Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  Octavius, who had been continuing to build his strength in the West and had been preparing public opinion for an offensive against the East, found all this a godsend.

  It is here that Shakespeare takes up the story. Immediately after the scene in which the fate of Lepidus and Sextus is described, the scene shifts to Rome, where Octavius Caesar is describing Antony's activity to Maecenas:

  Contemning Rome, he has done all this and more In Alexandria.

  Here's the manner oft: I 'th'marketplace on a tribunal silvered,

  Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold

  Were publicly enthroned; at the feet sat Caesarian,

  whom they call my father's son,

  And all the unlawful issue that their lust

  Since then hath made between them. Unto her

  He gave the stablishment of Egypt; made her

  Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia, Absolute queen.

  —Act III, scene vi, lines 1-11

  Caesarion is, of course, the reputed son of Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was the great-uncle of Octavius Caesar, actually, but in his will Julius had adopted Octavius as his son, and Octavius therefore always refers to Julius as his father. (A good propaganda point, of course.)

  In a way, Antony was restoring to Cleopatra territory that had belonged to the Ptolemies at the peak of their power two centuries before. He also restored Cyrene (which Shakespeare does not mention), which Rome had annexed in 96 b.c.

  What's more, their children are also endowed. Octavius Caesar goes on to say:

  His sons he there proclaimed the kings of kings:

  Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia

  He gave to Alexander;

  to Ptolemy he assigned Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia.

  —Act III, scene vi, lines 12-16

  This is not as bad as it sounds. Alexander is Alexander Helios, who at this time (34 b.c.) was six years old. The kingdoms he was given were not really Roman, so that they represented a phantom rule. Ptolemy (that is, Caesarion, who is called Ptolemy XIV) received lands that had once been Ptolemaic.

  However, we can be sure that Octavius Caesar made the most of Antony's rash family-centered actions. He made it seem to the Roman populace that Antony was giving away Roman provinces to a powerful foreign queen. What's more, he had made himself king (hated word) and loved Alexandria more than Rome. He held triumphs there and Octavius Caesar found a will which he said was Antony's and which directed that Antony be buried in Alexandria rather than in Rome.

  It was easy to make it appear that Antony planned to conquer the West and then not only set himself up as king in Rome but make Cleopatra queen. Accusations such as these, skillfully spread, and made plausible by Antony's own actions, utterly destroyed any credit Antony might have in the West.

  My lord, Mark Antony

  And in upon Octavius Caesar, at this moment, comes Octavia, apparently on her errand of mediation. She says:

  My lord, Mark Antony,

  Hearing that you prepared for war, acquainted

  My grieved ear withal; whereon I begged

  His pardon for return.

  —Act III, scene vi, lines 57-60

  It would appear that Octavia, who left Mark Antony two scenes before, now arrives in Rome. All the events that took place over three years-the defeat and death of Sextus Pompeius, the demotion of Lepidus, the campaigns of Mark Antony in Parthia and Armenia (to which Octavius makes reference in passing)-are all hastened over in the one intervening scene.

  This serves a purpose. In many places in the play, Mark Antony is whitewashed to make him a more sympathetic hero. Here he is made to seem worse than he is so that the love story with Cleopatra can be made more dramatic.

  In actual fact, he returned to Cleopatra only after three years, when his marriage to Octavia proved to be politically worthless-or worse. Here in the play, it appears that even while Octavia is on her way to intercede for Antony with her brother, the faithless Antony deserts her.

  Octavius asks her where Antony is and when she innocently says that he is in Athens, her brother says:

  No, my most wronged sister,

  Cleopatra Hath nodded him to her.

  —Act III, scene vi, lines 65-66

  Cleopatra's power over Antony thus seems enormous. The truth of Antony's return would have considerably diminished the glamour of the love affair.

  The kings o'th'earth …

  Indeed, Octavius goes on to say, Antony is preparing for war:

  He hath given his empire

  Up to a whore, who now are levying

  The kings o'th'earth for war.

  He hath assembled Bocchus, the King of Libya;

  Archelaus, Of Cappadocia;

  Philadelphos, King Of Paphlagonia;

  the Thracian king, Adallas;

  King Mauchas of Arabia;

  King of Pont; Herod of Jewry;

  Mithridates, King Of Comagene;

  Polemon and Amyntas,

  The kings of Mede and Lycaonia;

  With a more larger list of scepters

  —Act III, scene vi, lines 66-76

  This list of kings sounds impressive; the sonorous syllables roll off the tongue. They are at best, however, a set of puppet kinglets, with very little power except for what prestige their names can lend Antony. Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Pont (Pontus), Comagene, and Lycaonia are all regions in Asia Minor. Herod and Mauchas represent small kingdoms in southern Syria, and so on. Indeed, one of the kings listed, Bocchus of Libya, actually fought on Octavius Caesar's side.

  Nevertheless, this sort of thing was undoubtedly used by Octavius to rouse the Roman populace with the fear that Antony was turning the whole mysterious East loose upon them.

  … denounced against us…

  Between this scene and the next, further crucial events take place.

