Antony and Cleopatra Act I Scene-wise Summary
Antony and Cleopatra
Summary and Analysis of Act One, Scenes 1-5
Summary
Scene One.
Cleopatra's palace, in Alexandria. Philo complains to Demetrius that Cleopatra has transformed
Antony from a great general to a whore's fool. Antony and Cleopatra enter, with Cleopatra pushing
Antony to describe how much he loves her. A messenger comes from Octavius, but
Antony, clearly annoyed, commands the messenger to be brief. Cleopatra, partly
mocking, partly serious, chides Antony and tells him to hear the message. But
in the end Antony refuses to hear the message, and he and Cleopatra set out for
a night in the city. Philo and Demetrius do not approve.
Scene Two.
Cleopatra's palace, in Alexandria. The servants of
Cleopatra's court ask a soothsayer to predict their futures. The soothsayer
seems to start out well, telling Charmian that she will outlive her
mistress, but then he warns that the days to come will be worse than the days
past. When the soothsayer insinuates that Charmian's loose, she's had enough.
The soothsayer tells Iras that her fortune will be like
Charmian's.
A second messenger brings yet more grim news: his wife
Fulvia is dead. Antony muses that he sometimes wished her dead while she lived,
and now that she's gone he can only miss her. Antony resolves to stop dallying
in Egypt. He summons Enobarbus, and informs him that they'll have to leave.
Enobarbus talks, with irony and cynicism, about how their departure will
shatter Cleopatra. When informed of Fulvia's death, Enobarbus continues with
this lightness of tone. Antony has learned that Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the great, now
rules the seas in defiance of the triumvirate. Lepidus and Caesar will have
need of Antony if they are to overcome him.
Scene Three.
Cleopatra's palace, in Alexandria. Cleopatra enters with
Charmian, Alexas, and Iras. She tells them to find
Antony, and exactly what deceptions to use to bring him to her. When Charmian
suggests that honesty and obedience might be a better way to keep Antony's
heart, Cleopatra replies that such behavior would be a sure way to lose him.
When Antony appears and tries to tell Cleopatra that he must leave, her
response is scathing. Even news of Fulvia's death only increases her distress:
as Fulvia goes unmourned, Cleopatra says, so will she. Yet eventually she asks
forgiveness for her behavior, and wishes Antony success. He promises that
though they separate, they will be with each other in spirit.
Scene Four.
Caesar's house, in Rome. Octavius and Lepidus, followed by
their train, discuss Antony. While Lepidus is inclined to defend Antony,
Octavius condemns Antony's neglect of his duties. A messenger brings news
that Sextus Pompeius' power by sea grows only greater.
Lepidus and Octavius go their separate ways, to evaluate their capabilities
before meeting tomorrow to discuss how to battle Pompey.
Scene Five.
Cleopatra, attended by Charmian, Iras, and Mardian, languishes without Antony. Alexas arrives with news from Antony,
assuring her of his continued devotion and that his martial endeavors will make
her mistress of the East. Cleopatra seems delighted to have news from her
lover, and asks Charmian if ever she loved Caesar so. When Charmian teases her
mistress, saying that once Julius Caesar was considered to be a paragon
of men, Cleopatra replies that those were "salad days," when she was
green, and therefore younger and knew less.
Analysis:
The
first three scenes of Act One all take place in Queen Cleopatra's palace, in
Alexandria. They establish quickly the conflict between duty and passion,
ambition and pleasure, Rome and Egypt. They also showcase Cleopatra's
complexity: her incredible emotional vicissitudes, her theatricality, her
manipulative streak, and her genuine passion for Antony. They also hint at the
destructive powers of historical necessity, a great theme of the play, through
the figure of the soothsayer and the juxtaposition of his unsettling presence
with the gayness of Cleopatra's court.
The
first scene is short, and framed by the disparaging comments of Philo and
Demetrius, two of Antony's men. The Roman soldiers disapprove of Antony's
decadent affair with the queen, and are quick to write her off as a whore.
