Antony and Cleopatra: Language and Writing 9781408184516, 9781472504999, 9781474275774, 9781408184806

Table of contents :
FC
Half title
Arden Student Skills: Language and Writing
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Series editor’s preface
Preface
Introduction and overview
Shakespeare’s perspective art
First appearance
The legend
Peopling Egypt and Rome
Genre
Writing matters
1 Language in print: Reading the performance script
Early modern staging
Reading the Folio text
Visualizing the scene
‘He words me, girls, he words me’
Cutting the text
Writing matters
2 Language: Forms and uses
Feel the beat
Prose
Sound and sense
Figurative language
Mythmaking
Wordplay
Writing matters
3 Language through time: Changing interpretations
Antony and Cleopatra after Shakespeare
Characterizing the characters
Well-wrought urns
Deconstructing the text
History and politics
Gender
Cleopatra’s tawny front
Colonizing Egypt
From stage to page
Intertextuality
New questions
Writing matters
4 Writing checklist
Bibliography

Citation preview

Antony and Cleopatra

ARDEN STUDENT SKILLS: LANGUAGE AND WRITING Series Editor: Dympna Callaghan, Syracuse University

Published Titles The Tempest, Brinda Charry Macbeth, Emma Smith Romeo and Juliet, Catherine Belsey Othello, Laurie Maguire Twelfth Night, Frances E. Dolan Hamlet, Dympna Callaghan

Forthcoming Titles King Lear, Jean Howard A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Heidi Brayman Hackel The Merchant of Venice, Douglas Lanier Much Ado About Nothing, Indira Ghose

Antony and Cleopatra Language and Writing

VIRGINIA MASON VAUGHAN

Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as Arden Shakespeare 50 Bedford Square

1385 Broadway

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New York

WC1B 3DP

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USA www.bloomsbury.com

BLOOMSBURY, THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 © Virginia Mason Vaughan, 2016 Virginia Mason Vaughan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB:

978-1-4081-8451-6

PB:

978-1-4725-0499-9

ePDF: 978-1-4081-8480-6 ePub: 978-1-4081-8571-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

CONTENTS Acknowledgements  vii Series editor’s preface  viii Preface  xi



Introduction and overview 1 Shakespeare’s perspective art  1 First appearance  4 The legend  12 Peopling Egypt and Rome  19 Genre  22 Writing matters  28

1 Language in print: Reading the performance script 31 Early modern staging  33 Reading the Folio text  36 Visualizing the scene  42 ‘He words me, girls, he words me’  52 Cutting the text  56 Writing matters  62

2 Language: Forms and uses 65 Feel the beat  71 Prose  76 Sound and sense  80

vi Contents

Figurative language  82 Mythmaking  89 Wordplay  96 Writing matters  100

3 Language through time: Changing interpretations 105 Antony and Cleopatra after Shakespeare  107 Characterizing the characters  111 Well-wrought urns  114 Deconstructing the text  116 History and politics  118 Gender  125 Cleopatra’s tawny front  130 Colonizing Egypt  134 From stage to page  137 Intertextuality  141 New questions  143 Writing matters  145

4 Writing checklist 149 Bibliography  155

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Dympna Callaghan, the General Editor for Shakespeare: Language and Writing, for asking me to contribute to this series; writing this book has allowed me to ponder some fascinating critical issues and think about the questions students raise in greater depth than the classroom allows. In addition, I would like to thank my editor at Bloomsbury, Margaret Bartley, for her support for my work, and her assistant, Emily Hockley, who arranged the reproduction of William Scrots’ portrait of Edward VI on page 2 with London’s National Portrait Gallery. I am also grateful to Dr. Anne Gibson, an experienced geographer who serves as Clark University’s Web Editor, for preparing the map of the play’s locations that appears on p. 10. Serena Hilsinger, Lois Brynes and Stephanie Grace read the manuscript in draft and shared their insights with me. Last, but not least, thanks are due to Alden T. Vaughan for his thoughtful suggestions on early drafts and to our corgis, Meg and Carly, who provided tranquillity for my writing by napping in my study.

SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE This series puts the pedagogical expertise of distinguished literary critics at the disposal of students embarking upon Shakespeare Studies at university. While they demonstrate a variety of approaches to the plays, all the contributors to the series share a deep commitment to teaching and a wealth of knowledge about the culture and history of Shakespeare’s England. The approach of each of the volumes is direct yet intellectually sophisticated and tackles the challenges Shakespeare presents. These volumes do not provide a short-cut to Shakespeare’s works but instead offer a careful explication of them directed towards students’ own processing and interpretation of the plays and poems. Students’ needs in relation to Shakespeare revolve overwhelmingly around language, and Shakespeare’s language is what most distinguishes him from his rivals and collaborators – as well as what most embeds him in his own historical moment. The Language and Writing series understands language as the very heart of Shakespeare’s literary achievement rather than as an obstacle to be circumvented. This series addresses the difficulties often encountered in reading Shakespeare alongside the necessity of writing papers for university examinations and course assessment. The primary objective here is to foster rigorous critical engagement with the texts by helping students develop their own critical writing skills. Language and Writing titles demonstrate how to develop students’ own capacity to articulate and enlarge upon their experience of encountering the text, far beyond summarizing, paraphrasing or ‘translating’ Shakespeare’s language



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into a more palatable, contemporary form. Each of the volumes in the series introduces the text as an act of specifically literary language and shows that the multifarious issues of life and history that Shakespeare’s work addresses cannot be separated from their expression in language. In addition, each book takes students through a series of guidelines about how to develop viable undergraduate critical essays on the text in question, not by delivering interpretations, but rather by taking readers step-by-step through the process of discovering and developing their own critical ideas. All the books include chapters examining the text from the point of view of its composition, that is, from the perspective of Shakespeare’s own process of composition as a reader, thinker and writer. The opening chapters consider when and how the play was written, addressing, for example, the extant literary and cultural acts of language, from which Shakespeare constructed his work – including his sources – as well as the generic, literary and theatrical conventions at his disposal. Subsequent sections demonstrate how to engage in detailed examination and analysis of the text and focus on the literary, technical and historical intricacies of Shakespeare’s verse and prose. Each volume also includes some discussion of performance. Other chapters cover textual issues as well as the interpretation of the extant texts for any given play on stage and screen, treating for example, the use of stage directions or parts of the play that are typically cut in performance. Authors also address issues of stage/film history as they relate to the cultural evolution of Shakespeare’s words. In addition, these chapters deal with the critical reception of the work, particularly the newer theoretical and historicist approaches that have revolutionized our understanding of Shakespeare’s language over the past 40 years. Crucially, every chapter contains a section on ‘Writing matters’, which links the analysis of Shakespeare’s language with students’ own critical writing. The series empowers students to read and write about Shakespeare with scholarly confidence and hopes to inspire

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their enthusiasm for doing so. The authors in this series have been selected because they combine scholarly distinction with outstanding teaching skills. Each book exposes the reader to an eminent scholar’s teaching in action and expresses a vocational commitment to making Shakespeare accessible to a new generation of student readers. Professor Dympna Callaghan Series Editor Arden Student Skills: Language and Writing

PREFACE Antony and Cleopatra chronicles historic events in ancient Rome and Egypt that were well known to most of Shakespeare’s original audience, but are obscure or poorly understood in the twenty-first century. Today the common impression of the play’s central characters, Antony and Cleopatra, is often shaped by images from popular culture. If, for example, you Google ‘Cleopatra’, most of the visuals you find will be shots of Elizabeth Taylor in the role of Cleopatra in the 1963 film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, one of the most expensive movies ever made. The movie used none of Shakespeare’s language, but it has influenced the way many think about his play. The film’s first half portrays Cleopatra’s youthful liaison with Rex Harrison’s Julius Caesar and ends with his assassination. The second half chronicles Antony (Richard Burton) and Cleopatra’s love affair, their conflict with Octavius, and their suicides. The fact that Burton and Taylor were having their own adulterous affair while the film was being shot, conflating life and art, made its reception even more sensational. Taylor’s Cleopatra is a dark-haired, full-breasted, seductive and beautiful woman who is also extremely intelligent and committed to her role as Queen of Egypt. Burton’s Antony is handsome, dissipated and desperately in love. Filmed in full colour before scenes of the pyramids and Roman forum, Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra provides a panoramic view of the ancient world across which Antony and Cleopatra play out their tragic love affair. As we watch, our gaze moves from Egyptian palaces to Roman streets to battles fought on sea and land, and the vast visual scope reminds us that these events not only encompassed the entire Mediterranean world, they changed its future. The plot of the second half is the same as

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Shakespeare’s tragedy because the historical events being represented are the same, but Mankiewicz’s film is not Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra are not Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Indeed, Mankiewicz’s film was titled Cleopatra; although it portrayed her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, its focus throughout was her life and her sensational suicide by means of a poisonous snake. When Shakespeare tackled the same historical material, he made the characters Antony and Cleopatra share the role usually assigned to a single tragic hero so that both serve as the play’s protagonists. As you approach your reading of Antony and Cleopatra, recall that Shakespeare did not have a movie camera and imagine the challenge he faced in dramatizing this epic tale. As an actor and writer for England’s most prominent repertory company, the King’s Men, Shakespeare knew his actors and the space in which they performed. How could he possibly represent such legendary figures on the bare stage of the Globe playhouse? How could he show the scope of their story? And ‘show’ is the word, because the other representations of Antony and Cleopatra that circulated in Shakespeare’s England were not intended to be performed – they narrated the story, they did not enact it. Shakespeare had to rely on a few props to suggest the scene. His plays were performed at the Globe without artificial lighting. He shaped Antony and Cleopatra to exploit juxtaposition and contrast, moving scenes rapidly from one locale to another, but his most important tool was language. Throughout the play Shakespeare’s poetry creates his characters and conveys the worlds of ancient Egypt and Rome. The chapters that follow are meant to help you familiarize yourself with the multi-faceted way language works in Antony and Cleopatra, to help you understand the poetic and dramatic techniques Shakespeare uses and to provide you with the tools you need to convey your own ideas in a clearly written and well-researched essay. The Introduction surveys the historical events that inspired the play and examines the

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sources Shakespeare referenced whilst writing. It also tackles the vexed issue of dramatic form, commonly referred to as genre, because even though Antony and Cleopatra is usually categorized as a tragedy, it shares features with history plays and comedies. Chapter 1, ‘Language in Print: Visualizing the Performance Script’, examines the original text of Antony and Cleopatra, the version printed in 1623 in Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, commonly referred to as the First Folio. This chapter offers tips on how to read the text as a performance script, to visualize it off the page and in the theatre of your mind. It surveys the choices commonly made by editors, directors and actors that interpret Shakespeare’s words in specific ways. Remember that Shakespeare did not supervise the publication of his plays as modern authors do. There are many differences among the versions that were printed during his lifetime, and the texts were printed using spelling conventions and formats that are quite different from what we use today. As a result, the editions of Antony and Cleopatra that are for sale in the twenty-first century are not uniform; the literary scholars who prepare them often make different decisions about how to present and update the original text. A secondary goal of this chapter is to demystify this process so that whatever edition you are using, you understand what kinds of choices your editor made and how they affect what you are reading. Chapter 2, ‘Language: Forms and Uses’, moves from staging and the panoramic view of scenic design to an examination of the text at the micro level. This section offers a variety of tools that will assist your close reading of the text, particularly explanations of the poetic techniques Shakespeare used in his characters’ dialogue. The goal throughout is to highlight Shakespeare’s masterful fusion of sound and sense: the way he matches the rhythm of the poetic line with the emotions being expressed, how he shapes his sentence structure for maximum effect and, particularly important to this play, his exploitation of the characters’ references to the gods and the natural world to convey their personal aspirations. The linguistic tactics I

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describe will help you understand and appreciate the power of Shakespeare’s language to shape our responses to the characters and to imagine the world of Rome and Egypt that they inhabit. Chapter 3, ‘Language through Time: Changing Interpretations’, surveys the ways Antony and Cleopatra has been interpreted from the late seventeenth century to the present, particularly the way each generation has reshaped its conception of the protagonists. Shakespeare portrays Cleopatra as the powerful Queen of Egypt, a woman who has her own navy and chooses to lead it in battle, but from the late seventeenth century well into the twentieth, her political role was largely ignored. Sometimes even her role as co-protagonist was forgotten and Antony framed as the play’s sole tragic hero. Shakespeare also portrays Cleopatra as racially different from the western European Romans, yet it was not until the twenty-first century that critics began to consider race as a factor in the play. Over time attitudes toward the play have become less dogmatic and more eclectic, so much of this chapter describes the critical and theoretical perspectives that have been applied to Antony and Cleopatra in the last thirty years. It offers a sampling of some of the most provocative recent criticism in order to demonstrate the many questions readers have asked about this complicated text and to stimulate questions of your own. Chapter 4 presents a step-by-step approach to writing your own research paper on this challenging play, followed by a list of websites, editions and books that you may find helpful, as well as a list of the resources I’m citing. This book will be most helpful to you if you read Antony and Cleopatra closely and completely before you begin, and if you refer repeatedly to your edition of the play as you study each chapter. Shakespeare’s language is often difficult, but with re-reading it becomes much easier, and eventually it can even seem natural. Shakespeare lived in a culture that listened, whether to proclamations, sermons or plays. Contemporary reporters often said that they were going to ‘hear’ a play. The

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twenty-first century relies more on visual images than spoken words, but you will find it enormously helpful if you listen to an audio version of the text. The words will jump off the page and the characters will come alive. If you’ve familiarized yourself with the entire text, our detailed examination of the play will make more sense. Remember that this book is intended to help you achieve your own understanding of the play’s language. Close reading will not only make the play’s action and characters much clearer to you, it will also help you write your own critical analysis. Throughout this book I have used bold print to highlight the literary terms I’m defining so that you can easily access them for future reference. The words themselves are not as important as the concepts they represent, but when we’re writing about a literary text, we need a common vocabulary in order to communicate with our readers. I also use the term ‘early modern’ to denote a particular period of history. When this descriptor is applied to England, it refers roughly to the years between 1485 and 1660, a historical period that began at the close of the middle ages and ended before the Enlightenment. Historians and literary scholars have chosen the term ‘early modern’ to describe this period because the older term, ‘Renaissance’, is more ambiguous and value-laden. The Renaissance is commonly defined as a ‘rebirth’ of learning, implying a sudden shift in consciousness that is quite different from what was actually a widespread and gradual historical development. Moreover, what we think of as the Renaissance began as early as the 1300s in Italy but did not affect England until after 1485, when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, ending a bloody civil war. Henry was subsequently crowned as Henry VII and established the Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth I, his granddaughter, became Queen in 1558, six years before Shakespeare was born. The last of the Tudors, she died in 1603 and was succeeded by the son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, James VI, who became James I, King of both England and Scotland and founder of the Stuart dynasty. Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616 under the reigns

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of both Elizabeth I and James I, his plays were performed at each court, and when James became King, Shakespeare and his fellow actors were established as the King’s Men, the monarch’s own acting company. Sometimes Elizabeth’s reign, 1558–1603, is referred to as the ‘Elizabethan’ age, the years of James’ reign, 1603–25, as Jacobean. While these terms are often applied to historical events or to denote particular literary texts, they privilege the monarchy over other social and economic forces and, as a result, scholars must be careful about using them. As imprecise as the description ‘early modern’ is, I use it in this book because not only is it the preferred usage in current scholarship, its simple denotation of a historical period between the middle ages and the eighteenth century seems more value-neutral than terms like ‘Renaissance’, ‘Elizabethan’ and ‘Jacobean’. In my overview of recent scholarship in Chapter 3, I explain that today’s literary critics recognize that their own interpretations are contingent upon the circumstances of their own lives. No matter what our education, our perspectives on Shakespeare’s plays are inevitably influenced by the context of our own times and by our gender or class, and our racial, ethnic or sexual identities. With this recognition comes the critic’s responsibility to situate herself for the reader, so let me tell you a little about myself. I received my doctorate in 1972 and soon began a forty-year teaching career, first at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and more extensively at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. The challenging and provocative questions my students ask have consistently stimulated my own thinking about Shakespeare’s plays, and over time my approach to the plays has become more open and eclectic. As you will see in Chapter 3, my education began with an emphasis on close reading, but the rise of feminist and new historicist scholarship in the 1980s had a tremendous impact on my thinking. Then in the 1990s into the 2000s, I had the opportunity to team teach ‘Shakespeare from Page to Stage’ with the playwright Gino DiIorio of Clark’s Theatre Arts department, an experience that opened up new windows

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into the plays as performance scripts. My published work on Othello takes a new historicist approach to performance by placing specific productions within the cultural moment of their production. I have also collaborated with Alden T. Vaughan, an American historian specializing in the early history of race; together we have published four books on The Tempest, including the Arden Edition, Third Series. My interest in Antony and Cleopatra began when I was asked to edit the original Folio text for the third iteration of the Norton Shakespeare, a project that forced me to ponder each word in the play. That meticulous process immersed me in Antony and Cleopatra’s evocative language, and in what follows I hope to share what I have learned with you.

Introduction and overview Shakespeare’s perspective art When Cleopatra learns that Antony has betrayed her by marrying the Roman matron Octavia, she exclaims: Let him forever go! Let him not, Charmian. Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon, The other way’s a Mars (2.5.115–17). Here Cleopatra employs a type of image crafted by many early modern artists as an experiment in visual perspective. Technically known as an anamorphosis, this visual image looks distorted when it is viewed straight on, but seen from a side angle, what was grotesque becomes more recognizable and regular. You may have seen an old-fashioned campaign button that, depending on the light, alternates between the candidate’s face and ‘Vote for so and so’. An anamorphic painting is similar, except that the image changes only when the viewer moves from one side to the other. Cleopatra’s immediate reaction to the Messenger’s news is to see Antony as a Gorgon, the Medusa’s head crowned with snakes. A moment later she shifts position and sees him from another perspective, like Mars, the god of war. The grotesque and the godlike are both inherent in the image, but like the two visuals in a campaign button, they can’t be seen simultaneously.

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King Edward VI, by William Scrots, © National Portrait Gallery, London

One of the best examples of an anamorphic painting is William Scrots’ portrait of King Edward VI (1546), which now hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery. When spectators stand in front of the painting, they see a grossly distorted profile with a Pinocchio nose, but when they move to the side, the facial features look more regular. This portrait of Edward VI was hanging at Whitehall Palace in 1598 when Shakespeare’s theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, performed at court, so it is likely that Shakespeare had seen it. He refers to this type of painting in several plays. In Richard II, for example, Lord Bushy sympathizes with Queen Isabella’s grief over her husband’s deposition: For Sorrow’s eye, glazed with blinding tears, Divides one thing entire to many objects, Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon, Show nothing but confusion; eyed awry, [they] Distinguish form (2.2.16–20). To gaze upon something ‘rightly’ is to look directly at it. To ‘eye [it] awry’ is to look at it from a sideways position. Such ‘perspectives’, or ‘anamorphoses’, may have appealed to Shakespeare because, unlike a static portrait, they require an active response from the viewer. To appreciate the painting fully, viewers cannot simply stand passively before it; they must interact with it by stepping aside and looking again. Similar to Shakespeare’s plays which were performed in real time before live audiences, anamorphic images demand



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sequential and sometimes contradictory responses. As happens so often in real life, first impressions – whether those of the audience or those expressed by the on-stage characters who interact with each other – may be contradicted by subsequent encounters. Discrepancies between the on-stage characters’ perceptions inevitably lead to conflicting judgements about each other and the worlds they inhabit. While the manipulation of different perspectives was a crucial ingredient in all of Shakespeare’s plays, in Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare maximizes the contradictory nature of those perspectives, so much so that the literary scholar Sarah Munson Deats has dubbed it ‘Shakespeare’s anamorphic drama’ (1–3). Not only does Cleopatra suggest two divergent ways of looking at Antony, Antony, in turn, vacillates between contradictory perspectives of Cleopatra, shifting rapidly from angry descriptions of her past liaisons to expressions of transcendent love. As we see from Cleopatra’s outburst describing Antony as both Mars and Gorgon, in Antony and Cleopatra even the protagonists frequently express opposing perspectives about each other. This anamorphic quality may explain why however tempting it may be to reduce the meaning of Antony and Cleopatra into a simple formulation or to identify the protagonists’ ‘tragic flaws’, the play continually resists such efforts. We constantly need to remember that the text is not static or one-dimensional. It was written as a script to be performed through time, drawing upon multiple, often contradictory, perspectives about the central characters and the events of their lives. After all, Antony and Cleopatra’s legendary love story had circulated in a variety of texts from the time of their deaths in 30 bc to the end of the sixteenth century, many of which presented conflicting interpretations. Through the juxtaposition of scenes Shakespeare himself presents multiple points of view regarding their history; each character expresses viewpoints that change under the pressure of events; the responses of individual members of his audience – and today’s readers – vary as well, shaped by their own life experiences.

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All these factors contribute to the variability of our readings. You may find that your responses to Antony or to Cleopatra differ quite a bit from those of someone else. The key is to base your thinking on Shakespeare’s language and recognize the conflicting impressions it fosters. Like Cleopatra’s anamorphic description of Antony – one way he’s a Gorgon, another a god – the play moves between two vastly different historical milieus, Rome and Egypt, and the differences between these two venues are created through language. That binary is central to the play’s structure, but Shakespeare also undercuts it by presenting Egyptian carousing on a Roman galley and inflecting Cleopatra’s Egyptian suicide with Roman imagery of ‘marble constancy’. To be sure, the play’s movement across the Mediterranean world can be confusing and we may find ourselves longing to pin the action down, to choose one character to identify with. To side with Octavius, who represents a Roman point of view, or Cleopatra who indeed is Egypt, is to miss the way Shakespeare complicates both points of view through language and structure. Understanding the complexity of the play’s seeming opposites is, as we shall see, the central challenge of Antony and Cleopatra.

First appearance Antony and Cleopatra was entered in the Stationer’s Register, a public record of the books that printers intended to publish, on 20 May 1608. But the text was not printed, however, until 1623 in the First Folio, the collection of Shakespeare’s plays assembled by his fellow actors seven years after the dramatist’s death. Textual evidence suggests that the date of composition was probably in 1606 or early 1607. Like Julius Caesar, which was performed in 1599, and Coriolanus, which followed Antony and Cleopatra (probably in 1608), the play is based on Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans,



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which was written in the first century ad, translated into English by Thomas North in 1579, and reprinted in 1595 and 1603. Grouped together, the three plays are often referred to as the ‘Roman plays’. Placed in the chronological order of the historical events they dramatize, these three plays form a history of ancient Rome, and each deals with a crucial transition in its political evolution. Coriolanus is set in the early days of the Republic between 494 and 490 bc, when Rome was still a city-state fighting for domination of the Italian peninsula; it enacts the Senate’s introduction of the office of Tribune, elected by the plebeians, into its constitution. Julius Caesar depicts that general’s assassination in 44 bc, the civil war that followed, and the defeat of the conspirators Brutus and Cassius by the second triumvirate (translated literally as the rule of three men, in this case Lepidus, Octavius and Antony) at the battle of Philippi. Antony and Cleopatra traces Rome’s continuing transition from Republic to Empire during the next ten years. It portrays the power struggles that took place within the second triumvirate, especially Octavius’ competition with Antony for control of Rome and its territories, and concludes with Antony’s defeat at the battle of Actium in 31 bc and the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra in 30 bc. Antony and Cleopatra seems in many ways to be a sequel to Julius Caesar. The most obvious connection is the reappearance of Octavius Caesar and Mark Antony. In the earlier play, the young Antony delivers a famous speech at Julius Caesar’s funeral and joins with Octavius Caesar and Lepidus in the second triumvirate to rule Rome. Lepidus was given control of the west (Spain and Gaul), Caesar of Rome and the Italian peninsula, and Antony the east (Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt). At key moments in Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare makes his characters reflect on events that were dramatized in Julius Caesar. In 2.6.14–19, for example, the Roman general Pompey the Younger, a rebel against the second triumvirate, recalls the appearance of Julius Caesar’s ghost to Brutus the night before the battle of Philippi, a scene included in Shakespeare’s earlier play, and ponders:

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What was’t That moved pale Cassius to conspire? And what Made the all-honoured, honest Roman, Brutus, With the armed rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom, To drench the Capitol, but that they would Have one man but a man? This passage suggests that the issues Shakespeare probed in Julius Caesar also underlie Antony and Cleopatra, especially anxiety about one man gaining power over all the rest. The conspirators who killed Julius Caesar feared that he was on the road to tyranny, but ironically, with the death of Mark Antony and ascendance of Octavius Caesar in the final scenes of Antony and Cleopatra, that feared one-man-rule is a fait accompli. Antony, too, refers back to Julius Caesar. After his disastrous defeat by Octavius’ forces at Actium he bitterly describes his earlier victory over the conspirators at Philippi, when Octavius kept His sword e’en like a dancer, while I struck The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and ‘twas I That the mad Brutus ended. He alone Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had In the brave squares of war (3.11.35–40). To Antony, who prides himself on his military prowess, Octavius is a cowardly politician, which makes the loss to him at Actium even more shameful. Antony’s recollection here suggests that his competition with Octavius is long lasting and deep-seated, and as Octavius admits in 5.1.39–40, they ‘could not stall together / In the whole world’. It took Shakespeare eight or nine years after finishing Julius Caesar in 1599 to return to Roman history and continue Antony’s story. Geoffrey Bullough, who compiled and edited all of Shakespeare’s known sources, suggests that the fall and execution in 1600 of the Earl of Essex, a popular military hero who threatened Elizabeth I’s authority, may have made the



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story of a war hero destroyed by passion too topical for safe handling any earlier (5.216–17). Historicist critics have also argued that Shakespeare’s representation of Cleopatra was influenced by recollections of Queen Elizabeth I, a queen who ruled in her own right despite male competitors’ challenges to her authority (Deats 24). It has been argued that Cleopatra’s treatment of the messenger who brings her bad news in 2.5, and the questions she asks him about Octavia’s physical features in 3.3, are prime examples of this sort of historical allusion; they echo widely circulated reports of Elizabeth’s response to an ambassador from her rival, Mary Queen of Scots, when the English queen demanded information concerning Mary’s physical appearance and accomplishments. But even if this scene is not a direct allusion to Elizabeth, Cleopatra’s status as a female monarch who exploited feminine wiles to govern, as I indicate in Chapter 3, may have recalled Elizabeth I to many in Shakespeare’s original London audience only five years after the Queen’s death. It would have been risky for Shakespeare to represent her in this way while she was still alive, which may also explain Shakespeare’s delay in dramatizing Cleopatra’s story. Whatever the reason, when Shakespeare turned to Antony and Cleopatra he had already written his best-known tragedies – Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear. His return to Roman history after a hiatus of eight or nine years suggests that he was then ready to experiment with a tragic form that was more historically grounded. The impact of historical events makes Antony and Cleopatra different in tone and scope than Shakespeare’s other great love tragedies – Romeo and Juliet and Othello, which were written earlier, Romeo and Juliet sometime in 1596 and Othello in 1604. Like these earlier tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra displays the irresistible yet destructive power of passion, especially for lovers who rebel against a dominant power structure. The most important resemblance between Antony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s presentation of two protagonists who are passionately in love with each other and choose to take their lives in the final scenes.

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Despite attempts by many critics from the eighteenth century to the twentieth to make Antony the sole hero, Antony and Cleopatra concludes with Cleopatra’s death just as Romeo and Juliet concludes with Juliet’s. But unlike Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra is not a story of young love or private passion. Antony was in his mid-fifties during the events the play chronicles and Cleopatra her late thirties. Represented in their maturity, the lovers are powerful public figures that enact their love scenes before an on-stage audience of servants, soldiers and messengers. Thus for Antony and Cleopatra, love is a performance as much as a personal relationship. Antony and Cleopatra is also quite different from Othello, which focuses squarely on Othello, the Moor of Venice, as the tragic hero. Othello is initially presented, like Antony, as a highly respected military general, but that changes in the second act after the battle with the Turks is ended and the action shifts from Venice to Cyprus where the Moor’s jealousy leads to murderous domestic violence. In contrast, global politics is more than a backdrop in Antony and Cleopatra because the fate of its protagonists is integrally linked not simply to Rome’s destiny, a fate Shakespeare’s audience knew well, but to the geopolitics of the entire Mediterranean world. In 2.6.34–9, for example, Pompey informs us that in order to secure peace, Antony, Caesar and Lepidus have offered him the territories of Sicily and Sardinia, and in 3.6.1–16, Caesar reports that Antony has made Cleopatra absolute Queen of lower Syria, Cyprus and Lydia, and proclaimed his sons by her kings of kings: Great Media, Parthia and Armenia He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assigned Syria, Cilicia and Phoenicia. That the central figures in Antony and Cleopatra can distribute large territories so casually underscores the global impact of their actions.



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Antony and Cleopatra collapses ten years of intermittent civil war into a fast-paced drama. The play begins in 40 bc. At that time the second triumvirate was still viable; Octavius was responsible for governance in Rome and its western territories, Lepidus ruled in Andalusia and Gaul, and Antony was in charge of the extensive eastern region, which encompassed Greece (including its territories in Asia Minor, the area we now know as Turkey), Syria, Judea, and Egypt. Although the historical Antony had likely met Cleopatra when she sojourned in Rome as Julius Caesar’s mistress, Shakespeare sets their first meeting in Asia Minor’s Cilicia on the River Cydnus. Shakespeare skips over Plutarch’s lengthy account of the battles Antony fought in Parthia (now Iran), focusing instead on the comings and goings spurred by conflicts with Antony’s political rivals, Pompey and Octavius Caesar and the wars they fought between 30 and 40 bc. We learn in act 1 that Fulvia, Antony’s wife, and his brother had revolted against Octavius Caesar. Caesar blames Antony, but their quarrel is resolved with Fulvia’s death and Antony’s marriage to Octavia in act 2. The reconciliation comes at a time of political crisis because Pompey, son of Julius Caesar’s great rival Pompey the Great, has raised a navy in Sicily and threatens war against the triumvirate. Pompey agrees to their offer of Sardinia and Sicily in 2.6 and peace is sealed with a drunken banquet. Later we learn in act 3 that Octavius has removed Lepidus from the triumvirate and arranged for Pompey’s death, leaving Antony as his sole political competitor. The play’s second half then chronicles the battles fought between Octavius and Antony’s forces at Actium and Alexandria. Because Antony lost and Octavius won – and because we put so much emphasis on Cleopatra – we may be tempted to underestimate Antony’s heroic status as a ‘triple pillar of the world’, but for over a decade he had been one of the two most powerful men in the western world, highly regarded for his military accomplishments and the loyalty of his followers. Antony and Cleopatra’s action moves rapidly from Antony’s sojourn in Egypt, his return to Rome from Egypt after Fulvia’s

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death and his marriage to Octavius Caesar’s sister Octavia, to highlight the events that led up to the battles of Actium and Alexandria and the protagonists’ suicides. This map shows the scope of the play’s various locations, which encompass most of the known ancient world. You can see that Octavius Caesar dominated the western part of the Empire while Antony was put in charge of the eastern region stretching from Greece to modern-day Iran. This area included Egypt, whose fertile Nile valley provided Rome with much-needed grain. Like other Mediterranean principalities that Rome conquered, Egypt was subject to Roman control, but at least until the death of Cleopatra, it was allowed to maintain its own monarch. The play begins and ends in Alexandria, but starting with Antony’s return to Rome in act 2, Shakespeare rapidly moves scenes around the Mediterranean, from Alexandria to Rome, to Athens, and back again to Rome and Alexandria, with shorter occasional visits to military outposts and battlefields. Shakespeare disarms any consternation an audience might feel at the rapid shifts from place to place by making his characters explain their arrivals and departures. In 2.1.26–31, for example, much to Pompey’s surprise, Varrius explains that Antony has arrived in Rome from Egypt. Similarly in 3.7.20–4 Antony wonders, ‘Is it not strange, Canidius, / That from Tarentum and Brundusium / He [Caesar] could so quickly cut the Ionian sea / and take in Toryne?’ Antony’s surprise at Caesar’s sudden appearance in Asia Minor helps the audience to suspend its own disbelief in the characters’ rapid movements. Movements from one location to another force the audience, like someone gazing at an anamorphic painting, to figuratively cross the room and see the action from a different perspective. By shifting in act 3 from Antony’s political dealings in Rome to Cleopatra’s anger when she hears the news of his marriage, Shakespeare asks his audience to shift its view of the marriage from a political to a personal perspective. To the Romans, Antony’s marriage cements an important political alliance. To Cleopatra it is a personal betrayal. When we chart the

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scenes’ locations, we find that despite her many mood swings, Cleopatra is surprisingly constant: while Antony seems to be in continual motion both physically and in his alliances, Cleopatra stays, for the most part, in Egypt. The lovers’ deaths end the political turmoil that had plagued Rome since the ascent of Julius Caesar as dictator and leave Octavius Caesar as sole ruler of Rome’s extensive territories around the Mediterranean basin. Renamed Augustus Caesar, Octavius became the first Roman Emperor and took pride in what was known as the ‘Pax Romana’, a century or more of relative tranquillity under Roman rule.