  Toward the end of 32 b.c. Octavius finally had the situation exactly where he wanted it. The Senate and the people had grown so exasperated that the former declared war against Cleopatra and the latter supported it avidly.

  This was utterly clever. The war was not against Mark Antony, who could be pictured as a Roman general deceived and besotted by a wicked foreign queen; it was against the wicked foreign queen herself. It was not a civil war; it was a patriotic war against the dangerous kingdom of Egypt. (The fact that Egypt was helpless and harmless and that Cleopatra, minus Mark Antony, had no military power at all, could be ignored. The public knew nothing of that.)

  Naturally, Mark Antony had to fight. But he had to fight now against Rome and on the side of the foreigner. Desperately he shifted his armies to Greece and prepared to invade Italy.

  Cleopatra, in a decision as foolish as that of Octavius Caesar had been wise, decided to accompany Antony, and together they are now at Actium, a promontory in northwestern Greece.

  The next scene, then, opens in Actium, where Cleopatra is raging against Enobarbus, who objects to her presence there. She points out that the war, after all, was declared against her:

  Is't not denounced against us? Why should not we

  Be there in person?

  —Act III, scene vii, lines 5-6

  But Cleopatra was unintentionally fighting on Octavius Caesar's side in this respect. As a foreign queen, she was no more popular with Antony's soldiers than with the enemy.

  And take in Toryne

  Indeed, it is the spirit of Antony's forces that is their weakest point, and Octavius Caesar knows it. Anti-Cleopatra propaganda reaches them and the desertions are numerous. The men won't fight for an Egyptian against Rome. Antony's movements are slowed and made uncertain by the increasingly doubtful loyalty of his men.

  Octavius Caesar's general, Agrippa, moves quickly, however. Where it had been Antony's hope to invade Italy, it was Agrippa instead who swept across from that peninsula and landed in Greece. Antony comes in with his general, Canidius, brooding about it:

  Is it not strange, Canidius,

  That from Tarentum and Brundusium

&n
bsp; He could so quickly cut the Ionian sea

  And take in Toryne?

  —Act III, scene vii, lines 20-23

  Tarentum and Brundusium are ports in the "heel" of Italy. The Ionian Sea is the stretch of water between southern Italy and western Greece. Toryne is a small harbor in northwestern Greece, thirty-five miles up the coast from Actium.

  … not well manned

  Octavius Caesar's rapid movement (or, rather, Agrippa's, in his name) has cut Antony's line of communication and put him in the peril of running short of supplies. It is to Antony's interest to force a land battle; he has eighty thousand troops to Octavius Caesar's seventy thousand and it is Antony who is the better tactician on land.

  On the other hand, it is to Octavius Caesar's best interests to fight a sea battle. He has only four hundred ships to Antony's five hundred, but he still would have the advantage there. Enobarbus points this out to Antony, saying:

  Your ships are not well manned;

  Your mariners are muleters, reapers,

  people Ingrossed by swift impress. In Caesar's fleet

  Are those that often have 'gainst Pompey fought;

  Their ships are yare, yours, heavy…

  —Act III, scene vii, lines 34-38

  The growing desertions from Antony's standards have left his ships shorthanded, and their crews have had to be fleshed out by the drafting of non-sailors from the surrounding population. And, of course, though you can force a man onto a ship, you cannot force him to be a sailor.

  The logical course of action would have been to retreat inland and force Octavius to follow and then fight a land battle. Even an ordinary soldier begs him to take that strategy, saying:

  O noble Emperor, do not fight by sea,

  Trust not to rotten planks.

  —Act III, scene vii, lines 61-62

  It is Cleopatra, though, who holds out strongly for a sea engagement. We can speculate why. The hardships of an army march might have excluded her and sent her back to Alexandria. A sea victory, on the other hand, would include the Egyptian fleet and entitle her to a share in the glory and the profits. She points out:

  I have sixty sails, Caesar none better.

  —Act III, scene vii, line 49

  And Antony rejects the advice of his seasoned warriors, decides on the sea battle Cleopatra wants, and loses his last chance.

  With all their sixty…

  There follows the sea battle, the Battle of Actium, on September 2, 31 b.c. It is one of the crucial clashes of history.

  The battle is, of course, not shown onstage, but Enobarbus supplies the vision of its crucial moment. In agony, he turns away from the sight:

  Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer.

  Th 'Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,

  With all their sixty, fly…

  —Act III, scene x, lines 1-3

  When the battle began, Octavius' ships could at first make little impression on Antony's large vessels, and the battle seemed to be a useless one between maneuverability and power. Finally, though, Agrippa's superior seamanship maneuvered Antony's fleet into stretching its line, and Agrippa's ships began to dart through the openings that resulted, making straight for Cleopatra's fleet of sixty that lay in reserve.

  At this point, Cleopatra ordered her flagship, the Antoniad (named in honor of Antony, of course), to turn and carry her to safety. The remainder of her fleet went with her.

  The easy interpretation is that it was simply cowardice. Or perhaps the cowardice wasn't that simple; she felt the battle was lost and that retreat was necessary. She had to preserve herself from capture (with reason - for with her a captive the war would be lost), and also the treasure chest, which was aboard the ship.

