Alexas and Ventidius: Hobbes and Locke Might Have Pointed With Pride

Hobbes’ Leviathan appeared in 1651. In it, to oversimplify, he said that each man is born a materialist, grasping and self-serving and privately practical. John Locke produced, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in 1690. In that work, he emphasizes not matter, but ideas. Ideas are “the whole material of our knowledge.” Politically, Hobbes felt that man’s inherent selfishness would cause society, if left unchecked, to run amok. Only an absolute monarch might control man’s crass ambitions. Locke had better faith in human rationality, and believed man could best rule himself by reasonable agreement. In these writers, we hear voices promoting reason over emotion as a tool for living (Locke), but warning that each ideate is apt to serve his private and selfish purpose only, if allowed free expression (Hobbes). In All for Love, which Dryden wrote in 1677, almost exactly midway between the publication dates of Hobbes’ and Locke’s philosophical treatises, we have a dramatization of just the forces those thinkers articulated for us.

Alexas, sometimes referred to as an embodiment of pure (scheming) reason in the play, is in fact a highly emotional man who operates out of fear and deep-seated anger. He controls his less rational inclinations by trying to “control” his immediate world: by making practical suggestions for survival to his queen; by wooing Antony and his commanders; by persuading Cleopatra to participate in a plot to make Antony jealous; and finally by perpetrating a private ruse that backfires. Ventidius, the practical man on Antony’s side, is no less emotional than Alexas, nor perhaps even than the two lovers. And his passion is not hidden. He comes to his leader with at least as many heart-rending arguments (including several in the flesh) as reasonable rebuttals. Both Alexas and Ventidius are Locke’s rational and fair-minded creatures of ideas, and each believes he is justifiably constrained to force his cause. Both men seem to be Hobbes’ hot-tempered and selfish seekers after personal gain, as well. We shall examine each one’s program of persuasion, noting in each case his principal emotional motivation, and determining to what extent each controls his ideas and feelings to achieve his goal.

At the opening of the play, all are threatened. The Romans are near, Antony has hidden himself, in dejection, from everyone including Cleopatra, and the priest Serapion has had a vision that portends destruction for Egypt. If Antony is defeated, he explains, or if he is reconciled with Rome. “Egypt is doomed to be / A Roman Province” (Act I, 1. 64). Alexas agrees, and tells us how he would have it instead if he could:

Had I my wish, these tyrants of all nature

Who Lord it o’er mankind, should perish,--perish,

Each by the other’s sword; but, since our will

Is lamely followed by our power, we must

Depend on one; with him to rise or fall.

                                                                        (I,  11,71-75)

To Alexas, both forces, far from controlling the situation to everyone’s benefit, are oppressive and so deserve to die. That is his broad political view, which includes everyone (“mankind”), but it is also an expression of personal frustration for being powerless; he is forced with the others to rely on Antony. It is clear from the next exchange that the counselor had other plans, but Cleopatra’s dotage has thwarted those too:

                        This changes my designs, this blasts my counsels,

                        And makes me use all means to keep him here,

                        Whom I could wish divided from her arms,

                        Far as the earth’s deep center.

                                                                        (I,  11.82-85)

Deep is Alexas’ center, we see already. He has thought out his own problem, and he obviously feels strongly about the whole situation.

            But he can handle it only his queen’s way—for now, Alexas’ first move is to order a celebration of Antony’s birthday city-wide, as a sure-to-be-noticed gesture of Cleopatra’s love. It is an honest act of conciliation. Ventidius, on the other hand, sees a party at a time like this, when Antony is in danger, as just another sign of Cleopatra’s and Egypt’s degeneracy. Alexas reminds the general that the celebration is an act of love, and that Antony would show more virtue by honestly returning the queen’s devotion. Ventidius’ emotions run high in this scene, while Alexas’ reasonable rebuttals level the tone. Persistent in his attack, Ventidius gives us his opinion of Alexas, and states his intention:

            Thou art her darling mischief, her chief engine,

            Antony’s other fate. Go, tell thy queen,

            Ventidius is arrived, to end her charms.

