Antony and Cleopatra: Who's tragedy was it?

[Ganymede]

For some reason, I could never get myself to care about the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra.  Personally, I found Enobarbus' plight much more moving.  What do you think?

[shaxper]

I always took that to be the very point of the play.  The tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra is that they're a little pathetic.  Cleopatra is an egocentric fool who thinks and talks about herself too much and Antony is the "bitch" of the relationship who has emasculated himself by abandoning his duties for a love interest (let's not forget that all important moment where Antony's vessel follows Celopatra's home) and who allows Cleopatra to dress him in women's clothing and take him about on the town for all his men to see.  Antony is the guy who has to beg his soldiers to kill him when he can't even get it right, himself.  I personally find it hysterical when his soldiers stand over him talking about how "A star has fallen" and there he is, writhing on the ground.  It seems to me that they'd be fully aware of this and were pretending not to see it out of respect; a respect that this scene clearly portrays Antony of not deserving.

Most importantly, there love is "questionable".  Antony tries to get away from Cleopatra because he suspects she's not good for him.  It seems implied numerous times that Antony was originally just in it for the sex and somehow got whipped into a relationship.  And let's not forget Cleopatra, who unravels  a long romantic description of an ideal lover, only to finally ask Dolabella "Think you there was, or might be, such a man as this I dreamt of?"  Whether she's implying that the now dead Julius Caesar (her former lover) fit this description or that no one did, the message is clear that Antony did not.  

Thus, the tragedy of this story is how pathetic the tragic characters are, and the minor characters (and nations) that are affected by it (especially as shown with Enobarbus).  Perhaps this was Shakespeare's apology for Hamlet, which showed every concern for the characters at the center of the tragedy and no regard for the country that lost two kings and its prince, only to be suddenly conquered by Fortinbras.  A&C, instead, shows truly stupid characters at the center of the tragedy, and a doomed world forced to face the reprecussions in the form of Octavius Caesar and shattered ideals.

[Bardolph]

Antony did not abandon his duties or his power base to follow a love interest.  His blunder was military.  The battle of Actium is the one that he fled to follow his Queen, or so was the propaganda in Rome.  Antony had an extraordinary advantage in the battle.  He had a far greater land based force.  Apparently he felt that this was enough to dishearten the enemy.  But, foolishly, he and Cleo decided to take to ship to defeat Octavian and Agrippa quickly and head directly to Rome to claim the Empire.  But Antony underestimated the brilliance of Agrippa as a naval strategist.  With this defeat, his armies began to whither away.  Without a royal presence to both protect and pay an army, they tend to shrivel up.  They are also disheartened by failure.  

Antony was in a commanding position and lost all as the result of impatience and ambition.  He ultimately falls victim to the same vices of which Ceasar was accused.  I think that WS wants to underline the Irony that he found in Plutarch's account.  

The tragedy is expressed in the carnage that ends the play.  WS could have used another line from H5.  "Here was a royal fellowship of death."