  The noble ruin of her magic …

  Scarus, another officer, enters in wild passion, for even worse has developed. He tells Enobarbus that, once Cleopatra sailed away:

  The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,

  Claps on his sea wing, and (like a doting mallard)

  Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.

  —Act III, scene x, lines 18-20

  This is the point at which the world is lost and Antony is forever disgraced. There might be reasons for Cleopatra running away; the only reason for Antony is an impulse of love. This impulse might be understandable, even admirable, to romantics, and surely there is nothing so worth a sigh as to witness some great game tossed away for love.

  Yet we must admit that however admirable it may be to ruin oneself for love, however noble to go down to personal death for love, it is not noble to cast away the lives and fortunes of thousands of others for love.

  Antony abandoned a fleet that was fighting bravely on his behalf, and in the confusion and disheartenment that followed his flight, many men died who might have lived had he remained. What's more, he abandoned thousands of officers and men on the nearby mainland, who had been prepared to die for him, leaving them only the alternative of useless resistance or ignoble surrender.

  We may understand Antony, but we cannot excuse him.

  He at Philippi...

  Antony well understood his own disgrace. After Actium, he played awhile with the idea (according to Plutarch) of retiring from the world in an agony of misanthropy and self-pity-like Timon of Athens. (It may have been the reading of this passage, indeed, that inspired Shakespeare to try his hand, rather unsuccessfully, at Timon of Athens immediately after he had finished Antony and Cleopatra.)

  Antony cannot bring himself to be a Timon, however, and he must crawl back to the only place that will now receive him-Alexandria. Only Egypt is now his who once ruled half the world, and it will remain his only until Octavius Caesar comes to get him.

  Antony broods madly on this same Octavius:

  He at Philippi kept

  His sword e'en like a dancer, while I struck

  The lean and wrinkled Cassius; and 'twas

  I That the mad Brutus ended. ..

  —Act III, scene xi, lines 35-38

  It is true. The Battle of Philippi was all Antony and Octavius' portion of the army was defeated. For that matter, Octavius' portion of the fleet was defeated by Sextus, and Octavius was sick during the Battle of Actium, so that the last two victories were all Agrippa.

  Yet Octavius, always beaten, was somehow the winner because what he had he kept and what he lost one way he won another. He could use other men well and he had brains and a cool judgment, and that stands head and shoulders over mere "style."

  Fall not a tear…

  There is no more room for glory in Antony. Shakespeare, for what is left of the play, intends only to recoup for Antony all the sympathy he has lost by his folly in another way; he will win it all back and more by showing Antony the lover.

  With all he has lost, Antony can only reproach Cleopatra sorrowfully. When she says that she did not realize he would follow her, he replies:

  Egypt, thou knew'st too well

  My heart was to thy rudder tied by th'strings,

  And thou shouldst tow me after.

  —Act III, scene xi, lines 56-58

  And when she weeps and begs for pardon he says:

  Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates

  All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss;

  Even this repays me.

  —Act III, scene xi, lines 69-71

  What an incredible fool! What an exasperating idiot! But then why do the tears come? And they will continue. Those who can sit through the rest of the play dry-eyed are either seeing an incredibly poor performance or are afflicted with an incredibly impoverished heart.

  … her all-disgraced friend

  Antony has no choice now but to sue for peace and get what terms he can. He has no kings to send now; they have all deserted him in the aftermath of Actium. He sends his children's tutor to approach Octavius Caesar.

  For Cleopatra, he asks that she remain Queen of Egypt only, giving up all the additions Antony has given her. For himself he asks that he remain in Eg
ypt with her or, still less, that he be allowed to remain in Athens as a private citizen. Octavius replies to the Ambassador:

  For Antony

  I have no ears to his request. The Queen

  Of audience nor desire shall fail, so she

  From Egypt drive her all-disgraced friend

  Or take his life there.

  —Act III, scene xii, lines 19-23

  Octavius knows his own military deficiencies as well as Antony does. He knows that all his victories are the work of his allies and subordinates and that he himself has contributed nothing in the field. What he desires more than anything else, then, is a glorious triumph in Rome, such as his famous great-uncle had received. It is very likely that for himself he required no such trumperies, but he must surely have realized that his hold on the Roman people would not be complete without some public celebration of victories associated (however unfairly) with his name.

  For the purpose of a triumph, Antony is useless. He is a Roman and could not be dragged at the chariot wheels, and even if he were, that would arouse dangerous sympathies. Nor could he be left alive, even as a private citizen in Athens. How long would he remain a private citizen? How soon would he begin to intrigue to regain what he had lost? For Antony, it had to be death.

  Cleopatra, however, must live. She was a foreigner. She was feared to an unimaginable (and undeserved) extent. Her reputation as a charmer and as an insidious schemer against Rome was so impossibly high that the sight of her in chains walking behind Octavius Caesar's triumphant chariot would drive Rome wild with exultation and turn Octavius, truly, into another Julius. Octavius Caesar might have a triumph without Cleopatra; but without her it would be a poor thing and leave his life in that one respect forever incomplete.