Love as an emotion is dealt with great precision and maturity against the backdrop of war and that essentially constitutes the groundwork of Shakespeare’s most enigmatic drama: Antony and Cleopatra. Written approximately around 1606-07, this play combines chemically the nuances of love, politics and the history of the Roman Empire in its concoction.

Love has a slightly different connotation for Shakespeare’s protagonists; it does not point towards a mild affection that conjoins two hearts but a destructive power that storms away a person’s rationale and sends him to his doom. This adulterous love engorged with voluptuous desires and sensual pleasures could be considered immoral by Elizabethan or Christian standards. It stands in stark opposition to the love of Romeo and Juliet also constructed by Shakespeare which stood by intense emotion and weighty melodrama. The love in Antony and Cleopatra clearly envisages the fact that both lovers have a rich previous personal history however it seems to transcend these perspectives and emerges as a somber nevertheless true love. Antony phrases it beautifully by stating that “there’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned” he posits that love is an immeasurable quantity that resonates with grandeur especially in this case. The hero, mark Antony is portrayed as a man of brilliant valiance and exceptional martial prowess. When in a dilemma between stately duties and sexual gratification chooses the latter as pointed out by Philo in the very first dialogue of the play. He stands unflinching by his supreme love, flickering in his decision. His position is validated by the fact that even his enemies speak high of him.

Octavious Caesar articulates his achievements on the battlefield and says that “… in the name lay a moiety of the world”. He can be contrasted with Horatio from Shakespeare’s hamlet whose “blood and judgment were well co-mingled. Although it has been suggested that his sentiments are base and it has been termed as an obsession, dotage and silliness, he still functions in consonance with it lest with its glimpses of ambivalence. The heroine or the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra comes across as a highly attractive, awe-inspiring enchantress with fathomless coquetry. Her wit, dialogues and her poise all have a theatrical edge to it. Enobarbus describes her demeanor appropriately when she and Antony met for the first time. She often behaves with relentless self-absorption. She favors high drama and displays a spectacle of emotions, indulges in play acting revealed consistently through her praxis as well as her ideology of life. Reflected through the scene where she deals in Proculeius’ proposal or even her love prattle in act 1 where she states “if it be love indeed tell me how much.” However she is also a woman of substance and has an active hand in the implementation of policies and the assertion of important decisions. Also she is a quintessential woman; she consolidates her authority over her lover, throws tantrums perpetually and rebukes him when she is angry. William Hazlitt regards her as the masterpiece among all the female characters, her “whole character” is the triumph over the voluptuous, of the love of pleasure and the power of giving it over every other consideration. The fact remains that both lovers are past their prime into love- that is a malady without cure. Their love stands as an inquisition within themselves and it is a daily war that they wage against each other. Like Cleopatra’s fascination of Antony, Antony’s greatness is also one of the two absolutes in the play. It defies any compartmentalization in the context of diplomacy, war, calculation, magnanimity, sensuality or heroism. Love as a word encompasses a multitude of emotions ranging from the purely spiritual to the basest perversions and the theme of the play is to amplify or conform to them. Quill and Couch avers that “the theme is of love: not the pretty amorous ritual played on a time by the troubadours and courtiers… Not as a business understood by eighteenth century sentimentalists, but love the invincible destroyer. Love: voluptuous, savage, perfidious, true to itself though rooted in dishonor… ” A tragedy might be as episodic as history or as complicated as a comedy. Shakespeare creatively crafts Antony and Cleopatra against the backdrop of the Parthian war defining all characters in that context. It is known for its subject matter not for its structure. This play however does not cater to all features of an ideal tragedy; for instance it is not marked by a suffering leading to a downfall, the element of chance is very subtly enforced by the soothsayer. However it does not procure within its spectrum the pangs of despised love, the anguish of remorse, powerlessness and pity. The hamartia of the protagonist, Antony can be stated as the ‘blind judgment’ of the situation at hand. According to Aristotle,” a tragedy is an imitation of action that is serious and complete in itself” in this regard even his Troilus and Cressida is also not a conventional tragedy as it lurches between bawdy comedy and tragic gloom.

The world of the play absorbs political contingencies, love affairs, and solemn deaths. Tragedy is nourished by the social context in which the individual is placed textually. Shakespeare does not seem to use his faculty of poetic justice as in the final conflagration both evil and good are destroyed alike. His vivid interest in roman histories can also be witnessed in his Coriolanus and Julius Caesar. Personal desires of Antony and Cleopatra are bracketed by the political vicissitudes and public catastrophes. The dichotomy between the geographical locales of Rome and Egypt is the pivotal framework of the play. The east stands for sensuousness, luxury and extravagance whereas the west symbolizes cold calculation, decadent heroism, and duty and soldiers hip. This binary permeates into the intimate relationships and subverts the very basis of it. People regard Antony as the ”strumpet’s fool” and Cleopatra as the ”Egyptian dish”.

Shakespeare using Romanesque rhetoric analyses the manipulative nature of tragedy crystallized in the death of the lovers thus immortalizing their names. Although their love is not composed of private intimacies they both desire an escape route to the world of their own wherein their interests are harmonized and bodies merged forming a solid compound. The love actually belongs to the public arena wherein displays of affection are understood to be expressions of political power and allegiance. It also has to bear the weight of personal failure and defeat of the state notwithstanding astute criticism of their co-inhabitants in a ceremonious manner. It grapples with the self-consuming rage of its tragic figures and the constant refinement of brute actuality with lyrical illusion. What comprises the frustration of the dramatist is the difference in the perceptions of its hero and heroine. Tragic dimension is attained by an excess and concentration of emotions, the profundity of the issue lies in the tragic potential of love because it cannot grant happiness to its pursuers. In death the lovers are not divided and become examples of legendary love. However it also serves as an apotheosis to love because it is a means to form a union beyond the realm of jealousy, uncertainty and regret. DA Traversi argues “… a tragedy of lyrical inspiration justifying love by presenting it as triumphant over death… a presentation of spiritual possibilities dissipated through a senseless surrender to passion”.

The outward struggle is of highest importance in a tragedy for its total effect. From the moment, Antony sets his eyes on Cleopatra in Cydnus. “… And for his ordinary pays in his heart/for what his eyes eat only”, it was instantaneous love, a tempestuous passion that both united and kept asunder both Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeare uses poetry of the highest order to accumulate variety in scene and distinction in character. Compared to Richard II where he intimated the love was the natural choice for all mankind. He seems in Antony and Cleopatra less interested in the battle of Actium than in the nature of that forces that utterly obliterates the individual mindset. To deepen the content he shows that it is precisely out of dishonor and defeat that spiritual triumph emerges, which is always found at the heart of any tragedy. As it nears its end, it seems to recede from history and myth and leaps forward to a colossal degree of imagination.