Thematic Concerns-"Antony and Cleopatra"

" ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA" -WAR OF OPPOSITES:

 

Academic Copelia Kahn sees this play as a chain of oppositions. The play is structured around the tension between two binary settings: Rome and Egypt. The text and action continually oscillates between these two vastly different 

and conflicting territories and it is fitting that they eventually meet at sea, an intermediate space in order the carry out their final battles. Several other oppositions function below this overarching binary that drive the ethos and meaning of this play; “war and love, public and private, duty and pleasure, reason and sensuality, land and sea and most importantly male and female”. Throughout history it has often been said that Antony sits at the heart of this opposition, he is the object of desire for both realms and the character with choice; Rome or Egypt, Octavia or Cleopatra, love or duty, land or sea, the male plight or the female realm. This is perhaps why he often gets hit with the blame. However, the play is much more complex. Does Antony truly have a choice? Rome and Octavius will not let him go, and any movement he makes towards Cleopatra seems to seal his fate of death and dilution. Copelia Kahn notes that Antony is tied between his homosocial relations with Caesar, his need to play at war with men and his love and desire for Cleopatra, and he cannot ever abandon either. Kahn states that although Antony resides and dies in Egypt he can’t ever cut ties with Rome; “Antony can’t avoid it because his very identity is always already constructed in terms of that male game.”

Then there’s the continual tension in the second half of the play between land and sea which poses the question…if Antony had chosen to fight by land would this play have ended happily? Or was it his choice? Whereas Plutarch’s life of Antony says that Antony was subject to a woman’s will, Shakespeare seems to give the final decision to Antony who blatantly ignores the advice of his men and faithful soldiers and repeatedly answers their pleas for a land battle with “By sea, by sea” (Act 3, Scene 7). Antony may be the first to suggest it, but Cleopatra does confirm his decision. However, Cleopatra’s choice seems based on the vast numbers in her fleet, whereas Antony is swayed simply because Octavius Caesar dared him to it. Shakespeare leaves the blame for the couple’s fate in their own hands, but like all works, this is still somewhat ambiguous.

Even the genre of this play is at odds with itself. Antony and Cleopatra is often labeled a tragi-comedy, and Adelman even classifies the play as a “tragic experience embedded in a comic structure”. Even the ending is a perfect compromise between the two traditional genres. Unlike Hamlet and Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra does not end in a veil of darkness, but rather a state funeral in “high solemnity” that will celebrate the title couple’s relationship much like the comedies do with their characteristic weddings.

Whereas Egypt represents what is feminine, pleasurable, sensual and mystical, Rome embodies all that is male, dutiful, reasonable and logical. They are two sides of humanity that exist within Antony, but in Roman terms they can’t coincide harmoniously and therefore destroy him. Janet Adelman sees this as a “contest between male scarcity and female bounty”, that Rome abhors self-waste and resents Egypt feeding Antony’s hedonistic tendencies. There is much debate over whether this play is about Rome vilifying Cleopatra to support masculine virtue, or whether she is simply a ruse to eliminate Antony as a rival and uphold what the gods determined as the fate of Rome. Historians do believe that Shakespeare would have been slave to upholding the Humanistic Renaissance ideal that Octavius Caesar is the destined ruler of Rome, and the male clash is just as important to the story, if not more so than the love story. However, Shakespeare’s play is again much more complex than this. 

FANTASY AND REALITY

Another pair of opposites that are at play in this text is the real and the fantastical. Rene Weis ties this closely to the two opposing settings, believing Rome to encompass what is real and raw much like the Athenian Court in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Egypt to align more with “the fairy-tale world of the comedies”.

Much like the woods in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, time is fluid or stagnant in Egypt and Shakespeare ensures that history is being made in Rome through usurpation and triumph whilst the Egyptian realm rarely changes, but rather languidly plays games and waits.

This play also presents sublime tension between reality and the character’s subjective perceptions of it. Glorified pasts are brought into the present and still seem to hold power. For instance, when Cleopatra commemorates Antony after his death she says there was “no winter” in the bounty of his generosity, that his delights were “dolphin-like” and showed their back “above the elements they lived in” and that in his absence there “is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon” (Act 5, Scene 2).

It could be said that Rome is consumed by present action whereas Egypt plays in spectacle, constantly recreating fantasies of moments past. For instance, Cleopatra’s aggrandized replaying of meeting Antony. She first wonders where he might be, then asks “Is he on his horse? Oh happy horse to bear the weight of Antony!”, then Cleopatra can’t help but bring that imaginary horse to life:

“ Do bravely, horse for wot’st thou whom thou mov’st?

