Antony and Cleopatra (24 page)

Enobarbus tries to persuade Cleopatra that she should not accompany Antony into battle against Caesar. He explains that her presence will “take from” Antony’s heart and brain and “puzzle” him when he should be concentrating on war. Highlighting the tension between her roles as ruler and woman, Cleopatra insists that she will be there as the “president” of her kingdom and therefore will “Appear there for a man.” Antony arrives with reports of Caesar’s military successes. Despite advice from Canidius and Enobarbus, and a desperate plea by one of Antony’s soldiers, Antony and
Cleopatra decide to fight Caesar at sea. They leave with Enobarbus, and Canidius comments bitterly that Antony’s soldiers are now “women’s men.”

Caesar orders that his army shall not attack on land until the sea battle is finished.

Antony places his squadrons on the hillside so they may view the sea battle.

The noise of the sea battle is heard as Enobarbus enters, announcing that the Egyptian flagship has turned and fled, followed by all sixty Egyptian ships. Scarrus reports that this occurred just as they had victory in sight, and that, seeing Cleopatra flee, Antony followed, allowing Caesar victory. He blames Cleopatra, emphasizing her sexual power over Antony in unflattering terms as he describes her as a “ribaudred nag” and “a cow in June” and Antony as a “doting mallard.” This animal imagery suggests that Antony and Cleopatra have let their personal, sexual instincts overcome their reason and responsibilities. Canidius declares his intention to defect to Caesar, but Enobarbus decides to remain with Antony although it goes against his reason.

Ashamed, Antony urges his followers to take his remaining gold and defect to Caesar. They refuse, but he urges “Let that be left / Which leaves itself” and his sense of having somehow “left” his true self shows his awareness of the divisions and contradictions in his identity. Cleopatra is led in by her attendants, who urge her to “comfort”
Antony. Cleopatra begs his forgiveness for her “fearful sails” and claims that she did not know that he would follow, but Antony argues that she knew his heart was tied to her “rudder” “by th’strings.” He says that his sword was “made weak” by his “affection” for her, an acknowledgment of his emasculation. Seeing how upset Cleopatra is, however, he forgives her and asks if his messenger has returned.

Dolabella comments to Caesar that Antony’s choice of messenger shows “he is plucked.” The Schoolmaster/Ambassador outlines Antony’s request that he might be allowed to live in Egypt, or if not, then as a “private man in Athens.” Cleopatra sends a message that she “submits” to Caesar’s might, and asks for the crown of Egypt. Caesar refuses Antony’s request and says that Cleopatra’s will only be granted if she either banishes or kills Antony. After the Ambassador leaves, he sends Thidias to “win Cleopatra” from Antony, relying on what he sees as her female weaknesses, as “Women are not / In their best fortunes strong.”

Lines 1–42:
Enobarbus reassures Cleopatra that it was not her fault that Antony followed her, arguing that “itch of his affection should not then / Have nicked his captainship,” emphasizing the tensions between personal emotions and public duties. Antony arrives, discussing Caesar’s response. He sends the Ambassador back with an offer to meet Caesar in single combat. In the first of several asides in this scene, showing his growing distance from Antony, Enobarbus observes that Antony’s judgment has decreased with his fortunes.

Lines 43–233:
In Antony’s absence, Caesar’s messenger suggests that Cleopatra “embraced” Antony out of fear rather than love. Cleopatra agrees with this and suggests her willingness to place herself in Caesar’s power, delivering flattering messages. As Thidias kisses her hand, however, Antony interrupts in a jealous rage,
ordering that Thidias be whipped. He declares “I am / Antony yet,” in strong contrast to his confused sense of self in Act 3 Scene 11. Then he turns on Cleopatra. He insults her as a “boggler” and compares her to Octavia, “a gem of women,” ironically forgetting that this allegiance was born out of dire political necessity. Cleopatra manages to reassure him of her loyalty and fidelity. Antony forgives her, declaring that they will have a feast. Alone, Enobarbus decides that Antony has lost all reason and that he cannot stay loyal to his master.