                                                            (I, 11. 191-193)

The personal battle line is drawn. Alexas is indeed Cleopatra’s agent, but by order of the queen herself. The savior Ventidius, on the other hand, is self-appointed. He will be the instrument of Antony’s better, as opposed to Cleopatra’s “other” fate, for him. He will neutralize her effect upon Antony and free the great man to follow his greater purpose. Why? Because Antony is too good to be lost:

            O Antony:

            Thou bravest soldier, and thou best of friends:

            Bounteous as nature; next to Nature’s God:

                                                            (I, 11.180-182)

Ventidius’ obvious intention is simple, and so is his rallying cry to Antony: “Up, up, for honour’s sake; twelve legions wait you, / And long to call you chief” (I. 11. 337-38). Ventidius is not wily and sophisticated like Alexas; his loyalty is clear and his values homespun. As Alexas puts it about his rival: “In short the plainness, fierceness, rugged virtue, / Of an old true-stampt Roman lives in him” (I. 11. 105-6). But the simple man has more complex feelings, and the indications of them are clear.

            After Antony describes during a rhapsodic soliloquy a “sylvan scene” of idyllic peace where he would prefer above all to be, the eavesdropping Ventidius admits having the same inclination: “Methinks I fancy / Myself there too” (I, 1. 240). It is a reverie of escape from all worldly cares. It is a longing for death, actually, but without pain; for the peace that passeth. Soon afterward, Antony confesses his feeling directly: “No I can kill myself; and so resolve” (I, 1.331), and Ventidius offers: “I can die with you too, when time shall serve” (I, 1.332). The death wish is selfish, the ultimate in self-condemnation, and the worst of sins, despair: all in all, a supremely egotistic notion. In the Roman code and in Cleopatra’s too, however, it is an honorable alternative—which all three choose. In the meantime, Ventidius will act as a delaying force, to bolster the languishing Antony and stave off the inevitable suicides. For now, urges Ventidius, we are “to live, / To fight, to conquer” (I. 1.333). The plain Roman is plainly a soldier first. He believes Antony to be practically a god, but is that reason enough, validation enough for Antony to rule the world? Octavius, that absent but haunting presence of relentless determination, is the proper heir to the Empire. Clearly, Ventidius is smitten.

            He attacks Cleopatra—even at the risk of incurring Antony’s wrath—and praises Antony extravagantly, to hear him at last declare: “Come, follow me:” (I. 1.428). The entire first meeting has been an emotional bath, and it ends with the highest feeling as Ventidius exults:

            Oh, now I hear my emperor: in that word

            Octavius fell. Gods, let me see that day,

            And, if I have ten years behind, take all:

            I’ll thank you for the exchange.

                                                            (I, 11. 429-32)

He would give up ten years of life, just to see Octavius defeated: He is so high now that he can’t help repeating himself in soaring praise:

                                                Me thinks, you breathe

            Another soul: Your looks are more divine;

            You speak a hero, and you move a god.

                                                            (I, 11. 435-37)

As Antony flexes and rhapsodizes about a past victory, Ventidius flies emotionally with him: “Ye gods, ye gods, / For such another honour:” (I, 1. 447). Another death wish. Another honor. For right? Or for self? So far, to die with Antony seems to be Ventidius’ fondest dream.

            Alexas, quite to the contrary, has been running for his life from the very start. From the beginning, he has recognized Ventidius’ effectiveness and different nature:

            This downright fighting fool, this thick-skulled hero,

            This Blunt, unthinking instrument of death,

            With plain dull virtue has outgone my wit.

                                                            (III, 11. 379-81)

Alexas here expresses, with anguish, exactly how he has been victimized, and why he must fight so hard to survive:

            Pleasure forsook my earliest infancy,

            The luxury of others robbed my cradle,

            And ravished thence the promise of a man.

Cast out from nature, disinherited

Of what her meanest children claim by kind,

Yet greatness kept me from contempt: that’s gone.

Had Cleopatra followed my advice,

Then he had been betrayed who now forsakes.

She dies for love; but she has known its joys:

Gods, is this just, that I, who know no joys,

Must die, because she loves?

                                                (III, 11. 382-92).

