. He decides to die only as a reaction to news of Cleopatra’s death. He tries to offload the responsibility for his death to his attendant; when that fails, he botches the fatal blow. He hears that Cleopatra lives, and he regrets his decision, asking to be carried to see her. He dies weakly, short of his goal.
In contrast, Cleopatra secures control over her body, one that’s been the target for male aggression and desire on all sides. She enters her own monument, a place she had created to secure her identity at the height of her power. She plans and executes her death by her own hand, denying Caesar the use of her body to augment his power. As with other acts of political self-immolation, it is an act both tragic and yet futile. Caesar will put on a show of grief while he secures control over the East and Rome itself.
‘Why should we assume that people […] are acting in good faith?’
Most people don’t want to think about their government. They want to trust in the courts that define justice, especially when their own interests are at stake. They want the comfort of certainty that neighbors and coworkers are trustworthy; to live otherwise is to live constantly in fear. That’s the genie of horror films, whether “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or “The Last of Us” or “The Road”: to not be able to trust anyone is a special kind of hell. By definition, life is existentially dangerous when no one can be trusted.
One political strategy is to incite fear, hatred, and distrust amongst neighbors and within families. Not everyone is untrustworthy. Know the vipers for who they are.
Thanks for reading,
She’s named in the play, but is not a character seen onstage.
The historian Barry Strauss (“The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium”) argues that Cleopatra’s exit from battle was planned by her and Antony.