Though angry at Antony’s insults and his treatment of Thidias, Caesar merely laughs at Antony’s challenge. He prepares for a final battle.

Antony receives Caesar’s refusal of single combat and declares that he will fight Caesar “By sea and land,” emphasizing that this is a matter of honor. He then morbidly bids farewell to his followers and Enobarbus chastises him for making them weep, saying “Transform us not to women,” again equating women with weakness. Antony rallies and declares that they will be victorious.

Antony’s soldiers hear strange music and believe that it is the god Hercules abandoning their leader.

This scene contrasts impending conflict with a gentle domesticity between Antony and Cleopatra, as she helps him to put on his armor. He leaves, confident, and giving her a “soldier’s kiss,” but her uncertainty as to the outcome becomes clear once he has gone.

A soldier informs Antony that Enobarbus has defected to Caesar, but has left his “chests and treasure” behind. Antony does not blame Enobarbus, recognizing that his own declining “fortunes have / Corrupted honest men.” He magnanimously gives instructions that Enobarbus’ treasure is to be sent after him.

Caesar orders that Antony is to be taken alive and that those who have defected are to be placed in the front of the attack so that Antony “may seem to spend his fury / Upon himself,” an image that reinforces the sense of Antony’s inner conflict. A soldier gives Enobarbus his treasure, observing that Antony “Continues still a Jove.” Overcome with shame, Enobarbus decides that he would rather die than fight against Antony.

Caesar’s soldiers retreat, pursued by Antony and Scarrus. Scarrus refers to his “brave emperor,” restoring Antony to his previous reputation. Eros brings the news that Caesar’s armies are beaten and that victory is in sight.

Antony praises his men, promising them victory the next day. Cleopatra arrives and he greets her lovingly, presenting Scarrus to her and asking her to commend him for his bravery. Cleopatra promises Scarrus a golden suit of armor. She and Antony go to parade in triumph through the streets of Alexandria.

Two of Caesar’s sentries hear a noise and withdraw to watch. Enobarbus, in shame, begs to be allowed to die. With a cry of “O
Antony!” he collapses, and when the sentries try to rouse him, they find that he has died.

Antony sees that Caesar’s troops are preparing to fight by sea.

Caesar prepares for battle.

Antony leaves to watch the sea battle. Alone, Scarrus criticizes the condition of the Egyptian fleet. He dwells on the fortune-tellers’ reluctance to comment on events and Antony’s once-more divided self, that is both “valiant and dejected,” has “hope and fear,” and “has and has not.” Antony returns with news that “All is lost”: the Egyptian fleet has surrendered. He blames Cleopatra entirely: she is a “Triple-turned whore” who has “sold” him to Caesar. When she arrives, he threatens to kill her.

Cleopatra and her attendants flee to her monument and she sends Mardian the eunuch to tell Antony that she is dead. Again, we see her in a role akin to that of the director of a play, as she gives Mardian his lines and tells him how he must deliver them: “word it—prithee—piteously.”

Antony tells Eros that he does not know himself now that Cleopatra has betrayed him: he “cannot hold” his “visible shape.” Mardian enters and Antony tells him that his “vile lady” has “robbed” him of his sword, but Mardian argues that Cleopatra loved Antony. Antony declares his intention to kill Cleopatra, but Mardian claims that she
is already dead and that her last words were “Most noble Antony!” Antony tells Eros to “unarm” him and leave. Alone and filled with grief, Antony decides to die so that he can be reconciled with Cleopatra “Where souls do couch on flowers.” Calling Eros back, he asks him to kill him, but Eros refuses, killing himself instead so as to “escape the sorrow / Of Antony’s death.” Antony declares that both Cleopatra and “valiant Eros” have shown themselves more noble than he. He stabs himself. Wounded, he is found by Dercetus, who takes his sword to give to Caesar, and then by Diomedes, sent by Cleopatra who has had “a prophesying fear” that Antony would kill himself. Diomedes explains that Cleopatra is in fact still alive. He calls Antony’s guards to carry him to her.