Philo calls her a gipsy, which in Shakespeare's time connoted sorcery,
treachery, and cheap trickery. Their view is simple and straightforward, and
perhaps not perfectly in line with what we see when Antony and Cleopatra
themselves appear. Cleopatra, though mocking of Antony's Roman duties, does in
fact encourage him to hear the message. Her purposes for doing so are not
entirely clear: she may be using reverse psychology on her lover, and her
arguments already have a hint of irony, which can be played up in productions
of the play.
The
theme of duty versus passion, and Rome versus Egypt, both come together in this
scene. Antony is having too fine a time to be bothered by news from the
capitol, and shirks his duties: "Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
/ Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space, / Kingdoms are clay . . ."
(1.1. 33-35). Egypt is escape from the duties of empire, and in Alexandria
Antony is able to live life as he loves to live it. But Antony's attitude will
be sharply reversed by the next scene, and he will force himself back to Rome:
Antony is torn throughout the play between duty and passion, between Roman
power and the good life of Egypt.
He
is never able to reconcile the two, and their fundamental incompatibility are
emphasized by the commentary provided by Philo and Demetrius. When Antony and
Cleopatra appear before us, they are beautiful in their excess. They are a
grand, godlike couple, a handsome Roman general and a magnificent queen, playful
and exuberant, and conscious of their glamour. Youth is not part of their
glamour; both are middle-aged. Their beauty is one of ripeness and maturity,
and Antony revels in his Egyptian life as rest from a lifetime of fighting
wars. Antony proudly proclaims, "We stand up peerless" (1.1.39), and
within a certain realm he's right. But the world where they stand up peerless
is a different one that Rome's world of duty, war, and ambition. The couple's
beautiful language and delight in one another make no great impression on Philo
and Demetrius, who can't understand Antony's shirking of his duties.
Scene
Two contrasts the incredible gaiety and liveliness of Cleopatra's court with a
dour, though not humorless, Soothsayer. The play touches on the theme of fate
for the first time here. Playfully seeking some kind of entertainment from the
Soothsayer, the servants of Cleopatra make bawdy jokes and tease each other,
even as the Soothsayer, in words whose meaning only becomes clear later,
foretells the maids' deaths. The gay and frivolous world of Cleopatra's palace
seems an unfit place to speak of death, and this scene drives home how grim
historical necessity will put an end to this Eastern world of fun and play.
The
beginning of that process follows immediately. As the servants and Cleopatra
exit, Antony enters with messengers and finally hears the news he has been
avoiding. Antony sees the price of his neglect of his duties, and he is
immediately remorseful, owning up to his faults and encouraging the messenger
to tell him all bad news without fear. This scene makes an interesting
juxtaposition with later scenes (2.5 and 3.3) where Cleopatra takes bad news
out on the messenger. One of Antony's most outstanding qualities is his
capacity for remorse. His sincere emotional response to his own failures is in
marked contrast to Octavius' detached machinations. Antony's remorse leads, at
least temporarily, to renewed resolve.
Enobarbus' response to Anthony's new
resolve is cynical, cutting, and strangely light considering the gravity of the
news. He seems to mock Cleopatra's intense emotions, warning of what she'll do
when she hears news of Antony's departure: "I have seen her die twenty
times upon far poorer moment" (1.2.143-4). Yet he defends her, with an undetermined
degree of irony, from the charge of insincerity. His lightness leaves much open
to the actor's interpretation: does he believe Cleopatra's sincerity, or is he
speaking with deep irony? His response to Fulvia's death is strangely light:
although at first he seems shocked (Antony needs to tell him the news three
times), he quickly becomes cynical, telling Antony that Fulvia's death would
only be sad if there were no other women left on earth. While this might be a
real bit of misogyny on Enobarbus' part, it also refers to Antony's
relationship with Cleopatra. He mocks Antony a few lines later, saying with sly
innuendo that though the business in Rome cannot do without him, the sexual
business he has started with Cleopatra can't do without him either. Enobarbus
speaks in prose, and his talk with Antony is bold and plain. Their familiarity
with each other shows a relationship not between master and subject, but
between two soldiers and old friends, even if Antony is his superior. That kind
of equality is part of Rome's tradition of citizenship, as well as a function
of military service together, not possible to the same degree between Cleopatra
and one of her subjects.