Alexas knows Ventidius is an agent of death, and that the general’s simple-minded persistence is winning for him. What he doesn’t know is that for Ventidius, death is a happy notion. Ventidius would die for love of Antony, and so another one who knows joy dogs Alexas’ footsteps. This is the second time he has cursed aloud his fate to be tyrannized by selfish leaders. He has had removed his very manhood, the right of even the lowest being to possess, which is an injustice quite enough to fill him with contempt. But his “greatness” of spirit has kept him honorable. Or has it been a simple sense of survival? But he has been so diligent in fact, that it comes to him, in the last hours, that he has thereby been promoting his on destruction, in effect. In a rage, Cleopatra lays the blame for her ruin upon Alexas and his failed schemes, and tries to attack him. Alexas cowers at first, but then stands to state his case:

            Yes, I deserve it, for my ill-timed truth.

            Was it for me to prop

            The ruins of a falling majesty?

            To place myself beneath the mighty flaw,

            Thus to be crushed, and pounded into atoms,

            By its o’erwhelming weight? ‘Tis too presuming

            For subjects to preserve that willful power,

            Which courts its own destruction.

                                                            (V. 11. 19-27)

If Cleopatra had followed his advice, Egypt would have survived, and if Alexas had not suppressed his contempt and pain, we may presume, perhaps he would not have lingered to be destroyed. But his plots, born of anguish and self-preservation, have served a power that labors inexorably toward self-destruction.

            Ventidius has been up against just as relentlessly self-destructive energies in Antony. But unlike Alexas, Ventidius is prepared, even eager, to die with his leader. His strategies—including his two most powerful ploys, Dolabella and Octavia—have failed, too, and for Ventidius as for Alexas, “Fate comes too fast upon [his] wit” (V, 1. 255). But this man of reason seems to have proceeded all along on a current of self-immolation. Whether Antony wins or loses, Ventidius can have his own victory—in death; and he seems to have anticipated that alternative. At the end, in the face of destruction, he is ecstatic, declaring to Antony:

            Now you shall see I love you. Not a word

            Of chiding more. By my few hours of life,

            I am so pleased with this brave Roman fate,

            That I would not be Caesar, to outlive you,

            When we put off this flesh, and mount together,

            I shall be shown to all the ethereal crowd,--

            Lo, this is he who died with Antony:

                                                            (V. 11. 178-184).

What greater glory than to be united in death with a god! Death seems always uppermost in both of their minds: “I could be grieved, / But that I’ll not outlive you: choose your death” (V, 11. 289-90); and the egos are startling in their selfishness:

            ANTONY: Wilt thou not live, to speak some good of me?

            To stand by my fair fame, and guard the approaches

            From the ill tongues of men?

            VENTIDIUS:                          Who shall guard mine,

            For living after you?

                                                                        (V, 11. 299-302).

For each warrior, his self-image will stay intact, with or without the Empire, even without life. And in the opposite camp, facing annihilation just as certainly, Alexas manages to have a moment of self-assurance, too:

            Some other, any man (‘tis so advanced),

            May perfect this unfinished work, which I

            (Unhappy only to myself) have left

            So easy to his hand,

                                                                        (V, 11. 53-56)

He tells Cleopatra (and himself) in the last minutes.

            Both men have succeeded. Each has applied his reason to control deep personal feelings, or, more accurately, to direct longings that might otherwise be self-defeating, toward the achievement of a private and pleasurable goal. If Ventidius cannot have victory and honor, he will take death and even greater honor. If Alexas cannot have his havens, Egypt and Cleopatra secured, and his personal safety guaranteed, he will settle for self-congratulation for an attempt well-made, and life in the midst of mass suicide. Locke would commend the soldier and the eunuch for their sense, and Hobbes might shout, ‘There, you see!’ at their selfish victories. Antony and Cleopatra escape defeat to achieve glory in death; Ventidius does, too; and Alexas lives—we may presume—to talk his way out of execution by the Romans. The Egyptians are terrified, but probably also relieved, to have a resolution at long last. And Octavius? His pure reason rules the day as surely as Dryden’s grace and economy, poetry and precision, rule us through the play.