Shanelle Galloway Shakespeares Developmental Language of Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeares Antony and Cleopatra is a play of legendary proportions.

Of course, with three legendary characters, Shakespeare was wont to hold up the standard of their mythic status. The problem, however, of dealing with such a grand story as the love affair of Antony and Cleopatra and their constant battle for power with Octavian Caesar is condensing the grandeur into a three-hour length stage performance. To do so, time and history have been warped and edited; scenes impossible to stage must be omitted, but the importance of such iconic events must still be memorialized. In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare uses language to develop plot, action and character; without being able to see the characters in action, Shakespeare builds their character through their speech. As Wolfgang Clemen points out in his essay Shakespeares use of the Messengers Report, it is recommended that certain events which can be represented only imperfectly on the stage should take place off-stage and be reported subsequently in the form of an eye-witness account (97), and in this play, Shakespeare describes many off-stage scenes by word of mouth. To set the stage with the legendary status of the characters, Shakespeare uses a great deal of hyperbolic language, especially with Cleopatra herself, who views herself as the goddess Isis, and Antony her Mars. Julian Markels states that, within the play language goes as far as language can in creating for the characters that immortality which is attributed to themthe cosmic languageis a continuous outgrowth of dramatic action (169). For example, as Enobarbus describes Cleopatras arrival in Rome for her first wooing of the great Antony, he speaks of her as though she is some mythical nymph-goddess: The barge she sat in like a burnished throne

Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold, Purple the sails, and so perfumed that / The winds were lovesick with them For her own person, It beggared all description: she did lie In her pavilioncloth-of-gold, of tissue Oerpicturing that Venus where we see The fancy out work nature. (2.2.227-238). She is held over Venus, and her boy servants are cupids, her gentlewomen like mermaids. Every description of Cleopatra is over the top. Antonys man Alexas tells her that even Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you / But when you are well pleased. She replies, That Herods head / Ill have! (3.3.5-10), giving proof that she is a woman of extreme passion; her passion would put fear into the archetypal and hyperbolically raging theater Herod. Cleopatras language emulates her high passion; it is full of hyperbole, exploding with high emotional extremes, from anger to despair to love. She elevates herself and Antony to godlike and mythic stature, to her, Antony is the demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm / And burgonet of men and she herself was / A morsel for a monarch (1.5.27-36); the two of them are beyond human. Her language is driven by her emotions, which in turn drives her action. Cleopatra emulates that at all levels, high and low, playful and serious, hearts continually press forward with their longings, so much so that by placing even a few of them in sequence on may easily recapitulate the action (Mack 91). When a messenger arrives in the fifth scene of act 2, from Rome, before he gets a chance to say anything, Cleopatra exclaims:

Antonios dead! If thou say so, villain, / Thou killst thy mistress MESSENGER: First, madam, he is well. CLEOPATRA: Why, theres more gold. But sirrah, mark, we use / To say the dead are well. Bring it to that, / The gold I give thee will I melt and pour / Down thy ill-uttering throat. MESSENGER: Good madam, here me. CLEOPATRA: Well, go to, I will She carries on saying that if he bears bad news, shell torture him to death; the messenger once again has to beckon her to hear him out. Through her conversations, we discover that Cleopatra is impatient, insecure and believes she has the power to change the truth of the moment. She beats the aforementioned messenger when he tells her Antony has married Octavia. In Shakespeares tragediessuch outward impulses, are indispensable for keeping the action in motion... Action becomes partly a result of characters reacting to an external event, and, in doing so, facing a choice (Clemen 101), Cleopatras beating of the messenger displays her lack of temperance. She is conniving, she tries to trap everyone to get the reaction she wants; she plays games, hence her hyperbolic lingo. Cleopatra uses her words to direct others actions, especially Antonys. Upon learning of Fulvias death and Antonys honor calling him back to Rome, it is with her permission that he leaves: I prithee turn aside and weep for her, / Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears / Belong to Egypt (1.3.91-94). She commands him to act a part in order to please her, just as she acts to get reaction. When Antony gets angry with her, threatening to kill her, she flees and tells her women to give Antony a message that she has died, hoping to see the reaction he gives, testing his true devotion to her:

