Gender

 “Cleopatra appropriates the conventional trappings of masculinity in wearing

Antony’s sword while he lies, dressed in her ‘tires and mantles’, drunk in bed (2.5.22-
3)”

-Antony and Cleopatra by Paul Dean 2014

Paul Dean is Head of English at Summer Fields, Oxford, and a Founding Fellow of the
English Association.

 Harriet Hawkins calls Cleopatra "the least conventionally genteel and feminine of all
[Shakespeare's] dramatic heroines" (122).

 “…she is the only female in the tragedies to disrupt sexual difference in a sustained
and meaningful way. Cleopatra capitalizes on the rich love play of seduction and
cross-dressing as well as the ability to dominate sexually (rather than to adopt the
subservient position culturally ascribed to women): "Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him
to his bed, / Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst / I wore his sword
Philippan..." (2.5.21-23).”
-The Death Drive in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra by Lynne M. Simpson
,Presbyterian College

Love

 “As for Cleopatra, we know that she is in love, not only through her laments and
through the lines in which she envies Antony's horse, but also through a scene
Shakespeare needed to add to what he found in his sources. Shakespeare there
highlights Cleopatra's possessiveness through her violence to the unfortunate
messenger bringing her news of Antony's marriage to Octavia:

Mess. Madam, he's married to Octavia.

Cleo. The most infectious pestilence upon thee!

[Strikes him down]

Mess. Good madam, patience.

Cleo. What say you? Hence,

[Strikes him]

Horrible villain, or I'll spurn thine eyes

Like balls before me; I'll unhair thy head,

[She hales him up and down]

Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd in

brine,

Smarting in lingering pickle.

Mess. Gracious madam,

I that do bring the news made not the match.

(II. v .60-67)

This scene cannot be found in North's Plutarch, in Daniel's play, or in the Gamier-Pembroke
work. When we ask for Shakespeare's motive in adding this specific scene to a work in which
he was generally following his source, the answer is rather obvious. Nowhere in
Shakespeare's play is the erotic element in Cleopatra's love clearer to us than in these
moments when she hales the poor man up and down. Issuing one horrible threat after another
- promising the panicstricken messenger that she would melt gold and pour it down his throat,
telling him that he has lived too long and drawing a knife - these cannot but dispel the image
of the cynical manipulator, convincing even the most suspicious of audiences that this
woman's love, while it cannot be intimated directly to Antony, is genuine. “

-Mature Love: A Reading of Antony and Cleopatra by Tzachi Zamir (2001)

 “Antony's feelings on the other hand. while they are unmistakably love..”

-Mature Love: A Reading of Antony and Cleopatra by Tzachi Zamir (2001)

“Antony will follow, and, in its apparent preoccupation with a single object, the man himself:
a man of complexity, a colossus and a ruffian who consumes himself in the love that, by
devouring him, transforms him into a being the military Antony, noble as he might be, could
not imagine. The image suggests, further, a shameful helplessness; it suggests entrapment, the
commitment of the passionate being to his passion, but never the commitment of the passive
being to his “fate.” “"

-The Tragedy of Imagination: Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”

By Joyce Carol Oates

Originally published in Bucknell Review, Spring 1964.

“ It also makes him neglect his new wife Octavia, which breaks the brief reconciliation
between the two rivals. A solution to the problem might be for Antony to give up Cleopatra,
but to do so is not in his power and would not make him happy: 'I'th'East my pleasure lies'
(Act II, scene III) he says soon after his wedding with Octavia. The love between Antony and
Cleopatra is tragic because there is no way it could make them happy.”

--The tragic in William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra by Isabelle Vignier (2004)

Power

“He tries to escape the power she has on him, to use his freedom to be himself again. His
marriage with Octavia shows this: he is not compelled to marry her, but shows enthusiasm for
the idea: 'I am not married, Caesar: let me hear / Agrippa further speak' (Act II, scene II).
This is an attempt to make use of liberty that fails. According to Lepidus, Antony simply
cannot change his nature:”

-The tragic in William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra by Isabelle Vignier (2004)