When the play begins, Antony is consumed by his military failure at the Battle of Actium. His cowardice when fleeing the battlefield particularly haunts him, and upon his reunion with Ventidius, he begs the man to curse him. Unable to bear listening to his friend as he indulges himself in melancholy, Ventidius refuses to help Antony dig himself further into his hole of misery, using a simile in the process:
You are too sensible already
Of what/have done, too conscious of your failings,
And like a scorpion, whipped by others first
To fury, sting yourself in mad revenge.
I would bring balm, and pour it in your wounds,
Cure your distempered mind, and heal your fortunes.
Comparing Antony’s current state to that of a scorpion whose actions are unintentionally poisoning itself, Ventidius clearly articulates his good opinion of Antony’s character, affirming the man as a righteous and caring leader. Furthermore, the life and death of the figurative scorpion foreshadows the tragic end of the play and the way that the love Antony bears for Cleopatra will inevitably lead to his death. Thus, this simile reveals how Antony’s love for Cleopatra has become self-destructive in the eyes of those around him (and even to himself, as he is becoming aware of just how doomed they are).
In Act 1, while trying to awaken Antony to the ways in which he has been struck and even duped by love, Ventidius criticizes his devotion to Cleopatra and hyperbolically rants about just how little it might take for Antony to give up his power to her:
They said they would not fight for Cleopatra.
Why should they fight, indeed, to make her conquer,
And make you more a slave? To gain your kingdoms,
Which, for a kiss at your next midnight feast,
You’ll sell to her? Then she new names her jewels,
And calls this diamond such or such a tax;
Each pendant in her ear shall be a province.
Although Ventidius is sympathetic to Antony’s grief following his defeat at the Battle of Actium, he is frustrated by his friend’s inability to put aside his love for Cleopatra, especially when it comes at the expense of his military’s support. Exasperated, Ventidius deploys his hyperboles with laser-precision, lambasting Antony for how utterly he has fallen under the spell of Cleopatra’s love by suggesting that a kiss might be all it would take for him to sell the whole of the empire.
However, Ventidius’s efforts do not achieve their desired effect, as Antony proves himself equally adept at (and even prone to) hyperbole while discussing his emotions—particularly when it comes to his love for Cleopatra and his melancholy whenever he's separated from her. Thus, he returns Venditius’s argument in kind, with a hyperbolic rebuke of his own:
Ventidius, I allow your tongue free licence
On all my other faults; but, on your life,
No word of Cleopatra: she deserves
More worlds than I can lose.
While Ventidius uses hyperbole to expose the faults in Antony’s thinking, Antony uses hyperbole to express his innermost emotions. By forbidding Ventidius from uttering a harsh word against Cleopatra in such extreme, grandiose terms (“she deserves / More worlds than I can lose”), Antony’s hyperbole serves as a demonstration of just how completely consumed he is by his passions and how divorced he has become from reason.
John Dryden begins Act 1 of All For Love with a series of omens that set an ominous mood, foreshadowing the doomed plot about to unfold before the audience. The opening lines uttered by the priest Serapion at the Temple of Isis are the first of many signs of danger to come:
Portents and prodigies are grown so frequent
That they have lost their name. Our fruitful Nile
Flowed ere the wonted season, with a torrent
So unexpected and so wondrous fierce
That the wild deluge overtook the haste
Even of the hinds that watched it: men and beasts
Were borne above the tops of trees that grew
On th’utmost margin of the watermark.
Then with so swift an ebb the flood drove backward,
It slipped from underneath the scaly herd:
Here monstrous phocae panted on the shore;
Forsaken dolphins there with their broad tails
Lay lashing the departing waves; hard by 'em,
Sea-horses floundering in the slimy mud
Tossed up their heads and dashed the ooze about 'em.
In the passage above, Serapion lists a myriad of frightful and mysterious occurrences one after another: the overflowing Nile, “monstrous” seals drifting ashore, and creatures of all kinds appearing from the depths of the water. The effect of each bad omen appearing together places not just the priests but also the audience on edge, signifying that the events to come have some greater importance beyond the merely human realm. By inviting such speculation, Dryden draws his audience into the world of the Ancient Egyptians, transposing them from their contemporary English lives to a story thousands of miles away and hundreds of years in the past.
In Act 3, Cleopatra and Octavia’s differing opinions on the conflict between love and honor take center stage as the pair confront each other in person for the first time. As their competition (to determine which of the two has the worse fate in their relationships with Antony) concludes, Octavia makes the following portentous statement, foreshadowing the fact that Cleopatra will be her own undoing:
Cleopatra: There wants but life, and that too I would lose
For him I love.Octavia: Be’t so, then; take thy wish.
Cleopatra, disconsolate at the news that Antony has chosen to take Octavia back, laments the loss of her honor, fame, and royal reputation as the price of her love. However, rather than regret her choices, Cleopatra reiterates her devotion to Antony—now that she is left with nothing but her life, she would gladly give even that for his love. Octavia’s cold parting response to Cleopatra’s passionate declaration in the passage above is both a jab at her rival’s emotional decision-making and an ominous promise of future pain to come for the jilted queen. In the end, it is Cleopatra’s own heart, which she freely gives to Antony despite many dangers and consequences, that sentences her to death.
