- TLN 2718classical allusion
“more mad Than Telamon for his shield”
Telamon was the father of Ajax, the Greek champion at Troy. When Achilles died, Ajax and Odysseus both claimed his armour; the Greek army awarded it to Odysseus, and Ajax went mad with rage and humiliation, massacring a flock of sheep under the delusion they were his enemies. The armour is the 'shield.' Cleopatra compares Antony's fury to this proverbial classical madness.
- TLN 2719classical allusion
“the boar of Thessaly Was never so emboss'd”
The 'boar of Thessaly' is the Calydonian boar — a monstrous beast sent by the goddess Diana to ravage Calydon (in what is now northern Greece, near Thessaly) as punishment for a neglected sacrifice. The heroes of Greece hunted it together in one of classical myth's great collective quests. 'Emboss'd' here means foaming at the mouth from exhaustion and fury, said of a hard-pressed hunted animal. Cleopatra is saying even that legendary beast was never as dangerously enraged as Antony is now.
- TLN 2722historical topical
“send him word you are dead”
Charmian's advice to send Antony a false report of Cleopatra's death is the hinge on which the play's catastrophe turns. Cleopatra takes it: she orders the eunuch Mardian to deliver the lie. In Plutarch's account, Cleopatra retreats to her monument and sends word she has killed herself, which drives Antony to fall on his sword. Shakespeare follows this sequence almost exactly.
classical Plutarch's Lives (North's Translation) - TLN 2723rhetorical device
“The soul and body rive not more in parting Than greatness going off”
'Rive' means to split or tear apart violently -- it is used of splitting wood or cleaving rock. Charmian's aphorism compares the violence of a great person's fall from power to the ultimate violent separation: the soul tearing free from the body at death. Nothing tears more brutally than a soul leaving its body -- except, she says, a great man losing his greatness. The remark frames Antony's collapse in cosmic, almost metaphysical terms before the scene exits.