Go tell him that I have slain myself. Say that the last I spoke was Antony And word it, prithee, piteously. Hence, Mardian, And bring me how he takes my death (4.14.10-13). Although Antonys language is all over the place, depending on whom he is speaking to. His main focus is always honor. When speaking with Octavia, he is nearly patronizing, he calls her Gentle Octavia and tells her Let your best love draw to that point which seeks / Best to preserve it. If I lose mine honor, / I lose myselfso your desires are yours (3.4.21-23, 30). With Cleopatra, he is the patronized and cannot grasp his language because she rules the conversation. His reaction to the news of Cleopatras suicide, is more focused on the honor of the action: I have lived in such dishonor that the gods Detest my baseness The courage of a womanless noble mind Then she which, by her death, or Caesar tells I am conqueror of myself (4.14.66,70-73). Antony tries to match her hyperbolic diction and syntax, matching the grand imagery of Egypt, but Antony is still Roman at heart, with all his care for honor, and falls into harsher diction when he reaches high emotion. Cleopatra accuses him of still being loyal to Rome: Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine / Is Caesars homage (1.1.35-6 ). Antony replies with almost too much passion to be sincere: Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall. Here is my space, Kingdoms are clay. Our dungy earth alike

Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life Is to do thus; (1.139-42). He attempts to claim that Rome means nothing to him, that he is loyal to Egypt only; however, these words mean nothing since he returns to Rome at Caesars beckoning and marries Octavia for the sake of keeping peace with Rome. Madeline Doran explains that Antonys rangd empire speech immediately sets the tone of the playthe greatness of the issue, the sweep of the scene, the splendor of the imagery. The action moves freely back and forth between the two poles of Antonys conflicting lures of his lust for Egypt and his honor to Rome (Doran 157). Antonys language emulates his conflict. He speaks in extremes, although his speech is often seeking an imagery of emphasis and excess, [it] can also be simple, especially in its moods of pathos (Evans 194). He rages against Cleopatra, he falls to his knees to beg her forgiveness pledge his loyalty to her, only to turn around and rage against her again. He fights for Cleopatra, and when he fails, he blames her for the fault, and threatens to kill her. Antony is not a man of temperance; he is quick to escalate from despair to rage and back to despair again. It is others words that drive his emotions and his actions. Messengers are the driving force of information between the worlds of Rome and Egypt, Caesars realm and Cleopatras. They carry news from across the known world. They bring news of battles, of conspiracies. They supplement the plot by building the bridges between scenes where action is omitted (Clemen 99). Their messages hold the bulk of the action sequences that are missing from the notorious storyline that cannot be played on-stage. Messengers reports (or any reports by anyone) replace action scenes. As the play carries on, action [is] replaced more and more by retrospective report However, this has no effect on a more organic integration of the report into the interplay between the characters (Clemen 98). A sea-battle was not

executable on the Elizabethan stage. The battle scene is actually a series of short scenes of entrances and exits by a messenger and a message receiver, who in turn responds. The message creates the imagery, leaving up to the audiences imagination to fill the gaps with the images of battle. Each report brings more action and more report, which in turn drives action. It is a cycle where words spill into action. In Act 3 Scene 9, we discover by the mouth of Antony, that his troops plan to watch from the hill to size up Caesars fleet: Set we our squadrons on yond side o th hill (3.9.1). In scene 10, we are made privy to the outcome of the battle, Antony has fled after Cleopatra mid-battle: Th Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral, / With all their sixy, fly and turn the rudder (3.10.2-3). Through the messengers bearing of their news that we discover attributes of the characters. Messengers speeches not only function as a constituent part within the structure of the plays, Shakespeare uses them as a means of characterizing the recipient of the news as well (Clemen 102);How each character, namely Cleopatra, Octavian and Antony, take the news of the messenger reveals their character. There are very few soliloquies that open up our view into the characters minds: The play, like the lovers, makes no confidences. Soliloquies and asides, though engaged in by Enobarbus, are evidently foreign to Shakespeares conception of heroic character in this play, or at least to his conception of the optimum relation between these protagonists and us. We are never brought close to them by a secret shared, a motive, conscious or unconscious, suddenly divulged. We watch them always from a distance, uncertain how far to accept their actionsand which actionsat face value, how far to believe the commentary of the observers in which Shakespeare again and again frames them, and even how to reconcile one action with the next (Mack 82).

