ANTONY         Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch

Of the ranged empire fall. Here is my space.

Kingdoms are clay. Our dungy earth alike

Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life

Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair

And such a twain can do’t—in which I bind

On pain of punishment the world to weet—

We stand up peerless.          (1.1.35-42)

Screw the lot of them, says Antony, but MAGNIFICENTLY. I don’t care if Rome crumbles, melts into the Tiber. I don’t care if the entire empire falls, if its wide arch—in which I am the keystone—collapses, its troops and institutions, so orderly ranged, tumbling into disarray. Here is my space. This is where I belong. Nothing else matters. This, here, now is my entire world. You, and we, are my entire world; nothing else is. And in comparison with that, kingdoms are clay, mutable and messy and cheap, and our dungy earth alike feeds beast as man. There’s nothing special about territory, about earth itself, about being merely human—one might as well be an animal. The dungy earth is perhaps also human flesh, made from the dust (and dung) of the ground, and the implication is that Antony and Cleopatra transcend all that; they’re gods, or at least god-like in their passion. The nobleness of life, its true end, its proper ambition and aspiration, is to do thus—and thus can be all this, the way they’re living, with magnificent disregard for politics, convention, and the needs or desires of anyone else, or specifically an embrace, a kiss, a touch. To do thus is all that matters. When such a mutual pair and such a twain can do it—when it’s us, when it’s the two of us, so inextricably bound to each other, so entirely meant for each other—and so I call the entire world to weet, to witness it and swear to it, on pain of punishment—we stand up peerless. There’s no one like us; we’re untouchable, and we live by our own rules. Together, we are unequalled. MAGNIFICENT.