The legend The truism that history is written by the victors is particularly apt when it comes to the story of Antony and Cleopatra, for once Octavius Caesar became Emperor of Rome and its vast territories, it would have been dangerous not to laud his victory as a Roman triumph. Not surprisingly, after he attained sole power, Augustus [Octavius Caesar] favoured official accounts that painted Antony’s defeat and Cleopatra’s death as a victory for Roman virtue over eastern decadence. Virgil, who composed his epic poem The Aeneid partly in tribute to Augustus, was no exception. In the eighth book, as the eponymous hero Aeneas gazes at a shield crafted by Vulcan, he has a vision of Augustus Caesar’s future victory at Actium. While Augustus’ destiny is marked by ‘His father’s [i.e. Julius Caesar’s] star’, Antony appears ‘with barbaric might and varied arms’. He brings with him ‘Egypt and the strength of the East […]. And there follows him (O shame!) his Egyptian wife’ (Virgil 2:107). Every Elizabethan schoolboy knew his Virgil and thus many in Shakespeare’s audience were familiar with the poet’s framing of Antony and Cleopatra as barbarous Easterners, antithetical to Roman civilization.



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When it came to writing plays about Antony and Cleopatra – and there were many in early modern Europe – Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans was by far the most influential source. While Plutarch’s overall judgement of Antony’s character is harsh, he shows the Roman general’s popular appeal among the soldiers who followed him. Unlike many other Latin authors who, seeking Augustus’ favour, made a seductive Cleopatra the overriding cause of Antony’s downfall, Plutarch depicts Antony as dissipated long before he met her. Antony, he wrote, ‘had a noble presence, and showed a countenance of one of a noble house’. In Antony, the ‘things that seem intolerable in other men, as to boast commonly, to jest with one or other, to drink like a good fellow with everybody, to sit with the soldiers when they dine, and to eat and drink with them soldier like’ served instead to win loyalty and love from the men who followed him (Bullough 5:257). In contrast, the Roman elite, particularly the orator Cicero, ‘did not only mislike him, but also hate him for his naughty life: for they did abhor his banquets and drunken feasts he made at unseasonable times, and his extreme wasteful expenses upon vain light housewives. […] In his house they did nothing but feast, dance, and mask: and himself passed away the time in hearing of foolish plays’ (Bullough 5:261). Thus, according to Plutarch, the seeds of Antony’s destruction – particularly a penchant for riotous living – were in place before he met Cleopatra at Cydnus. Yet, Plutarch says that Cleopatra ‘did waken and stir up many vices yet hidden in him, and were never seen to any: and if any spark of goodness or hope of rising were left him, Cleopatra quenched it straight, and made it worse than before’ (Bullough 5:273). Plutarch’s description of Cleopatra, as well as his sensuous account of her first meeting with Antony (which Shakespeare copied in 2.2.201–36) demonstrate her appeal: although she was not particularly beautiful, ‘her voice and words were marvellous pleasant: for her tongue was an instrument of music to divers sports and pastimes, the which she easily turned to any language that pleased her’ (Bullough 5:275).

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Even in Plutarch, then, it is not Cleopatra’s physical attributes that make her a femme fatale – it is her intelligence and wit. And that explains why she could be convincingly portrayed by one of Shakespeare’s clever boy actors. Plutarch’s was not the only voice that shaped early modern perceptions of the lovers. Occasionally a writer even praised Antony and Cleopatra as models of romantic love. Writing in the 1390s, for example, Geoffrey Chaucer placed Cleopatra first in his Legend of Good Women, a compendium of short biographies of heroines of classical antiquity who, according to Chaucer, suffered some sort of martyrdom out of devotion to their men. These women, Chaucer explains ‘were true in loving all their lives’. He describes Cleopatra as Antony’s wife; after his death, she jumps naked into a pit of snakes to commit suicide and declares her commitment to her husband: ‘and thilke [this] covenant, while me lasteth breath, / I will fulfill, and that shall be well seen / Was never unto her love a truer queen’ (Chaucer 496–7). To Chaucer, Cleopatra is a true and faithful spouse, not a seductive whore. There are two other important treatments of the legend that Shakespeare must have known, and both were informed by Plutarch’s Lives. The first is Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine, translated in 1590 from the original French by Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, and published in 1595 as The Tragedy of Antony. Sidney’s translation introduced Senecan tragedy, a type of Roman tragedy popular in early modern France and Italy, into the English literary scene. Sidney’s translation was not intended to be performed on stage but read privately or out loud. Like other Senecan tragedies, it followed the classical unities of time, place and action – staying in one particular locale and focusing on one particular day or afternoon in the protagonist’s life, the short culmination of earlier events that were narrated by the characters or a messenger. In lengthy speeches, the characters shape the narrative to moralize on the ways intemperate or irrational decisions lead to disaster and on the fickleness of fortune that leads great men to their downfall.



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Senecan tragedies, in other words, inform readers about what happened and what we should think about what happened; they tell rather than show, and as a result, they are more polemical than dramatic. Sidney’s Tragedy of Antony begins after the battle of Actium with Antony’s despair at what he thinks is Cleopatra’s betrayal. The love of Cleopatra, he exclaims, made him abandon life and despise honour, becoming ‘A slave […] unto her feeble face’ (Bullough 5:359). In the second act Cleopatra denies betraying her love: Rather sharp lightning lighten on my head: Rather may I to deepest mischief fall: Rather the opened earth devour me: Rather fierce Tigers feed them on my flesh: Rather, oh rather let our Nilus send, To swallow me quick, some weeping crocodile (Bullough 5:368–9). Instead, Cleopatra claims to have accompanied Antony in battle for fear he would return to Octavia. When Charmian urges her to negotiate with Caesar, she maintains that her intent is to follow Antony in death. Later, the Roman Diomede enumerates her charms: She is all heavenly; never any man But seeing her was ravished with her sight. The alabaster covering of her face, The coral colour of her two lips ingrains, Her beamy eyes, two suns of this our world, Of her fair hair the fine and flaming gold, […] Are nothing else but fires, fetters, darts (Bullough 5:376). Diomede’s list of Cleopatra’s physical attributes is similar to the poetic blazon the Italian writer Petrarch used in his love sonnets to the unobtainable Laura, passages that catalogue her physical beauty, and like so many early modern English

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sonnets, it depicts Cleopatra as the ideal of English femininity: fair-complexioned, bright-eyed and blonde. In Sidney’s act 3 Antony claims that although Cleopatra entrapped him, he made the decision to pursue her rather than doing his duty, choosing pleasure over reason. In the next act, Caesar and Agrippa blame Antony’s fall on his pride. After they debate at length whether to kill him, Dercetus enters with the sword Antony used to commit suicide. The play’s final act turns to Cleopatra. When her ladies urge her to live for her children’s sake, Cleopatra bewails their fate at great length, then, characterizing herself as Antony’s wife, she dies. But, as the play’s title indicates, the focus throughout is on Antony’s character; the love story is his tragedy; Cleopatra is merely the catalyst for his downfall. Samuel Daniel’s The Tragedie of Cleopatra, first published in 1594, is dedicated to Mary Sidney, but in contrast to her earlier translation of Garnier, his play is centred on Cleopatra as the sole protagonist. In the Argument Daniel promises to continue the Countess’s work by focusing more fully than she had on Cleopatra’s death. The first act begins with Cleopatra’s statement that she is determined to deceive Caesar and control her own destiny: Seeming to suit my mind unto my fortune, Whereby I may the better me provide Of what my death and honour best shall fit (Bullough 5:412). In the following act Caesar wonders if Cleopatra can be persuaded to live. Proculeius describes how he surprised her and explains that her most important concern was her children. Act 3 continues the discussion of what will happen to Cleopatra’s children, especially Cesario, her son by Julius Caesar. Philostratus argues that ‘Tis inhumane, an innocent to kill’, but Arius maintains ‘Such innocents seldom remain so still’ (Bullough 5:421–2). Cleopatra then presents Caesar with a list of her jewels, only to be contradicted by her treasurer Seleucus, who claims she is cheating, an episode that



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Shakespeare also uses. Later Seleucus regrets his betrayal to his friend Rodon, who replies that he has done even worse by turning Cesario over to Caesar for certain death. In act 4, Cleopatra learns that Caesar will send her to Rome, and once again she resolves to die. But we only learn about her death from Nuntius, a messenger who recounts what she said and did in her final moments. His description concludes with the Romans’ entrance to find Charmian adjusting Cleopatra’s crown: ‘Charmian, is this well done? Said one of them. / Yea, well said she, and her that from the race / Of so great kings descends, doth best become’ (Bullough 5:447) – lines that echo Plutarch’s ‘Very well said she again, and meet for a Princess descended from the race of so many noble kings’ (Bullough 5:316), words that Shakespeare also uses nearly verbatim in his play. There are sufficient similarities between these Senecan tragedies and Shakespeare’s text to suggest that he knew them. But his purpose was not to tell the story of Antony or Cleopatra to a reader but to dramatize it to an audience. Limited by the classical unity of time to a few hours, Sidney and Daniel explore only the characters’ final moments before their deaths, whereas Shakespeare depicts ten years of political turmoil that lead up to their demise. While Sidney and Daniel use minor characters and messengers to inform the reader about what is happening and why, Shakespeare lets the characters speak for themselves in ways that force the audience to make up its own mind about the choices characters make. Unlike Sidney’s and Daniel’s Senecan tragedies, with their didactic choruses that pontificate on the meaning of events, Shakespeare leaves the moral judgements to his characters, whose opinions conflict and change over time. Shakespeare makes his characters come alive, exploiting poetic language that helps the audience to imagine the idea – the legend – of Antony and Cleopatra on a bare stage. The Sidney and Daniel versions of Antony and Cleopatra’s story are judgemental, but they are also sympathetic. They demonstrate how the legend of Antony and Cleopatra as

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famous but flawed lovers circulated in the years before Shakespeare came to write his own play. While North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives is clearly a direct source for Antony and Cleopatra, these Senecan tragedies can be taken as contexts or influences – texts that likely shaped the dramatist’s thinking as he wrote. An examination of these texts helps us to identify what choices Shakespeare made from the many options that were available to him. To begin with, both Sidney and Daniel follow convention and centre their tragedy on one protagonist: Sidney’s version is the story of Mark Antony; Daniel’s the tragedy of Cleopatra. Shakespeare defies their precedent by making both Antony and Cleopatra his protagonists, highlighting their complex and changing relationship. Sidney and Daniel each emphasize Cleopatra’s concern for her children, perhaps in an effort to garner sympathy for her. Shakespeare, in contrast, ignores this aspect of her story to focus more squarely on her position as Queen of Egypt, a political dimension that is lacking in the Sidney and Daniel texts. Shakespeare’s changes from Plutarch also tell us much. Plutarch blames Cleopatra for inciting Antony to fight the naval battle of Actium: ‘Cleopatra forced him to put all to the hazard of battle by sea’ (Bullough 5:298); Shakespeare shows Antony’s determination to make a sea-fight is a response to Caesar’s challenge, not a reaction to any persuasion from Cleopatra (3.7.29–40), a change that mitigates her culpability for the subsequent defeat (see Fitz 313). Plutarch refers to a Domitius Aenobarbus who served Antony during the war in Parthia and to another Domitius who deserted Antony; neither character is ever mentioned in the Sidney and Daniel plays. When Shakespeare crafted his own play he conflated Plutarch’s two Domitiuses into one character and referred to him as Enobarbus, perhaps because the original name, Aenobarbus, means ‘red-bearded’ and red beards were associated with the ultimate betrayal, that of Judas Iscariot. Shakespeare places Enobarbus in most of the play’s scenes until he dies in act 4, creating a character whose satiric



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comments shape our responses to other characters and whose suicide pushes the play away from comic commentary into tragedy. I will consider Enobarbus more fully when we look at the play’s design, but suffice it to say that without him, Antony and Cleopatra would be a very different play. The point to be remembered is that these sources and analogues help us to identify the choices Shakespeare made and to understand the ways those choices shaped his tragedy.

Peopling Egypt and Rome The Arden edition of Antony and Cleopatra lists thirty-nine roles. Thirty-one are named; the others are a schoolmaster, a soothsayer, a boy singer, the ‘clown’ who brings Cleopatra asps hidden in a basket of figs, as well as miscellaneous messengers, servants, and soldiers. This is a huge cast for a repertory company normally staffed by about twelve men and four adolescent boys. Boy actors whose voices had not yet deepened performed the roles of Cleopatra, her ladies, and Octavia. They wore elaborate wigs and make-up and were trained to walk gracefully in women’s clothing. We know from contemporary audience accounts, such as Henry Jackson’s 1610 comment that the actor playing Desdemona, ‘slain in our presence by her husband […], entreated the pity of the spectators by her very countenance’ (Neill, Othello 9), that they were highly effective. Richard Burbage, the lead actor in the King’s Men, performed Antony’s role, with another prominent actor as Octavius Caesar. Most of the remaining roles were doubled, using the same actor to perform two or more parts. Demetrius and Philo, for example, appear only in 1.1 and could easily have returned in act 5 to portray Proculeius and Dolabella. In this way, the King’s Men could represent many more dramatis personae than it had actors. In twenty-first-century productions, Roman characters are normally costumed in some version of a toga or military

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breastplate and helmet; the Egyptians tend to be marked by more exotic costumes, sometimes with an Egyptian decor reminiscent of King Tut’s tomb. Shakespeare’s original staging was quite different; even in Roman plays the actors did not try to look Roman but maintained their English doublets and hose. Casca refers to Caesar’s ‘doublet’ in Julius Caesar (1.2.264) and, in 1.3.72 of Antony and Cleopatra, a breathless Cleopatra asks Charmian to cut her tightly laced Elizabethan bodice. Such anachronisms were commonplace in early modern plays. They serve to underscore the timelessness of Antony and Cleopatra’s legend and remind the audience that they are watching a representation, not an historical reproduction. Simple props – banners, scarves, or other insignia – might have been used to distinguish Egyptians from Romans, but for the most part, the audience receives its bearings from what the characters say, especially when they enter and exit. Sudden entrances interrupt the flow of action and conversation and often provide new information that undercuts what has already been discussed. Shakespeare’s manipulation of entrances and exits, which is discussed at length in Chapter 1, is consequently a crucial ingredient in his scenic design. We should also remember that as public, political figures – like today’s pop stars and politicians – Octavius, Antony and Cleopatra seldom appear without a substantial entourage. The minor characters’ comments, like today’s online celebrity gossip, shape our responses to the protagonists. Because Antony and Cleopatra so seldom appear alone on stage, it is crucial to pay attention to the characters that surround them. Even unnamed soldiers and servants have something important to say. Organizing them into several groups will help you understand the variety of perspectives they embody. Most modern editions begin their lists of roles with the triumvirate, Antony, Octavius Caesar, and Lepidus – the three powerful men who rule Rome in the first half of the play. Lepidus is the oldest of the triumvirate, and it’s clear from his request in 1.5.82–4 for Octavius to keep him informed of what is happening that he is also the



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weakest link. Lepidus gets drunk in 2.7, and by 3.5 we learn that Caesar has forced him out of power, leaving Antony as his only competition for supreme rule. Grouped with Octavius are his sister Octavia, his friends and supporters (Maecenas, Agrippa, Taurus, Dolabella, Proculeius), and his servant Thidias. Antony also has substantial support for his military campaigns from Canidius, Ventidius, Silius and, most prominently, Enobarbus. Scarus and other unnamed soldiers reflect the special relationship described by Plutarch between Antony and his military followers. Philo and Demetrius, who appear only in 1.1, also seem to be members of Antony’s entourage, but their disgust at his behaviour is palpable. Eros is a personal servant, while Dercetus is a member of his guard. Pompey is not aligned with either Antony or Octavius. The younger son of Pompey the Great, he had served as governor of Sicily, where he turned a blind eye to the pirates who plagued the Italian coast. Resentful of Octavius’ and Antony’s power, he subsequently mounted a naval challenge against them; Antony informs Enobarbus in 1.2.190–2 that Pompey ‘Hath given the dare to Caesar and commands / The empire of the sea’. He, too, has his followers: Menecrates, Menas and Varrius. In 2.6 and 2.7 Lepidus, Antony and Caesar patch up their differences with Pompey and join him in a drunken feast. As the drinking goes on around them, Menas draws Pompey aside to suggest they murder Caesar, Antony and Lepidus then and there, which would make him Rome’s sole ruler, but Pompey refuses. Nevertheless, his peace agreement with the triumvirate doesn’t last, and in 3.5.18–19 we learn that Caesar has arranged for Pompey to be murdered. The disappearance of Lepidus and the death of Pompey are revealed in a conversation between Eros and Enobarbus in 3.5, making it clear that by this time Antony remains the only impediment to Caesar’s rise to absolute power. Using minor characters as commentators in this subtle way, Shakespeare suggests that Caesar’s anger at Antony’s abandonment of his sister Octavia might be something of a ruse to cover his determination to become Rome’s first all-powerful Emperor.

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Cleopatra also has an entourage; after all she is Queen of Egypt, and royal courts are usually populated with advisors, servants, and hangers-on. The Queen generally appears with her ladies-in-waiting, Charmian and Iras. Diomedes is her secretary, Seleucus her treasurer. Alexas is a counsellor, and the eunuch Mardian adds an exotic, eastern flavour to her court. So does the Soothsayer, whose prophecies add to the growing conviction that Egypt is doomed. The many messengers who rush on stage with news from Rome and other faraway places also signal the geopolitical importance of Cleopatra’s position as Queen of Egypt.

Genre Although Antony and Cleopatra, like Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, is based on a historical source – Plutarch’s biographies of famous Greeks and Romans – all three were categorized as tragedies in the First Folio, and are generally considered to be tragedies as opposed to history plays. In many ways, however, Antony and Cleopatra seems less like a tragedy than the other Roman plays, and the issue of its exact form has been a continuing focus of scholarly discussion and debate. The First Folio’s compilers divided thirty-six plays into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies, but these descriptions are imprecise and in many cases unreliable. The editors placed Cymbeline, a play we normally think of as a comedy or romance, with the tragedies. Several of the Folio’s history plays had been published earlier as ‘tragedies’, and even though an earlier version of King Lear (1608) was titled, The Historie of King Lear, it was grouped with the tragedies. One may well wonder why the Roman plays were not considered histories, because like the history plays, their main source, Plutarch, was historical, much as Shakespeare’s plays about England’s kings, which are conventionally labelled



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as ‘histories’, are based on Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland. But Holinshed’s concern was simply to chronicle the events that happened during each king’s reign; in contrast, Plutarch’s history was not a chronicle of events from year to year but a series of thoughtful biographies illustrating the complex interrelationship between the character of illustrious Greek and Roman individuals and the situations they found themselves in, a concern that is essential to tragedy. Generic classifications, as you can see, are seldom precise, and sometimes misleading. The most exciting plays (and in our day, films) tend to transcend generic definitions and experiment with accepted forms and conventions. At the same time, generic classifications offer a vocabulary, a set of conventions that enable us to judge the success or failure of a literary work against accepted expectations. Generic categories are often used in reviews and advertisements for plays, motion pictures and television shows: musical comedy, horror, romance, drama, science fiction, and so forth. There are also subtypes, as in the case of the fad for zombies, a particular subset of horror film. Knowing the type of movie we intend to see makes us feel comfortable; it gives us an idea of what to expect. But if a film follows its advertised genre conventions too simply and slavishly, we become bored. Films that push against our expectations to surprise us are generally more interesting and successful. This kind of generic experimentation is characteristic of Antony and Cleopatra. A common classroom exercise is to take Aristotle’s famous criteria for a tragedy, outlined in The Poetics, and apply them to Antony and Cleopatra. Aristotle’s prime example of a great tragedy was Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the story of the Greek king who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, events that take place before the play begins. Aristotle explained that the hero in a tragedy must be of noble status, but neither all good nor all bad. Aristotle’s hamartia is often interpreted as the hero’s ‘tragic flaw’, but hamartia literally means ‘missing the mark’, suggesting that the hero makes

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some kind of mistake. Eventually he recognizes that mistake (Aristotle’s anagnorisis), but it is too late and he dies or suffers some terrible calamity, such as Oedipus’ self-blinding. In the tragedy’s final moments the audience is moved by a combination of pity and terror (catharsis), often leaving the theatre shaken by the experience. In Oedipus Rex, the circumstances of Oedipus’ birth and subsequent history had been prophesied and were fated; Oedipus’ mistake is his insistence on probing the past, sometimes called pride (hubris). But Shakespeare wrote in a Christian milieu, and although fate is a factor in several of his tragedies (most notably Macbeth), choice is what matters most. In the Christian tradition the sinner has to choose – follow God’s teachings or succumb to the devil’s temptations. The interaction of circumstances with personality traits determines what a character’s choices will be. I’ve often told my students that if you reversed the heroes of Hamlet and Othello, you would no longer have either tragedy. Hamlet is a procrastinator. He would delay doing anything about Iago’s insinuations for so long that the villain’s house of cards would fall apart. Othello is a man of action. He would leave his confrontation with the Ghost of his father and quickly kill his uncle, the murderer. The play would end after the first act. Shakespeare’s plays were written in a culture quite different from ancient Greece, so applying Aristotle’s definitions to Shakespeare’s tragedies is like trying to put the proverbial round pegs into square holes; they simply do not fit. In Antony and Cleopatra, the only character that really meets Aristotle’s criteria is Enobarbus, who indeed makes a tragic mistake, recognizes it, dies, and evokes sympathy at his death. But he is a major minor character, not the protagonist. Although Antony and Cleopatra was categorized as a tragedy in the First Folio, in many ways the play doesn’t seem very tragic. The most influential early twentieth-century critic, A. C. Bradley, excluded Antony and Cleopatra from his lectures on Shakespearean tragedy, arguing that the play was insufficiently painful to be tragic and that it presented no ‘scenes of action or passion which agitate the audience



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with alarm, horror, painful expectation, or absorbing sympathies and antipathies’ (Bradley 283). To be effective, tragedy must engage us. If we are to feel a sense of tragic loss at the performance’s conclusion, we need to sympathize with the protagonist even as we recognize where he (or she) has gone wrong. In the tragedies that preceded Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare ensured our engagement with the central characters by giving them soliloquies, speeches spoken to the audience and to themselves that reveal their innermost thoughts. We hear Hamlet speculate about his delay in taking revenge and listen to him wonder about the meaning of life itself. Iago spends a good part of his time on stage talking to us and explaining his devilish plans. We listen to Macbeth ponder the consequences of the crime he is about to commit. But because Antony and Cleopatra have few soliloquies, we have no channel to their innermost thoughts. As J. Leeds Barroll observes in his book-length study of Antony and Cleopatra, the protagonists become accessible to us ‘in many of the same ways as those close to us in life’ (60). The only way we can understand what they are thinking, what motivates them, is to examine what they do and say and to weigh what others say about them. As public figures that are never on stage without an audience, Antony and Cleopatra remain opaque for much of the play. The observations of other characters further undercut Antony and Cleopatra’s self-presentation. Shakespeare sets up this kind of point-counterpoint in the opening scene. It begins with Philo and Demetrius’s private conversation; Philo describes the deterioration he sees in Antony since his infatuation with Cleopatra and sojourn in Egypt; Rome’s greatest warrior, whose eyes ‘glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn / The office and devotion of their view / Upon a tawny front’ (1.1.5–6). But as soon as Philo finishes his contemptuous description of Cleopatra and her ‘gipsy’s lust’, trumpets sound and she enters with Antony and their entourage. In hyperbolic speeches, the lovers declare their boundless love and proclaim their passion on a grand scale.

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By turning away the Messenger who brings news from Rome, Antony seems to prove Philo right. When the entourage leaves the stage, Demetrius can only comment that he is sorry Philo’s assessment is correct. This framing of the protagonists presents a double perspective; Antony is and isn’t a great Roman hero. But it also moves the audience away from direct engagement with the characters; we see Antony and Cleopatra through the eyes of others, whose judgements vary – a kind of detachment that usually occurs in comedies. If characters don’t mean much to us and we’re not involved with them, it’s easy to laugh at their actions. When we start to care, it tips the balance from comedy toward tragedy, as happens in acts 3 and 4 of The Merchant of Venice when we find ourselves sympathizing with Shylock. The movement from detachment to engagement is thereby akin to the experience of an anamor­phic painting – the spectators’ changing positions forces them to reconsider what they have already seen and to recalibrate their assessment of the characters. The Merchant of Venice stretches comic conventions by veering toward tragic engagement. Antony and Cleopatra stretches tragic conventions by introducing elements of comic detachment. Enobarbus’s bawdy comments on Cleopatra’s ‘celerity in dying’ in 1.2, Cleopatra’s violent treatment of the messenger who brings her bad news in 2.5, the triumvirate’s drunken antics on Pompey’s barge in 2.7, Antony’s rage at Thidias’s kissing of Cleopatra’s hand in 3.13, and the rural clown’s jokes in 5.2 as he delivers the asps to Cleopatra – these brief comic interludes interrupt the flow of tragedy, moving us to laughter. Some of the humour in Antony and Cleopatra borders on satire. Michael Neill observes in the introduction to his scholarly edition that ‘Enobarbus frequently voices a cynical disillusionment which strips away the hyperbolic rhetoric of love and martial prowess to expose in both [protagonists] the ungoverned play of mere appetite’ (90). For example, in 1.2.154–8, Enobarbus sardonically describes Cleopatra’s histrionics: ‘We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and



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tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report’. As a choral commentator, Enobarbus frequently undercuts both Antony and Cleopatra, but he also appreciates their individual greatness. In 2.2, when Enobarbus is back in Rome among his military companions, he delivers the play’s most eloquent description of Cleopatra’s appeal: ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety. Other women cloy / The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry / Where she most satisfies’ (245–8). Tallying Enobarbus’s joking comments and asides, we have trouble figuring out just where he stands. The moment of death seems to stop the play’s oscillation of opposites. It certainly does for Enobarbus, who dies in grief at his betrayal and with Antony’s name on his lips (4.9.26). The protagonists’ deaths are more problematic. Antony botches his suicide and dies a lingering, painful death, while Shakespeare leaves it ambiguous to the very end as to whether Cleopatra will be faithful to her promise to die with him or sidle up to Caesar. But in death the lovers who have squabbled through much of the play are united, and Shakespeare’s poetry lends them a mythical transcendence that counters the negative qualities we have seen and asserts their greatness. Cleopatra exalts Antony in 5.2.81–91 as a colossus whose ‘legs bestrid the ocean’, and in the play’s final moments, as she dons her ceremonial robes, she claims to be ‘fire and air’, leaving her other elements to ‘baser life’ (5.2.288–9). This strikes many commentators as a shift from tragedy to romance, the type of play Shakespeare turned to at the end of his career. The reality of death pervades the romances, but, while some characters die, death itself is consistently transcended. In the romances families and lovers who have been torn apart by some kind of violent action and are believed to be dead are miraculously reunited. Antony and Cleopatra are ‘new created’ through Shakespeare’s poetry, and the prospect of a new beginning provides a hopeful ending. To be sure, Antony and Cleopatra are dead, but the legend they strove so hard to create is given new life. Rather than sadness at their death, some may

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respond that for Antony and Cleopatra it is indeed ‘paltry to be Caesar’ and remain in ‘this vile world’. Claiming for themselves a transcendent love, Antony and Cleopatra choose death because Caesar’s world is too narrow to compass their identities as mythic lovers. It should be clear by now that to fully understand Antony and Cleopatra, we have to take the play on its own terms, looking at what it is, not what it is not. The play has the closest family resemblance to tragedy because the protagonists die, but like Antony’s drunken description of the crocodile, ‘It is shaped […] like itself’ (2.7.42). Through his poetry Shakespeare transforms historical legend into myth, and the play’s many changing perspectives, its ebb and flow, resist any simple generic classification.

Writing matters In this Introduction I have used the comparison between anamorphic paintings like William Scrots’ Edward VI and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra to highlight the importance of the viewer’s/reader’s active interaction with the text. If you don’t shift position when examining the anamorphic painting, you miss a crucial part of its significance. When you’re reading Shakespeare’s text, you also need to take account of contradictory signals whether they come from the characters or the framing (as we noted earlier in act 1, scene 1). The most important first step in the writing process is to read carefully, making note of your responses and ideas as you go along. Some readers find it helpful to keep a sort of reading journal, where they jot down their reactions to particular passages. You may even wish to do a scene-byscene commentary, noting down where the action takes place and who is on stage. In my Shakespeare lecture courses, I give open-book exams in order to encourage my students to practise this kind of engaged reading by annotating their text. The following reading strategies are ways to do this.



Introduction and overview 1 Underline or make a marginal note of passages that

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stand out to you. It might be your reaction to a particular character at a particular moment, a turn of phrase that seems particularly telling, or a question you have about what is going on. Circle or highlight any words or passages that you don’t understand, but don’t feel you have to get them nailed down on this first reading. If you can bring yourself to ignore the edition’s glosses and notes at this time, do so because interrupting your reading to check them interrupts the play’s flow and your first reactions to it. When you find a passage that strikes your imagination – something like Enobarbus’ description of Cleopatra in 2.2.200–50 – read it out loud. Don’t worry about whether you get the pronunciation right, but follow the punctuation and breathe where there’s a comma or an end stop. In this way you’ll begin to feel the rhythm of Shakespeare’s poetic lines. Once you’ve finished an act, see if you can write a brief summary of what has happened in it. Don’t read someone else’s plot summary – craft your own. This will be especially helpful if you aren’t able to read the entire play in one sitting. Your own summary will be there to refresh your memory when you come back to your reading. After you’ve finished your first reading, go back to the passages you had trouble with. Sometimes the word’s context provides clues as to its meaning. Look up difficult words in a dictionary, but remember that the meanings of some of Shakespeare’s vocabulary have changed, and some of his words are no longer current. Now is the time to see what the scholar who edited your edition has to say in the commentary notes or marginal glosses about words you don’t understand. If your library has audio resources, take advantage of them. Listening to an audio version of the play makes

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the characters real through their voices. Hearing Shakespeare’s lines spoken will often clarify language that seemed dense or opaque on a first reading. 6 There aren’t as many filmic versions of Antony and Cleopatra available for viewing as for some of Shakespeare’s other tragedies, but the BBC/Time-Life version (1981) might be available in your library or you might watch some scenes from other, more obscure productions on YouTube. Again, make some notes about your reactions to the performance. Does the production present the scene and the characters the way you think they should be presented? Remember, however, that no performance of the play is as important as the one you imagine, with your reading of the characters and your conception of the world they inhabit. 7 Once you’ve finished your initial reading, think about what you find most interesting about the play. This could be an aspect of the plot, one or more of the characters, the language in a particular exchange or speech, or just about anything that excites you. It doesn’t matter how half-baked or silly your idea may seem, because this kind of brain-storming is essential to the creative process. Write some notes about whatever it is, explaining why you find it so appealing. You may wish to refer to these notes later as you begin the writing process, for the ideas that interest you the most are also likely to interest your reader.

CHAPTER ONE

Language in print: Reading the performance script Although we remember Shakespeare as a great poet, he attained financial success from his share of the profits earned by his repertory theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (after 1603 the King’s Men), not from his writing. As a partner in the company, Shakespeare wrote play scripts and actively participated in their rehearsal and performance. The dramas he produced were ‘work for hire’ that belonged to the company even after his death in 1616. His fellow sharers John Heminge and Henry Condell decided that the way to keep the memory of ‘so worthy a friend and fellow’ alive was to gather together the company’s Shakespeare manuscripts and publish them in one attractive volume. In 1623 Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, &Tragedies, the earliest collection of Shakespeare’s plays (commonly referred to as the First Folio because of the large size of its folio pages, approximately 8 by 13 inches), was first published. As Heminge and Condell explain in their dedicatory epistle, the project was a labour of love, a tribute to the colleague who had died unexpectedly seven years earlier. Eighteen of the Folio’s thirty-six plays had been printed earlier in quartos

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(inexpensive pamphlets printed on pages half the size of the Folio’s); if the First Folio had never been assembled, eighteen other plays, including Antony and Cleopatra, might have been lost forever – as were many other early modern plays whose titles we know but whose texts were perhaps never printed or, if printed not preserved. The modern editors who prepare versions of Antony and Cleopatra for publication transform the Folio’s words into an easily readable format. Whatever edition of Antony and Cleopatra you are reading (in this book I am using the Third Arden edition, prepared by the scholar John Wilders and published in 1995), you should constantly remind yourself that modern printed versions of Shakespeare’s plays are usually mediated by their editors. Scholarly editors modernize Antony and Cleopatra by making its spelling and punctuation conform to current usage. They maintain the language of the Folio but occasionally make minor emendations to correct what seem to be errors by the Folio’s printers; they also compare the Folio’s readings with changes made in later editions and note those changes in textual notes. Their commentary notes add valuable explanations of difficult words or passages. From their close examination of clues within the text, editors generally agree that the Folio’s Antony and Cleopatra is based on Shakespeare’s original draft. He wrote it for actors he knew well and in anticipation of a performance at a particular theatre, the original Globe, built in 1599 by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (which became the King’s Men in 1603). After 1609 the King’s Men alternated performances between the outdoor Globe and a smaller indoor playhouse, the Blackfriars. Although the Blackfriars was smaller and more intimate than the Globe, the stage’s basic structure was the same. Antony and Cleopatra could have been performed in either venue, but given the dates usually cited for its first performances (1607–8) and its large cast, Shakespeare probably had the Globe in mind when he crafted it. Unlike a novel in which the author provides information about the characters’ back-story and interior consciousness,



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sometimes directly and other times through a narrator, the acting scripts prepared for the Globe simply offer stage directions, which are sometimes vague, and lines that the characters are to speak. As a sharer in the King’s Men, Shakespeare was present at the first reading of Antony and Cleopatra and no doubt explained to his fellow actors the way he wanted the scenes performed. We have only the acting script. As we study it, we must trust our imagination to unpack the language and decipher the ways the characters move, talk, and think. In other words, the way we read a Shakespeare play has to be much more proactive than the way we read a novel. This chapter is designed to help you pick out the cues embedded in the written text of Antony and Cleopatra and visualize it as a theatrical performance.

