At the start of Act 4, Antony asks Dollabella to tell Cleopatra of his departure. Almost as an afterthought, in an exemplary moment of dramatic irony, Antony wavers before also asking Dollabella to inform her that his heart would break if she were ever to take another lover:
Wilt thou forgive my fondness this once more?
Tell her, though we shall never meet again,
If I should hear she took another love,
The news would break my heart. Now I must go,
For every time I have returned, I feel
My soul more tender, and my next command
Would be to bid her stay, and ruin both.
In an extremely ironic turn of events, it is this very conversation that inspires Dollabella to consider wooing Cleopatra for himself:
And yet th’occasion’s fair. What injury
To him, to wear the robe which he throws by?
Thus, Antony sets in motion a chain of events that dooms all three characters, for Ventidius is listening in the wings as Dollabella schemes to win Cleopatra’s affections. Antony therefore directly creates the situation that inspires Ventidius and Octavia’s duplicitous scheme to convince him that Cleopatra has betrayed his love, which indeed causes his heart to break.
In Act 4, Dollabella goes to deliver Antony’s parting message to Cleopatra. However, in an act of dramatic irony, when Cleopatra asks him for the message—confident that it was tender and loving—he instead chooses to lie with a selfish viciousness that results in multiple broken hearts:
Cleopatra: “The message then
I know was tender, and each accent smooth,
To mollify that rugged word, ‘Depart’.”Dollabella: Oh, you mistake: he chose the harshest words;
With fiery eyes and with contracted brows,
He coined his face in the severest stamp,
And fury shook his fabric like an earthquake:
He heaved for vent, and burst like bellowing Etna
In sounds scarce human, ‘Hence, away forever;
Let her begone, the blot of my renown,
And bane of all my hopes:
Let her be driven as far as men can think
From man’s commerce: she’ll poison to the centre!’
Although the audience knows that Dollabella’s message is false, as Antony’s true, devastating parting words were spoken onstage earlier in the same scene, Cleopatra’s ignorance of this fact results in her very real and extreme distress. The further Dollabella goes on, embellishing his lie with vivid details (particularly those about Antony’s “fiery eyes,” his “contracted brows,” and his furious, bellowing, inhuman voice), the more concerned Cleopatra grows, until she swoons from the shock. Therefore, in an ironic turn of events, rather than creating an opportunity for himself to win her heart, Dollabella provides yet another chance for Cleopatra to prove her unending love for Antony.
In Act 4, Ventidius and Octavia try to convince Antony that Cleopatra has betrayed him by taking up with Dollabella. However, their attempt is full of dramatic irony, as the audience knows that no such sordid affair has taken place:
Ventidius: [Dollabella] went by your command,
Indeed ’tis probable, with some kind message,
For she received it graciously: she smiled, And then he grew familiar with her hand,
Squeezed it, and worried it with ravenous kisses.
She blushed, and sighed, and smiled, and blushed again;
At last she took occasion to talk softly,
And brought her cheek up close, and leaned on his,
At which he whispered kisses back on hers,
And then she cried aloud that ‘constancy
Should be rewarded.
Although Ventidius paints a very vivid picture of Cleopatra’s betrayal for Antony in the passage above, his words bear only a passing resemblance to the actual events that occurred on stage earlier in the same scene, in which Cleopatra reaffirmed the depth of her devotion and loyalty to Antony and rid Dollabella of any hope of winning her heart. Octavia affirms the report made by Ventidius, hoping to cement the success of their deceptive plot:
Octavia: This I saw and heard.
Antony: What woman was it, whom you heard and saw
So playful with my friend? Not Cleopatra?
Ventidius: Even she, my Lord.
Antony: My Cleopatra?
Ventidius: Your Cleopatra;
Dollabella’s Cleopatra;
Every man’s Cleopatra.
Despite the fact that they only observed Cleopatra and Dollabella’s interaction from a distance, with these inflammatory declarations, Ventidius and Octavia are confident in their mistaken interpretation of the situation at hand. Furthermore, they are sure that such news will hasten Antony’s return to his family in Rome. However, the pair’s attempt to cement the discord between Antony and Cleopatra does not go as planned, and in fact reminds Antony of his devotion to his lover instead. Thus, in an instance of situational irony, Ventidius and Octavia unwittingly undermine their own goals by inducing Antony’s protective romantic instincts and throwing him into a rage. Antony’s reaction disillusions Octavia so thoroughly that she resolves to leave him permanently and join her brother’s military camp, separating the married couple for good. It is worth noting that prior to Ventidius and Octavia’s meddling in this scene, Antony had already resolved to reconnect with Octavia, reminded of his duty by the presence of his two young daughters. Had the pair simply stayed quiet, he very well might have left Egypt for Rome with his wife and children in tow. In an ironic twist of fate, it is Octavia’s very desire to ensure this future that results in the ultimate loss of her husband.
In Act 5, Alexas tells Antony that Cleopatra has killed herself, leading him to mournfully lament the death of his beloved and, soon after, take his own life. Of course, the audience knows that Cleopatra is not dead at all and is instead hiding inside her monument. Thus, Antony’s heartfelt lament in the passage below is an excellent example of dramatic irony:
Then art thou innocent, my poor dear love?
And art thou dead?
Oh those two words! Their sound should be divided:
Hadst thou been false, and died; or hadst thou lived,
And hadst been true—but innocence and death!
This shows not well above. Then what am I,
The murderer of this truth, this innocence?
Thoughts cannot form themselves in words so horrid
As can express my guilt!
The tragedy of Dryden’s play grows as Antony weeps and as he makes desperate pleas to his supposedly dead lover. Antony’s shocked disbelief even as he exclaims his guilt and declares himself “the murderer of […] innocence” is all the more heartbreaking for the irony of the situation.
Dryden also injects a dual layer of situational irony into this scene through Ventidius’s reaction to the news of Cleopatra’s death:
Is’t come to this? The gods have been too gracious,
And thus you thank ‘em for’t.
[...]
Would she had died a little sooner, though,
Before Octavia went: you might have treated.
Now ’twill look tame, and would not be received.
Come, rouse yourself, and let’s die warm together.
Rejoicing at the news of Cleopatra’s supposed death, Ventidius is so wrapped up in his personal distaste for the monarch that he verbalizes his feelings to Antony despite bearing witness to his friend’s extreme grief. The fact that Ventidius dies before he can learn that Cleopatra is still alive adds yet another layer of irony to this scene, as the reason for his joy is unfounded. The juxtaposition of Antony’s devastation with Ventidius’s glib reception of the news is a stark representation of Ventidius’s inability to fully understand the value Antony places upon love, let alone the meaning that his relationship with Cleopatra gave to his life.