Cleopatra declares that she will never leave her monument. Diomedes arrives and explains that Antony is dying and is being brought to her. They call to each other and once again an intimate moment is played out in public with the guards and attendants as audience. Antony tells Cleopatra that he is “dying, Egypt, dying,” but that he is waiting until he has kissed her. Cleopatra is too afraid to leave her monument, fearing capture by Caesar, and so they draw him up to her. They kiss, and Antony tells her to trust only Proculeius. He declares that he is “A Roman by a Roman / Valiantly vanquished,” thus restoring himself, at least in his own mind, to his original status. He dies. Cleopatra faints. When she comes around, it becomes clear she does not intend to entrust herself to Caesar as she announces that she will bury Antony and then do “what’s brave, what’s noble” and take her own life.

Dercetus brings Caesar Antony’s sword and explains that he is dead. Caesar feels that this news “should make / A greater crack”: after all, Antony represented half the world. He declares that he will mourn Antony because, even though their stars were “Unreconciliable,” they were once friends and companions “in the front of war.” An
Egyptian arrives from Cleopatra to ask what Caesar intends for her and he sends assurance that he means to be “honourable” and “kindly” toward her. After her messenger has gone, however, he sends Proculeius to prevent Cleopatra committing suicide, as he wants her to be brought to Rome as a symbol of his “triumph.”

Lines 1–83:
Proculeius brings Caesar’s greetings to Cleopatra. Although she remembers that Antony told her to trust Proculeius, Cleopatra is suspicious and tells him that she asks for Egypt for her son. While Proculeius talks of Caesar’s grace and kindness, soldiers arrive and seize Cleopatra. He gives orders that she be guarded until Caesar comes and, when she draws a dagger, disarms her. He tells her to allow the world to see Caesar’s “nobleness well acted,” a metatheatrical reference that emphasizes the false nature of Caesar’s behavior. She declares that she would rather die in “a ditch in Egypt” than be shown to “the shouting varletry / Of censuring Rome.”

Lines 84–223:
Cleopatra describes her visions of Antony to a sympathetic Dolabella. She convinces him to admit that Caesar will lead her in triumph through Rome. Caesar arrives and Cleopatra gives him a paper that she claims lists all of her wealth, but her treasurer, Seleucus, tells Caesar that she has lied. Cleopatra is furious at this betrayal, but Caesar assures her that he is not interested in her wealth, saying that he is “no merchant” and that he feels “care and pity” for her.

Lines 224–376:
Once Caesar has left, Cleopatra sends Charmian to carry out some orders that she has previously given. Dolabella returns briefly and, showing honor and loyalty to Cleopatra, tells her that she and her children are to be sent to Rome. Cleopatra tells Iras what their lives in Rome will be like, as surrounded by “greasy,” “thick,” and “gross” Romans, they will be displayed and mocked. In a moment of metatheater, she imagines how she and Antony will be staged, and how she will be played by a “squeaking Cleopatra,” a “boy” actor “I’th’posture of a whore.” Determined against this, she prepares to die, once more staging herself in her “best attires” and
her crown. A Guardsman enters with news that a peasant has brought Cleopatra a basket of figs. Played by the company Clown, he is shown in. The basket contains snakes and, after a deliberately incongruous bantering (and sexually suggestive) conversation with the Clown, Cleopatra prepares to die by their bite. As she kisses Iras and Charmian goodbye, Iras falls and dies, and, paralleling Antony’s reponse to Eros’s death, Cleopatra comments that she has been pre-empted by her follower. She applies an asp to her breast and another to her arm, and with her final thoughts of Antony, dies. The Guards rush in, but only in time to see Charmian die.

Lines 377–428:
Caesar follows Dolabella into the monument where they discover the bodies. Caesar gives the orders for Antony and Cleopatra to be buried together.

The best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible—a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made “our contemporary” four centuries after his death.

We begin with a brief overview of the play’s theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half-century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews, and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an “RSC stage history” to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.