Early modern staging Because Antony and Cleopatra was crafted with particular playhouses in mind, we need to know something about the Globe and the Blackfriars in Shakespeare’s time. The Globe was a round, open-air structure that could hold more than 2,000 spectators; the Blackfriars was an indoor theatre built to accommodate about 300. At the Globe, the only lighting effects came from the sun; at the Blackfriars, candelabra that could be raised and lowered lighted the stage. Despite the Blackfriars’ smaller scale, its basic structure was similar to the Globe. At both locations the actors used no scenery and relied instead on architecture to suggest the action’s location. The Globe’s six-foot-high stage took up one section of the building’s enclosed circle known as the yard; the stage was approximately 40 feet wide and thrust halfway into the yard. Two pillars at either side of the stage held up the roof that hung over the staging area, which was painted with signs of the zodiac and known as the heavens. At the rear of the stage were two doors, one on either side, which led to the tiring

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(attiring) area behind the stage where actors changed their costumes and through which actors made their entrances and exits. At the centre rear was the discovery space, a wider alcove covered with the sort of curtain or ‘arras’ that Polonius hides behind in Hamlet’s closet scene (3.4). This alcove provided an alternative exit wide enough for stage properties such as a throne or a bed. At the centre of the playing area was a trap door; when the door was open, the space below could suggest a cellarage (where the ghost of Hamlet’s father disappears), a grave (as in the gravediggers’ scene, also in Hamlet), or the mouth of Hell (as it does in Dr. Faustus when the hero who has sold his soul to great Lucifer is dragged downwards screaming). This tripartite structure – heavens above, earth in between, and the underworld below – provided the actors with a variety of staging options. At the Globe most spectators stood in the yard, but those who paid more money could sit on benches arranged in three tiers, or galleries, around the sides of the circular building. The small gallery above the stage – from which Juliet delivers her famous speculation on Romeo’s name – was often employed in the history plays to suggest the space above a castle wall or in the comedies as a place for musicians to perform. The space features prominently in Antony and Cleopatra’s 4.15 as Cleopatra’s monument. As the prolific editor David Bevington explains, in this scene ‘Shakespeare underscores the visual prominence of Cleopatra’ by specifying her entrance with Iras and Charmian ‘aloft’ (100). The guards bring in the dying Antony below. Plutarch described the ensuing action: It was a hard thing for these women to do, to lift him up: but Cleopatra stooping down with her head, putting to all her strength to her uttermost power, did lift him up with much ado and never let go her hold, with the help of the women beneath (Bullough 5: 310). The Folio stage direction reads: ‘They heave Antony aloft to Cleopatra’ (4.15.39). Bevington observes that, ‘the task



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of lifting Antony aloft was a daunting one. Shakespeare capitalizes on the difficulty by giving lines to Cleopatra that stress Antony’s heavy weight and the women’s weakness in managing the task.’ Cleopatra’s cry, ‘How heavy weighs my lord! / Our strength has all gone into heaviness; / That makes the weight. […] O come, come, come’ (4.15.33–8), accompanies the arduous process of drawing Antony’s body upwards, suspended perhaps by ropes or chains. Cleopatra’s lines reinforce the audience’s impression of what it is seeing, emphasizing ‘the bodily substantiality and earthbound qualities of Antony even while the movement is upward’ (Bevington 103). Paradoxically, Antony’s death marks his ascent from corporeal humanity into myth. As this scene demonstrates, the movement of characters up to the gallery or from the gallery to the playing space below often signifies a transition in their status, whether moral or political or both. The actors also created special sound effects at the Globe and Blackfriars playhouses by using trumpets (stage directions often call for ‘alarums’) and drums. The Folio’s initial stage direction for 3.10 shows offstage sounds at work: ‘Camidius marcheth with his Land Army one way over the stage, and Towrus the Lieutenant of Caesar the other way: After their going in, is heard the noise of a Sea-fight. Alarum. Enter Enobarbus and Scarus’. Small explosions, drums, and a wind machine used under or behind the stage created enough noise and mayhem to mimic the sound of a sea-fight. Although the plays were not accompanied by a sound track as happens in contemporary film and some recent productions, occasionally stage directions call for some sort of music to underscore the action. As Antony’s soldiers stand guard in 4.3.12, for example, the stage direction states: ‘Music of the hautboys [oboes] is under the stage’. As they listen to strange music emanating from under the trap door, the soldiers speculate as to its meaning and conclude that ‘’Tis the god Hercules whom Antony loved / Now leaves him’ (21–2). As you read, remember that in the original text there were no pauses between scenes so the play’s action moved swiftly.

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With no scenery to move and no lights to dim, actors could enter and exit through the two doors at the rear of the stage or the discovery space without pause, what we now call continuous staging. This is especially important for Antony and Cleopatra where the scene frequently moves between different locations. The first six scenes of act three, for example, change from Parthia in Asia Minor (3.1) to Rome (3.2), to Alexandria (3.3), to Athens (3.4), back to Alexandria (3.5), and then back to Rome (3.6). The shift between 3.2 and 3.3 is a good example: as the actors portraying the Romans leave through one door, the actors taking Egyptian roles come through the other. You might say that Shakespeare’s scenic design anticipates the kind of jump cuts used in today’s films. The Blackfriars’ small stage made it impossible to stage battles, but even on the Globe’s larger stage Shakespeare couldn’t represent full-fledged battle scenes the way contemporary films do. Instead, he uses a rushed series of short scenes in acts 3 and 4 to convey the urgency, the hustle and bustle, of Antony and Caesar’s preparations for battle. In Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare also exploits the alternation between short battle scenes with longer, more leisurely scenes set in Cleopatra’s court to underscore the contrast between Roman militarism and Egyptian playfulness. Even though the scenes shift rapidly, when you watch a stage performance you can recognize the characters and figure out where you are. Reading the text is more challenging. The text’s stage directions usually indicate just who is leaving and who is entering, so if you pay careful attention to stage directions the play’s movements will become clearer. The commentary notes in the Third Arden edition also provide a location for each scene.

Reading the Folio text Most academic libraries have a facsimile of the First Folio prepared by Charlton Hinman (1968, rev. edn 1996) in



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their holdings, but you may also access the Folio text online at (http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile). Go to p. 848 where you will find the opening page of Antony and Cleopatra. If you examine the pages that follow, you will discover that the play has only one act and scene division, ‘Actus Primus. Scoena Prima’, on its first page. When Heminge and Condell added this act and scene division, they (or whoever prepared it for printing) began to impose the conventional five-act structure used in Greek and Roman plays onto the manuscript they were using, but after 1.1 they neglected to add any further act and scene divisions. Not until the eighteenth century were Shakespearean plays consistently printed using this classical format. The rule of thumb established by eighteenth-century editors like Nicholas Rowe and Samuel Johnson, also borrowing from classical theatrical conventions, introduced a new act and scene division whenever a group of actors exited the stage, leaving the space clear for another group to enter. Subsequent editions have, for the most part, adhered to this tradition, dividing Antony and Cleopatra into five acts with forty-two different scenes, more than any other Shakespeare play. These act and scene divisions were increasingly important to theatre practitioners after the introduction of moveable scenery after 1660 (a period known as the Restoration because the exiled King Charles II was brought home from exile and the monarchy ‘restored’) because they needed time to change elaborate sets. Think what that would do to scenes 3.1 to 3.6 described above! The performance would be unbearably long. Thus from the Restoration through the nineteenth century, when Antony and Cleopatra was produced at all, it was cut drastically, and in the pictorial productions popular in the Victorian age the text practically disappeared. In the twentieth century productions of Shakespeare’s plays became less reliant on expensive scenery, and many in the twenty-first century, especially those at the reconstructed Globe in London, have eschewed scenery altogether and returned to continuous staging. The act and scene divisions we find in modern texts

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are convenient markers that enable us to discuss and write about specific points of action, but their presentation of the play’s action in little, discrete chunks can hinder our appreciation of Shakespeare’s design. As Antony and Cleopatra was originally performed, its continuous flow from one scene into another paralleled the imagery of melting and mingling we find in Shakespeare’s language, offering a fluidity that may be obscured in a modern text. There are several other important differences between the Folio’s pages and a modern edition. Most confusing to twentyfirst-century readers, the letters ‘i’ and ‘j’, as well as ‘u’ and ‘v’ were interchangeable, so that a word like our ‘haunt’ would appear as ‘havnt’. Writers also used a long stroke to make some of their ‘s’ letters, so that a long ‘s’ and an ‘f’ looked very similar, though in fact they were distinct. (The crossbar of the ‘long s’ extends only from the left side of the vertical stem; there is no counterpart on the right, as you can see in the Norton facsimile.) Although I have not modernized the spelling in my quotations from the First Folio, I have changed i, j, u, v and s in accord with modern usage. In addition to the confusion caused by these particular letters, English spelling was not regularized until the eighteenth century; before then writers spelled words variously – even Shakespeare’s extant signatures differ from each other in their spelling. Ever since the eighteenth century, editors have modernized the Folio’s old spelling (and in this book I have silently modernized quotations from Chaucer, Plutarch, Mary Sidney and Samuel Daniel). Most editors print the hero’s name as ‘Antony’, pronounced with a hard ‘t’ rather than the Folio’s ‘Anthony’, which might be mispronounced with a ‘th’ sound. ‘Antony’ also accords with the nomenclature used in classical sources, particularly Plutarch’s Lives. The Folio was originally printed in two columns and the lines are not numbered. Italic speech prefixes, usually abbreviated as in ‘Cleo’ and ‘Ant.’, identified the actors’ lines. For the most part, the Folio’s speech prefixes are clear, but in three cases they are problematic. In 1.2 (Folio facsimile 849) the Folio assigns lines 65 to 71 to Alexas:



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Char. Our worser thoughts Heavens mend. Alexas. C  ome, his Fortune, his Fortune. Oh, let him mar[r]y a woman that cannot go […] Editors believe that the Folio’s italicized Alexas was a mistake made in the printer’s shop. In the Folio all proper names were italicized, and it is almost certain that the person who set type for this scene mistook the manuscript’s italicized Alexas for a speech prefix, not realizing that Charmian is directing her comments to Alexas. Here is the same passage from the Third Arden edition: CHARMIAN  Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas – come, his fortune his fortune! O, let him marry a woman that cannot go […] (1.2.64–6) Speech prefixes are also confusing in act 2, scene 1 (Folio facsimile 853). The initial stage direction states that both Menas and Menacrates enter. It’s not clear from subsequent speech prefixes for ‘Mene.’ just who is speaking, Menacrates or Menas. Some editors have assigned all the Mene speeches to Menas, whilst others, including the Third Arden edition, award lines 2–3 and 5–8 to Menacrates on the grounds that Shakespeare differentiated the lines, making Menacrates’ lines more matter-of-fact and less impatient than the lines Menas speaks in 16–17 and 18. A third, even more troubling, error occurs on Folio page 873 (5.2.32–6). The compositor repeated the speech heading for Proculeius, possibly omitting a line or a stage direction between the two speeches: Pro. This Ile report (deere Lady) Have comfort, for I know your plight is pittied Of him that caus’d it. Pro. You see how easily she may be surpriz’d: Guard her till Caesar come.

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Proculeius’ language implies that between these two speeches the Roman guards have entered and surprised Cleopatra, perhaps taking a weapon from her. Some editors solve the anomaly of the repeated speech headings by awarding the second Proculeius speech to Gallus, an otherwise non-speaking role. This approach erases the contradiction between Proculeius’ initial expression of sympathy for Cleopatra and his satisfaction in lines 35–6 that she can so easily be surprised. Such an editorial intervention is necessarily interpretative because it softens our impression of Proculeius and makes him seem less of a hypocrite. The Third Arden edition keeps the lines as written and simply inserts a stage direction: PROCULEIUS This I’ll report, dear lady, Have comfort, for I know your plight is pitied Of him that caused it. [Enter GALLUS and Roman Soldiers.] [to the Soldiers] You see how easily she may be surprised. Guard her till Caesar come. Even though Antony had earlier told Cleopatra to trust Proculeius, his remarks to the Soldiers make it clear to her and to us that his initial concern for her is bogus. The double Proculeius speech heading illustrates the way even a minor intervention in the text can change our interpretation of a scene or a character. In the Folio lines of prose (see for example 2.1.1–5, Folio facsimile 853) are justified at both the left and right margins, whereas verse (all of 1.1) is set in individual poetic lines. Notice too that the Folio prints each verse line separately. Modern editors number the lines for our convenience, and sometimes they combine what seem to be two short lines spoken by separate speakers in the Folio into one shared poetic line. Put together, the two lines create one line of blank verse, the metrical form that Shakespeare usually uses for dramatic



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dialogue. The next chapter will examine Shakespeare’s manipulation of poetic lines in some detail, but for now remember that shared lines indicate the flow of conversation back and forth between two or more interlocutors. The Folio’s stage directions also provide important clues to the way a scene would have been performed. Take for example the stage direction that interrupts line 10 in 1.1. The Folio reads, ‘Flourish. Enter Anthony, Cleopatra her Ladies, the Traine, with Eunuchs fanning her’. This descriptive language indicates what the scene might look like, but the stage direction’s imprecision (Who is in the train? How many Eunuchs are fanning her?) suggest that it came from Shakespeare, the writer envisioning the scene’s effect, rather than a stage manager at the Globe who needed to know precisely which actors were to enter and required what we call prompt copy. Modern editors try to clarify such descriptive stage directions by adding more information, usually within brackets. The Third Arden edition, for example, inserts ‘[CHARMIAN and IRAS]’ after ‘Ladies’ so that the reader will know who accompanies Cleopatra. The opening stage direction of 1.2 (Folio facsimile 848) also indicates that the manuscript used in the printing of Antony and Cleopatra was close to Shakespeare’s original. The Folio reads, ‘Enter Enobarbus, Lamprius, a Southsayer, Rannius, Lucillius, Charmian, Iras, Mardian the Eunuch, – and Alexas’. Alexas, Charmian, and the Soothsayer begin the scene with a jocular conversation, but Rannius, Lucillius and Lamprius never say a word. Editors describe the three as ghost characters because they are introduced but then have nothing to say or do. Some editors have assumed that the Soothsayer is the same person as Lamprius, but the text doesn’t indicate that this is the case. Furthermore, the repetition of the Latin ending ‘ us’ for all three characters can be taken as evidence that they were envisioned as Romans. Shakespeare’s original scenic design might well have been to oppose three austere Romans to the trash-talking Egyptian ladies of Cleopatra’s court. Perhaps he changed his mind, or perhaps the King’s Company didn’t have

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the requisite number of actors to represent the three Romans. The Third Arden edition handles this textual conundrum by changing the stage direction to ‘Enter ENOBARBUS [and other Roman Officers], a Soothsayer, CHARMIAN, IRAS, MARDIAN the Eunuch, and ALEXAS’. Other editions make different choices; many simply mention Lamprius, Rannius, and Lucillius in a footnote. The key point to remember is that while all modernized editions base their text on the First Folio, the interventions they make to clarify the text will not always be the same. Most will include some kind of textual apparatus that tells you what changes they have made from the Folio text and why. The Third Arden edition includes textual notes at the bottom of the page that indicate the changes the editor John Wilders made and whether they were borrowed from earlier editors or are his own intervention in the text. Modern editors also supply explanatory notes and bracketed stage directions to help you envision the action, but you should use their insights as a supplement to your own close reading of each scene.

Visualizing the scene Even though some of the Folio’s stage directions are imprecise, they are the single most important indicator of what is going on in the play. If you think of them in the context of the Globe stage described above, you can establish a visual picture of the characters’ movements, what modern theatre practitioners call blocking, in your mind. Sometimes the blocking is fairly obvious. In 3.2 (Folio facsimile 860), for example, the initial stage direction reads, ‘Enter AGRIPPA at one door, ENOBARBUS at another’. Each actor would enter from one of the two doors at the back, and then meet toward the front of the stage to talk. At other times the action has to be assumed from Shakespeare’s text, which often implies blocking or stage



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business. In the same scene, lines 20–1, Enobarbus suddenly breaks from a conversation with Agrippa and cries, ‘So, / This is to horse’, meaning that the soldiers have been called to arms. The Third Arden edition inserts the stage direction, ‘[Trumpet within.]’, a sound effect that is implied by Enobarbus’ ‘This’, which refers to the sound of a military trumpet calling the cavalry to mount their horses. Later, in line 43, Antony’s description of Octavia, ‘The April’s in her eyes’, implies that the boy actor playing Octavia is crying. The Third Arden editor adds a stage direction, ‘[She weeps.]’ to make this clear, but a careful reader would understand that from the language alone. Similarly, in 2.2.30–1, the quarrelling Caesar and Antony meet for the first time in this play and square off: CAESAR Sit. ANTONY Sit, sir. CAESAR Nay then. The lines reveal the awkwardness Caesar and Antony feel in this encounter; neither wants to be the first to sit down because the person standing normally has the dominant position. But after some hesitation they do sit and begin to negotiate their differences. The Third Arden edition inserts ‘[Caesar sits, then Antony.]’, but there might be other ways actors could convey the underlying tension between Antony and Caesar as they jockey for position. Shakespeare also shapes his scenes to exploit opposing viewpoints. As the literary critic Mark Rose notes in his analysis of Shakespeare’s scenic design, Antony and Cleopatra’s first scene, discussed in my Introduction, establishes ‘the opposition between the Roman and Egyptian perspectives on life’ that will animate the play until its protagonists commit suicide. The scene begins with two Roman soldiers, Demetrius and Philo, who conduct a private conversation before Antony and Cleopatra enter. Philo gives his interpretation of what we are about to see before we even see it by describing Antony’s degradation. ‘From the Roman point of view, Philo

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is undoubtedly right. Antony is a sorry figure. But the Egyptian centrepiece [lines 34–56] is designed to contradict the Roman frame point for point […] suggesting an alternative interpretation of Antony’s state.’ While Philo thinks love is ‘dotage’ and a form of slavery, Antony proclaims that there is beggary in love that can be measured. ‘Philo sees Antony’s staying in Egypt as a sign of servitude, but Cleopatra, ironically urging Antony to hear the messenger, suggests with equal plausibility that it is in Rome that Antony is a servant.’ Philo thinks nobility is found only on the battlefield, where Antony’s eyes ‘glowed like plated Mars’. Antony proclaims instead that ‘kingdoms are clay’ and that the nobleness of life is to be found in his love for Cleopatra. These opposing perspectives are irreconcilable and, once they are established, they continue to alternate in our imaginations, producing an anamorphic view of Antony (Rose 163–4). Act 2, scene 2 is another good example of this framing technique. Here Shakespeare places Antony and Caesar’s formal diplomatic efforts to settle their differences between two private conversations. The scene opens with Lepidus privately urging Enobarbus to counsel his master Antony ‘To soft and gentle speech’, advice that Enobarbus immediately rejects. Lepidus then announces the more public arrival (through one door) of ‘The noble Antony’ and Enobarbus continues, ‘And yonder Caesar’, as Octavius Caesar enters through the other door. The serious negotiations between Caesar and Antony are briefly interrupted with the irrepressible Enobarbus’ sardonic comment (in prose lines 109–12) that they can ‘borrow one another’s love for the instant’, but once the threat from Pompey is taken care of, they can go back to fighting. Antony promptly tells Enobarbus to shut up, but Enobarbus’ cynicism undercuts any hope that the agreement struck between Antony and Caesar will endure. Then, at the scene’s conclusion, after Antony has agreed to seal the alliance by marrying Caesar’s sister Octavia, Enobarbus undercuts that hope once again by describing Cleopatra’s seductive beauty and asserting that Antony will never leave her (2.2.244). Such framing presents



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the audience with two opposing appraisals of the agreement that Antony and Caesar have just reached. Agrippa believes the marriage will bring lasting peace; Enobarbus knows that it won’t. Shakespeare uses similar point-counter point later in 3.2. The scene begins with Agrippa and Enobarbus in private conversation. Enobarbus describes the aftermath of the previous scene’s drunken revels: Pompey has left, Octavia is saddened at the thought of leaving Rome, and Lepidus has a hangover. The two men mock the way Lepidus parted from Antony and Caesar: ‘Oh, how he loves Caesar!’ says Enobarbus. ‘Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony!’ replies Agrippa. But when the trumpet sounds at line 21 they must move aside to make way for the entrance of Caesar, Antony, Lepidus, and Octavia. They remain aside while the three Roman commanders take centre stage and Caesar bids a tearful good-bye to his sister. From their position aside Enobarbus and Agrippa mock Caesar’s farewell: AGRIPPA Why, Enobarbus, When Antony found Julius Caesar dead, He cried almost to roaring, and he wept When at Philippi he found Brutus slain. ENOBARBUS That year, indeed, he was troubled with a rheum. What willingly he did confound he wailed, Believe’t, till I wept too (50–9). The interjection of Enobarbus and Agrippa’s cynical comments here counters any sense that Caesar’s emotional parting from his sister is genuine and undermine his pretensions to the higher moral ground. Shakespeare’s repeated exploitation of similar framing – juxtaposing serious conversation with sarcastic remarks – reinforces the play’s anamorphic texture.

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As I pointed out in the Introduction, Enobarbus was hardly mentioned in Shakespeare’s source, so it is important to recognize the effects of his expanded role in the play. From the first time he appears in act 1, scene 2, Enobarbus’ comments tend to deflate the exalted rhetoric used by Antony and Cleopatra to describe their relationship. He sees what to them is transcendent love as little more than lust. Thus he puns on Cleopatra’s ‘celerity in dying’ (151), alluding to the early modern double meaning of ‘to die’, which denoted, in addition to the act of dying, enjoying a sexual orgasm. Saying one thing and meaning its opposite in lines 152–8, Enobarbus implies that the tears Cleopatra will shed at Antony’s departure are a sham: ‘her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report’. This description is so obviously hyperbolic as to be sarcastic, and as we have seen, Enobarbus’s commentary frequently frames and thereby undercuts the pretensions of the major characters. So, too, do his asides. It is easy to overlook passages that are marked aside when you are reading, but they are crucial ingredients in Shakespeare’s representation of opposing points of view. Generally, an aside is delivered directly to the audience as the actor steps apart from the main action; the audience is expected to realize that the lines are not audible to the other characters on stage. In filmic versions of Shakespeare’s plays they are usually presented through voiceover or as direct address to the camera. A telling aside occurs in 2.7 as the triumvirs celebrate their newfound agreement on Pompey’s ship. Menas conspiratorially draws Pompey apart to suggest that they cut the ship’s cable and murder Octavius, Lepidus and Antony so that Pompey can become sole ruler of Rome. This scene could be staged in a variety of ways. The easiest way is to have the drinking party silently mimic conversation in the background while Menas and Pompey talk to each other at the front of the stage. When this scene was staged at London’s Globe in 2014, Pompey and Menas directly addressed the audience



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while the triumvirs froze behind them, as if in stop action. As soon as Pompey rejected Menas’ suggestion and ended the conversation, Lepidus, Antony and Caesar came back to life and resumed what they had been doing. An aside spoken by one individual while others are on stage differs from a soliloquy, a speech delivered while the actor is alone. Both offer insights into the speaker’s inner life and reveal what he or she really thinks about what is happening. In Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare provides very few soliloquies and instead relies on asides. In this way, even though the protagonists are seldom alone and many of their interactions are calculated performances before an on-stage audience, the dramatist can let us know what the characters are thinking. Sometimes the terms ‘soliloquy’ and monologue are used as if they were the same thing, but they are not. A monologue is an extended speech by one person that may be heard or addressed to others. While a soliloquy can be a monologue, not all monologues are soliloquies. Enobarbus reveals his thoughts through both asides and soliloquies. In the first half of the play, his asides are witty and cynical, but by the end of act 3 they become less jocular and increasingly bitter. In 3.13, after Antony’s disgraceful performance at the battle of Actium, Enobarbus reflects in an aside on Antony’s challenge to Caesar to fight in single combat: That he should dream, Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued His judgement too. (34–7) Enobarbus’ private assessment signals to the audience that he has become disgusted with the commander he had served loyally for so long. When Enobarbus later abandons Antony to fight for Caesar, his speech becomes even more serious. Alone on stage after hearing Antony’s rage and seeing Thidias whipped, Enobarbus resolves to leave Antony’s service. Later, in 4.6 after he’s joined Caesar’s forces, Enobarbus has two

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soliloquies that explain his growing disillusionment with Caesar. Octavius has cynically hanged some of the men who had abandoned Antony to fight with Rome, including King Herod. He has moved others of Antony’s former followers to the front of the battle (11–20) so they will be killed. Then, after Enobarbus learns that Antony has sent his treasure to him from the Egyptian camp, he repents his disloyalty to Antony, ‘Thou mine of bounty’ (30–40). Finally, in his last soliloquy in 4.9.15–26 Enobarbus despairs and dies pronouncing Antony’s name. In Charlton Heston’s 1972 film adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra, Eric Porter signals the change in Enobarbus’ state of mind – moving from sarcastic banter to serious reflection – by delivering these asides and soliloquies directly into the camera, as if speaking to himself. However, these soliloquies are staged; they are the culmination of Enobarbus’ special role as a commentator on the action. His belated recognition of Antony’s good qualities, especially his generosity and affection for his followers, highlights the positive aspects of Antony’s character even as his fortunes are falling. The play’s final scenes, staged without Enobarbus’ sardonic commentary, allow the audience to focus more squarely on Antony and Cleopatra’s idealized relationship, moving the play away from satire toward tragedy. Shakespeare also choreographs entrances and exits for theatrical effect. Just as a new person’s sudden entrance into a room sometimes interrupts the flow of conversation, on stage the entrance or exit of a character can disrupt the emotional tone or force a change in the subject. This is especially true of Antony and Cleopatra; its five acts include twenty-eight entrances from designated Messengers or from named characters that enter to convey new information. The Messengers’ announcements and other reports of news from overseas, whether from Egypt or back from Rome, remind us of the action’s geopolitical impact. Repeated entrances – as in act 1, scene 2 when three separate messengers bring Antony news from Rome – convey the urgency of what today would



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be called ‘breaking news’. Reports of preparation for battle or the battle’s results offer important information, but they also highlight the cataclysmic nature of Antony’s fall. Often when the Messenger appears the audience isn’t learning anything it didn’t already know and its interest is drawn instead to the effect of that new information on the characters. The most notorious example of this sort of dramatic irony – when the audience knows something the character on stage doesn’t know – occurs in 2.5. The scene begins with Cleopatra reminiscing to her entourage about the past pleasures she and Antony have shared, but her musings are interrupted at line 23 by the appearance of a Messenger from Rome. The audience knows that he will tell Cleopatra about Antony’s marriage, which makes Cleopatra’s response more important than the message itself. The Messenger is clearly hesitant to deliver words that will upset the Egyptian Queen. Shakespeare uses a series of shared lines here to convey the intensity of their dialogue. When Cleopatra asks if Antony has made friends with Caesar and is well, he responds: MESSENGER Madam, he’s well. CLEOPATRA Well said! MESSENGER And friends with Caesar. CLEOPATRA Thou’rt an honest man! MESSENGER Caesar and he are greater friends than ever. Cleopatra is delighted with this news and offers the Messenger rewards, but he still is reluctant to get to the point; finally he reports that Antony is ‘bound unto Octavia’. CLEOPATRA For what good turn? MESSENGER For the best turn i’th’ bed. CLEOPATRA I am pale, Charmian. MESSENGER Madam, he’s married to Octavia. CLEOPATRA The most infectious pestilence upon thee! Strikes him down. (2.5.46–61)

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In 1.3.3–11, Cleopatra admitted that some of her mood swings are calculated performances, but her sudden shift from delight to rage in this scene with the Messenger, while comic to us, is no laughing matter for her. In this way Shakespeare uses the Messenger to underscore the depth of Cleopatra’s passion for Antony. In addition to manipulating perspectives within scenes, Shakespeare structures scenes in relationship to each other. In act 2, scene 7 we see the fractious triumvirs celebrating drunkenly on Pompey’s barge, but in the next scene, 3.1 (usually cut in films and performances) the action shifts to Parthia. Ventidius, who on Antony’s behalf has triumphed in battle over the Parthians, enters in procession with the dead body of the Parthian leader Pacorus. As John Wilders notes in his commentary note for the Third Arden edition, ‘The vast distance between this location and that of the previous episode indicates the extent of the territory over which the triumvirs hold power.’ More important, the two scenes are ‘in ironical relationship’ to each other; ‘[w]hile the commanders [of 2.7] are celebrating their spurious concord, the subordinate is loyally carrying out his orders, and, whereas the previous scene leads up to the carrying out of the drunken Lepidus, this one starts with carrying in of the dead Pacorus’ (171). Both scenes incorporate the business of carrying an inert body across the stage, but each conveys an entirely different meaning. Only when you visualize the scenes’ blocking can you realize the way they mirror each other visually, with the second scene commenting on the one immediately before it. Again, this anamorphic effect requires you to reconsider what you’ve experienced in 2.7 as you reflect on it from the viewpoint of 3.1’s action. Repeated gestures are another mode of mirroring. When the Messenger enters in 2.5, Cleopatra tells him that if he reports that Antony is well and free, he will have her hand to kiss, ‘a hand that kings / Have lipped, and trembled kissing’ (29–30). As part of her study of hand gestures in early modern English culture, Farah Karim Cooper, Head of Education at



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Shakespeare’s Globe, has shown that in Shakespeare’s England a lady’s hand was fetishized as a site of erotic pleasure. The lady would only offer her hand to a subordinate to be kissed as a sign of her favour, and kissing it was considered an intimate gesture. Thus Cleopatra begins her interview with the Messenger with unusual condescension to a social inferior, but that intimacy soon turns to violence. Once Cleopatra learns that Antony has married Octavia, she uses the same hand to strike the Messenger and draw a dagger to attack him. Later in 3.13 Antony is enraged when he finds Thidias, an emissary from Caesar, kissing Cleopatra’s hand. After he orders his servants to take the man offstage and whip him, Antony excoriates Cleopatra as a ‘boggler’, a woman who gives her favours to any man that comes along. Still later, in 4.8, after he returns triumphant from winning the first battle of Alexandria, Antony asks Cleopatra to extend those favours to Scarus, who has served him well in the battle: ‘Commend unto his lips thy favouring hand’ (23). The act is the same – Cleopatra’s extending her hand to be kissed and a man’s lifting that hand to his lips signals her desirability and his wish to be intimate with her – but the tenor of the scenes is quite different. Taken together, these mirror scenes use the granting or withholding of the privilege of kissing Cleopatra’s hand to mark changes in her status as well as her relationship with Antony. Similarly, if Cleopatra’s cries against her treasurer Seleucus in 5.2.154–7, ‘I’ll catch thine eyes / Though they had wings! Slave! Soulless villain! Dog! / O rarely base!’ are accompanied by threatening moves and gestures, they recall her earlier treatment of the Messenger in 2.5. The repeated sight of Cleopatra berating one of her servants, especially if – as in the latter instance – it is a performance she has crafted to fool Caesar into thinking she wants to live, suggests that she may be beaten but is not defeated. Another gestural parallel is possible between Antony’s comment in 1.1.37–8: ‘The nobleness of life / Is to do thus’, and his remark to Caesar in 2.2.26–7: ‘Were we before our

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armies, and to fight, / I should do thus’. Jacquelyn Bessell, a Shakespeare critic who is also a director, observes that in the first instance editors and actors have taken ‘to do thus’ as a verbal cue to the actor impersonating Antony that he should embrace Cleopatra. Bessell speculates as to whether Antony’s second iteration also calls for an embrace; she explains ‘I rather like the idea of Antony embracing Caesar in a cheeky reprise of his earlier clinch with Cleopatra, but the text does not dictate this. What is important to remember is how this moment can define our idea of Antony’s relationship with Caesar at this point in the play’ (196). Shakespeare’s exploitation of gestural language that is implied in the text but not mentioned in the stage directions is a central weapon in his dramaturgical arsenal.

