How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Act.Scene.Line). Line numbers correspond to the Riverside edition.
Quote #1
CAESAR
You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,
It is not Caesar's natural vice to hate
Our great competitor. From Alexandria
This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel, is not more manlike
Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy
More womanly than he; (1.4.1-7)
Caesar suggests that Antony is no better than his woman, and that Cleopatra is perhaps a little more manly than she should be. The gender ideals of Rome are all turned upside-down in Egypt.
Quote #2
MAECENAS
Now Antony must leave her utterly.
ENOBARBUS
Never. He will not.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies. For vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
MAECENAS
If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle
The heart of Antony, Octavia is
A blessèd lottery to him. (2.2.274-284)
Maecenas and Enobarbus’s conversation highlights the contrast between Octavia and Cleopatra. They represent two different types, as linked to the ideals of their home cultures, and those cultures’ expectations and judgments of women’s gender identities. In Egypt, Cleopatra’s "riggishness," or her propensity for sex, is a thing to be blessed by the priests. Her sexual desire isn’t foul, but rather fits her nature (which isn’t foul either). Octavia, by contrast, is wise and modest, which is a comparison to Cleopatra’s rashness and flashiness. Still, the play doesn’t set these personal characteristics up in a hierarchy with one as better than the other.
Quote #3
ENOBARBUS
[aside to Agrippa] Will Caesar weep?
AGRIPPA
He has a cloud in's face.
ENOBARBUS
He were the worse for that, were he a horse;
So is he, being a man.
AGRIPPA
Why, Enobarbus,
When Antony found Julius Caesar dead,
He cried almost to roaring; and he wept
When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.
ENOBARBUS
That year, indeed, he was troubled with a rheum.
What willingly he did confound he wailed,
Believe 't, till I weep too. (3.2.61-71)
Enobarbus and Agrippa argue over the old question of whether "boys don’t cry" is part of their masculine identity. Caesar seems like he would weep as his dear sister leaves him, but Agrippa points out that Antony wept over Brutus’s dead body. Since these feelings don’t compromise strength, it seems that men are allowed to have feelings in Antony and Cleopatra.