Finally, we go to the horse’s mouth. Modern theater is dominated by the figure of the director, who must hold together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director’s viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare’s plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear directors of highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways.

Although there is no record of any production of
Antony and Cleopatra
before the Restoration, scholars believe it was written and first
performed in 1606. Versions of two earlier plays revised in 1607, Samuel Daniel’s
Cleopatra
and Barnabe Barnes’s
Devil’s Charter
, both contain probable allusions to Shakespeare’s play. The Lord Chamberlain’s records of 1669 report it was “formerly acted at the Blackfriars,” the indoor venue of Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, from 1609 to the closure of the theaters in 1642. It was most likely staged at the Globe Theatre also, and it is assumed that Richard Burbage, the company’s leading tragedian, would have played Antony. Speculation as to the identity of the talented, charismatic boy player entrusted with the part of Cleopatra has been great, particularly in view of her anxiety expressed at the idea of seeing “Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.” It has been suggested that Enobarbus may have originally been played in a red wig (his name means “red-beard”), aligning him emblematically with the character of Judas Iscariot in the medieval morality plays, who was traditionally bewigged in red.
¹

When the theaters reopened after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660,
Antony and Cleopatra
was assigned to Thomas Killigrew’s company, the King’s Servants, but never performed. Restoration audiences preferred John Dryden’s neoclassical adaptation,
All for Love
,
or The World Well Lost
(1677), which takes place in a single day after the Battle of Actium. David Garrick was the first to stage Shakespeare’s play again, in a text prepared with the scholar Edward Capell, but it proved one of his less successful ventures, despite Garrick’s considerable expenditure on scenery and costumes. Thomas Davies, who played Eros, wrote an assessment of the production in which he argued that Garrick’s slight physique was inadequate for Antony:

Spectacle dominated nineteenth-century revivals such as John Philip Kemble’s 1808 production at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and William Charles Macready’s at Drury Lane in 1833.
The Gentleman’s Magazine
complained that Kemble had “merely dovetailed
Shakspere [
sic
] and Dryden; vamped speeches from one with speeches from the other; welted scenes together and in fact ‘cobbled’ the affair…It did not succeed, as Shakspere’s play has since done, when acted with more regard for the author.”
³
Shakespeare’s play was still seen as problematic, though, not least for the role of Cleopatra. Kemble is said to have tried to persuade his sister, Sarah Siddons, the greatest actress of the era, to play the part, but she refused on the grounds that “she should hate herself if she were to act Cleopatra as she knew it ought to be acted.”
⁴
The role continued to pose a problem for actresses. Ellen Tree, for example, who played the part in the first American production in New Orleans in 1838, was described as “impeccably pure and decorous in the proper Victorian manner”:
⁵
decorum is hardly the characteristic Shakespeare was looking for in the part. The first New York production at the Park Theater in 1846 “only ran for six performances despite expensive scenery and costumes and competent acting.”
⁶

Samuel Phelps staged the first successful production of Shakespeare’s play at Sadler’s Wells in London in 1849. It was praised for its realistic sets:

But it was the performance of Isabella Glyn that made the show:

Phelps’s Antony was “less delicately shaded” and also “less effective” but played with “great spirit, and is most successful in giving the
notion of the half-conscious recklessness with which the infatuated man rushes to his destruction.”
⁹

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the play had some international exposure. Edward Eddy’s 1859 production at the Bowery Theater, New York, with himself as Antony and Elizabeth Ponisi as Cleopatra, was an amalgam of Shakespeare’s and Dryden’s texts. The last production at this old theater on Broadway, it ran for three weeks. Charles Calvert’s 1866 production at the Prince’s Theatre, Manchester, went on tour and took the play to Australia (Theatre Royal, Melbourne) for the first time.