‘He words me, girls, he words me’ The next chapter will address the grammatical changes that affect Shakespeare’s language; here the emphasis is on vocabulary. Between 1500 and 1659 approximately 30,000 words were added to the English language. The early sixteenthcentury poets Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who incorporated Italian verse forms into their poems found the English language poor in rhymes. Other writers wanted English poetry to imitate classical Latin texts. One result of their experimentation with language was the introduction of new words, called neologisms, into English literature. Shakespeare was no exception. He had a huge vocabulary, and it has been estimated that he invented up to 600 words (McDonald 36). Many of his neologisms, such as Macbeth’s ‘assassination’ and ‘dwindle’, have stood the test of time. Others have not fared as well and what Shakespeare meant by them remains obscure. Since the eighteenth century when Shakespeare’s texts first became subject to careful scrutiny, editors have assumed the prerogative of emending



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the text if they found it made no sense or if they thought the printer had introduced an error. Here we’ll look at some of the words Shakespeare uses in the Folio Antony and Cleopatra that have consistently puzzled editors. In 1.5, Alexas arrives from Rome, reports to Cleopatra and presents her with a greeting and rich pearl from Antony. Alexas then describes Antony: [H]e nodded And soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed Who neighed so high that what I would have spoke Was beastly dumbed by him. (49–52) Basically, Alexas is saying that when Antony mounted, his horse’s neighing was so loud that it drowned out Alexas’ voice. But, ever since the earliest editions of Antony and Cleopatra, scholars have wondered exactly what Shakespeare meant by the unique coinage, ‘arm-gaunt’. What would such a horse look like? They wondered why a Roman triumvir would mount an underfed horse. One editor contended that ‘gaunt’ in this case meant thin-shouldered, others countered that the horse was stalwart, courageous and strong, if underfed. Still others changed the word, emending to ‘termagant’ because of the horse’s loud neigh, to ‘arm-girt’ to indicate that the horse wore armour, or to ‘arrogant’ to describe the horse’s demeanour. More recently The Oxford Shakespeare emended to ‘arm-jaunced’ to denote the horse’s bouncing motion. The Third Arden edition resists this kind of speculation and sensibly maintains Shakespeare’s original ‘arm-gaunt’ with the explanation: ‘lean from service in battle (or ‘arms’)’ (122). Like Antony, the horse is battle-hardened (cf. Octavius’s description of the deprivations Antony had endured on the battlefield in 1.4.59–69) and some of its body is protected by armour. In this way it is ‘arm-gaunt’. Editors describe such a problematic word like ‘arm-gaunt’ as a textual crux, a word or phrase in the text that provokes continuing debate and whose exact meaning is unlikely to be

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settled definitively. A textual crux that has caused even more controversy than ‘arm-gaunt’ occurs in 3.10.10–11 when Antony’s supporter Scarus is infuriated at Cleopatra’s sudden retreat at the battle of Actium. He cries, ‘Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt – / Whom leprosy o’ertake!’ According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the descriptor ‘ribaudred’ was invented by Shakespeare and hasn’t been used since. Context suggests the meaning is pejorative, and given Cleopatra’s slutty reputation with Roman soldiers, many editors simply change the word to ‘ribald’, meaning ‘offensive’ or ‘scurrilous’. The Oxford Shakespeare emends the word to ‘riband-red’, arguing that from the context of ‘pestilence’ in the previous line that Scarus is comparing Cleopatra to a whore who bears the red ribbons worn by victims of the plague. Other editions simply keep the original ‘ribaudred’ and gloss it as unique to Shakespeare. Sometimes an emendation makes so much sense that subsequent editors adopt it without question. A case in point is Caesar’s comparison of the ebb and flow of political popularity to a flag floating on the water that moves back and forth with the changing tides. The Folio reads:  This common bodie, Like to a Vagabond Flagge upon the Streme, Goes too, and backe, lacking the varying tyde To rot it selfe with motion. (1.4.44-7) The Folio’s ‘lacking’ makes no sense here because it is the ‘varying tide’ that moves the flag back and forth. The eighteenth-century editor Lewis Theobald emended ‘lacking’ to ‘lackeying’ and argued that the movement of the flag back and forth was similar to the way a court lackey subserviently leans back and forth in accord with his master’s motions. Theobald’s emendation is based on a complicated rationale, but it does clarify the text, especially in the context of Caesar’s reflections about the ins and outs of power and prestige. Most modern editors have adopted this emendation.



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One of the most eloquent passages in Antony and Cleopatra occurs in the final scene (5.2.81–7) when Cleopatra shares her vision of Antony’s greatness with Dolabella. The Folio reads: His legges bestrid the Ocean, his rear’d arme Crested the world: His voice was propertied As all the tuned Spheres, and that to Friends: But when he meant to quail, and shake the Orbe, He was as ratling Thunder. For his Bounty, There was no winter in’t. An Anthony it was, That grew the more by reaping (facsimile 873). Theobald emended the Folio’s ‘Anthony’ in line 86 to ‘autumn’, a reading that has been adopted by many editors ever since. ‘Autumn’ fleshes out Cleopatra’s seasonal metaphor in lines 85–7: Antony’s bounty was so great that there was no winter in it, only autumn, the season of harvest when reaping took place. Because early modern handwriting was difficult to read and spelling was irregular, the original manuscript’s ‘Autome’ could easily have been misread in the printing house as ‘Anthonie’. On the other hand, the Folio’s ‘Anthony’ also makes sense if we think of Antony himself as Cleopatra describes him in lines 81–5, a Colossus who transcends ‘the normal limits of human nature’ (Arden 305). Within the context of Cleopatra’s monologue, either reading makes sense. These are just four of the most important textual cruces in the Folio text; many other changes, some of them minor, will be noted in a good edition’s textual notes. What matters most are not the specific details of the textual apparatus, but our realization that Shakespearean texts are inherently unstable. The scholars who prepare our modernized editions of Shakespeare – however punctilious they may be – are influenced by the culture in which they live, their educational training and their own predilections. That’s why it is so important to study the text itself as carefully as we can and make our own judgements about its meaning.

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Cutting the text Antony and Cleopatra is one of the longest plays in the Shakespeare canon, and even with continuous staging it would take up to four hours to perform the entire play. Modern directors are less likely to cut huge swaths of text than they did in the nineteenth century, but even today it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a stage production or a film that included the entire Folio text. Some cuts, such as the omission of all of 3.1 (Ventidius’ conversation with Silius mentioned earlier), have a comparatively limited impact. Even so, when this scene is cut we miss out on Ventidius’ explanation that it would be unwise to outshine his commander Antony in battle. Ventidius’ lines imply that Antony’s reputation is more important to him than a possible military victory and undercut his self-representation as the finest military leader of the Roman Empire. In this way, even a seemingly innocuous cut can remove subtle nuances that make the characters more complex. Other omissions can narrow the text’s ambiguity. This is certainly the case with 5.2.137–88, which Shakespeare takes from a passage in Plutarch’s Lives that describes Caesar’s interview with Cleopatra after Antony’s death: At length, she gave him a brief and memorial of all the ready money and treasure she had. But by chance there stood Seleucus by, one of her Treasurers, who to seem a good servant, came straight to Caesar to disprove Cleopatra, that she had not set in all, but kept many things back of purpose. Cleopatra was in such a rage with him, that she flew upon him, and took him by the hair of the head, and boxed him well favoredly. Cleopatra protests that she only held back some trifles to give to Octavia and Livia. Caesar, Plutarch reports, ‘was glad to hear her say so’, and promised to treat her honourably, ‘and



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so he took his leave of her, supposing he had deceived her, but in deed he was deceived himself’. The marginal note in Thomas North’s translation reads, ‘Cleopatra finely deceiveth Octavius Caesar, as though she desired to live’ (Bullough 5: 314). Both Plutarch’s text and North’s marginal note imply that this little interlude was a performance carefully scripted by Cleopatra to deceive Caesar into thinking that she does not plan to commit suicide. As a dramatist, Shakespeare has to show rather than tell, but unlike Plutarch’s commentary, this scene’s dialogue makes Cleopatra’s motivation opaque. Shakespeare stages the interchange much as Plutarch reported it. Seleucus testifies that Cleopatra has retained ‘Enough to purchase what you have made known’ (147), and she responds in outrage that her servant ‘should / Parcel the sum of my disgraces by / Addition of his envy!’ (162–3). Caesar tells her to bestow her treasure at her pleasure, promises to remain her friend and leaves her. We have only the words spoken by Seleucus, Cleopatra and Caesar, so we have no way of knowing whether this is a put-up job as it is in Plutarch or a signal that Cleopatra is indeed seeking good terms with Caesar. Whether this scene indicates that despite her comments to the contrary, Cleopatra is looking for some sort of accommodation with Caesar, or that she is using a clever ploy to buy more time and opportunity for her suicide is our choice. Not until Cleopatra calls for her robes in 5.2.279 can we be absolutely sure that she will take her own life. Not surprisingly, many productions and most films cut the Seleucus business altogether, as they did in 2014 at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. In the 1981 BBC/Time-Life television production Jane Lapotaire’s Cleopatra presents her list to Caesar, but the follow up with Seleucus is omitted. This particular cut privileges the more heroic aspect of Cleopatra’s character, leaving much less ambiguity as to whether she will negotiate with Caesar. Directors and actors who take a sympathetic, even heroic, view of Cleopatra would, understandably, want Seleucus out. Directors might also argue that the episode is an interruption in the play’s movement toward the final

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tableau of Cleopatra’s suicide. Ultimately, the omission robs Cleopatra of some of the ‘infinite variety’ she has demonstrated in previous scenes, especially its mirroring of her initial anger at the Messenger in 2.5. No matter which filmic adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra you look at, you will find that the text has been cut in various ways. The omission of lines and even entire scenes is an understandable cost-cutting measure for an expensive media like film, but you should be aware that the choice of what to cut is inherently interpretative and the resulting streamlined text will not be as richly textured as Shakespeare’s play script. The most faithful filmic version of Antony and Cleopatra was produced in 1971 as part of an educational series, Bard Productions. Now available on DVD, it was filmed in a small studio without scenery on a wooden stage framed by opposing circular staircases. Costumes are also minimal: red Roman military uniforms for Caesar and his followers, green uniforms for Egyptian soldiers (including Enobarbus) and colourful, exotic dresses for Cleopatra and her ladies. Subtitles mark the location of each scene as it begins. Cleopatra’s palace features a chaise longue, Caesar’s camp a table and chairs. With this simple staging, the 183-minute production seldom strays from Shakespeare’s text. Lines are cut here and there from some of the longer speeches, and some of the framing material (such as Lepidus’ conversation with Maecenas and Agrippa in 2.4) is cut. Unlike other filmic versions, the Bard production keeps Ventidius’ conversation with Silius in 3.1 (although it omits the display of Pacorus’ body) and all of the Seleucus business in 5.2. But even minor cuts can modify a scene’s impact, as in the removal of Enobarbus’ and Agrippa’s description of Lepidus’ departure from Caesar and Antony in 3.2.7–19. Without the frame of their sarcastic badinage about the triumvirate’s protestations of brotherly love, we are likely to take Caesar’s affectionate farewell to his sister at face value rather than suspect his motives. In complete contrast to Bard’s unpretentious representation of Shakespeare’s text, Charlton Heston’s 1972 Antony and



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Cleopatra eviscerates it and relies on visual images instead. This Hollywood adaptation was filmed on location in Spain using magnificent vistas that convey the drama’s geographical scope in blazing Technicolor. For example, Heston opens with a helicopter shot of a trireme, an ancient warship that brings a messenger from Rome into the Alexandrian harbour. Heston also brings the battle of Actium to life by intercutting outtakes from the galley scenes in MGM’s Ben Hur. Outdoor shots are alternated with interior scenes inside Cleopatra’s palace, balancing between panoramic vistas with close-up portraits (Rothwell 163). In addition to the omission of Ventidius (3.1) and Seleucus, Heston cut all of 1.3 and many of Cleopatra’s other lines. As a result, Hildegard Neil’s Egyptian Queen has little to say for herself in the first half of the film. Instead she becomes the object of the male gaze; ‘A striking brunette with ivory skin and dark eyes, her hair piled high and carefully coifed, she is the femme fatale, […] the beautiful woman without pity. She appears’, explains film specialist Kenneth S. Rothwell, ‘in a variety of sybaritic poses, lounging on a luxurious bed, painting her own or Antony’s face, calling for her claque of “women” to wait on her’ (Rothwell 164). Heston’s Antony hogs the spotlight, allowing Neil’s Cleopatra to shine only in her final act of suicide. While Heston’s film is an unabashed adaptation, Trevor Nunn’s 1974 television rendition of the production he mounted for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1972 poses as an accurate representation of Shakespeare’s original. The opposition of Rome and Egypt is signalled from the beginning, with black and white close-ups of Romans set against warmly coloured shots of Cleopatra and Antony amid their Egyptian followers. In the first act the Egyptians loll around on oriental rugs and cushions, clad in rich shades of orange and burgundy, while Caesar and his followers appear in stark white togas against a white backdrop. Costumes aside, Colin Redgrave’s repressed Caesar pales in contrast to Janet Suzman’s sexual Cleopatra, making Antony’s choice between them seem all too obvious. Nunn’s cuts in the text

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are much deeper than the simple omission of 3.1 and the Seleucus episode, and the truncated script narrows the play’s complex politics into a simple Rome-Egypt binary, opposing Caesar to Cleopatra as if there were no one else involved. Most startling, except for Enobarbus’ passing reference to Pompey at 2.2.111, the film omits any mention of Pompey’s rebellion against the triumvirate or his threat to Rome. As a result, the reason for Antony’s return to Rome is muddled, the only explanation being a desire to sort out misunderstandings within the triumvirate. In addition, the omission of 3.5, where Eros describes Caesar’s coup against Lepidus and subsequent murder of Pompey, makes the end of the triumvirate and Caesar’s step-by-step rise to power incomprehensible. As Antony (Richard Johnson) bumbles his way through battles and suicide, Suzman’s powerful Cleopatra overwhelms him. The most easily available filmic version of Antony and Cleopatra remains the 1981 BBC/Time-Life television production, available on DVD. The BBC’s ‘Shakespeare Series’ was intended to present Shakespeare’s complete plays in accessible television versions suitable for screening in schools and colleges. Budget constraints meant that Antony and Cleopatra was filmed on a claustrophobic studio set. Directed by Jonathan Miller, the production broke with tradition by costuming the actors in early modern dress rather than quasi Roman and Egyptian costumes. Jane Lapotaire’s Cleopatra wears the kind of elaborate gowns we see in portraits of Queen Elizabeth I while Colin Blakely’s Antony and Ian Charleson’s Caesar appear in seventeenth-century doublets. Bits of exotica suggest Egypt: dogs, fans, cushions, and hangings. Caesar hovers with his military colleagues over a table in a tableau reminiscent of Veronese. The different coloured canvas tents denote Antony’s and Caesar’s camps: red for Antony, white for Caesar. The project’s low production value is most apparent in 3.10 when the screen displays a simple painting of a sea battle, accompanied by noisy sound effects and some text from Plutarch’s Lives, to represent the battle of Actium.



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Miller’s production sticks for the most part to Shakespeare’s language; aside from Ventidius and Seleucus there are few cuts. The language is clearly and forcefully presented, making this a good resource for those who want to experience the play in performance or simply listen to its language. But remember that the medium of television itself makes the experience quite different from that of a live theatrical performance. Miller used the camera’s flexibility to mimic the kind of fluid, continuous staging practised at the Globe, jump-cutting from one scene to another. Nevertheless, his constant reliance on close-ups and the repeated use of closed interior spaces rob the performance of the spaciousness we feel in Shakespeare’s original. As noted earlier, Antony and Cleopatra consistently appear in groups, acting out their love affair before an audience. Close-ups on the screen make the viewer lose track of that interpersonal dynamic in a way that a stage performance does not. On stage you can direct your gaze anywhere, whether to the character speaking or to the people listening. With film, the camera controls your point of view, and if the image you see is only of the person speaking, Antony and Cleopatra’s characteristic self-presentation to an on-stage audience is lost. Watching one of the filmic adaptations described here may help you understand the play’s characters and action more fully, but if you restrict yourself to only one version, you may begin to visualize that film as the play. It is not. It is a particular interpretation, one among many. There is no substitute for close and careful reading, but if you need help, I recommend listening to an audio recording. That way you can visualize the characters and action in the most important theatre, the theatre of your imagination. The next chapter will provide some useful tips to help you with that close reading, especially guidance on how to recognize the poetic techniques Shakespeare uses to make his characters come alive through language.

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Writing matters The best way to understand what an editor does is to edit a scene yourself. Go to the website http://internetshakespeare. uvic.ca/Library/facsimile and select Antony and Cleopatra, pp. 848–76. (The page numbers at the top of the facsimile pages run from 340 to 368 because the printers paginated each section of the Folio separately, beginning the Tragedies section with page 1.) Select a short scene, such as 2.4 or 3.1 (facsimile pages 856 or 859–60). Now it’s your turn to edit. 1 Put aside the modern edition you are using and

transcribe the Folio text of this short scene into modernized English, writing out the speech headings and stage directions in the same way your modern edition does. Consider whether changes in spelling and punctuation affect the way you think about the scene? Are there any short lines that should be made into a split iambic line, as they are in modern editions? Is there more than one way to split them? Do any of the stage directions need clarification? 2 Are there any words in this passage that you don’t understand? If so, look them up in a dictionary. Some of Shakespeare’s words are now obsolete and many are obscure. If the commentary notes in your edition are not satisfactory, you may find it helpful to look up the definition of such words in the OED. The OED provides a detailed history of each word’s changing usage and indicates what it meant during Shakespeare’s lifetime. Some libraries offer the OED online; others will have hard copy in the Reference collection. 3 Then, in a further exercise, think about the way you envision this scene being staged and write out your explanation of what transpires. What are the personal dynamics between the interlocutors? What do their words tell us about them? Assume they don’t just



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stand and talk -- what do they do as they talk? What gestures do they use? How would you stage the scene? Then consider the larger picture. How does this scene contribute to our overall impressions of the play’s actions and characters? Look at the scene before and the one that follows your particular scene. How does your scene contribute to the play’s flow? Does it parallel or contrast with what has gone before or what comes next? The next step is to write a paragraph or two about your findings. The scene itself is the topic of your short paper, and you’ve now gathered together some specific ideas about how it works. But you don’t yet have a thesis, an argument you wish to make. To determine what that is, ask yourself, ‘So what?’ Why is this scene important? What does it contribute to our understanding of the characters? How does it further the action? What is the single most important aspect of your scene that you’d like to stress or the most illuminating discovery you’ve made about it? The answers to these questions will tell you what your main argument should be. To articulate it more clearly, write out that idea in one complete sentence. After you’ve determined what your thesis is, you will need to organize the observations you’ve made about the way the scene works in order to explain, illustrate and support that argument. Your next step is to make an outline by grouping related ideas together. Consider which points are most relevant to your thesis and plan to emphasize them, using other points to develop your most important ideas. Now you are ready to write a draft. Very few of us can write a first draft that doesn’t require some revision. During the writing process it often becomes apparent that what you thought was the main idea is secondary to something else,

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something more important that reveals itself as you write. I find it helps to leave a draft for a day or two and re-read it with refreshed eyes. The best writers are compulsive revisers. 8 As an alternative exercise, you might take a longer, more complex scene, such as 3.2. The same process described above works for a longer paper. Using your modern edition, make a list or diagram that shows the order of the speakers and their entrances and exits. Does the scene have an arc, a pattern of pointcounterpoint? Is there a shift in rhetorical style or tone from speaker to speaker? Do some of the characters speak in prose as opposed to verse? If they do, how do the prose passages differ? Where do the disparate points of view seem most apparent? After you’ve listed all your observations about this scene and the way it works, decide what you think is the scene’s most important function. What does it contribute to the flow of the action? How does it develop the characters? How does it manipulate the audience’s response? Once you’ve answered those questions, you will be ready to make an argument about the scene’s function within the play. The observations you have made about the scene’s flow can be organized chronologically – as they occur within the scene – or by order of importance.

CHAPTER TWO

Language: Forms and uses Shakespeare’s lifetime (1564–1616) roughly coincided with England’s ‘Age of Discovery’. In the last half of the sixteenth century English explorers and navigators such as Sir Francis Drake and Henry Hudson charted lands in the New World. Indeed, while Shakespeare was writing King Lear, the Virginia Company was establishing its colony on the James River in what is now Virginia; a few years later, The Tempest was partly a response to a relief ship’s storm-driven beaching on Bermuda, eight hundred miles off the coast of present-day North Carolina. The excitement of discovery extended to more than geographical territory. For poets and playwrights this period promised another ‘brave new world’ in the rediscovery of the English language and nowhere is early modern England’s love affair with the vernacular’s power and flexibility more apparent than in Shakespeare. Many readers who tackle Shakespeare’s plays for the first time see his language as an obstacle to understanding. They look to ‘translations’ that rewrite the text according to contemporary usage and claim to ‘free’ Shakespeare from the prison of inscrutability. But Shakespeare without Shakespeare’s language is not Shakespeare. Any ‘translation’ lacks the multiplicity, resonance and sheer pleasure of the original text. This chapter introduces you to those pleasures and explains

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the linguistic tools Shakespeare relied on to individuate his characters and enliven their dialogue. Today English is universally recognized as an important, if not the most important, language worldwide. In the early sixteenth century, however, English was a newcomer. The longer established French and Italian languages offered richer vocabularies; Latin was the lingua franca of Europe. In addition to serving as the language of the Roman Catholic Church, Latin was the official language for government documents and diplomatic correspondence. At Cambridge and Oxford universities, as well as schools like the one Shakespeare attended in Stratford-upon-Avon, reading, writing and speaking were all conducted in Latin. By the time Shakespeare left school in the early 1580s he had read a host of classic Latin texts in the original, including Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, texts that inform many of his plays. But fortunately by that time English had also come into its own as a vehicle for great literature. The process had begun in the early sixteenth century and accelerated in 1533 when Henry VIII separated England from the Roman Catholic Church and established a Protestant Church of England. A central tenet of Protestant doctrine was the centrality of each individual’s relationship with God. Making the Bible available in the vernacular so that literate people of every class could read it for themselves fostered that relationship. With the Bible came other religious texts, books of rhetoric, political treatises, and eventually, poetry. Henry VIII was also determined to make England a centre of Renaissance culture and learning. He imported musicians and painters from the continent to his court, and many of his courtiers, especially Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, spent their leisure time writing English translations and imitations of Petrarch’s Italian love sonnets and circulated them in manuscript. By the time Shakespeare was in school, English poets like Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser were experimenting with the Italian sonnet form and, in Spenser’s case, the epic. They modified the verse forms of



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classical Latin literature and even borrowed from the Latin language to invent new words that would make English a more vibrant vehicle for literary expression. Shakespeare must have shared this excitement, for his earliest plays rely heavily, and sometimes satirize, the rhetorical tropes and techniques employed by his predecessors. By the time he wrote Antony and Cleopatra, he could seamlessly shift styles from character to character to indicate differences in personality and attitude. Throughout Shakespeare’s career, the English language was also undergoing a transition from Middle English usage to the linguistic forms we know today. Verbs are a case in point. Shakespeare usually uses the older verb forms ‘doth’ and hath’, but at other times he chooses the more modern forms ‘does’ and ‘has’. He maintains many of Middle English’s inflected endings so that our ‘I go, you go, he goes’ are sometimes ‘I go, thou goest, he goeth’. Shakespeare occasionally changes from the earlier form to the latter (and vice versa) depending on whether or not he needed an extra syllable to make his verse line metrical. More important, he also switches between an earlier and a modern form of the second person pronoun, ‘you’. We say ‘you’ when talking directly to another person and ‘your’ or ‘yours’ for the possessive pronoun. This modern usage was gradually supplanting the older pronouns of Middle English: ‘thee, thou, thy and thine’. Like the difference between the French ‘tu’ and ‘vous’, ‘thou’ was more informal and familiar, ‘you’ more formal and respectful. ‘Thou’ was used in personal conversation between equals, but also to address children and servants. Shakespeare uses ‘you’, for servants who are speaking to their masters. Just to add to the confusion, ‘thou’ was consistently used in prayers to God, as in the King James Bible. Shakespeare often takes advantage of these subtle differences, marking a change in two characters’ relationship simply by changing the pronoun one of them is using. In much of Antony and Cleopatra ‘you’ and ‘thou’ are interchangeable, but sometimes a shift suggests a change in tone. In 3.13.161–77, for example, Antony is furious at Cleopatra for sailing away during the battle of Actium. He

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addresses her with the formal ‘you’ in line 161 but later in the scene, after the lovers are reconciled, he switches to the more intimate form of address: ‘Where hast thou been, my heart? Dost thou hear, lady?’ (177). Contemporary English usage relies heavily on word order. Normally a sentence begins with a noun followed by a verb and ends with an object, as in ‘he cannot like her long’ (3.314). In sixteenth-century England, word order was less fixed and Shakespeare often varied it for rhetorical effect. Many sentences that seem confusing at first can be clarified once we identify what the subject, verb and object are. In 3.10.18–21, the excited Scarus describes what happened in the naval battle at Actium: She once being loofed, The noble ruin of her magic, Antony, Claps on his sea-wing and, like a doting mallard, Leaving the fight in height, flies after her. Scarus begins with a subordinate clause, ‘She once being loofed’. The Third Arden edition explains that ‘loofed’ is a nautical term indicating that Cleopatra’s ship has headed into the wind, away from the battle. Then, before Scarus names the subject of his sentence, ‘Antony’, he inserts a descriptive phrase: Antony is ‘The noble ruin of her magic’, i.e. her magic has ruined him. ‘Antony, / Claps’ finally provides a subject and verb, but they, too are interrupted with a comparison between Antony and a ‘doting mallard’. Then Shakespeare offers another modifier to describe Antony’s flight, the participial phrase, ‘Leaving the fight in height’. After all that, the sentence comes to a simple close with another verb, ‘flies after her’. Basically, this sentence states that Antony left the naval battle and sailed after Cleopatra’s ship, but the clauses that interrupt normal word order make Scarus’ speech seem rushed, almost breathless, and in this way they convey his anger and dismay at what has happened.



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The study of rhetoric, the art of persuasive writing, was a cornerstone of the early modern English curriculum and for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the meticulous arrangement of sentence structure was one of a writer’s important tasks. The goal was not to speak simply but to shape the language with amplitude and variety. Rhetorical tools included various types of repetition. For example, when a writer used the same word to begin two lines, he was using anaphora. Cleopatra uses this device effectively when she bids Antony farewell in act 1, scene 3: ‘Sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it; / Sir, you and I have loved, but there’s not it’ (89–90). Antony is angry and in a rush to leave, but Cleopatra wants to part on better terms. Repetition here is a delaying tactic, a way to make him stop and listen. In other cases, the repetition of parallel phrases adds emphasis, as in the series of imperative verbs Antony uses with the Messenger in act 1, scene 2: Speak to me home; mince not the general tongue; Name Cleopatra as she is called in Rome; Rail thou in Fulvia’s phrase, and taunt my faults With such full licence as both truth and malice Have power to utter (111-15). Another common rhetorical tactic is antithesis, an arrangement of clauses that seem to contradict each other. A typical antithesis might be phrased, ‘on the one hand […], but on the other […]’. Cleopatra employs this verbal tactic in her response to Alexas in act 1, scene 5: He [Antony] was not sad, for he would shine on those That make their looks by his; he was not merry, Which seemed to tell them his remembrance lay In Egypt with his joy (58–61). A third rhetorical tactic is paradox, a statement that at first glance seems contradictory but after further consideration

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reveals a surprising truth. Antony and Cleopatra’s most famous exploitation of paradox comes in Enobarbus’ claims that at Cydnus Cleopatra ‘did make defect perfection’ and that ‘she makes hungry / Where most she satisfies’ (2.2.241–7). The language of Shakespeare’s earlier plays is heavily dependent on such rhetorical devices. In an early comedy like Love’s Labours Lost, the dramatist seems more concerned about the way the characters speak than what they actually say. In contrast, Antony and Cleopatra makes less use of rhetoric than many other plays and places more emphasis on the give and take between characters. The text contains 470 split lines – lines that are divided between two or more speakers – nearly twenty per cent of all the lines and more than any other play in the canon (Chambers 2: 402). Consequently, when Shakespeare does employ a technique such as anaphora, antithesis or paradox, the passage stands out and we need to ask what that technique is intended to accomplish. This chapter relies heavily on a lively and accessible overview of Shakespeare’s style by Russ McDonald: Shakespeare and the Arts of Language, a book I highly recommend for serious students of Shakespeare’s love affair with words. McDonald explains that one aspect of English students’ rhetorical training in grammar schools was to practise exercises derived from Cicero that required them to argue for both sides of a political or philosophical position. This kind of exercise gave Shakespeare a ‘consciousness of the provisional nature of all philosophical positions’ as well as a ‘sense of contingency and the uncertainty of the world’ (McDonald 49). In a tragedy like Antony and Cleopatra, the language itself encourages the reader or spectator to participate in just this kind of internal disputation. Moreover, Shakespeare’s figurative language builds on the human tendency to find likeness in difference and difference in likeness. Seeing one thing often makes us think of something else that is similar, or perhaps different in an interesting way. When we meet someone new, for example, we often react, ‘He’s like so and so, but different in this respect ...’. As I hope to show, Shakespeare’s exploitation of



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metaphoric language conveys the same sort of contradictory – perhaps even anamorphic – readings of human experience that we find in his scenic design. We can appreciate the effects of Shakespeare’s poetic style by thoughtful and responsive reading, but if we want to understand the way he creates those effects, we have to ponder his choice of particular words and phrases. We can’t discuss those choices without using an agreed-upon literary vocabulary. Accordingly, this chapter includes many terms that may be unfamiliar to you. (Many of the definitions I use are taken from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, edited by Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray.) Remember, this technical terminology is simply a way to describe the linguistic tools in Shakespeare’s toolbox. Your response to Shakespeare’s text is what matters most, but you will be able to write about that response more persuasively if you employ this literary vocabulary and understand how poetic techniques shape our responses.

Feel the beat The great plays of ancient Greece and Rome studied in English schools and universities were written in verse. In the late sixteenth century, when English dramatists began to craft comedies and tragedies of their own, they looked to Greek and Roman plays for models and assumed that English drama should also be in verse. It took some time to find the format. Many plays from the 1560s and 70s were composed in rhymed lines of fourteen syllables. In this passage from Cambises, A Lamentable Tragedy Mixed Full of Pleasant Mirth, printed in 1569, a counsellor advises King Cambises to eschew vice: But then your Grace must not turn back from this pretended will; For to proceed in virtuous life employ endeavour still;

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Extinguish vice, and in that cup to drink have no delight; To martial feats and kingly sport fix all your whole delight (Adams 641). Each line is rhythmically similar and end-stopped with a strong punctuation mark, and the rhymed couplets contribute to the lines’ sing-song effect. This poetic style works well in a nursery tale where the goal is to make your auditor fall to sleep. In the theatre it is deadly. It wasn’t until the 1580s that playwrights Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe found a verse form that was close enough to everyday spoken English to sound natural: blank verse, the metrical form used by Shakespeare throughout his career. When English poets experimented with Latin verse forms, they found they could not replicate Latin’s quantitative meters, which depended on the length of time it takes to pronounce a particular syllable. Instead they focused on rhythmic alternation between stressed and unstressed syllables. The technical definition of blank verse is ‘unrhymed iambic pentameter’. Iambic refers to a particular metrical unit or foot, an iamb. Pentameter designates that each line of verse is composed of five poetic feet. The basic rhythm of an iambic pentameter line is an alternation between unstressed and stressed syllables, as in the five-foot line, ‘Ta-dum, Ta-dum, Ta-dum, Ta-dum, Ta-dum.’ This is also the predominant rhythm of spoken English. Still, just like the lines quoted above from Cambises, blank verse that sticks strictly to this pattern of alternation between unstressed and stressed syllables can be tedious. The variations and irregularities are what give the line verisimilitude. Like the steady beat of a musical score or the rhythm of percussion instruments accompanying rap, iambic pentameter provides a basic rhythm that anchors the line, while musical or tonal variations make the language seem natural. Without varied notes and changing rhythms, music would be dull indeed. The same is true of poetry. Over the course of his career Shakespeare learned the importance of such variations, and the later plays, including Antony and Cleopatra,



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rely heavily on irregular lines that do not fit a strict iambic pentameter pattern. To appreciate the way Shakespeare’s poetry is meant to sound, we must understand both the underlying iambic pattern and the intentional exploitation of metrical irregularities. The key is to say the line naturally without trying to force it into a strict iambic pattern. Although it is sometimes helpful to scan a line by marking where the stressed and unstressed syllables are, it is unnecessary if you remember that stressed syllables are usually the most important words in the line. They are the ‘taste’ words, verbs and nouns that convey meaning while prepositions and conjunctions simply serve as connecting tissue. One way to discern where the emphasis in a line should go is an acting technique called the ‘ladder’. You just say the line out loud ten times, each time emphasizing a different syllable. Try this and you will find that a shift in emphasis can change the line’s meaning. Take, for example, Cleopatra’s musings about Antony after he has left her for Rome: 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

O, Charmian, Where think’st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he? Or does he walk? Or is he on his horse? O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony! Do bravely, horse, for wot’st thou whom thou mov’st? The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm And burgonet of men! He’s speaking now, Or murmuring, ‘Where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ For so he calls me (1.5.19–27).

Do the ladder with line 20 and note the difference when you emphasize ‘Where’ instead of ‘think’st’. Spoken more naturally, line 20 starts with a regular ‘Ta-dum’ pattern, but at the question mark there’s a slight pause. This sort of mid-line pause is called a caesura; Shakespeare uses it to replicate natural speech, for most of us make little pauses as we gather our thoughts. The next sentence begins mid-line with a stressed syllable, ‘Stands’.

