To the Romans, Antony flees because he is a woman following the influence of a woman. To Shakespeare, and to anyone sympathetic to a non-dominant view of power and war, Antony and Cleopatra flee because their strategy of a naval battle did not work; it is called a retreat, after all, and they will regroup, pressed and outnumbered. As early as Caesar’s second sentence of the play, Antony is painted the woman. According to Caesar – the quintessential Roman male – Antony is “not more man-like than Cleopatra,” nor is “the queen of Ptolemy more womanly than he” (1.4.5-6). This is the proverbial diss among men, and is the reason given for Antony’s supposed running scared after his Cleopatra. Antony as the milquetoasty man without balls, according to the Roman male viewpoint, mollycoddled and desperate. In the flight scene here addressed, Enobarbus and Scarus evince their true positions by denouncing the milksop’s retreat. Cleopatra is the ruin of Antony because “like a doting mallard, leaving the fight in height, flies after her.” This is an “action of such shame.” Manhood, experience and honor “ne’er before did violate itself” (3.8.29-31). Canidius, one of Antony’s generals, abandons him, because “six kings already show me the way of yielding” (3.8.43). Enobarbus will leave Antony, too. They are Roman men going to the stronger side, ashamed of Antony’s tactics, but more reacting to his losing the battle.
There is another way to view the fleeing scenes. Antony and Cleopatra do what they have done throughout the play – namely, band together to form a stronger alliance in hopes of holding Caesar at bay. Antony knows not to trust Caesar; Caesar signed a peace treaty with Pompey, then proceeded to vanquish him in battle anyway. Additionally, he used Lepidus in the war against Pompey, and then turned to arrest Lepidus on suspicions of treasonous letters, false charges indeed, and “the poor third is up” (3.513). Caesar’s power grows. Antony and Cleopatra know they are outgunned. Their fleeing is mutual, and designed. They believe the strategy will work, as Antony repeats “By sea, by sea” to the contra councils of Enobarbus (3.7.41). Cleopatra adds to the discussion, “I have sixty sails, Caesar none better,” and Antony asserts that they will “beat the approaching Caesar with these numbers,” and crucially adds, “But if we fail, we then can do it at land” (3.7.49-53). This is fundamental, as it places the retreat in a tactical context, which deflates entirely the Roman male point of view of the scene. When Thyreus comes to discuss terms with Cleopatra, she tells him what Caesar wants to hear: “I lay my crown at’s feet, and there to kneel” (3.11.76). This is not what she truly believes; she plays for time. Antony in fact enters and has Thyreus whipped, a clear signal of non-surrender to Caesar. Antony readies to fight once more: “Our force by land hath nobly held; our sever’d navy too have knit again” (3.11.170). He adds to that, “There’s hope in ‘t yet,” to which Cleopatra exclaims “That’s my brave lord” (3.11.175). Antony meets with success on land this time, “we beat him to his camp” (4.1.1). Eventually, though, Antony and Cleopatra are overwhelmed by superior forces. After Antony’s suicide, Cleopatra continues to play her cards, in a strict military, practical sense. When Caesar’s men capture her, she knows she will be paraded through Rome a captive. She realizes her options are spent, and she kills herself with the asp. It is over for them, and they leave the world as losers to Caesar and the Romans, and tragic figures for Shakespeare, for his contemporary audience, for the commoners who saw explicitly the real world consequences of subscribing to the dominant, homosocial, patriarchal, aristocratic, warring sphere. The fleeing is also a metaphor for running from this all-male world. Antony chooses her, he abandons that world and subscribes to something else, to a world which welcomes roles for women, to one which attempts to live outside the crushing oppression of the Roman model. Antony and Cleopatra eventually succumb to the pressures of that dominant universe, and this is the real tragedy of the play.
