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Shape-Changing Clouds
In act 4, scene 14, Antony likens his shifting sense of self to a cloud that changes shape as it tumbles across the sky. Soon after his decisive defeat in battle with Octavius, Antony addresses his attendant, Eros: “Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish, / A vapor sometime like a bear or lion, / A towered citadel, a pendant rock” (4.14.3–5). It isn’t clear at first why Antony is remarking on something as remote as the shapes of clouds, an activity more readily associated with the imaginative games of children. But Antony soon reveals the link, declaring: “My good knave Eros, now thy captain is / Even such a body. Here I am Antony, / Yet cannot hold this visible shape” (4.14.16–18). Just as a cloud morphs from one shape into another, Antony has gone from being a legendary conqueror to a debased victim. But the point here isn’t just that Antony has changed; it’s that he has become changeable. When he stood firmly in the service of Rome, Antony relished the reassuring solidity of his identity as a soldier and general. But now that he has fallen under Cleopatra’s sway, his sense of identity has become as “indistinct / As water is in water” (4.14.13–14).
The Spirit of Hercules
Act 4, scene 3, dramatizes a brief but chilling incident in which two anonymous soldiers hear a strange noise and interpret it as the spirit of Hercules. Throughout the play, Antony is associated with the mythical figure of Hercules, from whom Antony’s family claimed to descend. When Cleopatra earlier called Antony “Herculean” (1.3.103), she did so in gentle mockery of this claim. Elsewhere, Antony implicitly refers to himself as Hercules when he complains that “the shirt of Nessus is upon me” (4.12.48). Nessus is the name of a centaur Hercules mortally wounded, and who deceived Hercules’s wife into giving her husband his bloodied shirt. The shirt acted as a poison that drove Hercules to madness. These references indicate that Antony and his followers believe the spirit of this great hero is with him—no doubt a great confidence booster. In act 4, scene 3, however, the soldiers, worried that they will suffer a defeat in the battle to come, hear a mysterious music that they view as an ominous sign: “’Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, / Now leaves him” (4.3.21–22). Though Antony may once have had the gods on his side, the time of his good fortune has come to an end.
The Basket of Figs and Snakes
One of the most memorable symbols in the play appears in its final moments, when an anonymous “Countryman” (sometimes known as a “Clown”) delivers to Cleopatra a basket filled with figs, which in turn conceal several deadly snakes known as asps. This basket serves as a multilayered symbol. Most immediately, it’s a symbol of Cleopatra’s desire to maintain control of her own fate. Whereas Octavius attempts to prevent her suicide, she outmaneuvers him by procuring this basket full of venomous asps. Significantly, the asp is associated with the Nile, that famous river that functions as the symbol par excellence of Egyptian fertility and excess. Cleopatra, who shares the Nile’s tendency to overflow its own banks, adopts the asp as a prop for her final and most magnificent performance. As she lifts one snake, then another, to her breast, they become her children, and she becomes a common wet nurse: “Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, / That sucks the nurse asleep?” (5.2.368–69). In taking on this domestic role, Cleopatra once again asserts her sexuality, which is further symbolized by the presence of figs—a fruit that has long been a symbol for female fertility.