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It would be unnatural to leave this action verb unstressed and emphasize ‘he’; instead, Shakespeare reverses the iambic pattern by making ‘Stands’ a stressed syllable followed by ‘he’ which is unstressed. This kind of foot is known as a trochee. Thus the rhythm of the second half of line 20 is ‘Dum-ta, Ta-dum, Ta’ – stressed, unstressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed. Notice that the last syllable, the word ‘he’ is the eleventh syllable in what is supposed to be a ten-syllable line. This unstressed extra syllable is called a feminine ending, a variation on blank verse that Shakespeare frequently uses in his later plays, probably because feminine endings make blank verse seem less patterned and more like natural speech. Antony and Cleopatra contains over 600 feminine endings. We next see that line 21 is a regular iambic pentameter line with a caesura after ‘walk?’ The next line also seems regular until we come to ‘Antony’, which ends with two unstressed syllables. It is likely that these last two syllables of ‘Antony’ were run together, making line 22, like 20, conclude in a feminine ending. Another characteristic of the late plays is elision, a slur over unstressed syllables to make words fit the iambic pentameter rhythm. Sometimes an elision is carefully noted in the text with an apostrophe where the missing syllable should be. Shakespeare does this in line 23, with ‘wot’st’. ‘Wot’ is an early modern synonym for ‘to know’; ‘knowest thou?’ was a common way to ask, ‘do you know?’ Cleopatra asks the horse, ‘wotest’ or ‘knowest’ thou whom you’re carrying? But Shakespeare omits the ‘e’ and elides the word so it can be pronounced as one syllable. He does the same thing with the line’s last word, ‘mov’st’, an elision of ‘movest’. The line begins with a spondee – ‘Do brave’ – a foot consisting of two stressed syllables. When Shakespeare uses two or more one-syllable words in a row, as he does later in the same line with ‘wot’st thou whom thou mov’st’, each word is sounded separately as if it were underlined. Spondees slow down the line’s rhythm and add emphasis. Notice too that all but one of the lines in this passage end with a question mark, an exclamation or a comma. These lines



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are described as end-stopped because the punctuation calls for a break at the end of the line. In Shakespeare’s early plays the majority of lines were end-stopped, but as his career went on he began to carry phrases over from one line to the next, as he does in lines 24 and 25: ‘the arm / And burgonet of men!’ Enjambment is the term we use when the thought continues from line to line without a punctuation break. This, too, makes the blank verse line seem more natural. Shakespeare also seems to interrupt the iambic flow in line 26 by making the second foot consist of two unstressed syllables, what we call a pyrrhic foot: the last two syllables of ‘mur-mur-ing’. Pyrrhic feet speed up the pace and are often used to convey haste or excitement. If ‘mur-ing’ is indeed a pyrrhic foot, line 26 becomes extrametrical because it ends with an extra stressed syllable in ‘Nile’. The line would be scanned as Or murmuring, ‘Where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ Ta-dum, ta-ta, Dum-ta, Dum-ta, Ta-dum, Dum. But then again, ‘mur-ing’ might be elided and pronounced as one syllable. If so, line 26 is regular after all, and it concludes with a spondee in ‘old Nile’. Or murmuring, ‘Where’s my serpent of old Nile? Ta-dum, Ta- dum, Ta-dum, ta-ta, Dum-Dum. In either case, the line is irregular. The second way of scanning the line is probably the most sensible because it conforms more clearly to the iambic pattern, and places extra emphasis on ‘old Nile.’ But whether ‘mur-ing’ is elided into one syllable or a sounded pyrrhic foot of two syllables doesn’t really matter. As the ladder exercise demonstrates, any single line can be read in different ways. The study of Shakespeare’s metrics is not an exact science. We shouldn’t try to force the syllables into an iambic pattern, but speak them naturally, placing our emphasis on the words that convey information:

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concrete nouns, action verbs and descriptive modifiers. The crucial point here is that we must always be aware of the flexibility and fluidity of Shakespeare’s language. The many liberties Shakespeare takes with blank verse in Antony and Cleopatra show that at this stage of his career he didn’t mind breaking the rules to make the dialogue imitate the way people actually talk. Shakespeare loved to experiment with poetic language. In some of his earlier plays – Love’s Labours Lost or Romeo and Juliet for example – he embeds the same rhyming pattern that he used in his sonnets (abab cdcd efef gg) into the lovers’ language. In those plays, not to mention A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he also exploits paired iambic pentameter lines that end in rhymes, rhymed couplets, to convey the lovers’ mutual obsession with each other. Shakespeare uses very few rhymed couplets in Antony and Cleopatra, but occasionally he inserts one at the end of a scene, as he does in 4.15.94–5: after Antony’s death Cleopatra tells Iras and Charmian as his body is carried offstage, ‘Come, we have no friend / But resolution and the briefest end’ (94–5). The tragedy’s final scene, 5.2, concludes with Caesar’s pronouncement, ‘Come, Dolabella, see / High order in this great solemnity’ (364–5). At the Globe, where there were no curtains to mark divisions between scenes or to indicate the performance’s conclusion, a rhymed couplet was often used to signal a break in the action or the play’s ending.

Prose As I noted in Chapter 1, the Folio’s anomalies make the text’s lineation imprecise and line numbers will vary from edition to edition. Here I will use the statistics established early in the twentieth century by the meticulous scholar E. K. Chambers in his two-volume study of Shakespeare’s life and work, William Shakespeare, but other sources may differ slightly. According to Chambers Antony and Cleopatra contains a total of 3059 lines; 2731 lines are in blank verse, forty in rhymed couplets,



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and 287 in prose (2:398–405). In other words, 8.2 per cent of Antony and Cleopatra was written in prose. Whatever edition you are using, you can identify which lines are prose and which are poetry by looking at the way they appear on the page. Each line of verse begins with a capital letter and there is usually some white space at the end of the line. Prose runs to a justified right margin and only capitalizes words that would normally be capitalized within the sentence. It is often said that Shakespeare uses prose to indicate that a speaker comes from a lower social class. This certainly seems the case in 5.2. when the Clown brings Cleopatra a basket of figs containing the fatal asps. The clown is introduced as a ‘rural fellow’ (232) and his speech reflects that. But it does even more. Speaking in prose is appropriate for someone who likes to talk so much that he runs away with the conversation. Consider the Clown’s response to Cleopatra’s simple question as to whether he has the ‘pretty worm of Nilus’ with him: Truly, I have him; but I would not be the party that should desire you to touch him, for his being is immortal. Those that do die of it do seldom or never recover (244–7). In his own rambling way the Clown assures Cleopatra that the asps he brings offer a certain but painless death. His use of the word ‘immortal’ when he means ‘mortal’ – sure to cause death – is a malapropism, a misunderstanding of appropriate word choices that is characteristic of Shakespeare’s comic characters, such as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. The Clown’s humorous musings seem at first glance to interrupt the play’s tragic momentum, but instead they intensify it, especially because Cleopatra’s responses to his chatter convey her impatience. The clown’s unwitting use of the word ‘immortal’, as the Third Arden edition observes, is surprisingly accurate: Cleopatra seeks immortality through the asp’s bite. There are many other reasons why Shakespeare might have chosen to vary his text and occasionally switch from verse to

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prose or vice versa. Prose is suitable for informal occasions when conversation is leisurely and less intense. In Antony and Cleopatra prose is used for conversational badinage and in Enobarbus’ sarcastic and sexually charged commentary. It is important to recognize a shift from blank verse to prose because such a transition signals a change of pace or emotional tone. Let’s look at how Shakespeare handles both prose and verse in act 1, scene 2. The scene opens with Enobarbus (perhaps accompanied, as I noted in Chapter 1, by three Romans, Lamprius, Rannius and Lucillius) along with Cleopatra’s attendants, Charmian, Iras, Mardian and Alexas. With them is a Soothsayer. In a telling contrast to the previous scene, which was entirely in blank verse, the first eighty lines of 1.2. are in prose. Certainly prose works best for the kind of bawdy banter we hear from Charmian, Iras and Alexas. Charmian teases Alexas: ‘Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas’ and asks to have the Soothsayer tell her fortune. Like most fortune-tellers, the Soothsayer responds in riddles. He seems to tell her what she wants to hear, but an audience familiar with the story of Antony and Cleopatra knows that there is a double meaning to his words. Furthermore, Shakespeare sets the Soothsayer’s words apart by writing them in nearly perfect iambic pentameter lines. Line 32, for example, ‘You shall outlive the lady that you serve’ can be scanned ‘Ta-dum, Ta-dum, Ta-dum, Ta-dum, Ta-dum’. (His prediction turns out to be true; in 5.2 Charmian does die after Cleopatra, but only by a moment or two.) The Soothsayer’s cryptic verse lines stand out in stark contrast to Charmian, Iras, and Alexas’ lighter, sexually charged prose. Shakespeare switches back and forth between prose and verse here to call attention to the contrast. The next segment of the scene begins with Cleopatra’s entrance at line 81. In curt interchanges with Enobarbus and Charmian, she asks for Antony and then exits at line 93. After this series of short lines, the scene shifts to Antony’s long-delayed interview with the messenger from Rome. Their



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conversation is basically in blank verse, with several short and split lines (the Messenger’s ‘Ay’ in line 95 for example) that suggest excited and engaged conversation. Line 110 is a telling use of a split line. The Messenger starts, ‘Whilst’, but Antony interrupts him and completes his thought: ‘“Antony”, thou wouldst say – ’ and the Messenger interjects, ‘O, my lord!’ Antony’s interjection signals that he recognizes how his reputation in Rome has suffered because of his dalliance with Cleopatra, a recognition he elaborates in lines 111–17. The pace quickens when two more Messengers bring further news. Then Antony, left alone to contemplate what he has learned, reflects in a brief soliloquy about Fulvia’s death. Blank verse is appropriate for such ruminations, but they too are interrupted when Enobarbus replies in prose to Antony’s command. From 138 to 177 Enobarbus’ comments are loaded with sexual innuendoes. He begins by making fun of Cleopatra’s theatrics; her sighs and tears ‘are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report’. Once he learns of Fulvia’s death, the double entendres follow fast and furious. He sardonically remarks that when one woman, like an old garment, is taken from a man, fortunately there are ‘“members” [i.e. penises] to make new’. It would be a tragedy if Fulvia were the only woman, ‘a cut [cunt], and the case [vagina] to be lamented’. To show that Antony tires of Enobarbus’ bawdy jokes and tries to get the conversation back to serious matters, Shakespeare switches in lines 178–9 to verse. In many editions Antony’s line 178, ‘The business she hath broached in the state’, is printed with an accent over the second syllable of broachèd, which makes the line metrically regular. This added stress further contrasts Antony’s speech with Enobarbus’ prose reply, ‘And the business you have broached here cannot be without you’ (180–1), where the same syllable is not stressed. As the Third Arden editor observes in his commentary, Enobarbus’ response is ‘another bawdy pun. Antony uses the word to mean “set on foot, started”, but Enobarbus in the sense of “pierced, stabbed, thrust through”’ (105). The missing accent on ‘broached’ signals the difference. Finally,

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Antony has had enough. ‘No more light answers’. The initial spondee, ‘No more’, underscores the change of subject, and the scene concludes in blank verse. As 1.2 richly demonstrates, a shift from verse to prose or vice versa is seldom accidental. When you notice such a transition, ask yourself why Shakespeare made that choice. What kind of change in the scene’s dynamics does it indicate? What does it reveal about the characters at that point in time?

Sound and sense In addition to Shakespeare’s skilful manipulation of the metrical effects I’ve just described, he also relied on an arsenal of sound effects to differentiate the play’s speakers and underscore their words’ emotional impact. Shakespeare’s blank verse was primarily written to be spoken, not to be read silently. If we read the text to ourselves, we generally overlook the way words sound, but speaking the words out loud, or listening to a good recording, can help us recognize this other aspect of Shakespeare’s artistry. The last part of act 5, scene 2, is particularly rich in such sound effects, and a close examination of Cleopatra’s diction in her final moments illustrates the variety of choices Shakespeare had at his disposal. For example, Cleopatra’s final speeches are full of onomatopoeia – words whose sound replicates what they mean. Before the clown enters at line 240, she tells Charmian and Iras what will happen if they are led in triumph to Rome: ‘Some squeaking Cleopatra [will] boy [her] greatness / I’th’ posture of a whore’ (219–20). Sounded out loud, ‘squeak’ sounds exactly like what it is – a squeak. Shakespeare’s word choice adds to the line’s irony, because the boy actor who portrayed Cleopatra in the original Globe performance was a skilled female impersonator and presumably did not ‘squeak’. Later, after Iras falls dead, Cleopatra thinks of death as being like a lover’s ‘pinch’ (294). She compares the aspic to a baby that



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‘sucks’ the nurse asleep (309). These word choices – ‘squeak’, ‘pinch’ and ‘sucks’ fuse the sense with the sound. In addition, many of Cleopatra’s final lines exploit alliteration, the repetition of initial consonant sounds. You are probably familiar with tongue-twisters such as ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’. Like tongue-twisters, alliterative phrases can’t be sounded quickly; by slowing the speaker down, they ensure that the words will be clearly articulated. In lines 301–2 Cleopatra imagines meeting Antony in the afterlife and his kiss, which is her ‘heaven to have’. The repeated ‘h’ and ‘v’ sounds slow the actor down and allow Cleopatra to savour the thought of Antony’s kiss. In the next lines she invokes the aspic, ‘Come, thou mortal wretch, / With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate / Of life at once untie’. Here the repetition of ‘t’ forces Cleopatra to articulate the words, as if she is indeed longing for what the asp can provide, the release of the soul from the body. Then she replicates the snake’s hiss in lines 306–7 by calling Caesar ‘ass / Unpolicied’. As she holds the asp, she asks, ‘Dost thou not see my baby at my breast / That sucks the nurse asleep?’ Again, Cleopatra must linger over the repeated ‘b’ sounds, and the resulting effect is like a crooning lullaby. Cleopatra’s diction also makes good use of consonance, the repetition of a final consonant in words that sound alike, but do not rhyme. In lines 284–5, for example, she envisions Antony after death; ‘I hear him mock / The luck of Caesar’. The harsh ‘k’ sounds underline her scorn for Octavius. Later, in line 301, worried that Iras will meet Antony in the other world before she can get there, she cries, ‘If she first meet the curlèd Antony, / He’ll make demand of her and spend that kiss / Which is my heaven to have’. Charmian’s lines are equally rich with repeated sounds. After Iras falls dead, Charmian responds, ‘Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say / The gods themselves do weep! (298–9). Her pace slows over ‘thick cloud’ partly because both syllables are stressed in a spondee, but also because the alliterated ‘k’ sounds must be carefully articulated. Then, with

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her ‘rain, that I may say’ Shakespeare employs assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds, here the ‘a’ in ‘rain’, ‘may’ and ‘say’ (the latter two words another spondee). When Cleopatra expires, Charmian gently closes her eyes and again repeats another vowel sound in a kind of lullaby: ‘Downy windows, close’. Cleopatra’s death is the tragedy’s culmination. The words spoken in this scene fashion the image that Antony and Cleopatra wish to leave behind – transcendent, godlike figures whose love will endure even after death. Consciously or unconsciously, Shakespeare’s exploitation of sound effects transforms Cleopatra’s last lines into an incantation, calling upon Death to take her and Antony to welcome her to a new, more glorious existence. Moreover, the rich diction Shakespeare provides for Cleopatra and Charmian contrasts with Caesar’s straightforward lines 352–65 that end the play, setting up a final contrast between the Egyptian Queen and the Roman conqueror.

Figurative language Sound effects are but one aspect of Shakespeare’s poetic repertoire. Even more important is imagery, language that creates a visual picture or sensual impression in the auditor’s mind. Imagery draws upon the five senses of sight, taste, touch, smell and sound to make the character’s thoughts and feelings immediate to the audience. In 2.5, for example, instead of telling the Messenger, ‘Hurry up. I can’t wait to hear news of Antony’, Cleopatra demands, ‘Ram thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears / That long time have been barren’ (24–5). This is figurative language. The violent act of ramming the tidings is not literal, but the phrase graphically conveys Cleopatra’s impatience for news from Antony. She wants the tidings NOW. The use of ‘fruitful’ to describe the news she will receive suggests the sexual intensity of her longing for Antony



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– without him she is barren. Shakespeare uses such imagery to reveal Cleopatra’s state of mind while Antony is away in Rome. Imagery’s impact becomes particularly clear when we compare Plutarch’s prose narration of Cleopatra’s arrival at Cydnus with the poetry Enobarbus uses to describe the same scene in act 2, scene 2. Plutarch’s explains: [Cleopatra decided to take] her barge in the river of Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, oboes, citherns, viols, and such other instruments as they played upon in the barge (Bullough 5:274). Plutarch’s straightforward account is organized like a list of features in a catalogue. Enobarbus notes the same details, but he paints a more vivid picture: 201 The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, 202 Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold; 203 Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that 204 The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, 205 Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made 206 The water which they beat to follow faster, 207 As amorous of their strokes (2.2.201–7). Here Shakespeare draws upon four of the five senses. You can feel the heat of the barge as it ‘burned’ on the water (touch) and see (sight) the gold of the ship’s stern, the purple sails and the silver oars. The wind wafted the perfume of the sails (smell), while the music of flutes (sound) kept time for the rowers. In addition, Shakespeare employs a series of tropes, or figures of speech, to create images of the scene in the hearer’s mind. The word ‘trope’, as McDonald observes, comes from the Latin word for ‘turn’; tropes ‘turn a word away from

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its literal or everyday meaning’ (54). Tropes offer the reader or auditor the pleasure of recognizing the likeness between seemingly different things. More than that, tropes complicate and enrich our understanding of the speaker’s frame of mind. In the scene Enobarbus describes, Cleopatra sits on a small boat, a barge. But look what Shakespeare does with that. The barge ‘burned’ on the water. This is a metaphor – a comparison of dissimilar objects. The barge is not literally burning, but it seems to be when the sun shines on it. Not only is Cleopatra sitting on the barge, as Enobarbus views her he is dazzled by the sight. In a simile, a type of metaphor that announces itself by ‘like’ or ‘as’, Shakespeare compares the barge to a ‘burnished throne’, underscoring Cleopatra’s royal status. The barge’s purple sails are so fragrant that the winds whip after them as if they were love-sick. Here Shakespeare attributes human characteristics to a non-human natural force, the wind; this technique is called personification. The water, too, is personified; like the wind, it is ‘amorous’ of the oars’ strokes. These images and the rhythm of Enobarbus’ blank verse lines are palpably sensuous, even erotic, and they imply that nature itself is in love with Cleopatra. We often use tropes in everyday speech, but most of our metaphors are clichés. ‘John eats like a pig’ uses ‘like’, so it is a simile that tells us about the sloppy way John eats. ‘He is a pig’ is a metaphor. The sentence doesn’t use ‘like’ or ‘as’, and so its meaning is not limited to a one-on-one comparison. In the metaphor John is imagined as a pig – his shape, manners, vocal expression and lack of cleanliness could all be piggish. And because ‘pig’ is a stale metaphor that has also been widely used to describe men’s mistreatment of women, the sentence can suggest other meanings as well. A simile is easy to identify because it signals the two points of comparison with ‘like’ or ‘as’. Metaphors need more unpacking because they radiate on many different levels. Metonymy is another common trope that makes one thing refer to another. For example, in the United States the name of the executive mansion, the White House, is frequently used as



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shorthand for the President or his staff. The White House is literally just a house, but figuratively it can stand for the entire executive branch of the government. Synecdoche is a subset of metonymy that uses the part to stand for the whole. When we refer to a car as ‘wheels’, a boat as a ‘sail’, or a human being’s emotions as the ‘heart’, we are using synecdoche. As the poet John Thompson and Shakespearean scholar Ann Thompson point out in their overview of metonymy in Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare consistently uses smaller parts to suggest a larger whole: his ‘language moves between the wide world of an imagined Mediterranean and the small “world” that is the human body’. A telling example occurs in Antony’s final words to Cleopatra. He tells her, ‘I am dying, Egypt, dying’ in 4.15.18 and repeats that haunting phrase again in 4.15.43. The Thompsons claim that this is metonymy: ‘Cleopatra is not Egypt, so it is a figure; she is not like Egypt, so it is not a metaphor; but she is Egypt insofar as she is Egypt’s ruler: she is a regal part for the whole’. It is hardly surprising that Antony would equate Cleopatra with Egypt in his dying breath, because this association permeates much of the play’s language. Cleopatra is called a ‘gipsy’ in 1.1.10 and 4.12.28, a word that originally meant ‘Egyptian’ but in the sixteenth century had come to be associated with wandering vagabonds who were often characterized as lascivious in their behaviour. In 1.2.122, Antony excoriates the ‘Egyptian fetters’ that keep him tied and in 3.11.51 and 56 he directly refers to Cleopatra as ‘Egypt’. In 3.13.81–2, Cleopatra sends word to Caesar asking to know her fate, ‘the doom of Egypt’. While Cleopatra is not literally Egypt, she represents the nation and with her death the country loses its independent identity. Similarly, repeated referrals to Octavius as simply ‘Caesar’ equate him with Rome and establish our sense of Rome as a burgeoning empire. Antony and Cleopatra’s opening lines are rich in metaphoric language, and they demonstrate the way simple word choices radiate meanings. As if he is answering a question from Demetrius about Antony in a conversation that began offstage and continues as they enter, Philo explains:

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1 Nay, but this dotage of our general’s 2 O’erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes, 3 That o’er the files and musters of the war 4 Have glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn 5 The office and devotion of their view 6 Upon a tawny front. His captain’s heart, 7 Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst 8 The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper 9 And is become the bellows and the fan 10 To cool a gipsy’s lust. A metaphor in the first sentence compares Antony’s devotion to Cleopatra to the overflow of a river or stream, the first of many references to Egypt’s Nile River whose yearly floods ensure fertile crops. ‘Those goodly eyes’ is a synecdoche, the eyes standing for Antony who looks over the ‘files and musters’, which represents the whole action of battle. Those eyes that ‘glow like plated Mars’, is a simile comparing Antony to Mars, the Roman god of war, a trope that is repeated several times later in the play. Instead of surveying the battle, those eyes now gaze on ‘a tawny front’, another synecdoche with ‘front’ referring to the whole body of Cleopatra, with ‘tawny’ establishing her outsider status through skin colour. The next sentence, from lines 6 to 10, uses another synecdoche, ‘his captain’s heart’, a phrase that stands for Antony in his role as military commander. That heart is personified as a fighter that once had fought so bravely that he broke the buckles on his armour. Now, instead that heart [Antony] is, metaphorically speaking, a bellows that enflames the fire as well as the fan that cools it. The fire, in turn, stands for sexual desire, specifically ‘a gipsy’s lust’. The word ‘gipsy’ or ‘gypsy’, derived from ‘Egyptian’ as a term of contempt, is used again in 4.12.29 when Antony thinks Cleopatra has betrayed him. Note also the diction Philo uses in describing Antony before he succumbed to Cleopatra; his eyes, that ‘glowed like plated Mars’ were ‘goodly’; they exercised ‘office’, i.e. their duty, and ‘devotion’. He fought ‘great fights’, but now he foregoes all



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‘temper’, i.e. temperance, and is servant to the sexual requirements of a lustful gypsy. Shakespeare makes Philo’s opening speech rich in figurative language to highlight his disgust and dismay at the transformation he sees in Antony. Each of these tropes contributes to our initial impression of Antony. They stimulate our imagination in that moment, but when they recur later in the play, they can also be seen as symbolic. Tropes that are repeated lend Antony and Cleopatra’s sprawling action coherence and shape our responses to the characters. References to the sea are a case in point. As G. Wilson Knight, a twentieth-century literary scholar who revelled in Shakespeare’s imagery, explains, the play’s language gives ‘an impression of wide empire and vast issues at stake in the wars waged by sea and land; continued reference to the sea helps to vitalize this effect’ (206–7). The action chronicles voyages by sea from Egypt to Rome and back again, features a drinking scene on Pompey’s galley and concludes with battles fought on land and sea. Imagery of the sea’s vast reach is even more potent. Menas tempts Pompey to murder the newly reconciled triumvirate in 2.7: ‘Thou art, if thou dar’st be, the earthly Jove, / Whate’er the ocean pales or sky inclips / Is thine, if thou wilt ha[ve]’t’ (68–70). If Pompey kills Antony, Lepidus and Caesar, he will rule the entire world. Later, as Antony looks back on his military career, he recalls that with his sword he ‘Quartered the world and o’er green Neptune’s back / With ships made cities’ (4.14.59–60). Knight also observes that along with sea imagery, frequent references to the ‘world’ highlight ‘the protagonists’ almost superhuman power and nobility’ (209). Philo begins the play by calling Antony ‘The triple pillar of the world’, now ‘transformed / Into a strumpet’s fool’ (1.1.11–12). Cleopatra proclaims that Antony is the ‘greatest soldier of the world’ (1.3.39); he later claims to have lived as ‘the greatest prince o’th’ world’ (4.15.56); and after his death, Cleopatra eulogizes him: ‘His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm / Crested the world’ (5.2.81-2). In contrast to such ‘world’ imagery, repeated metonymies of eating and feasting signify the satisfaction of physical

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needs, particularly sexual appetite. Not only does Shakespeare present scenes of actual feasting and drinking – most in Egypt but also the drunken festivities on Pompey’s galley – he uses poetic imagery to connect Cleopatra with food. Pompey prays for Cleopatra to keep Antony in Egypt: Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts; Keep his brain fuming. Epicurean cooks Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour (2.1.23–6). At Cydnus, Enobarbus explains, Antony went to feast with Cleopatra ‘And, for his ordinary, pays his heart / For what his eyes eat only’ (2.2.235–6). He concludes, ‘Other women cloy / The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry / Where most she satisfies (246–8). Later Enobarbus describes Cleopatra as Antony’s ‘Egyptian dish’ (2.6.128). Angered at Cleopatra for allowing Thidias to kiss her hand, Antony cries, ‘I found you as a morsel, cold upon / Dead Caesar’s trencher’ (3.13.121––2). But at Cleopatra’s death, she eschews food: ‘Sir, I will eat no meat; I’ll not drink, sir’ (5.2.48). No longer a creature of fleshly appetites, she becomes ‘fire and air’; her ‘other elements’ she gives to ‘baser life’ (5.2.288–9). The instrument of Cleopatra’s liberation is the bite of a poisonous snake. Snakes were sacred to the Egyptian goddess Isis, with whom Cleopatra identifies. Images of snakes recur throughout the play, particularly in reference to her. Indeed, she calls herself the ‘serpent of old Nile (1.5.26), and when the Messenger angers her in act 2, scene 5, with news of Antony’s marriage, she exclaims, ‘Melt Egypt into Nile, and kindly creatures / Turn all to serpents! (78–9). If only the Messenger were lying, she says, it wouldn’t matter if ‘half my Egypt were submerged and made / A cistern for scaled snakes’ (94–5). Yet it is a real snake, ‘the pretty worm of Nilus’ (5.2.242) that frees her from the flesh. The serpent’s association with Isis, a goddess of fertility, suggests its phallic properties, but Shakespeare’s Christian audience would remember that



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Satan appeared to Eve in the Garden of Eden as a serpent. To many, the serpent’s sinuous movements, its colour and shape, are sinister and mysterious, as is Cleopatra to her Roman opponents. These are but a few of the tropes Shakespeare uses to establish the play’s ‘atmosphere of extravagance, exoticism and cosmic scope’ (McDonald 65). As you read through the play, make a note of the images you find and see if any are repeated or connected to a particular character. I’ve highlighted some of the tropes that are associated with Antony and Cleopatra, but what about Octavius Caesar? How is he represented through imagery? Is his characteristic way of speaking different from Antony and Cleopatra’s?

Mythmaking One of the most perceptive literary critics to tackle Antony and Cleopatra, Janet Adelman, explains its anamorphic quality as ‘its power to assert that the protagonists are at once entirely human and larger-than-life, that they are both lascivious adulterers and virtually mythic natural forces’ (96). Shakespeare conveys such contradictory impressions through hyperbole, language that deliberately exaggerates for effect. When the exaggeration clearly belies known facts, it is usually meant to be humorous or ironic. Enobarbus’ depiction of Cleopatra’s tearful passions in 1.2 is a case in point. He says, ‘We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her. If it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove’ (153–8). By the end of the sixteenth century, metaphors that compare sighs to windy storms and tears to tempests had long circulated in English poetry, particularly Petrarchan love sonnets, and become hyperbolic clichés. Enobarbus uses them ironically, adding an extra dose of hyperbole by concluding if her tears are indeed calculated, she

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has power to make it rain equal to that of Jove. Enobarbus’ sardonic observations imply exactly the opposite of what they say. Cleopatra’s tantrums are actually nothing but a performance, calculated to win Antony’s attention. At other times, hyperbole serves a more serious purpose, especially in Antony and Cleopatra. While Roman characters tend to dismiss the protagonists’ love as a shameful affair, Antony and Cleopatra repeatedly describe their relationship in hyperbolic terms. When Cleopatra asks Antony how much he loves her in the first scene, he replies ‘There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned’. There are no limits to this love, or if there are, ‘Then thou needs find out new heaven, new earth’ (1.1.15 and 17). As Antony is about to depart for Rome, Cleopatra recalls, ‘Eternity was in our lips and eyes, / Bliss in our brows’ bent; none our parts so poor / But was a race of heaven’ (1.3.36–8). According to both Antony and Cleopatra, their love is extraordinary; ‘the world to weet / We stand up peerless’ (1.1.40–1). The lovers’ adulterous liaison, Antony’s abandonment of his military duties, Cleopatra’s treatment of the Messenger, her flight and Antony’s defeat at the battle of Actium, his anger at Thidias and his botched suicide – all seem to contradict the protagonists’ grandiose self-representation. Still, after all that happens, in the final scene Cleopatra’s hyperbolic language reasserts their largerthan-life reality. In her dream of Antony, she tells Dolabella, ‘His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck / A sun and moon which kept their course and lighted / The little O, the earth’ (5.2.78–80). Compared to Antony, the earth is paltry. Indeed, ‘His legs bestrid the ocean’ and ‘He was as rattling thunder’ (81, 85). Showing a touching awareness of her own hyperbole, she concludes by asking Dolabella, ‘Think you there was or might be such a man / As this I dreamt of?’ (92–3). Dolabella answers truthfully, ‘Gentle madam, no’, but Cleopatra insists that the Antony she imagines – and we are asked to imagine – surpasses any man found in nature. This is the man Cleopatra dresses to meet as she dons her crown and royal robes. ‘Husband, I come,’ she exclaims, and



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in this simple phrase she proclaims the transcendence of their union. In addition to hyperbole, Shakespeare frequently adds a superhuman resonance to Antony and Cleopatra through references to the ancient gods and goddesses of Rome and Egypt, drawing on myths that many in his audience would have learned at school by reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses or other classical texts. An allusion is an indirect reference to a person, god, event, or narrative that the author believes the reader or audience will recognize and understand. These allusions add extra layers of meaning to the language because the audience brings to them their own associations with the god or person referenced. Of course it is hardly surprising that a tragedy set in ancient Rome and Egypt should invoke mythological figures worshipped within those historic cultures. Certainly the play’s geography determines Shakespeare’s choice of some allusions. Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, understandably presides over the feasting and drinking on Pompey’s galley in 2.7. As Adelman astutely observes in her book-length study of the play, the way we read Cleopatra is also ‘partly shaped by Isis, goddess of the Nile, the earth, and the moon, nurse of all life and patroness of generation, who almost always appears accompanied by serpents’ (81). According to Egyptian myth, after her brother and husband Osiris was murdered, Isis brought him back to life. The worship of Isis particularly resonated during the Ptolemaic dynasty, when succession to the throne involved the royal sister’s marriage to her brother and their joint rule. The connection between Isis and Cleopatra is apropos, because under Julius Caesar’s tutelage she had arranged for her brother’s death in order to rule Egypt alone. In Antony and Cleopatra Octavius reports that Cleopatra appeared with Antony in the public marketplace ‘in th’ habiliments of the goddess Isis’ (3.6.16) and Antony called her ‘Thetis’ in 3.7.60, which, as the Third Arden editor notes, was another name for Isis. Cleopatra, like Isis, is associated with fertility, femininity and the changing moon. After the loss at Actium, Antony compares Cleopatra

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with ‘our terrene moon’ that is ‘now eclipsed’ (3.13.158), but as she prepares to die, she proclaims, ‘Now from head to foot / I am marble-constant. Now the fleeting moon / No planet is of mine’ (5.2.238–40). We have already seen that Cleopatra is, in a sense, Egypt, so it is not surprising that she would want to appear as the Egyptian goddess Isis. While Cleopatra frames herself as the Egyptian Isis, Antony lays claim to the Roman Hercules, the son of Jupiter renowned for his physical strength and the many seemingly impossible labours he accomplished. According to Plutarch, Antony prided himself on a relationship with Hercules: Now it had been a speech of old time, that the family of the Antonii were descended from one Anton, the son of Hercules, whereof the family took [its] name. This opinion did Antonius seek to confirm in all his doings: not only resembling him in the likeness of his body […] but also in the wearing of his garments (Bullough 5:257). Shakespeare capitalizes on Plutarch’s hint to associate Hercules with Antony throughout the play and to highlight the heroism that sets Antony apart from the lesser mortals Caesar, Lepidus and Pompey. Yet, as Adelman explains, the ‘legends associated with Hercules by the Renaissance made him as gigantic in folly as he was in strength and virtue’. His folly was especially evident in the story of his relationship with Omphale, the queen of Lydia, who made him her slave. Adelman continues, ‘his transformation into Omphale’s servant, dressed in woman’s clothes and performing domestic chores, was generally cited as evidence that even the strongest men are liable to be made effeminate by a failure to bridle their passion’ (81). In early modern England, men who neglected their manly duty for love were termed ‘effeminate’, as we can see from Romeo’s regret that he did nothing to stop the murder of his friend Mercutio: ‘Juliet, thy beauty hath made me effeminate’ (3.1.116). Plutarch connects Antony’s behaviour with Hercules’ enslavement to Omphale in his



