Antony and Cleopatra

Author: William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Written: c 1606 – 1607
Editors: Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen
Publisher: Modern Library (2009 Edition)
Bought from: Book Depository


Introduction

Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies based on Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.

For centuries, Egypt has been ruled by the Ptolemiac Dynasty, a family that traced its origins to Ptolemy, the Greek general who was appointed satrap of Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. In 51 BC, Cleopatra (69 BC – 30 BC) and her 10 years old younger brother Ptolemy VIII were made joint rulers of Egypt. As was Egyptian custom then, they married each other. Relationship between them broke down before long and Cleopatra was exiled in 48 BC.

In the same year, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) arrived in Alexandria, fleeing the forces of Julius Caesar during the first Roman Civil War. Ptolemy had Pompey beheaded and presented Pompey’s head to Caesar, hoping to ingratiate himself with Caesar. This backfired in a big way. Caesar may have been horrified at the boy king’s treatment of a fellow Roman. He seized Alexandria. At this time, Cleopatra played her hand. Plutarch wrote of the famous episode of Cleopatra smuggling herself past her brother’s guards to Caesar rolled up in a carpet. Caesar ousted Ptolemy and named Cleopatra queen of Egypt in 47 BC, with another younger brother Ptolemy XIV as co-ruler.

Caesar had an illegitimate son with Cleopatra, Caesarion. There is evidence that Cleopatra, Caesarion and her entourage were visiting Rome when Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.

After Caesar’s death, Mark Antony (83 BC – 30 BC) formed an alliance in Rome with Caesar’s adopted son and great-nephew, Gaius Octavius (63 BC – 14 AD) and Marcus Lepidus in 43 BC. This alliance, known as the Second Triumvirate, was a formal institution (unlike the First Triumvirate) and held practically unlimited political power (nearly identical to the powers that Caesar had held). As such, the Senate and assemblies remained powerless even after Caesar had been assassinated.

The Triumvirs launched the second Roman civil war against Caesar’s murderers Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. In 42 BC, Octavius and Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius in two battles fought at Philippi. The Triumvirs divided Rome’s provinces into spheres of influence. Octavius took control of the West, Antony the East, and Lepidus Hispania and Africa.

In 41 BC, Antony (who controlled Egypt as Triumvir) summoned Cleopatra to Tarsus, in modern-day Turkey. Plutarch wrote that Cleopatra made such a first impression on Antony that he spent the winter of 41 – 40 BC with her in Alexandria before returning to Rome. In 36 BC, Antony returned to Alexandria and married Cleopatra (although he was already married to Octavia, sister of Octavian). Antony and Cleopatra would have 3 children.

Also in 36 BC, Octavius’ general Marcus Agrippa defeated the pirate commander Sextus Pompeius (son of Pompey) thereby ending serious opposition to the Second Trimvirate.

However, like the First Triumvirate, the Second Triumvirate was ultimately unstable and wracked with internal jealousies and ambitions. In 33 BC, Octavius convinced the Senate to declare war against Cleopatra, as opposed to Antony, an important distinction because Octavius did not want the Roman people to consider it a civil war.

Octavius’s forces decisively defeated those of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in Greece in September 31 BC. Octavius invaded Egypt the following year. Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide in Alexandria in 30 BC. Caesarion was killed on Octavius’s order. Cleopatra’s children with Antony were spared and taken to Rome where they were brought up by Antony’s widow Octavia. Egypt became a Roman province. The rule of the pharaohs ended forever.

With the complete defeat of Antony and the marginalisation of Lepidus, Octavius became the most powerful man in the Roman world and the Senate bestowed upon him the name of Augustus in 27 BC. This marked the transformation of the oligarchic/democratic Roman Republic into the autocratic Roman Empire. Augustus brought peace to the Roman state that had been plagued by a century of civil wars and ushered in the Pax Romana, which remains the longest period of peace and stability that Europe has seen in recorded history (27 BC ­– 180 AD).


What is the book about?

The play is about the famous love affair between Antony and Cleopatra as it played out against the combustible political situation in the Roman world. It covers events from c 40 BC to 30 BC.

Antony, whom Shakespeare first wrote about in Julius Caesar, is a lover and a fighter. He is torn between his passion for Cleopatra and his sense of duty to Rome.

Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s most famous female characters. Indeed, most people ‘know’ her purely through Shakespeare’s pen. In the play, she is bewitching, cunning, capricious, insecure, cruel, angsty, passionate, proud. The Romans do not what to make of her. Agrippa’s oxymoron “Royal wench!” (2.2.265) sums up the typical Roman’s ambivalence about her.

One Roman who is familiar with Cleopatra is Enorbabus, Antony’s friend and soldier. Shakespeare has him deliver some of the most wonderful description of Cleopatra. Here, he describes the first meeting between Antony and Cleopatra:

I will tell you
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that
The winds were lovesick with them: the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion; cloth-of-gold, of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy out-work nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colored fans whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did ...
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i’th’eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her, and Antony,
Enthroned i’th’marketplace, did sit alone,
Whistling to th’air, which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
And made a gap in nature.
(2.2.226 – 255)

This is my personal favourite:

I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
That she did make defect perfection,
And, breathless, pour breathe forth.
(2.2.268 – 272)

And finally:

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies. For vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
(2.2.275 – 280)

So how is the book?

Each of the books in the RSC Shakespeare series published by The Modern Library comes with very informative footnotes, helpful scene-by-scene analysis and, best of all, commentary on past and current productions that comes with interviews with leading directors and actor. The books are also very reasonably priced. Best of all, the introductions are not overly long and focus on a few talking points for each play. The paper quality is not particularly good though.

Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s later works and written in what the publishers call “his most soaring poetic idiom”. The language is indeed impenetrable on many occasions even with the footnotes.

The editors appear to have fumbled in the play’s last scene when Ocatavius’ Roman soldiers captured Cleopatra inside her monument. The character Gallus entered and left without any dialogue. In on-line editions of the play, Gallus spoke lines 39 and 40.

Antony and Cleopatra does not have as many memorable lines as Julius Caesar but it is the origin of the term “salad days”, uttered by Cleopatra: “My salad days / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood” (1.5.86-87).


Finally

Good read.