With its richly sensuous language, Antony and Cleopatra is, first of all, one of Shakespeare’s finest poetic achievements. It is the second of his three Roman plays, based on his reading of Plutarch’s Lives, and therefore includes, like his English history plays, a historical dimension. It belongs generically, however, with the four great tragedies, which immediately precede it in the Shakespeare chronology. As a tragedy, it is technically experimental, including two tragic climaxes, one for each of its paired protagonists. It is also full of humour as well as anguish, and one of Shakespeare’s most complex statements about love and sexual passion. As such it invites comparison with two earlier plays, Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and Cressida, though in this case the two lovers are middle-aged people, replete with experience and burdened with political responsibilities.
In recent years the play has been much discussed in the context of ‘orientalism’, that mythologisation and stereotyping of the East, to which Western Europeans are prone. Egypt and its Queen, Cleopatra, stand for mystery, sensuality, unpredictability and wilful caprice. Rome, by contrast, stands for reason and order. Mark Antony’s tragedy is that, through his passion for Cleopatra, he is divided between the two.
This course will study the play scene by scene – one act per day – exploring it in its poetic, psychological and political dimensions. The structure of the course will be extremely simple. We shall work through the play at a rate of roughly one act per session and conclude with a discussion of the play as a whole. It will present a number of problems. How noble are the protagonists? Is their fate truly tragic or possibly comic? How do we judge the Roman leader, Octavius, who is later to become the first Emperor, Augustus Caesar? Is he coldly Machiavellian or the inspired creator of a new civilisation? If the latter, what does that make of the legendary passions of Antony and Cleopatra?
One further point: the two actors who played the parts of Antony and Cleopatra in 1607 were probably the same actors who, the previous year and on the same London stage, played Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Both pairs, of course, are couples in middle age. A good complement to this course is Ra3, Vaulting ambition: The Tragedy of Macbeth. In both courses the two plays may briefly be compared.
