Antony and Cleopatra - Themes and Symbols

 Antony and Cleopatra 

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often common thoughts explored in a literary work.

The Struggle Between Reason and Emotion 

In his commencing strains to Demetrius, Philo complains that Antony has deserted the military endeavors on which his recognition is based totally for Cleopatra’s sake. His complaint of Antony’s “dotage,” or stupidity, introduces a tension between purpose and emotion that runs throughout the play. Antony and Cleopatra’s first trade heightens this tension, as they argue whether their love may be put into words and understood or whether or not it exceeds such colleges and barriers of reason. If, consistent with Roman consensus, Antony is the military hero and disciplined statesmen that Caesar and others trust him to be, then he seems to have happily deserted his reason with a view to pursue his ardour. He proclaims: “Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch / Of the ranged empire fall”. The play, however, is more concerned with the conflict between motive and emotion than the triumph of 1 over the opposite, and this struggle is waged most forcefully in the person of Antony. More than any other person in the play, Antony vacillates between Western and Eastern sensibilities, feeling pulled via both his duty to the empire and his desire for satisfaction, his want of navy glory and his ardour for Cleopatra. Soon after his nonchalant dismissal of Caesar’s messenger, the empire, and his responsibility to it, he chastises himself for his forget and commits to go back to Rome, lest he “lose [him]self in dotage”.

As the play progresses, Antony keeps to inhabit conflicting identities that play out the warfare between cause and emotion. At one moment, he is the vengeful conflict hero whom Caesar praises and fears. Soon thereafter, he sacrifices his navy function by unwisely allowing Cleopatra to decide his route of motion. As his Roman allies—even the ever-devoted Enobarbus—abandon him, Antony feels that he has, indeed, lost himself in dotage, and he determines to rescue his noble identity via taking his own lifestyles. At first, this route of action can also seem like a triumph of reason over ardour, of -Western sensibilities over Eastern ones, but the play isn't always that easy. Although Antony dies believing himself a person of honor, area, and reason, our expertise of him is not nearly as straight-forward. In order to come back to terms with Antony’s character, we ought to examine the elements of his identification that he ignores. He is, ultimately, a person ruled by means of ardour as much as by cause. Likewise, the play gives us a worldview in which one sensibility can't easily dominate some other. Reason can't ever fully triumph over the passions, nor can passion totally undo motive.

The Clash of East and West 

Although Antony and Cleopatra info the struggle among Rome and Egypt, giving us an idea of the Elizabethan perceptions of the difference among Western and Eastern cultures, it does no longer make a definitive statement approximately which way of life ultimately triumphs. In the play, the Western and Eastern poles of the sector are characterised by means of individuals who inhabit them: Caesar, for example, embodies the stoic responsibility of the West, whilst Cleopatra, in all her theatrical grandeur, represents the unfastened-flowing passions of the East. Caesar’s worries for the duration of the play are definitely imperial: he manner to invade foreign lands that allows you to invest them with traditions and sensibilities of his very own. But the play resists siding with this imperialist impulse. Shakespeare, in different phrases, does not align the play’s sympathies with the West; Antony and Cleopatra can hardly ever be examine as propaganda for Western domination. On the opposite, the Roman information of Cleopatra and her country seems enormously superficial. To Caesar, the queen of Egypt is little more than a whore with a flair for drama. His attitude lets in little room for the actual strength of Cleopatra’s sexuality—she will, in any case, persuade the most decorated of generals to observe her into ignoble retreat. Similarly, it allows little room for the indomitable strength of her will, which she demonstrates so forcefully at the end of the play as she refuses to permit herself to be turned into a “Egyptian puppet” for the leisure of the Roman hundreds.

In Antony and Cleopatra, West meets East, but it does no longer, regardless of Caesar’s triumph over the land of Egypt, triumph over it. Cleopatra’s suicide suggests that something of the East’s spirit, the freedoms and passions that are not represented inside the play’s thought of the West, can't be subsumed with the aid of Caesar’s victory. The play shows that the East will stay on as a seen and unconquerable counterpoint to the West, sure as inseparably and forever as Antony and Cleopatra are in their tomb.

The Definition of Honor 

Throughout the play, characters define honor variously, and frequently in approaches that are not intuitive. As Antony prepares to satisfy Caesar in battle, he determines that he “will stay / Or shower [his] loss of life honour within the blood / Shall make it live again”. Here, he explicitly hyperlinks the notion of honor to to that of dying, suggesting the latter as a surefire means of attaining the previous. The play bears out this declaration, due to the fact, although Antony and Cleopatra kill themselves for distinct motives, they each believe that the act invests them with honor. In loss of life, Antony returns to his identification as a real, noble Roman, becoming “a Roman by way of a Roman / Valiantly vanquished”, whilst Cleopatra resolves to “bury him, and then what’s courageous, what’s noble, / Let’s do it after the excessive Roman fashion”. At first, the queen’s phrases appear to suggest that honor is a enormously Roman characteristic, but Cleopatra’s death, which is her method of making sure that she remains her truest, maximum uncompromised self, is notably against Rome. In Antony and Cleopatra, honor seems less a function of Western or Eastern tradition than of the characters’ willpower to define themselves on their very own phrases. Both Antony and Cleopatra secure honorable deaths by means of refusing to compromise their identities.

Symbols

Symbols are items, characters, figures, or colors used to symbolize abstract ideas or principles.

Shape-Changing Clouds 

In Act IV, scene xv, Antony likens his shifting experience of self to a cloud that changes form because it tumbles throughout the sky. Just because the cloud turns from “a bear or lion, / A towered castle, a pendent rock,” Antony appears to trade from the reputed conqueror into a debased victim. As he says to Eros, his uncharacteristic defeat, each at the battlefield and in subjects of affection, makes it difficult for him to “maintain this seen shape”.

Cleopatra’s Fleeing Ships 

The photograph of Cleopatra’s fleeing ships is presented two times inside the play. Antony twice does war with Caesar at sea, and both times his army is betrayed by means of the queen’s retreat. The ships remind us of Cleopatra’s inconstancy and of the inconstancy of human character inside the play. One cannot make sure of Cleopatra’s allegiance: it is uncertain whether she flees out of worry or due to the fact she realizes it might be politically savvy to align herself with Caesar. Her fleeing ships are an powerful image of her wavering and changeability.

The Asps 

One of the maximum memorable symbols inside the play is available in its final moments, as Cleopatra applies deadly snakes to her skin. The asps are a prop inside the queen’s very last and most magnificent overall performance. As she lifts one snake, then every other to her breast, they come to be her kids and he or she a common moist nurse: “Dost thou not see my toddler at my breast, / That sucks the nurse asleep?”. The home nature of the photo contributes to Cleopatra’s final metamorphosis, in loss of life, into Antony’s spouse. She assures him, “Husband, I come”.