The demi-Atlas of this earth.

She then brings the absent Antony to life before her court:

…He’s speaking now, murmuring ‘where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ For so he calls me.”

( Act 1, Scene 5)

In this same scene Cleopatra even asks her ladies to give her the drug Mandragora to escape reality and “sleep out” the great gap of time Antony is away. However, Rome is not free of this imaginary of reflective practice either. Antony wishes to uphold Roman ritual of dying by his sword to ensure his mythical legacy out ways his earthly failures and Octavius Caesar can’t help but bring the old heroic Roman ideal of Antony to life when he laments to Lepidus in Act 1, Scene 4 about the loss of his opponent.

A.C. Bradley felt that the spectacle of this play caused audiences to be constantly aware of its artifice, and therefore it is not a “painful” tragedy like Macbeth and Hamlet. For this reason he chose to exclude it from his famous 1904 study, Shakespearean Tragedy.

A SIMPLE LOVE STORY?

This famous historical romance and Shakespeare’s rendition of it has long been considered one of the greatest love stories of all time. But is this love affair the main romance of the play? What of the homosocial male relations that exist alongside this main romance? Antony and Octavius’ relationship is complex and troubled. If it did not exist and Antony did not feel obligated to return to Rome to engage in this male rivalry the forbidden allure of Egypt and Antony’s pull towards it may be somewhat lessened. One can’t exist without the other. Throughout history the downfall of Antony has been attributed to his love for Cleopatra, but perhaps he and this love would flourish successfully if he could sever ties with Rome. Is it then the homosocial relationship with Rome and Octavius that is the true cause of his downfall? The Soothsayer predicts that if Antony plays at any game with Octavius he is “sure to lose”, but this does not deter Antony, who can’t seem to separate himself from Rome, despite being physically absent. The Soothsayer also says, “stay not by his side…near him thy angel becomes afeared, as being o’erpowered; therefore make space enough between you” (Act 2, Scene 3). Antony may initially make space between himself and Octavius but still continues to journey back to confront him as war is part of his identity.

Shakespeare does still spend much energy giving life and fervor to the romance between Antony and Cleopatra. Just like history and Octavius’ final speech about a “pair so famous” he endows it with great respect, but not without giving the audience a window into something very real and domestic. When we first see them together in the opening scene they are extremely playful. Cleopatra both compliments him and taunts him, cheekily asking “Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?”. The title characters are both confident in their love and deeply insecure. Antony attempts several times to tell Cleopatra that his wife has died, news that will surely please her, but she continually interrupts calling him a “liar”. When he eventually shares the news, instead of showing joy she chides him for his callous reaction to his wife’s death and shares her fears he will do the same to her. When Antony walks in on the Roman Thidius holding Cleopatra’s hand he falls to into a jealous rage, as would the typical lover. When Cleopatra bides her time, and lets Antony play out his antics he accuses her of being “cold-hearted”. However, she merely proves she knows him well and questions how he could have ever doubted her, “Not know me yet?” 

CULTURAL CONFLICT: THE OUTSIDER

You simply can’t ignore the conflict of cultures that sits at the heart of this play. Kahn believes that xenophobia was fostered in the “Roman national identity”.

Hughes-Hallet says the notion of Cleopatra that we have inherited identifies her “as being the adversary, the Other…and Oriental”. She is an outsider and an enemy of Rome, and as we the West inherited Rome, she is set up as our foe.

But does Shakespeare purely endorse this ideology? Although Rome, may blame Cleopatra for Antony’s downfall Enobarbus and the Soothsayer don’t. Octavius complains that in Cleopatra’s world Antony “wastes the lamps of night in revel” and he believes that his shames will “quickly drive him to Rome” (Act 1, Scene 4). In the opening speech of the play Philo says that Antony has been transformed into a “strumpet’s fool” (Act 1, Scene 1). Even Antony states that Cleopatra is “cunning past man’s thought” and wishes that he had “never seen her”. Conversely, Enobarbus applauds Cleopatra throughout the play and places the blame on Antony’s poor choices in battle. When Cleopatra asks Enobarbus “Is Antony or we in fault for this?” he responds promptly “Antony only” (Act 3, Scene 13). The Soothsayer goes further saying that Antony should distance himself from Caesar and “hie” himself hither to Egypt to preserve his “lustre”. Just as Romeo and Juliet may have lived happily ever after if not for their parents’ feud so may have Antony and Cleopatra skipped off into the sunset if not for Rome. But both worlds are subject to a cultural conflict that overrides individual’s choices and desires. 

