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Summary: Act 3: Scene 1
Ventidius, fighting for Antony, defeats the Parthians, killing their king’s son. One of Ventidius’s soldiers urges him to push on into Parthia and win more glory, but Ventidius says he should not. If he were too successful in war, he explains, he would fall out of Antony’s favor and not be able to advance as a member of Antony’s forces. Instead, Ventidius halts his army and writes to Antony, informing him of his victory.
Read a translation of Act 3: Scene 1.
Summary: Act 3: Scene 2
Agrippa and Enobarbus discuss the current state of affairs: Pompey has gone, Octavia and Octavius are saddened by their nearing separation, and Lepidus is still sick from his night of heavy drinking. Agrippa and Enobarbus mock Lepidus, the weakest of the three triumvirs, who trips over himself trying to stay on good terms with Antony and Octavius. A trumpet blares, and Lepidus, Antony, and Octavius enter. Octavius bids farewell to Antony and his sister, urging his new brother-in-law never to mistreat Octavia and thereby drive a wedge between himself and Antony. Antony implores Octavius not to offend him, making assurances that he will not justify Octavius’s fears. Antony and Octavia depart, leaving Lepidus and Octavius in Rome.
Summary: Act 3: Scene 3
Cleopatra’s messenger returns to report on Antony’s bride. He tells Cleopatra that Octavia is shorter than she and that Octavia has a low voice and is rather lifeless. This news pleases Cleopatra, who delights in thinking that Antony’s bride is stupid and short. She decides that, given Octavia’s lack of positive attributes, Antony cannot possibly enjoy being with her for long. She promises to reward the messenger for his good service, showers him with gold, and asks him not to think of her too harshly for her past treatment of him. She then tells Charmian that Antony will almost certainly return to her.
Summary: Act 3: Scene 4
Antony complains to Octavia that since departing Rome, Octavius has not only waged war against Pompey but has also belittled Antony in public. Octavia urges Antony not to believe everything he hears, and she pleads with him to keep the peace with her brother. Were Antony and Octavius to fight, Octavia laments, she would not know whether to support her brother or her husband. Antony tells her that he must do what needs to be done to preserve his honor, without which he would be nothing. Nevertheless, he sends her to Rome to make peace again between Octavius and himself. Meanwhile, he prepares for war against Pompey.
Read a translation of Act 3: Scene 4.
Summary: Act 3: Scene 5
Enobarbus converses with Eros, another friend of Antony. The two discuss Octavius’s defeat of Pompey’s army and the murder of Pompey. Eros reports that Octavius made use of Lepidus’s forces, but then, after their victory, denied Lepidus his share of the spoils. In fact, Octavius has accused the triumvir of plotting against him and has thrown him into prison. Enobarbus reports that Antony’s navy is ready to sail for Italy and Octavius.
Read a translation of Act 3: Scene 5.
Summary: Act 3: Scene 6
Back in Rome, Octavius rails against Antony. He tells Agrippa and Maecenas that Antony has gone to Egypt to sit alongside Cleopatra as her king. He has given her rule over much of the Middle East, making her absolute queen of lower Syria, Cyprus, and Lydia. Octavius reports that Antony is displeased that he has not yet been allotted a fair portion of the lands that Octavius wrested from Pompey and Lepidus. He will divide his lot, he says, if Antony responds in kind and grants him part of Armenia and other kingdoms that Antony conquered. No sooner does Maecenas predict that Antony will never concede to those terms than Octavia enters. Octavius laments that the woman travels so plainly, without the fanfare that should attend the wife of Antony. Octavius reveals to her that Antony has joined Cleopatra in Egypt, where he has assembled a large alliance to fight Rome. Octavia is heartbroken, and Maecenas assures her that she has the sympathy of every Roman citizen.
Read a translation of Act 3: Scene 6.
Analysis: Act 3: Scenes 1–6
In act 3, the pace of the action picks up yet again. Now that we have met all the major players in the complex dispute that unfolds in the region surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, Shakespeare allows the action to shift rapidly from place to place, sometimes within the space of a couple pages. The rapid nature of the scene shifts may admittedly be difficult to follow for those who don’t already have detailed knowledge of the history being staged. To make matters more challenging, Shakespeare chooses not to show much of the action onstage, and instead simply summarizes the major events through messages and reports. However, the swiftness of the action also powerfully demonstrates just how quickly power structures can collapse once they begin to falter. Indeed, over the course of a single act, the triumvirate will implode, resulting in the end of a major era in Roman history.
