Disappearing Act: The Role of Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra

Abstract

This essay explores perhaps the most unusual death scene in all of Shakespeare’s plays: that of Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra , in which Enobarbus wills himself to die in the absence of any obvious physical cause. Readers have traditionally viewed this death scene as “Roman” in character, but I argue that Enobarbus’s demise aligns symbolically with Cleopatra’s as an instance of an easy death, and moreover a death that (following Stanley Cavell’s broad argument about Shakespearean tragedy) enables the character to avoid the full weight of the catastrophe that conventionally occurs at the end of a tragic drama. Shakespeare’s treatment of Enobarbus and Cleopatra offers interesting resonances with other late plays that have tragic elements but fit uneasily into any single genre.