Analysis of Antony and Cleopatra’s scene IV (Act I).

In the present text I’m going to anlyze the first exchange of the scene IV of the first act.
The setting had changed, now we are in Caesar’s house. Caesar is telling Lepidus that he doesn’t hate Antony (“his great competitor”), anyway he is giving a negative opinion about him. He condemns Antony’s activities like fishing, drinking and all that he is doing in Egypt; Antony doesn’t follow Roman ideal beahvior: he is only following his istincts.Caesar judges negatively Antony : “he is not more manlike than Cleopatra”, Antony hasn’t got the qualities of a real man: he is as man as Cleopatra, he behaves like a woman. Caesar is criticizing Antony’s feminine features that in Roman culture were considered a weakness. The Romans expected that a military man behaves as a real man.Antony is compared to two queens to reinforce Caesar opinion about his feminine qualities, and he adds that Antony doesn’t consider Roman people that wanted to talk with him (it seems that he forgot his Roman life). Caesar concludes his judgment saying that Antony represents all the vices of human being. In this exchange Caesar makes a list of all Antony’s negative aspects, in doing this he uses semantic groups refered to feminine world and uses comparisons.
Lepidus doesn’t seem to accept all these Antony’s negative qualities: he thinks that something good must have been remained. What Caesar criticized about Antony belongs to his nature and can’t be changed. Antony’s nature is a fondamental element of his personality. So it seems that Antony’s nature is his weakness. Up to know the the audience know some of Antony’s inner qualities analyzed by the point of view of the Roman culture. Caesar seems to be interested only in military life.
Caesar goes on with his negative judgment including a negative opinion about Cleopatra, she is never connotate in a objective way (“ keep the turn of tipplingwith a slave”). Cleopatra is presented like an enchantress that distract Antony from his duties.
Caesar says “no way excuse his foils when we do bear so great weight in his lightness”, he also use a comparison to explain Antony’s situation: “ ‘tis to be chid..to judgement”.
So Antony is presented as a young roman that knows what are his duties and values but is living a confusing moment and needs to be scolded.