Act 3 opens with a brief scene in which a man named Ventidius recounts a proud victory over Parthia that he has won in Antony’s name. Antony thus begins act 3 in a powerful position. However, Ventidius’s caution against attempting to extend the conquest too much further has an ominous significance. Ventidius couches his warning in terms that extend the play’s ongoing concern with the nature of honor. He explains that it would not be honorable to keep pursuing conquest, since eclipsing his captain’s fame would reflect poorly on himself. His point is ultimately about curbing one’s ambition to avoid the perils of overachievement. As he puts the matter: “I could do more to do Antonius good, / But ‘twould offend him, and in his offence / Should my performance perish” (3.1.27–29). But though he speaks about his own sense of honor here, Ventidius’s words also ring out with caution against Antony’s own ambition. As becomes clear in the scenes that follow in quick succession, Antony’s irritation at Octavius’s failure to include him in the defeat of Pompey will lead to the remarkably ambitious decision to go against his fellow triumvir.
Of course, Antony’s desire to against Octavius isn’t unmotivated. Despite having just come from Rome, where they have worked to restore equilibrium between the three pillars of the empire, Octavius has taken it upon himself to go to war against Pompey. Yet the triumvirate has recently established peaceful relations with Pompey, making Octavius’s act of war dishonorable. To make matters worse, Octavius has made the executive decision to cut Lepidus out, at once relying on his forces and yet denying him any of the spoils of war. Octavius even goes so far as to imprison Lepidus. For Antony such actions must be understood as a betrayal, to which he responds by making a series of executive decisions of his own. Chief of among these are his decisions to assemble a fleet and to name Cleopatra the queen not just of Egypt, but also of lower Syria, Cyprus, and Lydia.
As political tensions rise and the major powers of the empire turn against each other, Octavia stands in the middle of it all. From the moment she was introduced in the play, it was clear that Octavia functioned as little more than a political pawn manipulated by men. Her marriage to Antony served the sole purpose of easing tensions between Antony and her brother, Octavius. Enobarbus recognized the danger involved in such an arrangement back in act 2, scene 6, where he noted that “the band that seems to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity” (2.6.150–52). The “band” he refers to is Octavia, and already in the first half of act 3 she has become a key source of strife between these two powerful men. Octavia reflects on her tortured position, trapped as she is between two competing forces: “A more unhappy lady, / If this division chance, ne’er stood between, / Praying for both parts” (3.4.13–15). Although Antony sends Octavia back to Rome under orders to restore peace between him and Octavius, for the audience it’s clear that this act merely aggravates their increasingly unstable relationship.
Shakespeare reminds the audience of an additional force against Octavia when, in scene 3, he returns us to Alexandria, where Cleopatra eagerly receives news about how unremarkable Antony’s new bride is. Just as Octavia is forced between Antony and Octavius, she’s also unwittingly forced between Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra clearly takes pleasure in the news of Octavia’s plain appearance and demure manner—“dull of tongue, and dwarfish” (3.3.24), as she puts it. However, it’s important to note that Cleopatra’s cruelty toward Octavia is an effect both of her affection for Antony and of the larger political drama that has forced the marriage between Antony and Octavia. In other words, Cleopatra’s jealousy is as much a matter of love as of politics.
This marks a significant difference between this play and Shakespeare’s other great love tragedy. Whereas Romeo and Juliet largely chronicles the private moments of its teenaged protagonists, following the couple as they steal moments together at a crowded party or on a moonlit balcony, Antony and Cleopatra’s concerns are public rather than private. What earns stage time in this play are not the muted whispers of discreet lovers but the grand performances of paramours who live in, and play for, the public eye. Love in Antony and Cleopatra is thus less a product of the bedroom than of political alliance. And the consequences of love are equally historical in scope. When Octavius laments that Antony has given up his empire for a “whore,” we understand the enormous impact—both civic and geographic—that the lovers’ affair will have on the world. Kingdoms stand to be built on the foundation of Antony and Cleopatra’s love, or else to crumble under its weight.
