Antony and Cleopatra (Penguin Shakespeare)
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Antony and Cleopatra (Penguin Shakespeare) Details
'Shakespeare's play is death-haunted from the start, and its self-glorifying lovers exist in a dream of passion' GuardianA battle-hardened soldier, Antony is one of the three leaders of the Roman world. But he is also a man in the grip of an all-consuming passion for the tempestuous and alluring queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. And when their life of pleasure together is threatened by encroaching politics, the conflict between love and duty has devastating consequences. A tragic drama of love and loss, sex and power, told in language of poetic sublimity, Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's supreme imaginative achievements.Used and Recommended by the National TheatreGeneral Editor Stanley WellsEdited by Emrys JonesIntroduction by René Weis
Reviews
Ever since I studied it at school, I have regarded “Antony and Cleopatra” as one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. It is both a “love tragedy” like “Romeo and Juliet” and “Othello” and a political tragedy like “Macbeth”, “Coriolanus” and “Julius Caesar” to which it forms a sequel. I need not say much about the plot as the story of the tragic love affair between the Roman statesman Mark Antony and the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra is so well-known.Despite the title, there are actually three people at the heart of this drama, the third being Octavius Caesar, Antony’s political rival. Throughout the play there is a contrast between Rome and Egypt. Rome stands for the masculine, for stability, order, morality, the martial virtues and for self-denial. Egypt stands for the feminine, for love, sensuality, mutability and for self-indulgence. (Shakespeare clearly understood the concepts of yang and yin long before they were formally introduced into Western thought from Chinese philosophy). The idea of a division between two different worlds is emphasised by a remarkably large number of scene changes; there are 42 separate scenes, more than in any other Shakespeare play. Most of the action takes place in either Rome or Egypt, but there are other locations, such as Sicily and Actium in Greece where the decisive sea battle between Caesar’s forces and Antony’s took place.Caesar is the prime example in the play of Roman values, Cleopatra of Egyptian ones. Antony, who wants both political power and the love of Cleopatra, is caught between the two. At one point Caesar tries to heal their political rift by organising a marriage between Antony and his sister Octavia, but we know this will never work. Although she is beautiful and virtuous, Octavia is too much the Roman maiden, and too much her brother’s sister, for her ever to be a serious rival to Cleopatra in Antony’s affections.A fourth major character is Antony’s lieutenant Enobarbus, who starts off as a cynical observer of events but then becomes a tragic hero in his own right when he has to decide between his own interests and his loyalty to his old friend Antony. He is by background and training a Roman soldier but can see the attractions of the hedonistic Egyptian lifestyle, although, unlike Antony, there does not appear to be any woman in his life.Although Caesar is a young man in his twenties or early thirties, his own love-life is a mystery; his wife Livia never appears on stage and is referred to on only one occasion, implying that matters of the heart do not play an important part in his world view. He has an authoritarian streak as well as a puritanical one- he is quick to condemn what he sees as Antony’s licentious behaviour- but it would be wrong to see him simply as a villain. Beneath the youthful prig one can discern the future Emperor Augustus, the statesman who was to restore peace and stability to the Roman Empire after decades of civil war.Antony is not just caught between love and ambition but is also caught between two worlds. Any actor playing him needs to be able to show, beneath the middle-aged sensualist which Antony has become, evidence of the tough Roman warrior he once was. Cleopatra is also a difficult role to play, being, along with Lady Macbeth, perhaps Shakespeare’s most complex female character. She has many faults: she can be moody, fickle and quick-tempered and can bully her subordinates. She often expresses jealousy, although it must be admitted that at times, such as his marriage to Octavia, Antony gives her good cause to be jealous, and that Antony himself can also be guilty of unreasoning jealousy. She exerts, however, a strong sexual fascination, and not merely over Antony. The otherwise detached observer Enobarbus pays tribute to her beauty and allure in surprisingly poetic language for a tough old soldier, concluding that her very faults actually contribute to her attractiveness:-“…Vilest thingsBecome themselves in her, that the holy priestsBless her when she is riggish”.When John Dryden, several decades later, wrote his own version of the story of Antony and Cleopatra he entitled it “All for Love, or, The World Well Lost”, thereby implying that love is greater than political ambition and that Antony's values are preferable to Octavius Caesar’s. There is no such dogmatic conclusion in Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare is not concerned to depict Antony as a hero and Caesar as a villain, or vice versa. He does not tell us that love is better than politics or that politics are more important than love. Roman values and Egyptian ones are presented as different from one another, not as “better” and “worse”. It is for the viewer or reader of the play to conclude which he or she finds preferable, and one possible conclusion is that both are desirable, that the world needs both the deep feelings and the lust for life of an Antony or a Cleopatra and the calm rationalism and capacity for action of a Caesar. As the German tragedian Friedrich Hebbel stated “Great tragedies are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights”. It is this ability to explore two conflicting sets of values, both of which can be seen as to some extent right and necessary despite the conflict, which gives “Antony and Cleopatra” its dramatic power.