The
next scene (1.3) gives amazing characterization of Cleopatra: "If you find
him [Antony] sad, / Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report / That I am sudden
sick" (1.3.3-5). Cleopatra's emotions are often sincere, but she also
knows how to use emotion for her own ends. Her relationship with Antony has
something of the feeling of a game to it. She seeks to play him in a way that
will keep him hers, and although she decries falseness in a man sees nothing
wrong with keeping Antony on his toes with a few well-placed lies. Proclaiming
she is faint several times, she goes through emotional changes at a dizzying
speed: first she rails against Antony, saying she should never have trusted a
man who was so faithless to his wife; then she hears news of Fulvia's death and
says that as Antony seems unmoved by the loss of Fulvia, so will he be unmoved
by the loss of Cleopatra; then she tells Antony to forgive her, and to be on
his way, with her hopes for his success. Note that Cleopatra sees every bit of
news only in terms of how it relates to her. Antony's departure, for reasons of
vital importance to the empire, is seen as faithlessness to his love. Fulvia's
death is evaluated not as news of death, but as a sign of the faithlessness of
Antony's heart. Yet Cleopatra also recognizes Antony's duty, and in the end
asks forgiveness for her ways. She lets him go, though not without commenting
on her own (as she tells it) pitiful status: "Therefore be deaf to my
unpitied folly, / And all the gods go with you. Upon your sword / Sit laurel
victory, and smooth success / Be strewed before your feet!" (1.3.98-101). Even
as she relinquishes hold and asks forgiveness for her "becomings"
(1.1.96), which means her graces but suggests the rapid changes of her
emotional state, she cannot help but toss in a self-pitying note to elicit some
response from Antony. Cleopatra has lived her life as the center of attention,
as if life is a play in which she is the star. For the queen, even love has an
element of performance, and Antony must proclaim his love to satisfy her.
In
scenes three through five, we leap from Egypt to Rome to Egypt again. The
concerns in these two places could not be more different. Note that when Romans
speak to each other, the concern is over empire, duty, and politics. The theme
of Rome versus Egypt becomes clear here. Octavius and Lepidus exhibit none of
the sense of play seen in Egypt, where even servants play along wittily with
their masters. Both scenes four and five show characters discussing Antony.
Octavius and Lepidus evaluate him as a soldier, and Octavius condemns him
roundly as a "man who is th'abstract of all faults / That all men
follow" (1.4.8-9). When Cleopatra and her attendants speak of Antony, it
is entirely within the context of her love affair with him.
The vast leaps in space constitute one of Antony and Cleopatra's famous characteristics. No other
play of Shakespeare's makes such vast leaps, from one edge of the known world
to the other, and back again. These leaps in space parallel the jumps in
perspective: in scenes four and five, we get two completely different
descriptions of Antony. While Lepidus praises Antony, defending him against
Caesar's charges of moral failure, he does not use the same criteria of
judgment as Cleopatra. These leaps in perspective help to create great portraits
of character, even though the play that has more talk than action: while we
don't see the kind of amazing drama of Macbeth or King Lear, we are treated to eloquent discussions of characters by
other characters. Compare in 1.1 the difference between Philo's descriptions of Antony and
Cleopatra and the description Antony and Cleopatra give themselves. Compare the
Romans' different descriptions of Cleopatra. Enobarbus' description of
Cleopatra in 1.2 is different from Philo's easy label of "strumpet"
in 1.1. Antony describes her quite differently at different points in the play.
Throughout the play, pay attention to the descriptions characters give other
characters, and the portraits that emerge.
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