Antony: The General Who Chose the Wrong War

Mark Antony is one of the three men who rule the Roman world at the start of the play. He is a celebrated general: the man who gave the funeral speech that turned Rome against Brutus in Julius Caesar. By the time Antony and Cleopatra begins, he has been in Egypt for years and shows no interest in leaving.

The play presents his attachment to Cleopatra as both weakness and grandeur, and refuses to settle on which it is. He returns to Rome twice, makes political alliances, and each time finds himself back in Egypt. His decision to fight Octavius by sea at Actium, against the advice of every experienced officer he has, is the military catastrophe that costs him everything. He makes it because Cleopatra wants to fight by sea.

His death in Act 4 is botched. He falls on his sword after being told, falsely, that Cleopatra is dead, and survives long enough to be brought to her and die in her arms. It is not the clean Roman death he intended. It is messy, drawn-out, and completely of a piece with the rest of his Egyptian life. He would not have had it otherwise.