It is left to the interplay of language to personify each character. Cesar is calculating. He thinks over actions before he takes them. He does not partake in indulgence, he calls Lepidus on his own indulgence and tells Antony Id rather fast from all, four days / Than drink so much in one (2.7.119-20). Cleopatra springs to flighty, rash action and she is self-absorbed, Antony is constantly in the moment, and takes action because others words encourage him. Each character sends messengers back and forth between each other in attempt to know what is going on across the seas. The plays emphasis on messengers reminds us that, in so volatile and mutable a world, opinion and report are matters of huge concern. All these people have an immense curiosity about each other, especially the Romans about Cleopatra, which they can only satisfy with fresh news (Mack 93). In nearly every scene, a messenger enters and relays some new information, whether it be a labeled messenger, or the school master or just the hand servants. Messengers do more than relay messages. The character with the most messengers can collect the most information on the other opposing side. Messengers enhance our sense of power and of the rearrangements that take place in power as the play wears on Caesars messengers come and go again and again in a fine show of strategy and efficiency while Antony and Cleopatra must resort to using their childrens tutor to bear messages due to the desertion of their other hands (Mack 92). They eagerly await the return messages, always asking what news? The messages fly between all parties even to the end. Cleopatras last message relayed to Antony ultimately is the catalyst for Antonys death. Caesars final words to Cleopatra convince her that she must follow Antony in death: CAESAR: Make not your thoughts your prisons. No, dear queen, For we intend so to dispose you as Yourself shall give us counsel. Feed and sleep.

Our care and pity is so much upon you That we remain your friend. And so adieu. (5.2.221-7) His words seem sincere, but Cleopatra senses the lie in his words, exclaiming He words me girls, he words me, that I should not / Be noble to myself (5.2.230-1). This is where she makes the ultimate decision to take action to end her life, putting her out of Caesars reach and back at Antonys side. The death scenes of Antony and Cleopatra, are overflowing with imagery and hyperbole. Antony is Mars and Cleopatra is the moon. Everyone who reads or sees the play is struck at once by the hyperbolic character of the value the lovers set on each other, or at any rate the hyperbolic character of their own conception of the value (Mack 96). They become heavenly subjects, united out of reach of Caesar. Cleopatra dresses herself in the most queenly state with her robe and her crown. I have immortal longings in me, she says (5.2.335). She becomes an immortal being, risen to the untouchable place where Antony waits for her, a place he has envisioned Where souls do couch on flowers where [they will] hand in hand, / And with [their] sprightly port make the ghosts gaze (4.14.61-2). It is a place created as highly legendary as they are.

Works Cited Clemen, Wolfgang. Shakespeares Use of the Messengers Report. Shakespeares Dramatic Art. Methuen & Co, LTD: London, 1972. Pp. 96-123. Print. Doran, Madeline. High Events as These: The Language of Hyperbole in Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeares Dramatic Language. University of Wisconson Press: Madison, 1976. Pp 154-181. Print. Mack, Maynard. Antony and Cleopatra: The Stillness and the Dance. Shakespeares Art; Seven Essays. Milton Crane, Ed. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1973. Pp 79113.Print Markels, Julian. The Pillar of the World. Ohio State Universtiy Press: Columbus, 1968. Print. Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra. Folger Library Edition, Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Wernstine, Eds. Washington Square Press: New York, 1999. Print