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concluding assessment: ‘as we see in painted tables, where Omphale secretly stealeth away Hercules’ club, and took his Lion’s skin from him. Even so Cleopatra oftentimes unarmed Antonius, and enticed him to her, making him lose matters of great importance, and very needful journeys, to come and be dandled with her’ (Bullough 5:319). Like everything else in this play, allusions to Hercules are double-edged, suggesting on the one hand Antony’s greatness, but also implying his weakness in subordinating himself to Cleopatra. Cleopatra highlights Antony’s self-representation when she calls him a ‘Herculean Roman’ in 1.3.85, but after the battle of Actium he loses that Herculean power. Hearing the music of hautboys [oboes] under the stage, his soldiers wonder what the strange sound means and one answers, ‘’Tis the god Hercules whom Antony loved / Now leaves him’ (4.3.21–2). Once Antony is finally defeated at Alexandria, and thinking Cleopatra has betrayed him, he seems to agree: ‘The shirt of Nessus is upon me. Teach me / Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage’ (4.12.43–4). Here, the Third Arden edition notes, ‘Antony recalls the death of Hercules (otherwise called Alcides), whom he claimed as his ancestor […]. The centaur Nessus, whom Hercules had shot with a poisoned arrow, gave to Deianira, Hercules’ wife, a shirt soaked in his own poisoned blood, claiming that it would work as a love charm’. Desiring his love, she sent it to Hercules, but when ‘he put it on it burned and destroyed him’ (252). In this last burst of fury at what he thinks is another of Cleopatra’s betrayals, Antony seeks the role of ‘Hercules Furens’, who murders in godly rage. The most important mythical allusions in Antony and Cleopatra are to Venus and Mars. They represent mythologically the twin poles of Eros and Thanatos, sexual desire and what Freud called the ‘death wish’. Through erotic activity, Venus has the power to generate life; through violence, Mars can destroy life. Opposites by definition, they are nevertheless yoked together in human physicality and psychology. Next to Jupiter, Mars was the chief Roman god. The son of Juno, he was worshipped as the god of war and as a

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guardian of agriculture. Like Antony, he was portrayed as middle-aged and bearded. And like Antony, he engaged in an adulterous liaison with an enticing female. Shakespeare sets up the comparison in the play’s opening lines, when Philo says of Antony: ‘Those his goodly eyes, / That o’er the files and musters of the war / Have glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn […] Upon a tawny front’ (1.1.2–6). Enobarbus suggests that Antony ‘look over Caesar’s head / And speak as loud as Mars’ (2.2.5-6), and Cleopatra compares him to Mars in 2.5.117. As the goddess of love, Venus represented sexuality, beauty, and fertility. Born from the sea, she stood for the yielding, watery female principle that insured generation. According to a myth the Romans inherited from Greece, she was married to Vulcan, the god of fire, but enjoyed an adulterous affair with Mars. After Vulcan discovered the lovers together in bed, he forged a net of wire to entrap them. As a result of their affair Venus and Mars bore a son, the smiling but blinded Cupid (also known as Eros) whose arrows, shot indiscriminately, provoked erotic desire in those they wounded. The myth’s various narrative threads elaborate both the pleasure and the dangers of erotic play. Shakespeare elaborated on both in his narrative poem Venus and Adonis where, infatuated with the young Adonis, Venus recalls how she was entreated by Mars, ‘the stern and direful god of war / Whose sinewy neck in battle ne’er did bow, / Who conquers where he comes in every jar; / Yet hath he been my captive and my slave (97–100). Mardian establishes the comparison in act 1, scene 5, when he confesses that even though he is a eunuch, he has fierce affections and thinks ‘what Venus did with Mars’ (19). Enobarbus later describes Cleopatra as she appeared at Cydnus: ‘she did lie / In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue, / O’erpicturing that Venus where we see / The fancy outwork nature’. Around her stood ‘pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids’ (2.2.208–12). The humiliation Mars faced when caught in Vulcan’s net, disarmed and robbed of potency, parallels the story of Hercules’ subordination to



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Omphale, who forced him to dress in women’s clothing. Both narratives are implied in Antony and Cleopatra with references to the lovers’ exchange of costumes. Early on Caesar decries Antony for fishing, drinking, and wasting ‘The lamps of night in revel’. He ‘is not more manlike / Than Cleopatra, nor the Queen of Ptolemy / More womanly than he’ (1.4.5–7). Cleopatra describes their revels: ‘I drunk him to his bed / Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst / I wore his sword Philippan’ (2.5.21–3). Cleopatra thinks this is great fun, but in Caesar’s mind, Antony’s willingness to let his paramour wear the sword he used to conquer Brutus and Cassius at Philippi is an abandonment of his heroic, masculine identity – through this behaviour she becomes the man and he is effeminized. As Adelman observes, this exchange of clothing ‘suggests a disastrous exchange of sexual authority and consequently a violation of the proper hierarchical relation between man and woman’ (91). At the same time, the switch in clothing also reflects a playful, androgynous relationship that defies rigidly defined gender roles. Adelman concludes, ‘Antony and Cleopatra are not gods; and their transexuality must be seen in human terms. But the process of analogy with the gods suggests that they participate in the cosmic and natural harmonies signified by divine transexuality; and they must also be seen in that context’ (94–5). What Octavius sees as Antony’s loss of manhood may also be viewed as the acquisition of the generative principle embodied in Cleopatra. In this way Shakespeare exploits hyperbolic language and allusions to well-known myths to transform the physical bodies of actors walking and talking on a bare stage into a drama of cosmic significance. As McDonald explains, Shakespeare’s creation of illusions through language ‘affords us imaginative participation in another realm, a liberation from the restrictions of the material world’ (179). But that material world continually reasserts itself, forcing us into a double vision. Sometimes we see Antony and Cleopatra as paltry humans acting out a tacky love affair, sometimes we see them as akin to the gods. As Cleopatra says, if you look at Antony one

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way, he’s Mars, but if you take another perspective, he’s a Gorgon. Thus the play’s allusions to Hercules, Mars and Venus contribute to Antony and Cleopatra’s anamorphic construction of reality.

Wordplay Antony and Cleopatra’s exchange of clothing has serious implications, but it also indicates an element of play in their relationship. When Cleopatra describes how she and Antony feasted, drank, and walked incognito through the streets, she delights in the fun they had together. So, too, with Shakespeare’s language, which can be deadly serious yet playful at the same time. Enobarbus indulges in just this kind of playfulness when he describes Cleopatra to the rapt Agrippa and Maecenas in 2.2. The little boys who fanned Cleopatra as she sailed down the River Cydnus created a wind that ‘did seem to glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool and what they undid did’ (213–15). After Cleopatra hopped through the public street, she lost her breath, says Enobarbus: ‘she spoke and panted, / That she did make defect perfection’ (240–1). Enobarbus’ clever repetitions demonstrate his delight that, unlike his auditors, he was there, and he relishes being the one to tell the story. As Molly M. Mahood observes in her study of Shakespeare’s wordplay, Shakespeare especially liked to use one word to link different ideas or meanings in a pun, or what is sometimes called a quibble. The Bedford Glossary of Literary Terms defines the pun as ‘A play on words that capitalizes on a similarity of spelling and/or pronunciation between words that have different meanings’ (383). Punning has often been mistakenly described as the lowest form of humour. There are, of course, bad puns, the kind that makes the auditors wince. But a good pun is a sign of a quick and intelligent wit. In an instant the punster has to understand the relationship between



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words and concepts and interject an appropriate pun into the conversation. In Shakespeare wordplay furthers the dramatic action because characters’ intentional or unconscious puns often reveal their inner thoughts and feelings. For the audience or reader, recognizing such word games is not simply pleasurable; it reinforces our understanding of the ambiguity and fluidity of Shakespeare’s language. Sometimes Shakespeare’s puns are lost to us because English pronunciation has changed. For example, Scarus reports to Antony after the first battle of Alexandria: ‘I had a wound here that was like a T / But now ‘tis made an H’ (4.7.7–8). In Shakespeare’s day, ‘ache’ was pronounced with a soft c and sounded something like ‘aitch’, similar to the way we sound the letter ‘H’. At first glance, the battlefield seems like a strange place for punning. That may be exactly why Shakespeare gave Scarus these lines. The unexpected pun conveys the exuberance the soldier feels at their hard-fought victory, exuberance that is underscored with his closing lines: ‘We’ll beat ‘’em into bench-holes. I have yet / Room for six scotches more’ (4.7.9–10). Antony and Cleopatra depends less on wordplay than do many of Shakespeare’s earlier plays. The lovers are established when we first meet them, so there is no need for the kind of courtship through verbal sparring that we find with Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew or Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. The linguistic combat these earlier lovers waged was a safe way to express underlying sexual attraction. Often the characters use double entendres, dirty puns that pass the censor because one definition is obscene while another is perfectly innocent (McDonald 146). To be sure, there are dirty puns in Antony and Cleopatra. We have already discussed Enobarbus’ wordplay later in 1.2 when he describes Cleopatra’s ‘celerity in dying’ and jokes about Fulvia’s death (172–4). Cleopatra also enjoys erotically charged language as she waits for Antony’s return from Rome. She tells Mardian, ‘I take no pleasure / In aught an eunuch has’; ‘aught’ means ‘anything’ but in this case, it implies

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‘no-thing’ because the eunuch has no testicles. She asks him, ‘Hast thou affections?’ and when he replies that he does, she queries, ‘Indeed?’ Mardian replies with a pun, ‘Not in deed, madam, for I can do nothing / But what indeed is honest to be done’. The ‘deed’ he refers to is, of course, the deed that ‘Venus did with Mars’ (1.5.10–19), namely intercourse. This sexually charged language continues as Cleopatra imagines Antony on his horse, and then the ecstasy of having Antony on top, as it were: ‘O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!’ (22). A more serious pun is ‘Eros’, the name of Antony’s servant and also a reference to the Greek god of love. Shakespeare took the name ‘Eros’ from Plutarch, but unlike the source text, he makes the name resonate with its other connotation of erotic desire. Antony repeatedly calls for Eros in 4.14 as he prepares to take his own life, and when he promises to ‘be / A bridegroom in my death and run into’t / As to a lover’s bed’ (100–2), his language suggests a pun on ‘dying’ and coition. For Antony and Cleopatra, death is a release of the spirit from the body, akin in some ways to orgasm. Shakespeare’s exploitation of the multiple meanings of ‘Eros’ is just one example of what Mahood calls ‘associative wordplay’ whereby a word’s disparate significations link a character’s thoughts. She cites this speech from Antony after he returns from the battle of Alexandria believing Cleopatra has betrayed him: Here I am Antony, Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave. I made these wars for Egypt, and the Queen – Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine, Which, whilst it was mine, had annexed unto’t A million more, now lost – she, Eros, has Packed cards with Caesar, and false-played my glory Unto an enemy’s triumph (4.14.13–20). In the midst of his despair, Antony puns on ‘knave’ [jack], ‘queen’ and ‘heart’, which lead to the image of card-playing



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with Caesar, and wordplay on Caesar’s ‘triumph’ which can also be pronounced as ‘trump’. By winning the battle, Caesar has not only triumphed, he has ‘trumped’ Antony’s hand. Such card-playing imagery highlights the tragedy’s repeated emphasis on fortune. In this scene Antony believes as the Soothsayer told him earlier, that abetted by Cleopatra, Caesar holds the winning hand and that somehow the deck has been stacked against him (Mahood 21). He is addressing Eros, but nevertheless his juxtaposition of ‘she’ with ‘Eros’ suggests the erotic attraction to Cleopatra that has led to his downfall. Indeed, Antony’s words, intentional or not, reveal more about his psychological state than he realizes. Sometimes one word alone will imply a range of meanings. Cleopatra’s request to the asp she holds in act 5, scene 2, is a case in point: ‘Come, thou mortal wretch, / With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate / Of life at once untie’ (302–4). The Third Arden edition notes that while the word is now obsolete, it seems to have been in circulation before Antony and Cleopatra was written as a synonym for ‘intricate’. The knot that conjoins soul and body is indeed intricate and complex; it is ‘intrinsic’, essential to a person’s being, as well as intensely private. Here, Cleopatra’s choice of ‘intrinsicate’ – what poet John Donne termed ‘the subtle knot that makes us man’ – brings together a range of meanings in one word. In his early plays Shakespeare sometimes seems to revel in wordplay because he could, and in the comedies wordplay is a major source of fun. Later in his career the word games are often deadly serious, as in Macbeth where the hero misreads the witches’ prophecies because he takes their words as meaning one thing when they, in fact, mean something else. In Antony and Cleopatra most of the wordplay occurs in the Egyptian scenes, where the characters have the leisure to play games and pass the time. Octavius, in contrast, has no time for games, and Shakespeare crafts his language accordingly.

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Writing matters This chapter focuses on close reading, the detailed analysis of a particular text’s language with careful attention to its rhetorical and poetic style. Close reading demands thoughtful consideration of Shakespeare’s words and their context. Keep in mind that since Shakespeare’s time, the meanings of some English words have evolved. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the OED is an invaluable tool for examining those changes. The OED traces each word’s history from its initial introduction into English, whether from Anglo-Saxon or borrowed from another language, to its contemporary usage. Because the OED was initially compiled in the late nineteenth century, it occasionally privileges Shakespeare’s vocabulary, sometimes attributing the introduction of new words to him when they actually originated earlier. But for a comprehensive historical account of a word’s derivation, the OED provides a wealth of information. If the OED is not readily available at your library, you can find definitions for Shakespeare’s words online at www.shakespeareswords.com. This website also serves as a concordance. When you search for a particular word, the site will list every place in the Shakespeare canon where that word occurs. If you look for ‘intrinsicate’, for example, you will find that it appears in only one place, 5.2.303 of Antony and Cleopatra. If you want to discover how Shakespeare alluded to Hercules in other plays besides Antony and Cleopatra, you will find citations to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, All’s Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, Coriolanus and Cymbeline. Examining these passages will help you understand what general qualities Shakespeare associated with Hercules and provide a base for comparison when you consider allusions to Hercules in Antony and Cleopatra. It would be daunting, if not impossible, to identify all of the metrical techniques and tropes Shakespeare uses in Antony and Cleopatra. On the other hand, even in an



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extensive research paper you are not likely to focus on the entire play. There will be specific passages that you need to discuss in detail, and the best way to understand them is to start with the kind of close reading I have been doing in this chapter. 1 Begin by selecting one of the following two passages.

The first is the soliloquy Enobarbus speaks before he dies:

A. O sovereign mistress of true melancholy, The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me, That life, a very rebel to my will, May hang no longer on me. Throw my heart Against the flint and hardness of my fault, Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony, Nobler than my revolt is infamous, Forgive me in thine own particular, But let the world rank me in register A master-leaver and a fugitive. O Antony! O Antony! (4.9.15–26).

Cleopatra speaks as she stirs from a faint after Antony dies; she tells Charmian and Iras that she is

B. No more but e’en a woman, and commanded By such poor passion as the maid that milks And does the meanest chares. It were for me To throw my scepter at the injurious gods To tell them that this world did equal theirs Till they had stolen our jewel. All’s but naught; Patience is sottish, and impatience does Become a dog that’s mad. Then is it sin To rush into the secret house of death Ere death dare come to us? (4.15.77–86)

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Read the passage out loud. Identify where the punctuation calls for pauses and note the syllables that receive the most stress. Even if you don’t want to scan the lines, you can note any phrases that slow the rhythm down or speed it up. The next step is to make sure you understand exactly what is being said. Write a paraphrase in your own words. Look at what occurs immediately before and after this particular speech. How does your passage further the action? How do the words reflect the speaker’s attitude in this moment? (The speaker’s emotional attitude toward the subject at hand is often referred to as tone.) Now look at the sentence structure. Is it unusual? What rhetorical strategies is Shakespeare / the speaker using? Is there any repetition? Antithesis? Look at the passage again to see what imagery and tropes are employed. What specific kinds of comparisons are being made in metaphors and similes? How do they relate to the rest of the speech and overall enrich the meaning? Once you have answered all of these questions, you should ask yourself why this particular passage is important. What does it contribute to our understanding of the characters? How might it affect an audience? This is what I call the ‘so what’ question, that is, Why does it matter? If you have studied the passage this closely, you should be able to answer that question. You are now ready to write about this passage, and your answer to the ‘so what’ question will be your thesis, the central idea that holds your analysis together. The particular observations you have made about the speaker’s language are your raw material, the evidence that supports your thesis. Making a list



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or outline of those observations will then help you to organize your essay. 7 Once you have accomplished all these tasks you are ready to write a coherent and persuasive essay explaining this passage. In Chapter 4 we’ll look at similar steps you can take to write a more substantial research essay.

CHAPTER THREE

Language through time: Changing interpretations This chapter shifts from Shakespeare’s words to critical interpretations of Antony and Cleopatra as a whole. That does not mean the play’s ultimate meaning. Whenever students tell me what Shakespeare’s ‘message’ is, I remind them that he was a dramatist, not a philosopher or priest; his plays never convey one single, clearly defined ‘message’. Rather, Shakespeare crafted a range of characters whose dialogue and actions represent moments of human experience. No one character or passage can be said to speak for Shakespeare. To be sure, his dramas pose important questions but they do not offer clearly defined answers. Interpretations are left up to his readers and performers. At the same time, Shakespeare’s texts can’t mean just anything we want them to mean. While his language is multivalent and the characters often contradictory, our interpretations must be limited to what can be supported by the entire text, not just part of it. That’s why the first step in any critical analysis must always be to read the whole play as closely and carefully as we can. Once you have studied the text of Antony and Cleopatra, you need to learn what others have said about it. Admittedly, the number of books and articles written about any of Shakespeare’s plays is mammoth, and you may be tempted to skip secondary reading altogether in despair that anything

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new could be said about Antony and Cleopatra. Although the worst thing you can do in a research paper is to create a random pastiche of quotations from other people, selective secondary reading can help develop your ideas and stimulate some new ones. Reading the thoughts of others is not an end but a means to the most important goal – your own analysis. How, then, do you decide what to read? Much will depend on what aspect of the play you are exploring. Amid the wealth of scholarship available to you, select the tools that are most appropriate to the task at hand. Just as our own readings of the text are influenced by our circumstances – age, gender, ethnicity, social status, etc. – any article, book chapter, or monograph is contingent on when it was written, who wrote it, and its intended audience. This chapter examines various critical approaches, showing how they were shaped by the social and political contexts in which they were derived. It is not intended as a survey of Antony and Cleopatra criticism, something you can find in the opening section of Sara Munson Deats’ Antony and Cleopatra: New Critical Essays. Nor is it comprehensive. Think of this chapter instead as a toolbox. Some of the discursive tools I describe here will be helpful for one kind of project, others for something else. If you’re focusing on Cleopatra, for example, reading criticism that addresses gender will be a priority. If you want to write about Octavius, you should explore scholarship that examines the play’s politics, though even there you will find that gender still matters. Most of the important questions Shakespeare poses demand more than one mode of analysis, and often the critical approaches outlined here will overlap. Depending on the topic you wish to explore, you might want to combine several methods of literary analysis.



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Antony and Cleopatra after Shakespeare The history of critical interpretations of Antony and Cleopatra begins in the late seventeenth century, in a period known as the Restoration. In the 1640s England had undergone a civil war between Charles I and anti-royalists who wanted to abolish the monarchy and vest political authority in a parliament. Religious reformers led the parliamentary forces that controlled London, and after seizing power they enacted widespread social restrictions, even closing the theatres. As a result, the King’s Men was disbanded in 1642. Parliamentary forces beheaded Charles I in 1649, and not until 1660 was the monarchy restored with the return of his son Charles II from France. The Restoration of the monarchy was not all that changed. Charles II loved the theatre, and not long after his return two theatre companies were established under royal patronage, a new King’s Company and the Duke’s Company, named in honour of Charles’ brother, James, Duke of York. With the reintroduction of plays came new tastes and technologies that transformed the way Shakespeare’s plays were performed. The introduction of moveable scenery and indoor lighting meant that the continuous staging that moved rapidly from one locale to the next used in Antony and Cleopatra was no longer practical because pauses were needed for changes of scenery. The introduction of French neo-classicism meant a return to the unities of time, place and action (discussed in the Introduction), which made Antony and Cleopatra – whose action covers ten years and moves around the Mediterranean – obsolete. The most startling change, especially in regards to Antony and Cleopatra, was the introduction of female actors to perform the women’s roles. At Shakespeare’s Globe, as Sarah Deats observes, Cleopatra’s ‘sexual magnetism [was] developed not through her own actions and dialogue but through her effect on others’, particularly the ways she is described (45). On the Restoration stage, that sexual magnetism radiated instead

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from the female actor’s physicality. No longer would a transvestite actor wink knowingly at the audience as he expressed Cleopatra’s fear that in Rome, some squeaking Cleopatra would ‘boy my greatness / I’th’ posture of a whore’ (5.2.219– 20), as if to say ‘But of course you know that I really am that boy’. When the boy actor called attention to his underlying status, he also reminded the audience that they were seeing a performance, suggesting that gender itself is a sort of performance. The Restoration introduction of women on the stage shut down this sort of multi-layered metatheatricality. For Cleopatra, the shift was a disaster. The history of Antony and Cleopatra in performance from the eighteenth century to the present, demonstrates that most female actors impersonating Cleopatra felt compelled to convey her sexuality physically as well as vocally, a feat that very few of them have ever fully realized. Not surprisingly, as a result of these changes Restoration London’s leading playwright and England’s poet laureate, John Dryden, felt that Shakespeare’s original text was no longer serviceable and needed substantial revision. His dramatization of Antony and Cleopatra’s legend, All for Love, or the World Well-Lost, was published in 1678 and became synonymous for many readers and most theatre audiences with Shakespeare’s original tragedy. It was not until 1759 that portions of Shakespeare’s Folio text were integrated into theatrical productions. Antony and Cleopatra was performed in a hybrid text, part Shakespeare and part Dryden for the next century. Even into the early twentieth century, critical responses and performances continued to be shaped by Dryden’s version, so it is important to understand the changes he made. As a proponent of neo-classical rules, Dryden believed a stage play should follow the unities. In order to follow the unity of time, he restricted his play’s action to a single day, not long after Antony’s defeat at the battle of Actium. He adhered to the unity of action by omitting anything that smacked of satire or humour. He attained unity of place by setting all the



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scenes in Alexandria, moving the action only from one room to another in Cleopatra’s royal palace. He also reduced the cast to a dozen characters. Although Cleopatra is a speaking character and the play, like Shakespeare’s, concludes with her death, the spotlight throughout is on Antony, who vacillates between his passion for Cleopatra and his identity as a Roman military hero. Early on Ventidius, a Roman military officer loyal to Antony, paints Cleopatra as an effeminizing influence opposed to Roman masculinity: she has quite unmann’d him. Can any Roman see and know him now, Thus altered from the lord of half mankind, Unbent, unsinewed, made a woman’s toy, Shrunk from the vast extent of all his honours, And cramp’d within a corner of the world? (Dryden 53) After this confrontation with Ventidius (who in Dryden is a major character), Antony resolves to leave Cleopatra, return to his army, and mount a battle against Octavius’s forces. On her part, Cleopatra dotes on Antony. Her intriguing servant, the eunuch Alexas, wishes that she would forsake Antony and turn him over to Caesar in order to preserve some vestige of Egyptian political power, but he knows she will never abandon her lover. Opposed to Ventidius’ demand that Antony see reason, Cleopatra describes her love as a ‘noble madness’, a ‘transcendent passion […] quite out of reason’s view’ (64). Whereas Shakespeare’s Cleopatra never abandons her political objectives as Queen of Egypt, Dryden’s heroine lives solely for her love. As Dryden explains in his Preface, Antony and Cleopatra are ‘famous patterns of unlawful love’ and his purpose is to show the ‘excellency of the moral’ (32), that yielding to such passion leads to destruction. Dryden imposes the ‘moral’ most palpably by drastically enhancing the role of Octavia. She has only thirty-seven lines in Shakespeare’s text, but in All for Love she dominates an interview with Antony in act 3, entering with her two daughters

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to plead for Antony to abandon Cleopatra and return to her. Antony agrees: ‘I am vanquished; take me’ (Dryden 95). Thinking she has won, Octavia charges Cleopatra with using ‘lascivious art’ and ‘black endearments’ (97), framing Cleopatra as a seductive enchantress. Octavia, in contrast, is portrayed as the epitome of Roman virtue and chastity. In a society like England in the late seventeenth century, heterosexual marriage was privileged as the bedrock of society. One might – as did Charles II – take a mistress out of love or lust, but that mistress would never be respectable. As the mistress who seduces Antony from his Roman duties, Cleopatra is guilty of criminality. Dryden’s All for Love was popular with critics and theatre practitioners alike; from the Restoration into the twentieth century, many male critics, who were deeply invested in the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, were influenced by Dryden’s play and considered Antony the protagonist in Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra the seductive but fallen ‘other woman’. Even after 1759, when theatre manager David Garrick finally reintroduced Shakespeare’s text in a drastically cut script, Dryden’s version of Antony and Cleopatra’s tragedy shaped the way audiences and readers thought about the play. By then London’s theatres had been enlarged to accommodate crowds of 2,000 or more, and audiences expected to see extravagant scenery and costumes. Garrick, and those who followed him, tried to illustrate the exoticism of Egypt and the marble-like splendour of Rome through scene changes, not through language and action. Even in Garrick’s truncated text, passages from Dryden’s All for Love were substituted for Shakespeare’s original. Antony and Cleopatra remained Antony’s play, the tragic of a story of a man who gave himself to passion. Sometimes that passion was presented as transcendent love, but most often it was seen as the tragic flaw that caused the fall of a great military hero.



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Characterizing the characters Critical and theoretical approaches to Shakespeare’s plays, and literature in general, have evolved and expanded ever since Dryden re-wrote Antony and Cleopatra as All for Love. Starting in the early nineteenth century (before the study of English literature became a profession), writers on Shakespeare’s works generally examined his major characters, who were seen as ‘emblems of the play’s value systems’ (Deats 6). Eighteenth-century critics and editors like Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson took a moralistic view of Antony’s love affair, arguing that the tragedy illustrates the consequences of surrendering to illicit passion and choosing a life of pleasure rather than duty. They viewed Cleopatra less as a character in her own right and more as the instrument of Antony’s downfall. Critics praised Octavius, in turn, for representing the counter claims of duty and honour. With the rise of romanticism in the early nineteenth century an alternative narrative emerged, particularly in the German criticism of August Wilhelm Schlegel and the writings of English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Although they, too, centred their discussions on Antony’s moral flaws, Schlegel and Coleridge responded as well to the imaginative power of his love for Cleopatra and Shakespeare’s poetic representation of Cleopatra’s death. Although Antony and Cleopatra’s affair was adulterous, the romantic poets recognized the power of Shakespeare’s language to make their love transcend society’s norms and attain a validity of its own. The text can support either perspective. Even today, both narratives underlie many critical responses to the play, yet both viewpoints are rooted in the same assumption: the play’s major characters can be understood as if they were real people. During the nineteenth century, readers had access to a host of novels that probed their characters’ inner lives, whether through an omniscient narrator who sees into each character’s consciousness or from the reflections of a first-person narrator.

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Not surprisingly, critical analyses of Shakespeare’s plays began to treat his characters as if they, too, were in a novel rather than a play. Many readers assumed that, like a novel, the play provided a window into the characters’ inner thoughts and feelings, even theorizing about what the characters’ lives were like before the play begins. At the turn of the twentieth century, A. C. Bradley, the first Oxford professor to hold a chair in English literature, published an influential series of lectures on Shakespeare’s tragedies that epitomize this way of thinking about the characters and shaped many subsequent readings. Here is part of Bradley’s extensive analysis of Antony’s character: It is a large, open, generous, expansive nature, quite free from envy, capable of great magnanimity, even of entire devotion. Antony is unreserved, naturally straightforward, we may almost say simple. He can admit faults, accept advice and even reproof, take a jest against himself with good-humour. He is courteous […]; and, though he can be exceedingly dignified, he seems to prefer a blunt though sympathetic plainness, which is one cause of the attachment of his soldiers. He has none of the faults of the brooder, the sentimentalist, or the man of principle; his nature tends to splendid action and lusty enjoyment. But he is neither a mere soldier nor a mere sensualist. He has imagination, the temper of an artist who revels in abundant and rejoicing appetites […]. He enjoys being a great man, but he has not the love of rule for rule’s sake. Power for him is chiefly a means to pleasure. […] In every moment of his absence, whether he wake or sleep, a siren music in his blood is singing him back to [Cleopatra]; and to this music, however he may be occupied, the soul within his soul leans and listens. The joy of life had always culminated for him in the love of women. […] He is under no illusion about [Cleopatra], knows all her faults, sees through her wiles, believes her capable of betraying him. It makes no difference. She is his heart’s desire made perfect (Bradley 294–7).



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Note that Bradley’s impressions of Antony’s nature, however eloquently expressed, go way beyond what we can determine with any certainty from Shakespeare’s text, especially in his speculations about the past (‘The joy of life had always culminated for him in the love of women’) or Antony’s attitude toward Cleopatra – does he really see through all her wiles? Rather than grounding his interpretation in the play’s dialogue and action, Bradley ignores textual specifics to elaborate a scenario of his own. Bradley’s lecture on Antony and Cleopatra illustrates the dangers of extrapolating too enthusiastically about a play’s characters, not to mention the absurdity of assuming they are real people. They are not. Rather, the characters are, in the words of a more recent Shakespeare critic, J. Leeds Barroll, ‘artificial persons’. When we limit ourselves to the characters’ words and actions, it is perfectly legitimate to speculate about their possible motives and feelings, but we must also remember that we are speculating. Barroll explains that characters in a play become persons ‘by being created accessible to us in many of the same ways [as are] those close to us in life’ (60). We know people by what they say and do, what they tell us and what others say about them. Sometimes they prove our initial impressions – even the way other characters characterize them – to be wrong. As Barroll notes, ‘What figure in a play can we accept as the final authority on the personality of another?’ (58). We have to consider all the evidence. Antony and Cleopatra, Barroll continues, are ‘presented in a wide variety of situations in which their responses – even on seemingly irrelevant subjects – guide and build our sense of a complex psychological web’ (223). Shakespeare thereby lends the characters verisimilitude. If the characters didn’t seem like real humans, we wouldn’t care so deeply about them. Because we do care, it is a challenge to avoid discussing them as if they were real people. And there are some circumstances when it is fair to speculate about things we can’t determine from the text. Actors, for example, inspired by the teachings of directors Constantin

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Stanislavsky or Lee Strasberg, often build a back-story as a way of conceptualizing the character’s underlying emotions and motivation. Novelists and poets who appropriate the characters in literary adaptations may also create a life for them before or after the play. Literary students and scholars, however, should try to avoid the ‘novel’ trap and base their discussions on what the characters say and do and the way they are framed within the text.