POWER: LOYALTY, BETRAYAL AND MANIPULATION

This play tracks a complex web of power games: manipulation, desertion, usurpation, corruption, distrust, attacks, retreats, intrigue and so much more. Despite Octavius’ final victory he seems to fail in solidifying true allegiance. Antony never truly aligns himself with Octavius, both Proculeius and Dollabella deceive him, and even the passive Lepidus seems to question Octavius’ motives. Menas attempts to drive his leader Pompey to murder the triumvirate and then questions leaving his master when this tactic proves unsuccessful, Enobarbus deserts Antony for a better military leader and even Antony and Cleopatra constantly question each other’s loyalty and manipulate one another in order to gain attention.

The Roman and Egyptian courts once respected each other through ceremony, by not attacking messengers from either realm, but even that political courtesy seems to have dissipated. Antony has Octavius’ man Thidius whipped in Egypt and Cleopatra attacks the Roman messenger refusing to accept the gifts he brings. Octavius’ single and unwavering vision does allow him to eventually rise to the top of this sea of intrigue and manipulation, but even he is not solely successful. Cleopatra outsmarts him by managing to take her own life before he can make an example of her through the streets of Rome. 

GENDER AND ROMAN MANHOOD IN DECLINE

Antony is in a continual state of emotional, physical and psychological decline throughout the play which eventually results in his death. He can no longer live up to the expectations of Virtus, the Roman code of heroic masculinity. Many academics claim that this is due to the Roman’s complex and flawed relationship with history; they never exist in the present, but are rather always in a state of reminiscing about past glories or solidifying their image or legend for the future. Shakespeare can’t help but prove that identity is always changing with each character’s choices and actions. The Romans wish to interrupt this, place a “permanent order on reality” and write their own history, in which they are the undeniable heroes. Shakespeare explores this in great detail in Julius Caesar. Brutus and Cassius constantly erupt into self-aggrandizing speeches in which they refer to themselves in the third person and adhere to the Roman ritual of dying nobly by their own sword in order to preserve and control the world’s memory of them. This seems somewhat successful for Brutus, but by the time Shakespeare gets to Antony and his sequel this behavior has become a pitiful mockery. Antony can’t even achieve the Roman ideal in death and fails to stab himself cleanly enough to die. He realizes his own failure instantly, and states “How? Not dead? Not dead?” (Act 4, Scene 14). Janet Adelman believes that no one is more aware of Antony’s declining manhood than himself. Before he asks Eros to take his life his existence seems to disappear before his own eyes and he expresses that feels as indistinguishable as “water is in water”. (Act 4, Scene 14).

There is also a great fear in Antony and Cleopatra of man being reduced to the state of a woman. Janet Adelman states that the play “is full of references to Cleopatra’s emasculating effect on Antony.” In Act 4, Scene 2, Enobarbus warns Antony, “For shame, transform us not to women”. At this point in the play Antony seems weak and spent, he is quick to emotion, drives his men to tears and even forgoes logic, requesting everyone to “drown consideration”. Academic Michael Neill states that the Roman hero in Antony and Cleopatra is threatened by the female and this actually reveals “the fragility of masculine identity”.

In the very opening lines of the play the Roman Philo states:

“ His captains heart,

Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst

The buckles of his breast, reneges all temper,

And is become the bellows and the fan

To cool a gypsy’s lust.’

( Act 1, Scene 1)

Classic writers like Ovid and Horace demonized Cleopatra and believed Antony to be infected by her feminine sexuality, but Shakespeare goes beyond this to show that it is the Roman ideal of masculinity that is flawed, not just the woman or outsider impinging upon it.

Antony and Cleopatra offers us several types of women in opposition to one another. Firstly Fulvia, whom we never meet, is portrayed as dull, easily forgotten and as Enobarbus notes Antony should only feel her loss if she were the last women on earth. Octavia is dutiful and a fitting match, but is cast aside just as easily. Her power only lies in her allegiances to men through either marriage or kinship. Conversely, Cleopatra is a woman of great skill, power and independence, yet even she relies heavily on her relationship with Antony, sends him “twenty several messengers” when he is absent and waits sorrowfully for his return.

Cleopatra does still enter and manage to function within the male realm, unlike her Roman, female counterparts. Octavia, and Portia and Calpurnia from Julius Caesar, are for the most part confined to the home. Cleopatra portrays a confident sexuality, has a public voice, is present at the battle, contributes forces and is involved in military decisions. It is interesting that Shakespeare becomes concerned with the anxieties surrounding female power and authority not long after the death of England’s longest reigning female monarch (at the time) Queen Elizabeth the 1st.