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Just Antony dies from self-inflicted wound, Shakespeare's Cleopatra asks, it sin, / To rush into secret house of death, / Ere death dare come to us? (1) The question appears to be rhetorical; Cleopatra soon announces her intention to prove her resolution by pursuing the briefest (4.15.91). (2) This decision earns her homage of her most assiduous critic: Caesar, fond of describing living Cleopatra as whore (3.6.67), refers to dead one as bravest at last and royal (5.2.333-34). Readers of play have followed suit. The queen of Egypt herself is subject of conflicting commentary, but her end typically earns critical applause. Even those who denounce Cleopatra's conduct as sinful tend to find her suicide splendid. (3) She is, to paraphrase Antony's comment about Fulvia, good choosing death. As Cleopatra's question suggests, we judge suicide by precise ethical standards; as her answer about the fashion reveals, these standards are also culturally contingent. In Tudor England, those who had access to education, and therefore to classical literature, might indeed judge suicide brave and noble if done after fashion (4.15.86-87). (4) The classical tradition concerning suicide provided only widespread and coherent interpretative challenge to absolute condemnation of act in early modern society. (5) But for most people living in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England, suicide was unquestionably sin. Under designation of self-murder, it was regarded as transgression against laws of God, of nature, and of state. (6) Far from being rhetorical, then, Cleopatra's question calls attention to difficulty of judging suicide that does not conform to fashion. Prompted by poor passion (4.15.74) that she suffers as result of Antony's death, her question refers as much to his death as to her own. And Antony's final moments have earned less acclaim than hers, in part because Antony improvises death that comprises elements of high Roman and early modern models of suicide, but that satisfactorily be explained by reference to either. In his treatment of Antony's suicide, Shakespeare inhibits both praise and condemnation, two responses associated respectively with classical and early modern ideas about suicide. The ensuing ambiguity suits story well: pagan setting precludes strictly Christian readings of suicide, while Antony's status as history's most famous deserting soldier undermines readings. Capitalizing on potential of his source, Shakespeare overturns categories by which suicide was understood in early modern period; he evokes these categories only to demonstrate their inadequacy when it comes to describing Antony's tragic death. Antony's refusal to follow recognizable pattern in his suicide might account for discomfort occasioned by his death among play's critics. While from Cleopatra's perspective Antony has rushed into the secret house, his critics have more frequently chastised his slowness in dying. Even Phyllis Rackin, whose reading of play is sympathetic to its protagonists, considers Antony's suicide a messy affair; other scholars more categorically describe it as bungled or botched. (7) Antony's motivations appear conflicted and his means suspect: he cannot properly manage his own death, he is diminishe [d] ... in eyes of audience, he behaves like gulled, ineffectual comic figure. (8) Again and again, Antony's dying body elicits such condescension and confusion. Like Antony's guards, who upon discovering their bleeding master flee room, critics eager to salvage Antony's reputation rush over embarrassing particulars of his suicide and focus instead on its aftermath. Cleopatra's eulogies enable readings that emphasize Antony's achievement of some kind of transcendent new heaven (1. …
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