During their initial reunion in Act 1, Ventidius uses metaphors to emphasize to Antony how dangerous his relationship with Cleopatra has become:
Oh, she has decked his ruin with her love,
Led him in golden bands to gaudy slaughter,
And made perdition pleasing: she has left him
The blank of what he was.
I tell thee, eunuch, she has quite unmanned him.
In the passage above, Ventidius first metaphorically compares Cleopatra's love for Antony to golden bands encircling and constricting him to a ruinous death, a “gaudy slaughter.” The discordant image he produces of opulence and bloodshed is a striking indictment of the couple’s relationship, casting Cleopatra as a poisonous seductress leading Antony to his doom. Continuing with his diatribe, Ventidius goes on to claim that Antony has been altered and made into a “woman’s toy”:
Can any Roman see and know him now,
Thus altered from the lord of half mankind,
Unbent, unsinewed, made a woman’s toy,
Shrunk from the vast extent of all his honours,
And cramped within a corner of the world?
In both instances, Ventidius’s metaphors place Antony in the position of an object: he is first bound and led and made subservient, like a eunuch or an animal, and then he is further reduced to a mere toy, a plaything. Likewise, both metaphors functionally emasculate him, demonstrating how, in Ventidius’s eyes, Antony has long let love override his role as a masculine warrior and emperor. These passages exemplify how Antony’s indulgence of his emotions over his duty reduces his ability to properly fulfill his role in society, let alone wield the power that his position demands.
Heartbroken by the false news of Cleopatra’s death in Act 5, Antony uses a sequence of metaphors to express the depth of his devastation:
O Ventidius!
What should I fight for now? My Queen is dead.
I was but great for her; my power, my empire
Were but my merchandise to buy her love,
And conquered kings, my factors. Now she’s dead,
Let Caesar take the world—
An empty circle, since the jewel’s gone
Which made it worth my strife; my being’s nauseous,
For all the bribes of life are gone away.
With each passing line, the quote above makes plain the all-consuming nature of the love he holds for Cleopatra. First, he equates the entirety of the Roman Empire to mere “merchandise,” or fodder to finance his purchase of her love. Next, he reduces the whole of the world to “an empty circle,” signifying the emptiness of his life without her. Finally, Antony metaphorically compares Cleopatra to a jewel and implies that without her precious presence in his life, life itself is no longer worth living. This passage reveals that, rather than being a distraction from his true purpose as the leader of an empire, Cleopatra was in fact his only purpose, his very reason for existing. With these three metaphors, Antony makes it clear how totally he has abandoned any other sense of responsibilities or ties to the outside world.