Subsequent productions cut Shakespeare’s text in the interest of decorum and reduced the number of scenes drastically. In productions such as Frederick Chatterton’s in 1873 at Drury Lane, Lewis Wingfield’s at the Princess’s in 1890 with Lily Langtry as Cleopatra, and Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s at His Majesty’s Theatre in 1906, archaeological spectacle—elaborate scenic reconstruction of Egyptian antiquity—was the keynote and successfully upstaged individual performances. Chatterton reduced the text to twelve scenes and included Cleopatra’s barge and her first meeting with Antony as well as an Egyptian ballet, thirty choirboys, a procession of Amazons, and the Battle of Actium. Critics complained about the mix of Shakespeare and spectacle:

Beerbohm Tree’s production cut the text by a third and focused on the lovers. Most critics again thought the lavish sets overblown—it opened and closed with a “projected dissolving Sphinx”
¹¹
—but were impressed by his Cleopatra:

1. Archaeological spectacle: Beerbohm Tree’s 1906 production.

The theater historian Richard Madeleine suggests that the number of productions and interest in all things Egyptian may have been sparked by the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 and Egypt’s subsequent financial and political crisis which resulted in British military intervention and the death of General Gordon in Khartoum in 1885.
¹³
One of the anachronistically named “Cleopatra’s needles” had been erected in London in 1878.

It wasn’t until the twentieth century that simpler productions were staged, influenced by the theories of William Poel and Harley Granville-Barker, who advocated a return to the continuous staging of the Elizabethan theaters. William Bridges-Adams’s production for
the 1921 Stratford Festival was played with few cuts and only one short interval, but it was Robert Atkins’ 1922 “non-stop” production at the Old Vic which decisively affected future staging. The play was popular throughout the 1920s and 1930s, partly thanks to Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922 and a continued cultural fascination with Egypt. John Gielgud played a romantic Antony to Dorothy Green’s voluptuous Cleopatra with Ralph Richardson as Enobarbus in Harcourt Williams’s successful 1930 Old Vic production. This featured semipermanent sets and simple designs inspired by the Renaissance painters Veronese and Tiepolo.

The expatriate Russian director Theodore Komisarjevsky’s 1936 Stratford-upon-Avon production, on the other hand, ran for only four nights, due in part to his own radical cutting and rearranging of the text, but also to his Cleopatra. The Russian Eugenie Leontovich’s pronunciation was mercilessly satirized, although Donald Wolfit’s Antony was admired, as was Margaret Rawling’s Charmian, praised by the renowned theater critic James Agate for the way she “refrained from wiping Cleopatra off the stage till after she was dead.”
¹⁴

Glen Byam Shaw’s 1946 production at the Piccadilly Theatre used a versatile permanent set consisting of a single solid central “column-tower-monument with a recess beneath reminiscent of ‘an air-raid shelter or an elevator with sliding doors.’” The design has been perceived by theater historians as “post-fascist” in that it seemed “to belong to the ‘architecture of coercion’ that celebrates the centralisation of power and looks back to the monumental forms of the fascist architecture of the thirties.”
¹⁵
Godfrey Tearle and Edith Evans were both praised for their individual performances. The fifty-eight-year-old Evans, playing the part of Cleopatra in a red wig, was described as “best in the raillery and mischief.” Both leads were judged “at their best when they are apart.”
¹⁶
Tearle’s “rich, resonant voice and noble presence” convinced the London
Times
reviewer that “for once we have an Antony who is really an old lion dying.”
¹⁷
He went on to play the part the following year opposite Katharine Cornell in New York at the Martin Beck Theatre in a record-breaking run, directed by her husband Guthrie McClintic. The production controversially updated and politicized the play: “Shakespeare’s soldiers
are Nazis, Pompey a Göring, Caesar a Baldur von Schirach, the rank and file a squad of heiling stormtroopers.”
¹⁸

In 1951 for the Festival of Britain, Michael Benthall alternated Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra
with George Bernard Shaw’s
Caesar and Cleopatra
at the St James’s Theatre; the leads in both cases were the glamorous celebrity couple Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. The venture was not without problems, as the Oliviers’ biographer records:

Critics were divided about individual performances. The
New York Times
was fulsome: “Miss Leigh’s Cleopatra is superb…Mr. Olivier’s Antony is worthy of her mettle.”
²⁰
The Commonweal
was more cautious: