Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

—Act IV, scene xii, lines 9-14

Antony is almost mad in his frustration, and when Cleopatra enters, he yells at her those words most designed to hurt her, exulting in the possibility that she may be taken by Octavius Caesar to grace his triumph.

Cleopatra rushes off, appalled by Antony's fury, and in deadly fear that he may even forestall Octavius Caesar's victory and kill her with his own hands. This possibility is made clear to the audience by Antony's rage-filled mythological allusion, when he cries:

—Act IV, scene xii, lines 43-45

Alcides is, of course, Hercules (see page I-70). Hercules was the personification of blind strength, and since such strength can often be misapplied, several tales were told of what Hercules did in his mad rages. In one of these madnesses, he killed six of his own children and it was in penance for this that he was condemned to perform his twelve labors. Such madness Antony feels to be coming over himself.

The specific reference is to an event late in Hercules' life, when he took his last wife, Deianeira. At one time the two were crossing a river in flood. Nessus, a centaur (half man, half horse), offered to carry Deianeira across while Hercules swam. The arrangement was accepted, but, coming to the other side, the centaur galloped off with Deianeira and tried to rape her. The angry Hercules shot down the centaur with one of those arrows which had been dipped in the deadly poison of the Hydra's (see page I-237) blood.

As Nessus lay dying, he told Deianeira that if she saved some of his blood and placed it on Hercules' shirt, it would be an infallible way of assuring his fidelity. While he wore the shirt, he would love only her. Deianeira believed him.

Eventually, when Hercules began to wander, Deianeira remembered Nessus' advice and sent him a bloodstained shirt by Lichas, one of his attendants.

Hercules put it on (not noticing the blood, apparently) and at once the poison it carried from his own arrow began to burn into him with agonizing pain. He writhed in anguish, but the shirt had grown to his body and could not be removed. He seized Lichas as madness came over him, throwing him high into the air with all the might of his superhuman muscles. Lichas fell into the sea and was changed into a rock, while Hercules himself died in torture. Deianeira, at hearing the news, killed herself.

It was this "shirt of Nessus" that Antony felt himself to be wearing, and a like agony that he felt within himself. In his grief and rage he is ready to kill Cleopatra:

—Act IV, scene xii, lines 47-48

The "young Roman boy" is now thirty-three, remember.

Cleopatra is in the last extreme of panic. She knows that it is because of her that Antony has frittered away everything, and there is no doubt in her mind that he intends to kill her. She cries out to her ladies:

—Act IV, scene xiii, lines 1-3

Cleopatra matches Antony's example of mythological rage and madness (Hercules) with two examples of her own; making, as it happens, a mistake in each case.

It was not Telamon, but Telamon's son, Ajax (see page I-110), that went mad. After the death of Achilles under the walls of Troy, the question arose as to who was to inherit his divinely wrought armor, and the choice narrowed to the mighty-thewed Ajax and the shrewd and cunning Ulysses (see page I-92). We might suppose the Greeks reasoned that Ajax's muscles could kill only one Trojan at a time but that Ulysses' shrewd policy might yet win the war altogether. (And it did, for it was Ulysses who finally conceived the stratagem of the wooden horse-see page I-188.) So the armor went to Ulysses.

Now, finally, Ajax's long-suffering and unsubtle heart broke and he went mad. He planned to revenge himself on the leaders of the Greek army, and mistaking a herd of sheep for men, he lunged among them with his sword, screaming imprecations. When he recovered from his rage and found himself surrounded by slaughtered beasts, he realized that he had but made himself ridiculous-so he killed himself.

As for the boar of Thessaly who was so embossed (that is, foaming at the mouth with fury), he was a huge mad creature sent to Calydon to ravage the countryside because the Calydonians had neglected to make proper sacrifices to Diana (Artemis). But Calydon was in Aetolia, not Thessaly.

Cleopatra feels that the only way of saving her life (and this is straight from Plutarch and is not Shakespeare's dramatic invention) is to send news to Antony that she has died with his name upon her lips. Her feeling is that he would then realize she had not betrayed him and she could safely come back to life so that together they might plan their next move.

But she miscalculated the effect of the news on Antony. In the midst of his raving for her death, the news is brought to him that she is already dead, and instantly his rage vanishes.

The full swell of the orchestra ceases sharply and leaves behind the soft wail of one lonely flute, as Mark Antony turns to his aide and says:

—Act IV, scene xiv, lines 35-36

He scorns the armor he is removing, for it cannot protect him from this new blow. He says:

—Act IV, scene xiv, lines 38-39

Again a reference to Ajax; this time to his famous shield, which Homer describes in connection with the duel of that hero with Hector. It was a huge shield, covering Ajax from neck to ankles, made of seven separate layers of tough oxhide and covered with bronze. It was so heavy that none but Ajax (or Achilles) could wield it, and so strong that a spear driven by the full fury of Hector's arm could penetrate but six of the layers.

Antony plans suicide and dreams that in death he and Cleopatra will be reunited. He imagines them in Elysium (see page I-13) and says:

—Act IV, scene xiv, lines 50-54

But even Antony's last act betrays him. He cannot have himself killed by his men. Eros kills himself rather than Antony. (That is in Plutarch and Shakespeare is not forced to make it up.) In desperation, Antony falls on his own sword, but does not aim correctly. He is badly wounded and dying, but still alive.

Now comes a messenger from Cleopatra, who, too late, fears the effect of the news of her death. She has locked herself, for safety, in her own tomb. (It was the custom of Egyptian monarchs to build, while alive, their own resting places after death-the pyramids having represented that custom at its most incredibly extreme. Shakespeare refers to Cleopatra's tomb as the "monument," and, of course, it served that purpose too.)