Well-wrought urns Character criticism dominated much of what was written about Antony and Cleopatra well into the twentieth century, but from the 1940s into the 1970s, as the study of English literature expanded at colleges and universities in the United Kingdom and the United States, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. In America, a group of literary scholars who, for the most part, were male, white and politically conservative, established the New Criticism. In the United Kingdom, I. A. Richards spearheaded a similar movement, calling it Practical Criticism. On both sides of the Atlantic, literary scholars argued that language was more important than character. Indeed, the text was all that mattered. Information about the author’s life or the historical epoch in which he or she wrote was irrelevant. Their students (including me in the late 1960s and early 1970s) were immersed in the close reading techniques described in Chapter 2, but they were also taught to think of the text as – in the words of the most influential New Critic Cleanth Brooks – a ‘well-wrought urn’. Like an ancient Greek vase, a poem, a novel or a play was a self-contained work of art. Each part – each line or phrase – contributed to the work’s unity, if one could only see the connection. No matter how trivial a dramatic scene or episode might be, the critic’s job was to determine its relationship to the work’s overall design. Close reading provided the



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building blocks, but the critic’s larger task was to explain how the author combined those building blocks into a carefully constructed, unified edifice – a well-wrought urn. The search for unity inevitably led to an emphasis on the relationship between the work’s construction – its form – and its meaning. The result was a host of books and articles devoted to the examination of a particular literary work’s theme, the general concept that tied all the building blocks together. For Antony and Cleopatra, the theme might be something like ‘the value of transcendent love’ or ‘the inevitable conflict between human desires and man’s inability to realize those desires’. The problem with this approach to Shakespeare’s dramas is that New Critics tended to forget that the plays were written for performance and treat them simply as poems to be read and studied. The theatrical qualities discussed in Chapter 1 held no interest for them, and it wasn’t until the 1980s that literary Shakespeareans began to consider, and to teach, the plays as performance scripts. In post-war England and America, when universities and colleges grew and English departments expanded, the number of essays, books and articles that purported to determine the meaning of Shakespeare’s plays proliferated. As the late Shakespeare scholar Richard Levin frequently argued in print and in person, the result was a sort of point-counterpoint. One scholar would posit a thematic meaning for a particular play, another would counter it, claiming ‘my theme can beat your theme’, i.e. my theme provides a better account of the play’s language than yours. If a play had two or more plots, the critic would find a theme to tie the plots together to make the play ‘unified’. Many readings either ignored aspects of the text that worked against their overriding theme or tried to reinterpret every aspect of the play in its support. When it came to Antony and Cleopatra, thematic readings usually reinforced the established binary opposition between Rome and Egypt: the play was a critique of Antony and Cleopatra’s relationship or it showed instead that relationship’s transcendence. Very few critical readings were open to

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the possibility that contradictory perspectives might both be valid. New Criticism influenced a whole generation of literary scholars whose thematic critical readings remain useful, but their claim to authority – to knowing exactly what the text means – should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Deconstructing the text Although the academic world changes slowly, the teaching of English literature could not help but be affected by the political and social upheavals of the late twentieth century. Not surprisingly, in the late 1960s and 1970s a younger generation of literary scholars rejected the conservatism of the New and Practical Criticism. Many adopted new theories of interpretation, loosely combined under the label poststructuralism, as a reaction against linguists and anthropologists who proposed that all human cultures share certain commonalities. Inspired by the theories of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, literary scholars continued to rely on close reading, but instead of trying to find one clearly defined meaning within a text, they sought to demonstrate its multiplicity and instability in a movement known as deconstructionism. Derrida argued that we can never determine a text’s ‘true’ meaning because all language is constituted by différance, a term derived from the French verb différer, which could mean both ‘to differ’ and ‘to defer’. Meaning is inevitably deferred because words signify through their difference from other words and their contextual relationship to other words; meaning is not inherent in the word itself (see Bedford Glossary 92). Contrary significations are embedded in the very nature of language and they can’t be reconciled. Derrida argued that Western culture (and its literary canon) was framed through binary oppositions that seem at first to be equal, but upon careful examination circulate in a hierarchical relationship to each other. The opposition of ‘white’ and ‘black’, or ‘male’



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and ‘female’, for example, seems neutral at first glance, but throughout Western history one side, the white or the male, was consistently deemed superior and more powerful. Derrida asked readers to recognize that such oppositions are mutually constituted by their différance from each other. In other words, the meaning of ‘white’ is determined in opposition to ‘black’, the meaning of ‘male’ shaped in opposition to ‘female’ – and vice versa – each term changing through time and usage. Given the inherent instability of language, the critic is no longer constrained to select one particular meaning as the right one. Instead the close reader can take pleasure, what Derrida terms jouissance, in the playful multiplicity of language. While not all literary scholars accepted Derrida’s theories, deconstruction had a tremendous impact on readings of Antony and Cleopatra. For centuries readers had felt the need to choose between the text’s seeming binary, Rome or Egypt, but, as the Shakespearean scholar Cynthia Marshall points out, ‘Shakespeare’s portrayal of the relationship between Cleopatra and Antony, and of that between Egypt and Rome, illustrates what Jacques Derrida calls différance, the logic through which two terms are caught in irresolvable dependency on one another’ (301). Shakespeare anticipates Derrida by including representations of ‘Egypt’ in the Roman scenes that contrast with Rome; just as black is ‘not-white’, Rome is ‘not-Egypt’, and vice versa. For instance, in 1.4.56–72 Caesar calls for Antony to leave the ‘lascivious wassails’ of Egypt, which he then opposes to Antony’s Spartan Roman valour at Modena; Egypt’s ‘lascivious wassails’ combine excessive drinking with sexual licentiousness and thereby make Caesar’s subsequent description of the deprivations of food and drink Antony endured on the battlefield seem even more austere. Act 1, scene 1’s framing of Antony and Cleopatra’s love-play between Philo’s censorious comments to Demetrius invokes Roman values in opposition to the revels of Egypt. In this way, the significations of ‘Rome’ and ‘Egypt’ are mutually constituted.

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Like the New Critics who went before them, deconstructionists limit their analysis to the text, which they see as self-contained and set apart from historical and political concerns. Deconstruction offers the careful reader another way of thinking about language, and it can be a useful tool, especially if you are focusing on particular words and phrases that reverberate throughout the play. But if you want to go beyond the text to consider historical or political contexts, you need to consider another kind of analytic tool.

History and politics During the first half of the twentieth century, some Renaissance scholars examined Shakespeare’s plays as historical documents. Chief among these ‘old historicists’ was E. M. W. Tillyard of Cambridge University, whose The Elizabethan World Picture was frequently cited as if it were gospel. Tillyard insisted that the Elizabethans believed first and foremost in a general principle of order that underlies the work of most Elizabethan writers, especially Shakespeare. That principle was best represented by a metaphor, the great chain of being: ‘The chain stretched from the foot of God’s throne to the meanest of inanimate objects’ (26), and as Ulysses proclaims in Troilus and Cressida (1.3.78–137), if there is disorder or rebellion in one link, it will vibrate up and down the chain to create havoc throughout. As a result, Tillyard argued that the Elizabethans were ‘terrified lest [that ideal order] should be upset, and appalled by the visible tokens of disorder that suggested its upsetting’ (16). Tillyard posited that this Elizabethan ideology, promulgated in official sermons like the Homily Against Disobedience and Willful Rebellion, was universal. He saw history as static and conservative and his ‘Elizabethan world picture’ naturalized the rigid class distinctions of Elizabethan society and invested ultimate authority in the monarchy. Yet Tillyard’s conservative assumptions were widely accepted



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and taught in the United Kingdom and the United States well into the 1960s. That was to change in the 1980s. In the United States, the Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt argued that literary works are not simple reflections of a dominant national ideology; rather, they act as receptors and disseminators of the contradictory discourses circulating within the culture in which they are created. According to Greenblatt and those who followed him, the text can only be fully understood when it is placed within the political and cultural context at the time of production. Even then, critical readings are contingent on time and place, for the critic is also imbricated within his or her own cultural moment. Although Greenblatt preferred to call his type of historical analysis ‘cultural poetics’, it is generally known as the New Historicism. The widespread practice of new historicist criticism had a tremendous impact on the way Shakespeareans thought and wrote about Antony and Cleopatra. While the Old Historicists privileged Octavius’ rise to power as the triumph of Roman law and order over Egyptian disorder, New Historicists situated Shakespeare’s tragedy within the context of late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century England, which they saw not as ‘Merry Olde England’, but as a society permeated by cultural anxiety. By the end of the sixteenth century Elizabeth I, who had reigned since 1558, was long past childbearing and had not designated her successor. After she died in 1603 the English throne passed to James VI of Scotland, who was greeted at first as a welcome change. But by the time Shakespeare wrote Antony and Cleopatra in 1607–8, many English had begun to feel something like buyer’s remorse as a result of James’ profligacy with the royal treasury, especially his grants of titles and estates to his favourite courtiers. That New Historicists would find a relationship between Elizabeth I and Shakespeare’s Cleopatra was perhaps inevitable (see Deats 24–5). Aside from the resonance between Elizabeth’s response to the news of her rival Mary Stuart’s delivery of a healthy son and Cleopatra’s treatment of the

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Messenger in 2.2, which I outlined in the Introduction, there were many other similarities. Both Elizabeth and Cleopatra were female monarchs who presided over a court peopled by women. Both exploited their feminine charm, intelligence and wit to disarm the men who threatened their rule. Both were fluent in many languages. Each appreciated theatrics as an instrument of power, Elizabeth in annual progresses through the country to show herself to the people, Cleopatra in erotic games with powerful Romans. Like Cleopatra, who dazzled the crowd as she sailed down the River Cydnus, Elizabeth travelled by barge down the River Thames where Londoners could admire her. Each Queen exhibited androgynous qualities, Elizabeth in her fiery temper and her 1588 appearance in armour before the troops at Tilbury, Cleopatra in taking Antony’s ‘sword Philippan’ and leading her own forces into battle. While we shouldn’t push the comparison further than the text will bear, it is safe to say that Shakespeare’s London audiences were accustomed to the idea of a female monarch. When Antony and Cleopatra was first performed, Cleopatra’s resonance with the Queen who had died four or five years earlier surely lent the character a political dimension that was, for the most part, ignored in critical discourse before the advent of New Historicism. In 1985 H. Neville Davies argued that while Cleopatra was informed by historical memories of Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare’s treatment of Octavius Caesar was also likely shaped by public perceptions of her successor, James I. If Shakespeare had written a sequel to Antony and Cleopatra, it would have shown Octavius’ return to Rome, his consolidation of power and selection as the first Emperor, and his long and comparatively peaceful reign. Davies explains that when James acceded to the throne, he ordered a coronation medal that depicted him ‘wearing a laurel wreath, while a Latin inscription proclaimed him Caesar Augustus of Britain, Caesar the heir of the Caesars’ (125; see also Yachnin). The identification with Octavius/Augustus was deliberate, for like the first Roman Emperor, James planned to unite his



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kingdoms (England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland) into one empire, to end an era of nearly continuous warfare (England’s continuing war with Spain) and to foster peace throughout Europe. As a sharer in the acting company formerly known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men – transformed at James’ accession to the King’s Men – Shakespeare was a servant of the king and wore his livery in the coronation procession. Of course we can’t know what was in Shakespeare’s mind as he wrote, but Davies’ speculations, like those about Cleopatra and Elizabeth, remind us of Antony and Cleopatra’s political implications and highlight the play’s contrast between Antony, the military hero, and Octavius, the politician. But there are limits to its usefulness. Davies concludes his essay with an account of James’s difficult relationship with his brother-in law King Christian of Denmark. Known for military heroism and riotous living, Christian strikes Davies as the perfect model for Antony. But one wonders how Shakespeare could have known the particular details of Christian’s activities at James’s court that Davies recounts. Fortunately many New Historicists, drawing upon the work of the French psychologist and philosopher, Michel Foucault, approach the study of historical contexts more broadly than simply looking for specific historical models for Shakespeare’s characters. Within any historical milieu (or to use Foucault’s term, epistémé), there existed a network of discursive practices – thoughts, codes and ideas derived from that society’s interrelated institutions (church, state, commerce, etc.) and cultural practices (education, marriage, etc.). Together they constitute a discursive formation that shaped the circulation of ideas within that particular culture. Unlike traditional source studies, which look for palpable evidence that Shakespeare drew on a particular text (such as Plutarch’s Lives for the Roman plays), analysis of the various discourses in circulation as the dramatist was writing is more suggestive. It helps us understand some of the cultural contexts that shaped the dramatist’s thinking as well as the audience’s likely response. The inverse is also true: Shakespeare’s plays,

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both in print and in performance, contributed to his own culture’s discursive formation. As the Shakespeare scholar Joan Lord Hall reminds us, ‘Shakespeare’s presentation of the fortunes of the Queen [Cleopatra] and her Roman lover, set in opposition to the rise of Octavius Caesar, is part of the ongoing discourse concerning power and imperial expansion in Shakespeare’s Jacobean society’ (19). A good example of discourse analysis is John Michael Archer’s account of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century English travel writing that describes Egypt. Archer examines primary texts ranging from English translations of classical sources such as Plutarch and Herodotus to contemporary accounts of travel to Egypt by George Sandys and other sixteenth-century English wanderers. He argues that Antony and Cleopatra ‘participated in the unstable early modern discourse about Egyptian antiquity’ (145) and finds that many of these texts support a dual image. On the one hand, travel writers expressed an appreciation of ancient Egyptian culture and learning; on the other hand, they decry what they perceive as the degeneration of that culture in more modern times, especially in regard to sexual behaviour. That degeneration is often coded in references to Cleopatra, who is regarded positively when characterized as being of light-skinned Macedonian heritage (Greek) but increasingly disregarded as she is coded as dark, or as Shakespeare puts it, ‘tawny’. Like most new historicist analysis, Archer’s research relies on the study of classical and English primary texts. In order to determine what ideas were circulating at the time Shakespeare wrote, historicist scholars read widely in contemporary printed material, including the works of other poets and playwrights as well as non-literary texts like sermons, official decrees, broadsides and travel narratives. Getting access to such material can be difficult, but if you are studying at a large research university, or if you are a member of the Renaissance Society of America, you can access nearly all of the books and pamphlets that were printed between 1485 and 1642 in Early English Books Online, an internet resource known as EEBO.



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As New Historicism swept through America’s English Departments in the 1980s, in the United Kingdom a group of younger literary scholars also rebelled, partly against the educational policies being implemented by the government of Margaret Thatcher and partly against the elitism of English universities. Influenced by the work of Marxist critic Raymond Williams, they instituted a more political mode of literary inquiry, Cultural Materialism, and argued that literature, like other cultural artefacts, is not ideologically neutral. The material conditions of Shakespeare’s society – its rigid class structure and incipient imperialism – and the subversive forces working within the culture against the social hierarchy and monarchical authority were embedded in his plays, which function as sites of anxiety and struggle. Cultural materialists also contended that by dominating twentieth-century school curricula as well as the examinations that brought acceptance into British universities, the study of Shakespeare perpetuated an anti-democratic social order. But was the problem with Shakespeare or the way his writings were taught and interpreted? In 1984 the young Shakespearean Jonathan Dollimore contended in Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries that Shakespeare’s plays were much more radical than had been recognized. Written in a time of turmoil (a period that eventually led up to the revolution of 1642 and the 1649 beheading of Charles I), the plays repeatedly subject the institutions of church and state to sceptical, subversive interrogation. In a chapter claiming that Antony and Cleopatra is inherently radical, Dollimore points to 3.1, the short conversation between Ventidius and Silius that, as we noted in Chapter 1, is so frequently cut in performance. Their conversation, Dollimore argues, ‘illustrates the way power is a function not of the “person” (l. 17) but of “place” (l. 12), and that the criterion for reward is not intrinsic to the “performance” (l. 27) but, again, relative to one’s placing in the power structure’ (209). Driven by a ‘myth of heroic omnipotence’,

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Antony learns that ‘identity is crucially dependent upon power’ (211). In contrast, Enobarbus is removed from power yet dependent upon it. Indeed, the play never lets us forget ‘people’s dependence upon the powerful’ (215), and we see that Antony and Cleopatra’s ‘sexuality is rooted in a fantasy transfer of power from the public to the private sphere, from the battlefield to the bed’ (216). Two years later another cultural materialist, Leonard Tennenhouse, saw Shakespeare as less subversive, noting that Antony and Cleopatra locates the source of legitimate authority in Rome. Tennenhouse also draws upon the insights of French theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to re-examine Cleopatra’s role. In his work on the French satirist Rabelais, Bakhtin theorized the political stratagem of ‘carnival’, the state’s licensed staging of disorder as an outlet for society’s subversive proclivities. According to Bakhtin, social disorder is figured in representations of the ‘grotesque body’ and in society by the carnival activities of excessive eating, drinking, fornication and other types of high jinks. The state, in contrast, is figured in the classical body, which, like Michelangelo’s statue of David, is marmoreal and self-contained. Tennenhouse contends that Cleopatra is carnivalesque. She often talks about eating and drinking to excess, she is associated with the overflowing Nile, and her sexuality stands in stark contrast to Octavius’ businesslike demeanour. Shakespeare, he suggests, saw ‘to it that his audience feels the seduction of a world independent of patriarchal power all the while knowing such a world is impossible’ (143). Other scholars reframed the power relations embedded within the plays to ask broader questions. Like New Historicists and Cultural Materialists, these scholars assume that human identities are constructed by material and social circumstances, that there is no essential human nature. Linda Charnes thus characterizes Antony and Cleopatra as a struggle for identity through representation. Octavius’ stratagem is that of narrative, specifically ‘the development of a unified, self-consistent temporal story line that involves the binding



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up and appropriation of ever-expanding territories’ (110). By controlling the narrative, Octavius wants to establish an imperial Roman identity which, as Emperor he will eventually embody. Cleopatra, in contrast, relies on theatrical modes of representation. On the River Cydnus and in other scenes, she stages herself as the object of spectacle. By insisting on their love above all else, Antony and Cleopatra create a ‘narrative that pretends to stand apart from other narratives’ (137), but Octavius’ final words capitalize on that narrative to craft the legend he desires. Like Dollimore and Tennenhouse, Charnes highlights the play’s political elements, but she, more than they, situates Antony and Cleopatra’s love affair within that political framework. Here I’ve summarized a handful of the most suggestive historical and political critiques of Antony and Cleopatra from the 1980s and 1990s. A bibliographic search will yield many others. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism taught literary scholars to look to the world beyond the text for insights into its cultural impact, not only on its early audiences and readers but also through the centuries. Depending on the topic you are pursuing in your research, keep in mind that the questions you are asking are shaped in part by your own background and the cultural moment in which you write.

Gender Since their introduction in the 1980s, historic and political modes of inquiry have gone mainstream; few recent critical analyses ignore the text’s historical context and political impact, but most combine those insights with other theoretical frameworks. Materialist feminists, for example, fuse Cultural Materialism’s interest in historical and political contingencies with the construction of gender. The feminist scholar Dympna Callaghan argues that the feminist critic’s role is to work against ‘the ideological investment of the status quo in securing Shakespeare as a locus of universal human values’ (44).

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For Antony and Cleopatra in particular, the development of feminist criticism from the 1980s to the present has had a huge impact on judgements about both protagonists. It is no doubt difficult for twenty-first century students to realize what a breakthrough the early feminist critics of Shakespeare made, but for me their work was a revelation. During my graduate studies at a major American research university in the early 1970s, there was only one full-time female faculty member in a department of eighty. Worse still, the Director of Graduate Studies interrogated every female applicant to the doctoral program because he suspected that they would drop out of the program to marry and raise a family. Educating women seemed to him a waste of resources. No wonder that in 1977 when I first encountered L. T. Fitz’s feisty essay, ‘Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony and Cleopatra Criticism’ in America’s leading Shakespeare journal, Shakespeare Quarterly, I welcomed her words as a breath of fresh air. Fitz, who only identified herself with initials at the time but later revealed herself as Linda Woodbridge (and went on to become President of the Shakespeare Association of America), argued passionately that the history of male critics’ interpretations of Antony and Cleopatra were informed by sexism: ‘Almost all critical approaches to this play have been coloured by the sexist assumptions the critics have brought with them to their reading. I believe these approaches have distorted the meaning of what Shakespeare wrote’ (297). Male critics’ discussions of Cleopatra, she contends, ‘go beyond the usual condescension toward female characters or the usual willingness to give critical approval only to female characters who are chaste, fair, loyal, and modest: critical attitudes toward Cleopatra seem to reveal deep personal fears of aggressive or manipulative women’ (298). Quoting from a host of critics, ranging from nineteenth-century poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge to twentieth-century academic Shakespeareans, Fitz demonstrates these critics’ consistent application of a double standard to the plays’ characters: while Enobarbus’ sexually charged language is perfectly acceptable, the critics



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invariably express discomfort at Cleopatra’s sexuality and her bawdy language. They cannot accept Cleopatra’s desire to be Antony’s active partner in the campaign against Caesar, and while his suicide is noble, hers is a cop-out. Finally, Fitz wonders why Cleopatra is never accorded the status of tragic hero in a tragedy that bears her name. Fitz’s essay exemplifies the first wave of feminist Shakespeare criticism, which sought to rescue Shakespeare’s female characters from biased, patriarchal readings. To them Shakespeare was not the problem; the problem was what had been done to him. Irene G. Dash’s Wooing, Wedding and Power: Women in Shakespeare’s Plays (1981), for example, insists that Shakespeare meant Cleopatra to be a ‘sexual being and a person of power’, but that critics too often rely on the male characters who ‘find it difficult to accept such a woman who is sexually alive and politically aware of her role as ruler’ (212–13). Dash bases much of her argument on promptbooks and other primary sources that demonstrate the ways Cleopatra’s role has been distorted in stage performances through cuts in the text and other staging practices that diminish her importance or frame her simply as a seductress. Other feminist critics disagreed with the ‘rescue’ approach, believing that Shakespeare was deeply invested in the patriarchal assumptions of early modern English society. While critical interpretations had certainly been inflected with gender bias, Shakespeare himself was a problem. Carol Thomas Neely’s Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare’s Plays (1985) illustrates this viewpoint. In the second half of Antony and Cleopatra, she argues, Shakespeare ‘initiates a pattern of male attack and female submission, a pattern familiar from the other tragedies, in which the tragic male protagonists, to assuage the sense of powerlessness they derive from their dependence on women, insist that these women accept blame and subordination’ (148). While Antony differs from other tragic heroes in that he can accept Cleopatra’s ‘sexuality, duplicity and difference from him’, he nevertheless relies on Cleopatra to prop up his heroic identity (150). Neely concludes that

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Antony and Cleopatra are not created equal: her death ‘serves Caesar’s political needs, confirming his historical control; serves Antony’s emotional needs, reaffirming the nobleness of his “shape”; and serves Shakespeare’s aesthetic needs, allowing him to make Cleopatra’s death, like her life, “eternal in [his] triumph” (V.i.66)’ (165). By the 1990s Shakespearean critics, male and female, adopted a more inclusive approach to gender: instead of simply focusing on female characters, they turned to the study of gender roles to show how Shakespeare’s constructions of masculinity were shaped in response to his representations of female characters. Janet Adelman, whose first book, The Common Liar (1972), provided a brilliant critical reading of Antony and Cleopatra, returned to the play again in 1992 for a chapter in Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, ‘Hamlet’ to ‘The Tempest’. Relying in part on psychoanalysis, Adelman returns Antony to centre stage, arguing that he is a focus of desire for both Octavius and Cleopatra. ‘The contest between Caesar and Cleopatra, Rome and Egypt, is in part a contest between male scarcity and female bounty as the defining site of Antony’s heroic masculinity. Longing for that heroic masculinity is […] at the centre of the play’ (Suffocating Mothers 177). Still, Cleopatra’s role is substantial. Like the goddess Isis, Cleopatra is a source of generation and regeneration (183); she ‘finds and restores, memorializes and consecrates Antony’s identity’ (184). Ultimately, if ‘Caesar’s masculinity is founded on differentiation from the female – and on the psychic scarcity that is the consequence of that differentiation – Antony’s is finally founded on incorporation of the female’ (190). In her chapter on Antony and Cleopatra in Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women (1997), Coppélia Kahn also focuses on Antony, but finds his homosocial competition with Octavius to be the play’s central issue. ‘The embracing irony of the play’, she argues, ‘is that Antony never returns to the heroic Roman image of fixed and stable identity from which – according to the testimony of nearly



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every character in the play – he has only temporarily departed’ (116). Antony’s actions are driven by his rivalry with Caesar. The Soothsayer tells him that in any competition with Caesar he is bound to lose, but even so, Antony wants to challenge his rival to single combat. Even more destructive, ‘[w]hen the fleets and armies gather at Actium, the pent-up competitive urge that makes Antony the man he is finds expression in his determination – in defiance of all military advice – to take Caesar’s dare, and fight at sea’ (117). In defeat, Antony sees suicide as a way to recuperate his Roman honour and defeat Caesar. Cleopatra, too, seeks to defeat Caesar and re-establish Antony’s heroic identity, and she does so by assuming the role of Roman wife, joining her husband in death: ‘Husband, I come’ (5.2.286). Underlying the work of Adelman, Kahn and many other contemporary Shakespearean critics is the assumption that gender roles are not inherent in an individual but the result of cultural ideologies and processes, especially changing familial and social environments. Practitioners of queer theory take this one step further by arguing that sexuality itself is socially constructed, that Western society’s traditional division between heterosexual and homosexual sexuality is a cultural product. Queer theorists question the ‘generally accepted associations and identities involving sex, gender, and sexuality’ (Bedford Glossary 386). Building on the work of gender theorist Judith Butler, they separate human sexuality from reproduction and describe it as a performance, the acting out of socially accepted roles rather than something innate. Juliet Dusinberre observes that in many ways Antony and Cleopatra illustrates Butler’s theories. Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, originally portrayed by a boy actor who represented her sexuality through performance, is a ‘fictionalization of the biological body, but which ceases to be a “given”, outside the concepts of gender, but becomes instead a part of those gender constructions’ (52). The feminist Shakespearean Phyllis Rackin anticipated this way of thinking as early as 1972 when she argued that ‘from beginning to end, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra is a dedicated showman’ (203). In her

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self-referential worry that if Caesar takes her to Rome, some ‘squeaking Cleopatra [will] boy [her] greatness / I’th’ posture of a whore’ (5.2.219–20), Cleopatra reminds us ‘that what we have been watching is a deceitful show’ (208). According to queer theory, Shakespeare’s boy actor both represents and challenges Cleopatra’s sexualized, feminine nature. Arthur L. Little, Jr., a Shakespearean committed to ‘queering the text’, also concludes that Cleopatra’s reference to the boy actor ‘provides more than a temporary threat to the dramatic illusion; it creates a fissure that remains a vital and complex piece of Cleopatra’s representation’ and makes ‘a space for – perhaps a cultural narrative to elucidate – the illusiveness of the dramatic illusion’ (172–3). The women’s movement created a space for female Shakespearean scholars to relate their own life experiences to the characters they find in his plays. After being denigrated for several centuries by male critics, Cleopatra, the representation of a mature woman in a sexual relationship, became – and remains – an attractive candidate for gender analysis. But as you can see from this sample of critical work on Antony and Cleopatra, the understanding of gender is not simply a woman’s concern nor is the focus only on women. Questioning traditional gender constructions helps us to understand and resist cultural expectations that are inherently rigid and often unjust to both sexes. Moreover, as recent Shakespeareans have argued, early modern gender constructions, like those of today, are also implicated in the development of geopolitical and racial ideologies.

Cleopatra’s tawny front Janet Adelman first raised the issue of Cleopatra’s race in 1972. In the Appendix to The Common Liar, her study of Antony and Cleopatra, Adelman speculated as to whether or not Shakespeare conceived of Cleopatra as black, i.e. as inherently dark-skinned, presumably from sub-Saharan African



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heritage. Shakespeare, in fact, has it both ways. When she first encounters the Messenger in 2.5, Cleopatra promises him ‘bluest veins to kiss, a hand that kings / Have lipped’ (29–30) if he brings good news. The blue veins, readily visible on light skin, suggest that Cleopatra is fairly pale, but other passages indicate that the Egyptian Queen is dark. As the play begins, Philo refers to Cleopatra’s ‘tawny front’ (1.1.6), a synecdoche for her entire body, and Cleopatra later describes herself being ‘with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black’ (1.5.29). The allusion to Phoebus, the sun god, reflects the widely circulated early modern belief that Africans’ skin colour is ‘black’ – as opposed to northern Europeans’ light pigmentation – because they are exposed to intense heat and sunlight. Plutarch represents Cleopatra as ethnically Greek, not African. Mary Sidney’s Tragedie of Antonie depicts her as white-skinned; as I mentioned in the Introduction, Diomede describes her face as ‘Alabaster’ and her hair as ‘fine and flaming gold’ (Bullough 5:376). In Samuel Daniel’s Tragedie of Cleopatra, Cleopatra refers to her age, the ‘Autumn’ of her beauty (Bullough 5:412), but her skin colour is never mentioned. Why then did Shakespeare include lines that suggest Cleopatra is dark-skinned? As Adelman pointed out, the term ‘black’ was multivalent in Shakespeare’s era. The term could refer to a brunette as opposed to a blonde; indeed, ‘to the English, anyone darker them themselves is apt to be characterized as black’ (Common Liar 185). Blackness did not necessarily connote what we think of as racial difference, but it did suggest an individual’s otherness from the majority of English men and women. Philo’s reference to Cleopatra as a ‘gipsy’ (also in 1.1) also suggests otherness, for ‘gipsy’, a derivative of ‘Egyptian’, often described dark-coloured vagabonds who frequented the English countryside in the early sixteenth century. Put together, all but one of the play’s references to Cleopatra’s skin colour connect her with Egypt and Africanness, yet for nearly four hundred years she has been consistently been portrayed on the stage, in film and in illustrations as white.

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Despite Adelman’s opening salvo, the issue of Cleopatra’s race was mostly ignored until the end of the twentieth century. Many Shakespearean critics argued that the discussion of race in early modern England was anachronistic because the racial categories we use today were not formulated until the eighteenth century, when the Swedish botanist and taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus divided the peoples of the earth into different physical ‘races’. From the eighteenth century well into the twentieth, Linneaus’ classifications bolstered white Europeans’ belief that non-white races were inherently inferior and were used to justify the enslavement of colonized peoples. When Shakespeare wrote, England’s colonial enterprise was just beginning, and even though English privateers were involved in the slave trade as early as the 1560s, the racial ideology that supported slavery was not yet rigidly defined. Early modern texts commonly applied the term ‘race’ to ethnic, tribal and even familial groups of people. To the English, for example, the Irish were a separate ‘race’ because their cultural practices seemed so uncivilized, even brutish. Although according to Linnaeus the Irish would be classified as Caucasian or ‘white’, sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury English writers often described them as ‘black’, the colour distinction serving as a shorthand for their innate difference from the English. Thus cultural differences were often inscribed onto the physical body, only later developing into hardened perceptions of racial differences. As the Shakespearean scholars Ania Loomba and Jonathan Burton have recently argued, the slipperiness of early modern racial discourse should not discourage us from addressing the ways ‘race’ is embedded in the period’s discourse. While there were more ‘inconsistencies and contradictions in the debates about human difference’ (7) in early modern England than there are today, current racial discourse is also unstable. Inchoate as early modern concepts of race may have been, they existed not simply in discourse but in legal directives that affected people’s lives, such as Queen Elizabeth I’s 1601 proclamation ordering Negroes and blackamoors to be



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transported from England. Race is accordingly a legitimate topic for Shakespeareans to consider, but we must recognize the term’s complexity. Although skin colour was often a determining factor in the assignment of racial difference in early modern England, the concept of ‘race’ was also shaped by contemporary ideologies regarding religion, gender, class, and sexuality – as it often is today. Just as gender examines the ways ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are used to construct each other, recent scholars recognize that ‘blackness’ and ‘blackening’ served as discursive tools in the construction of an opposing, dominant category, ‘whiteness’. As the scholar Kim F. Hall demonstrated in her path-breaking book, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (1995), English prose and poetry from this period consistently express cultural anxiety about English identity by using tropes of ‘darkness’ and ‘blackness’ in opposition to a stable European ‘white’ identity. Hall’s work seems particularly apropos for Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespearean critic Geraldo U. De Sousa contends, Shakespeare ‘reshaped the famous love affair of Antony and Cleopatra into a cross-cultural encounter that subverts the commonly held image of Rome, showing that, by defining Egypt as the cultural, racial, and ecological opposite of Rome, the Romans define themselves’ (158). In this way, recent scholarship broadens the concept of ‘race’ in Antony and Cleopatra beyond the issue of Cleopatra’s skin colour to the larger issue of Rome’s self-fashioning as a white, European nation superior to Egypt’s darkness. Moreover, Arthur L. Little, Jr. argues, ‘Shakespeare’s Rome persists, particularly through Enobarbus […,] in pushing a reading of Egypt that has as its goal the fixing of Egypt in a radical reality, a world that is perceived as different and threatening because it is so different from Rome’s own more quotidian and pedestrian reality’. Even though Rome ‘shapes its Egyptian imperial struggle most visually around the contours of Cleopatra’s sexualized and racialized black body’ (144), she challenges that fixing in the way she scripts her death. Holding the asp

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to her breast in 5.2, argues Little, Cleopatra figures herself as both Eve (seduced by the serpent) and the Virgin Mary (the Madonna holding the infant Jesus to her breast). By envisioning herself as a Roman matron (‘Husband, I come’) in her suicide, Cleopatra exposes Romanness, like Egyptianness, as a fiction rather than a fixed reality (145). As you can see from this sampling of recent critical work on race in early modern England in general and on Antony and Cleopatra in particular, race is not simply a matter of identifying a character as black or white. The play’s opposition of Rome and Egypt, especially its association of different behaviours with the inhabitants of each region, suggests a physical, even racial difference between the two. Yet, as we have already noted, Shakespeare breaks down that binary by undercutting Roman austerity on Pompey’s galley and insinuating Roman values into Cleopatra’s suicide. Issues of geography, ecology and gender are all intertwined within early modern racial discourse, leaving the critic a difficult but fascinating challenge.

