In Act 1, Antony mourns the depth of his fall from the greatest height of power, his misfortunes, and his lack of a future. During this fit of melancholy, he imagines a life in which he is not an emperor but instead a simple, ordinary shepherd, using vivid visual imagery to evoke an idealized alternate reality:
Stay, I fancy
I’m now turned wild, a commoner of Nature;
Of all forsaken, and forsaking all,
Live in a shady forest’s sylvan scene,
Stretched at my length beneath some blasted oak;
I lean my head upon the mossy bark,
And look just of a piece, as I grew from it ;
My uncombed locks, matted like mistletoe,
Hang o’er my hoary face; a murmuring brook
Runs at my foot.
[...]
The herd come jumping by me,
And, fearless, quench their thirst while I look on,
And take me for their fellow-citizen.
Antony’s daydream is pure wishful thinking; even as he speaks, it is clear he does not think such a life is truly possible for himself, so far removed as it is from his current reality. Still, the detail he provides while engaging in this fantasy is extremely evocative and thus highlights just how tortuous he finds his current situation in comparison. Antony’s idyllic sylvan forest— in which he becomes so entwined with nature that he looks like he grew straight from the “mossy bank,” a wild “commoner of Nature”—signifies his innermost desire to live a calm life away from the turbulent path that belongs to the rulers of empires. As he builds the image of a bubbly, “murmuring brook” running over his feet, Antony conjures a peaceful, simple life for himself—one in which the tide of his life flows like a simple stream passing by, rather than the violent wave that has begun to crash all around him. Unfortunately, Antony’s daydream is merely that: a daydream. It is not long before Ventidius makes himself known, disrupting his fantasy with cold, hard reality.
Cleopatra’s discovery of Antony’s death in Act 5 leads to a stunning, heartbreaking bout of imagery as she struggles comes to terms with the loss of her lover:
’Tis sweet to die when they would force life on me;
To rush into the dark abode of Death,
And seize him first. If he be like my love,
He is not frightful, sure.
Cleopatra draws on visual imagery to express the depth of her bereavement. Faced with the loss of the one person who lit her life with meaning, she welcomes the opportunity to "rush into the dark abode of Death"—a grim, chilling image of darkness that speaks to her desperation, cornered as she is by political enemies on all sides. With these words, she reveals her chosen fate, for to die with Antony is better than a lifetime without him. Cleopatra continues:
We’re now alone, in secrecy and silence,
And is not this like lovers? I may kiss
These pale, cold lips; Octavia does not see me,
And, oh, ’tis better far to have him thus
Than see him in her arms!
The visual and tactile imagery in the passage above, as Cleopatra talks about kissing Antony's "pale, cold lips," cements the tragedy of this moment. No matter how much she loves him, her own words betray the fact that no amount of wishing can bring Antony back to life.