Colonizing Egypt In the wake of the 1990s’ quincentennial of Columbus’ first encounter with the ‘New World’, a new and important thread was introduced into Shakespearean criticism, Post-colonialism. According to the Bedford Glossary, post-colonialism ‘explores and interrogates the situation of colonized peoples both during and after colonization’ and examines ‘historical, cultural, political and moral issues surrounding the establishment and disintegration of colonies and the empires they fueled’ (356–7). Edward Said, a Palestinian and a founding father of post-colonial theory, coined the term ‘Orientalism’, what he saw as the West’s stereotyping of eastern cultures as exotic, seductive, and mysterious – projections that underlay Europe’s exploitation of colonized peoples. Said sought to break down what seemed a fixed binary between the ‘familiar



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(Europe, the West, “us”) and the strange (the Orient, the East, “them”)’ that, he argued, had ‘animated European imaginative geography from Greek times till the present’ (Loomba, Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism 117). While Said’s theories were widely accepted by students of literature written during the height of Europe’s colonial enterprise in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he was also criticized for anachronistically applying the concept of Orientalism to pre-colonial times. But as Ania Loomba, a highly regarded post-colonial theorist contends, even though in the seventeenth century ‘neither colonialism nor capitalism were fully formed, their wheels had been set in motion’ (118). By the end of the sixteenth century, Spain was actively colonizing South America while England was seeking a toe-hold in North America. Elizabeth I signed a charter for the British East India Company as early as 1600. While English colonialism wasn’t a reality until the Virginia colony began to flourish in the 1620s, the idea of colonialism was well established by 1607–8 when Shakespeare wrote Antony and Cleopatra. While ancient Rome was not a colonizer in the same sense, or to the same degree, as were the European nations that controlled vast swaths of the Americas, Africa and Asia beginning in the sixteenth and continuing until the late twentieth centuries, its imperial project was unquestionably a form of colonization. As John Gillies, a scholar who has written extensively on early modern ethnography, explains, Octavius Caesar (who later became the Emperor Augustus) conceived of the Empire as a ‘ring of vassal nations dominated by a single city-state’ (113). Like the later European powers, Rome was motivated by economics; it depended on Egyptian grain to feed its citizens, a major motivation for gaining control of the nation. Once Antony and Cleopatra declared their alliance independent from Rome (Cf. 3.6.66–77), Octavius had to intervene. In the aftermath of Antony’s losses at Actium and Alexandria, Augustan propaganda, much of it recuperated and widely circulated during the Renaissance in vernacular

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translations, spread the notion that Antony’s ‘defeat represented the triumph of Rome over eastern barbarism’ (114) – barbarism cast as exotic, seductive, and most important, feminizing. Post-colonial perspectives help us understand the way such discourse frames the exotic East in a binary that posited the West’s superiority, an opposition embedded in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Dympna Callaghan’s essay on ‘Representing Cleopatra in the Post-colonial Moment’ is a good example of the application of post-colonial theory to Antony and Cleopatra. Using Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, an interrogation of the ways Third World women were represented in nineteenth-century British imperialist discourse, as a touchstone, Callaghan re-examines the way Shakespeare represents Cleopatra. ‘Spivak’s text allows us to ask’, she writes, ‘whether Cleopatra can function as anything other than an exotic, racially marked heroine who is yet another manifestation of “orientalism”’ (53). Like Rackin and Dusinberre, Callaghan sees Cleopatra’s power as histrionic, but maintains that the central issue is who controls the way her performances will be represented. After all, Cleopatra’s most spectacular performance, her appearance at Cydnus, is narrated by Enobarbus; there she ‘exists only as representation, not as dramatic presence’ (56). If we frame Cleopatra as a ‘subaltern’ Eastern Other, she cannot speak. As Callaghan notes, ‘the Other is always a projection, a complex and culturally necessary fantasy’, and as a consequence, ‘Cleopatra cannot represent authentic alterity’ (63). Almost twenty years after L. T. Fitz published her defence of Cleopatra, Callaghan argues that it is not the feminist critic’s ‘task to represent Cleopatra well despite the misogyny of her critical antagonists’ (62). Rather, we should understand that however ‘hubristic and voluble’ Cleopatra’s voice may be, ‘it is merely an instance of elaborate Western ventriloquism’ (63). Callaghan’s essay draws upon cultural materialist, feminist and post-colonial theories to demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of poststructuralist Shakespeare criticism. Although in



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this chapter I have addressed political, feminist, ethnographic and post-colonial modes of analysis as separate ‘tools’ in my metaphoric toolbox, remember that these critical perspectives inevitably overlap.

From stage to page At the research university where I studied, faculty from the English Department and the Theatre Department had little if anything to do with each other. English professors taught Shakespeare’s plays as works of literature to be read and understood; theatre professors staged Shakespeare’s plays with no intradepartmental dialogue. That would change. During the 1980s to the present, American secondary English teachers have gathered at summer institutes sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities to learn about Shakespeare’s plays as text and performance. These teachers’ enthusiasm for Shakespeare on stage has gradually percolated up, and while there are still many university and college English professors who remain theatre-averse, the majority recognizes the importance of thinking about the plays as performance scripts. For many instructors and students of Shakespeare, the study of performance opens a window into the text as the dramatist wrote it. Scholars want to understand the kind of questions I raise in Chapter 1: How would the play have been presented at the Globe or Blackfriars theatres? What can we learn from the Folio stage directions? What clues to the characters’ interactions do we find in the original blocking? Why are the scenes arranged as they are? And, for some the most important issue, what was the effect of having adolescent boys portray the women’s roles? Scholars’ desire to understand original staging practices has been a mobilizing force behind the development of three playhouses that recreate the architecture of the early modern theatres where the plays written by Shakespeare and his contemporaries were originally performed. In 1997

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Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London opened with the assumption that the only way to understand how his plays worked at the first Globe is to perform them in a reproduced Globe. In 2001 the Blackfriars’ Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia, was constructed along the lines of the more intimate, indoor playing house that Shakespeare’s Company used in later plays, like The Tempest. Neither venue can be said to be truly authentic, partly because they must accommodate twenty-first-century fire codes and audiences that require more space and the convenience of modern toilet facilities. While both theatres cater to popular audiences, occasionally they offer experimental productions that explore original staging practices, the Blackfriars in its Renaissance Season, the Globe in productions of lesser-known plays, and most recently in productions at a new, indoor performance venue, the Sam Wanamaker Theatre that is lit only by candlelight. In the summer of 1999, Shakespeare’s Globe mounted an all-male production of Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Giles Block that demonstrated the limitations of original staging. Shakespeare’s acting company was, of course, all male, with the women’s roles performed by adolescent boys. But in this production Shakespeare’s Cleopatra was not performed by a ‘squeaking boy’ but by a grown man, the accomplished actor Mark Rylance. In her review for a leading theatre journal, Kristen E. Gandrow observes that ‘Rylance’s girlish cavorting revealed the grasping of a consummate actress who knows she’s beyond her prime. […] Cleopatra was a skipping coquette who roved across her stage, tossing her head of black curls and jangling her gold bracelets’ (123). In this way Rylance highlighted Cleopatra’s performative role: ‘He did not try to be a woman, but only to portray one with verve’ (124). Nevertheless, the audience’s laughter occasionally approached the response one might expect from a talented drag queen. In other words, even though the Globe wrapped this production in the veneer of ‘authenticity’, it could hardly be said to replicate the original Antony and Cleopatra. To be sure, there is nothing like the novelty of a daytime performance in the



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Globe’s space, where you can watch your fellow audience members as well as the actors on stage. Even though the architecture and the festival atmosphere make you feel like you are moving back in time, it is important to remember that the theatre is a late-twentieth-century reproduction, built for a twentieth and twenty-first-century audience under modern conventions and restrictions. Plays at reconstituted theatres probably tell us more about how we imagine the past than what the past was actually like. Some theatre historians are less interested in original staging practices than in the history of Antony and Cleopatra on traditional stages, especially since the abandonment of John Dryden’s All for Love and reintroduction of Shakespeare’s text in 1849. A good place to look for information about past performances is The Masks of Anthony and Cleopatra, begun by the late theatre historian Marvin Rosenberg and completed by his wife Mary. The Rosenbergs trace the way major characters have been portrayed in Britain and the United States from the nineteenth-century through the twentieth. Even more detailed is Richard Madelaine’s edition of Antony and Cleopatra for Cambridge University Press’s ‘Shakespeare in Production’ series; Madelaine adds substantial notes to each scene that explain the ways particular lines have been performed from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth. Both resources help the reader understand how even the smallest decisions made by directors and actors can shape our response to the play as a whole. The details of particular productions are also grist for cultural historians interested in the impact of the wider culture on performance choices – and sometimes vice versa. As Juliet Dusinberre observes of Cleopatra, ever since the mid-nineteenth century the actress who plays her ‘has become the principal signifier of the anxieties and obsessions, pleasurable and less pleasurable, which dominate the audience who watches her’ (60). Carol Chillington Rutter’s chapter, ‘Shadowing Cleopatra: Making Whiteness Strange’, illustrates the various directions this kind of analysis can take. Working

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with four representations of Cleopatra in Royal Shakespeare Company productions – Peggy Ashcroft (1953), Janet Suzman (1972), Helen Mirren (1982) and Clare Higgins (1992) – Rutter asks why the productions consistently presented Cleopatra as white even as they surrounded her with black, or blackface, servants. Relying on close reading of theatre materials, including reviews, actors and directors’ memoirs and programme notes, Rutter examines these Cleopatras in some detail. She also contextualizes the productions, placing each within the historical and political context of the year it was produced. Peggy Ashcroft’s Cleopatra appeared in the early 1950s, a time when Britain was still recovering from the privations of World War II, whereas Janet Suzman’s 1972 portrayal reflected the changing nature of Britain’s population as formerly colonized people of colour increasingly migrated there. In all the productions, from 1953 to 1992, a period of nearly forty years, Cleopatra had to be white because that’s what British audiences expected a beautiful and powerful woman to be. The blackness of her ladies-in-waiting highlighted Cleopatra’s whiteness, while their servile roles simply underscored racial stereotypes. Rutter then turns her historicist gaze back to Shakespeare’s era to argue that in contrast to Royal Shakespeare Company productions, Shakespeare wrote ‘a black narrative at the centre of Antony and Cleopatra, a narrative marked by racial self-reference as explicit as Othello’s’ (62). She suggests a possible influence on Shakespeare’s tragedy by Ben Jonson’s Mask of Blackness, a court entertainment commissioned by James I’s wife Queen Anna that was performed in part by the King’s Men. In what struck many observers as an indecent or at least subversive display, Queen Anna wore black make-up over much of her body when she took the role of an African woman, the Queen of Niger. Her blackness mattered, and so, Rutter argues, did Cleopatra’s. ‘A black African queen who expertly manipulates a body politics that sensationalizes and sexualizes darkness even as she inhabits it, […] such a Cleopatra embodies the most potent sources of threat



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imaginable to the white male project of establishing a Roman empire’ (101). I’ve quoted Rutter at length because her work exploits several of the theoretical perspectives described in this chapter – historical, political, feminist, geopolitical, and racial – to understand the implications of particular performances, for their own time and in our memories of them. Her essay reflects the eclectic nature of recent performance criticism, which is no longer simply about what various actors do, but more about why they decide to do it and how their decisions relate to the culture at large.

Intertextuality Stephen Greenblatt and other New Historicists often begin their essays with a discussion of a non-literary text – an anecdote, a traveller’s description, a broadside or a painting. They then turn to a work of literature that is the main focus of their essay, explaining connections they find between the two texts. These essay writers believe that a consideration of the commonalities in character, theme, or language between two or more texts, even if they were written under different circumstances and at different times, will shed light on each. Such intertextuality need not be a direct influence; rather the disparate texts are compared so that we can see how each informs our understanding of the other. Because Cleopatra has been portrayed so frequently in literature, art, film and popular culture, she is a prime candidate for intertextual analysis. Catherine Belsey’s essay, ‘Cleopatra’s Seduction’, for example, begins with a discussion of her power to evoke desire in a way that is never satisfied. Enobarbus says it best in his description of her appearance at Cydnus, when he explains that ‘she makes hungry / Where most she satisfies’ (2.2.247–8). In her spectacular cruise down the Cydnus River, reports Enobarbus, Cleopatra ‘o’erpictured’ Venus; beside her

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‘Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids’ (2.2.210–12). Belsey takes her cue from this speech, where Cleopatra is presented ‘like a work of art, and like Venus goddess of love’ (45). Her essay then turns to the representation of Venus in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century paintings by Velazquez, Poussin, Titian, Correggio and Bronzino. All frame a naked and seductive Venus with putti, i.e. little cupids like those surrounding Cleopatra in Enobarbus’ description. After a close reading of the paintings, Belsey suggests that ‘for more than a century, all over Europe, boys were involved, implicated, somehow incorporated into female seductiveness’ (60), a tradition that disappeared by the nineteenth century. Like the boy actors of Shakespeare’s age, the smiling putti are central to Venus’s allure. Belsey infers from this intertextual reading that in the early modern period ‘seduction was apparently a more complex process than any system of sexual identification which is based on object choice and dependent on binary opposition allows, or makes space for’ (60). The Victorian era’s rigid distinction between male and female, which we tend to think of as universal, developed long after Shakespeare’s death and continues to shape our twenty-first century responses. If Belsey’s inferences are correct, the early modern audiences who watched an adolescent boy impersonate Cleopatra experienced a sexual fantasy that was more multi-faceted than we ordinarily imagine today. Francesca Royster’s Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon moves the intertextual framing of Cleopatra to the twentieth century. Royster begins with a discussion of Shakespeare’s representation of the Egyptian Queen, but the bulk of her book focuses on the ways Cleopatra has been imagined ever since, particularly in film. She puts Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1963 feature film starring Elizabeth Taylor in conversation with black Americans’ appropriations of Cleopatra’s story. While white Americans imagine Cleopatra as white, Royster shows the appeal of a black Cleopatra to contemporary African Americans. She focuses in particular on two films, Cleopatra Jones (1973) and Set It Off (1996).



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In the former, the African American actress Tamara Dobson portrays Cleopatra Jones, a formidable special agent for the CIA working in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the Watts riots of 1965. Set It Off features Queen Latifah as a lesbian bank robber named Cleo. Both films, Royster argues, reveal a counter-imaginary in which Cleopatra is a strong, black African queen. Like many intertextual studies, Royster’s book is not intended to prove a direct link between Shakespeare and works created much later under very different circumstances. Her study of Cleopatra through time asks the reader to think about sexuality, women and race today and to recognize that the cultural work Cleopatra performs in contemporary culture inevitably influences the way we read her in Shakespeare’s original text.

New questions As you can tell from this overview of critical methods, there are numerous approaches one can take in any study of Antony and Cleopatra. The body of critical work on this play is constantly growing as new avenues of inquiry are introduced. For many years scholars have drawn from other disciplines in their studies of Shakespeare’s plays, looking to history, music, and art for new ideas, but recently many critics are turning to science in their readings of early modern literature. One new direction that is gaining traction in Shakespearean studies is ecocriticism, which criticism highlights the plays’ representations of human interaction with the natural world. Antony and Cleopatra’s repeated references to Egypt’s overflowing Nile would be fertile (pun intended) territory for such a discussion. Other critics re-examine Shakespeare’s astronomical references and geographic representations to challenge the traditional wisdom that he was oblivious to the ‘new science’, in which ideas about the earth and its relationship to the sun circulated in the teachings of Copernicus and Galileo. Even

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molecular science has come into play. The shifting quality of Antony’s cloud suggests the Roman philosopher Lucretius’ atomistic conception of matter in The Order of Things, an ancient Roman poem that was rediscovered and circulated throughout early modern Europe. To Antony, the cloud is ever changing, shifting from one shape to another: Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish, A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t that nod unto the world And mock our eyes with air (4.14.2–7). As the Shakespearean scholar Scott Maisano has recently explained, according to Lucretius death is not finality because ‘everything eventually dissolves to its physical minima, atoms; but these indestructible particles will ultimately recombine with others to create new things and generate new lives’ (182). Similarly, Antony and Cleopatra’s emphasis on Cleopatra’s ‘becomings’ implies not simply her fluid, performative construction of identity, but also a broader concept of neverending change. As you can see from this overview, every generation brings its own concerns and values to bear on its understanding of Shakespeare’s plays. Antony and Cleopatra remains anamor­phic in that what the critics see depends on where they are standing. As a result, despite the enormous volume of Shakespeare criticism that has already been published, there is always something new to say. The key to preparing a research paper is to read widely. Don’t limit yourself to one or two critical sources or only one theoretical method. Open yourself to a variety of approaches, take some notes, and then let your ideas percolate. Once you have done that, you are ready to organize your essay.



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Writing matters After reading this chapter, you may well wonder, where did she find all this stuff? Sometimes the literary scholar has to be a bit of a detective, looking for clues and leads in likely, and even unlikely, places. Here are some suggestions that may help. 1 Your first resource is the edition you are reading. John

Wilders’ Third Arden edition, for example, includes a substantial bibliography: the editions that were consulted in the preparation of the text and ‘Other works’, the secondary sources that were consulted for the Introduction and Commentary notes. Any scholarly edition will include a list of references, so look there first. If you already have a topic, you can skim through the list and see if any of the titles indicate that a particular book or article might shed light on your area of interest. 2 Your next resource is your library catalogue, which lists its holdings on Antony and Cleopatra under Shakespeare, the title, or a subject heading. Sometimes one book leads to another, and one of my favourite sleuthing activities is to go to the library’s stacks and find the shelf that contains all the library’s books on a particular play. In my University’s library, the books on Antony and Cleopatra are located under PR 2802. When I pull the books off the shelves and browse the tables of content to see if there’s anything remotely related to my interests, I often find something unexpected, something I could never determine from the description in the card catalogue. 3 The card catalogue will list the library’s book holdings, but what about journal articles? Much of the most important work on Antony and Cleopatra in recent years has been published in scholarly journals, so

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it is crucial that you do a bibliographic search to locate pertinent materials. In the United States, most academic libraries subscribe to the MLA (Modern Language Association) Bibliography, an online listing of work published in literary studies, and some libraries might also have the World Shakespeare Bibliography on their websites. Both resources allow you to search for particular writers, works and subjects. Many journal articles can be accessed through the services Project Muse or J-Stor. The latter web service provides, among many other sources, past issues of Shakespeare Quarterly, the leading American journal of Shakespeare studies. 4 Once you’ve located the books and articles you need, the next task is to read them. It always helps to take notes on your reading, including writing down the page numbers of important ideas. Check out the writers’ footnotes and bibliography as well for leads to other sources you should look at. After you’ve reached a critical mass of materials (because no one can ever read it ALL!), discard any of your sources that are irrelevant to the project at hand. 5 Now that you’ve determined the interesting and useful sources you’d like to reference in your essay, make a list of the bibliographical information you will need for your works cited. For books, this should include the author or editor’s name(s), the title (exactly as shown on the title page), the place and date of publication, and in some bibliographical formats, the publisher. For journals, note the author and title of the article, the title of the journal, its volume number and date, as well as the relevant page numbers. 6 It is often helpful to make an annotated bibliography, a list of citations, each accompanied by a few sentences that summarize the book or article’s main ideas. At the back of this book I’ve included a short



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annotated bibliography of editions and ‘essentials’ that illustrates the format. Some instructors may ask for more information than I include, but the main goal is to provide your readers with sufficient information to see how the source informs your essay and to decide whether or not they should access it themselves. 7 Remember too that secondary reading can never substitute for your active engagement with the text. The goal of Shakespearean criticism is to make the reader think and to open new windows into the play. After you’ve completed your research, go back to the play and study it one more time before you begin writing. Once you’ve done that, you should have a good idea of what you want to say, and it’s time to write!

CHAPTER FOUR

Writing checklist Once you’ve applied your close reading skills to Antony and Cleopatra and completed the secondary reading related to the topic you’re exploring, you’re ready to write a first draft. Your reading will likely have stimulated many different ideas, but in order to craft a formal essay you need a clear focus. If you’ve studied the text but can’t figure out a topic – the subject you want to write about – go over your reading notes. No matter how scattered or incoherent your ideas were, those first impressions are valuable. What unanswered questions do you have? What were the ideas that excited you the most? If you’re still at a loss, you might peruse the books listed in my bibliography under ‘Essential Reading’. Each of the books on this list has important things to say that may spur your thinking. Sometimes your instructor may provide a prompt, a particular question for you to consider. Such questions are meant to help you move from a topic to a thesis, the central concept or argument that will tie your paper together. The thesis should be a claim you want to support with evidence. If you can state your thesis idea in a simple, declarative sentence, you are on firm ground to begin writing your paper. When I write, I like to make a list of my main points and organize them into an outline. The hierarchical structure of an outline allows you to distinguish between important ideas and less important details that support or illustrate the points you are making. Often the order of ideas will change in the writing

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process, but whether or not you use a formal outline, having a list of things you want to say is incredibly helpful. Many instructors will ask you to organize your paper deductively. That means your thesis statement should be highlighted in your introductory paragraph and the body of your paper should use the text and your secondary reading to explain and illustrate your thesis. If you are confident about what you want to say, another way to organize your paper is to lay out a general discussion point by point and then, drawing upon those ideas, arrive at a general conclusion in your final paragraph. Such an inductive structure is perfectly fine if you know where you’re headed as you write, but if you’re just floundering around looking for a thesis, it won’t work. Whether you organize deductively or inductively, the way you structure your paper should be a considered choice. If you’re like me, you are sometimes unsure of just what you want to say until you start writing. Writing is itself a creative process – new ideas will percolate as you go along. I often find that my concluding paragraph is a revelation: ‘Oh, that’s what I wanted to say all along!’ Since I’m a chronic reviser who uses a word processing program, this is not a problem because I can easily revise, move paragraphs and rewrite sentences. If you’re not sure exactly what you want to say, it’s all right to postpone organizing thoughts and writing your introduction until you have finished a first draft and have a clearer idea of its scope. The body of your paper should include the evidence you are using to support your thesis. You can use specific citations from the play (always marked with act, scene and line numbers in parentheses, as I have done in this book) to illustrate your ideas. You can also turn to some of the secondary sources you have read. If a particular quote from an outside source, whether historical or critical, perfectly illustrates the point you want to make, it’s fine to use it if you provide a citation indicating your source. Always introduce your quotations by mentioning the author’s name and indicate why this particular statement is important to your argument. If, for example,



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you are quoting something from John Wilders’ introduction, you could introduce it this way: ‘The Arden editor John Wilders explains the importance of hyperbole’. This phrase, followed by a colon and the direct quotation from Wilders’ introduction, lets your readers know that he had something important to say about hyperbole. Add the page number (51) at the end of the quotation before the final stop. Don’t simply drop quotations into your text like marbles on a floor, or your reader will trip. Most important, don’t make your essay a mishmash of what others think. This is your paper, and your instructor wants to know what you think. I make an outline before I write because some ideas are subordinate to others and must be used as supporting rather than free-standing arguments. In my outline I try to arrange my thoughts in a logical order. If you’re writing a paper based on close reading, the easiest organization is to go through the play in chronological order, act by act, and explain how the text supports your ideas. Another tactic is to place the most compelling evidence for your argument early in the paper, bringing in later more controversial or less persuasive evidence. However you structure your ideas, remember that each paragraph should build on the previous one, and it is crucial to provide orderly transitions from one paragraph to the next. Readers feel more comfortable if they know where they’re headed, so keep them in mind as you write. As the previous chapters have shown, Antony and Cleopatra is a multi-faceted text, subject to many different interpretations. It will strengthen the case for your ideas if you acknowledge ambiguity and take into account passages that could conceivably undercut your argument. Your thesis doesn’t have to be carved in stone; it is simply a way of thinking that is based on your reading of the text. Anyone can stop writing by stopping writing, but it is a big challenge to write a successful conclusion. At the end of your paper, readers should feel that you have successfully made your case and there is no more to say. A simple tactic for writing a conclusion is to firmly restate the thesis; another

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tactic is to suggest some questions that can’t be answered within the scope of your paper, things best left for further inquiries. As I’ve insisted in previous chapters, an even more effective way to conclude is to ask the ‘So what?’ question. Why are this topic and the argument you’ve made about it important? Does what you have to say have any implications beyond the scope of your paper? If at all possible, complete a polished draft ahead of time so that you can let it sit for a few days. When you come back to it, you’ll see things you want to fix. But even if you are working under time pressure, it is crucial to re-read your paper after you’ve finished it and make revisions. Sometimes you will find you simply need to correct typographical errors that inevitably appear during the heat of the writing process. You are also likely to find some lapses in grammar or logic, or there might be more substantial changes you decide to make, some new idea that hadn’t occurred to you earlier. I always find hosts of stylistic infelicities in my first draft, so I edit to make my prose more forceful and concise. I change the wording when I see that I’ve used several words where one will do, or if I’ve used a stringy participial phrase or the passive voice. If you are not ready to edit your own writing, ask someone you trust, a friend or writing tutor, to go over your paper and make suggestions for improvements. Good readers are also likely to notice ideas that seem perfectly clear to you but are confusing to them. No matter how fine your writing is, editing to correct spelling and grammatical errors, lapses in logic, or simply to clarify your thinking, is essential. Once you’ve finished your essay, the next step is the bibliography. Whether you’re writing for a college course, a newspaper, a journal or a monograph series, you need to be aware of ‘house’ style. Your instructor has probably provided a style sheet for you or recommended a format used by a professional organization like America’s MLA or Britain’s Modern Humanities Research Association or a handbook like the Chicago Manual of Style. All notes to outside sources quoted in your text should be formatted in accord with



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the relevant guidelines. (And as tedious as it is, you should double-check your quotes to make sure you’ve copied the text accurately.) In addition to page numbers in parentheses, or – if you’re using the Chicago Manual of Style – footnotes, you will be asked to append a list of works cited to your essay. Every source you quote in the paper should be included in this list. At other times, you may be asked for a more complete bibliography that lists all the works you consulted, not just the ones you cited. In either case provide all the information required by the style you are using, and be sure to double-check to make sure the entries are properly alphabetized. Finally, add page numbers and give your essay a title. An appropriate title indicates that you’ve considered your essay’s content and can convey it in a few words or a short phrase. A good title does not need to be clever or wordy, only appropriate. Before your submit your essay, proofread it one more time, just to be sure some careless error doesn’t mar your otherwise perfect paper!

Checklist 1 Choose your topic. 2 Frame a thesis. 3 Organize: Decide on a basic structure for your essay. 4 Make a list of ideas or an outline that includes

supporting material. 5 Provide transitions between paragraphs. 6 Introduce direct quotations with explanatory phrases. 7 Write a conclusion. 8 Revise: Try to make your writing clear, forceful, and succinct. 9 Edit for accuracy of spelling, grammar and quotations.

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10 Prepare a bibliography or a list of works cited. 11 Add an appropriate title. 12 Proofread, again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Internet resources http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile The University of Victoria offers an online facsimile of the First Folio. http://shakespeare.mit.edu The Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides digitized and searchable texts for all of Shakespeare’s plays, but without explanatory notes or commentary. www.bl.uk Through this site you can access the British Library’s catalogue and find citations for nearly all the books on Shakespeare published in the UK and many books published elsewhere. www.englishmonarchs.com This site is dedicated to the historical study of the English monarchy; here you can find biographies of Elizabeth I and James I. www.folger.edu The Folger Shakespeare Library houses the largest collection of First Folios in the world. Through this site you can access Hamnet, the Library’s catalogue, as well as the Library’s collection of digital images based on Shakespeare’s plays (using Luna software which is easily downloaded). www.luminarium.org Titled, ‘An Anthology of English Literature’, this site will help you sample the work of some of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, such as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton. www.shakespeareswords.com This site includes a dictionary of the words Shakespeare used as well as a concordance, which enables you to search through all the plays to see where and how a particular word has been used.

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Editions Bevington, David, ed. Antony and Cleopatra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Bevington’s scholarly edition provides helpful commentary notes as well as a useful survey of Antony and Cleopatra in performance. Mowat, Barbara A. and Paul Werstine, eds. Antony and Cleopatra. New York: Simon and Schuster, Folger Library Edition, 1999. Like all Folger editions, this user-friendly text places helpful notes and illustrations opposite each page of text. Cynthia Marshall’s essay, ‘Antony and Cleopatra: A Modern Perspective’ is also a helpful overview of the play. Neill, Michael, ed. Anthony and Cleopatra. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Neill’s outstanding scholarly edition includes a comprehensive introduction that’s full of valuable insights, and his commentary notes consistently shed light on the text. Spevack, Marvin, ed. Antony and Cleopatra: A New Variorum Edition. New York: Modern Language Association, 1990. A variorum edition is meant to be a record of all the changes made to the text by ‘various’ editors from the First Folio to the present. Because this edition includes extensive excerpts from the play’s critics, most pages include more notes than text. Wilders, John, ed. Antony and Cleopatra, Third Arden Series. London: Routledge, 1995. In this scholarly edition Wilders offers comprehensive textual criticism, a useful introduction, and ample commentary notes.

Essential reading Adelman, Janet. The Common Liar: An Essay on ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. Adelman’s nuanced reading highlights the multi-faceted, often contradictory, nature of Antony and Cleopatra and, in Appendix A she ponders the question of Cleopatra’s ‘blackness’. Barroll, J. Leeds. Shakespearean Tragedy: Genre, Tradition and

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Change in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1984. Focusing mainly on the characterization of Antony, Cleopatra and Octavius, Barroll raises important methodological issues about the way we understand dramatic characters. Deats, Sara Munson, ed. Antony and Cleopatra: New Critical Essays. New York: Routledge, 2005. Deats begins this collection of original essays with a 93-page introduction that surveys the ways Antony and Cleopatra has been interpreted in criticism and on stage. The essays that follow include more recent interpretations by Linda Woodbridge (L. T. Fitz) and J. Leeds Barroll, among others. Hall, Joan Lord. Antony and Cleopatra: A Guide to the Play. New York: Greenwood, 2002. Hall provides a useful overview of the play, including an analysis of its sources and structure, a survey of criticism and a history of the play in performance. Madeleine, Richard, ed. Antony and Cleopatra: Shakespeare in Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Madeleine’s 135-page introduction surveys the history of Antony and Cleopatra on stage and highlights the challenges it poses to stage managers, directors and actors. Notes to the text discuss various interpretative choices and describe blocking and stage business that has been used in particular scenes.

Works cited Adams, Joseph Quincy. Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas. Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1924. Adelman, Janet. The Common Liar: An Essay on ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. Adelman, Janet. Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, ‘Hamlet’ to ‘The Tempest’. New York: Routledge, 1992. Archer, John Michael. ‘Antiquity and Degeneration in Antony and Cleopatra’, in Race, Ethnicity and Power in the Renaissance, ed. Joyce Green MacDonald, 145–64. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.

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Barroll, J. Leeds. Shakespearean Tragedy: Genre, Tradition and Change in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1984. Belsey, Catherine. ‘Cleopatra’s Seduction’, in Alternative Shakespeares 2, ed. Terence Hawkes, 38–62. London: Routledge, 1996. Bessell, Jacquelyn. ‘The Early Modern Physical Theater’, in Speaking Pictures: The Visual / Verbal Nexus of Dramatic Performance, eds. Virginia Mason Vaughan, Fernando Cioni and Jacquelyn Bessell, 181–201. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010. Bevington, David. ‘“Above the element they lived in”: The Visual Language of Antony and Cleopatra, Acts 4 and 5’, in Antony and Cleopatra: New Critical Essays, ed. Sara Munson Deats, 95–110. New York: Routledge, 2005. Bradley, A. C. Oxford Lectures on Poetry. London: Macmillan, 1909. Bullough, Geoffrey. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. Callaghan, Dympna. ‘Representing Cleopatra in the Post-colonial Moment’, in Antony and Cleopatra: Theory and Practice, ed. Nigel Wood. Buckingham, 40–65. Buckinghamshire: Open University, 1996. Chambers, E. K. William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1930. Charnes, Linda. Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson. Boston, MA: Riverside, 1961. Dash, Irene G. Wooing, Wedding and Power: Women in Shakespeare’s Plays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Davies, H. Neville. ‘Jacobean Antony and Cleopatra’, Shakespeare Studies 17 (1985): 123–57. Deats, Sara Munson. Antony and Cleopatra: New Critical Essays. New York: Routledge, 2005. Dollimore, Jonathan. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Dryden, John. All for Love, ed. N. J. Andrew. London: Methuen, 1975.

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Dusinberre, Juliet. ‘“Squeaking Cleopatras”: Gender and Performance in Antony and Cleopatra’, in Shakespeare, Theory and Performance, ed. James C. Bulman, 46–67. London: Routledge, 1996. Fitz, L. T. ‘Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony and Cleopatra Criticism’, Shakespeare Quarterly 28 (1977): 297–316. Gandrow, Kristen. ‘Antony and Cleopatra (review)’, Theatre Journal 52 (2000): 123–5. Gillies, John. Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Hall, Joan Lord. Antony and Cleopatra: A Guide to the Play. New York: Greenwood, 2002. Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Hinman, Charlton, ed. The Norton Facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare. New York: Norton, 1968. Kahn, Coppélia. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women. London: Routledge, 1997. Knight, G. Wilson. The Imperial Theme. London: Methuen, 1951. Little, Arthur L., Jr. Shakespeare Jungle Fever: National-Imperial Re-visions of Race, Rape and Sacrifice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Loomba, Ania. Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Loomba, Ania and Jonathan Burton, eds. Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion. New York: Palgrave, 2007. McDonald, Russ. Shakespeare and the Arts of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Madeleine, Richard, ed. Antony and Cleopatra: Shakespeare in Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Mahood, M[olly] M. Shakespeare’s Wordplay. London: Methuen, 1957. Maisano, Scott. ‘Shakespeare’s Revolution – The Tempest as Scientific Romance’, in The Tempest: A Critical Reader, eds. Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, 165–94. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Marshall, Cynthia. ‘A Modern Perspective’ in Antony and

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Cleopatra, eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990, 297–307. Murfin, Ross and Supriya M. Ray (eds). The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, 2nd edn. Boston, MA: Bedford, 2003. Neely, Carol Thomas. Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare’s Plays. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Neill, Michael, ed. Othello. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Rackin, Phyllis. ‘Shakespeare’s Boy Cleopatra, the Decorum of Nature and the Golden World of Poetry’, Publications of the Modern Language Association 87 (1972): 201–12. Rose, Mark. Shakespearean Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972. Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Anthony and Cleopatra. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2006. Rothwell, Kenneth S. A History of Shakespeare on Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Royster, Francesca T. Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Rutter, Carol Chillington. Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shakespeare’s Stage. London: Routledge, 2001. Shakespeare, William. Richard II, Third Arden Series, ed. Charles R. Forker. London: Thomson Learning, 2002. de Sousa, Geraldo U. Shakespeare’s Cross-Cultural Encounters. New York: St. Martins, 1999. Tennenhouse, Leonard. Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare’s Genres. New York: Methuen, 1986. Thompson, Ann and John O. Thompson. ‘Community and Shakespearean Metonymy’, in Community-Making in Early Stuart Theatres: Stage and Audience, eds. Antony W. Johnson, Roger Sell and Helen Wilcox. Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming. Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture. New York: Vintage Books, 1944. Virgil. The Aeneid, trans. H. R. Fairclough. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934. Yachnin, Paul. ‘“Courtiers of Beauteous Freedom”: Antony and Cleopatra in its Time’, Renaissance and Reformation 15 (1991): 1–20.