Written
around 1607 and 1607 and published in 1623, Antony
and Cleopatra by Shakespeare is a play which evokes complex and ambiguous
responses. Revolving around the central theme of the love relationship between
the great Mark Antony of Rome and the legendary
beauty Cleopatra of Egypt, Shakespeare shows us the power politics which was
predominant during the times of Antony .
In Antony and Cleopatra, the chain of
events is made to seem more predetermined than in most of Shakespeare's plays.
Although many of the plays use expectation and prophecy and fulfillment, every
event in this play is foreshadowed either by soothsayers or savvy observers
like Enobarbus. Historical necessity, which would have one man alone rule Rome , seems to conspire to send Antony and Octavius head to head. And from
the beginning, even someone with no prior knowledge of the story sees clearly
that Octavius will win. Personal agency seems limited, and the suicides of the
lovers near the end seem to be a final act of self-assertion, the only possible
act left to them, in the face of historical necessity.
Antony and Cleopatra seems
to have a special place in Shakespeare's works because it is at a crossroad
between two types of play. It clearly belongs to what are generally called the
'Roman' plays, along with Coriolanus
and Julius Caesar. But it is also considered a tragedy.
The importance of history in the play cannot be denied, especially where it is
compared to Shakespeare's 'great' tragedies such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. But one
might wonder what is specifically tragic in Antony and Cleopatra, and
what can be said about the tragic in a play which is so different from the
other tragedies. It is clear that the notion of 'tragic' in the everyday sense
is not necessarily the same as the notion of 'tragedy', which is a
philosophical notion whose definition depends on which philosophic system one
takes into account. In this article I shall take the term tragic in its
literary and dramatic sense and try to define its main characteristics.
Relativity and ambiguity
are prominent ideas in Shakespeare's Antony
and Cleopatra, and the readers are challenged to come to conclusions about
the ambivalent nature of many of the characters. The relationship between Antony and Cleopatra can
easily be read as one of love or lust; their passion can be construed as being
wholly destructive but also showing elements of transcendence. Cleopatra might
be said to kill herself out of love for Antony ,
or because she has lost political power. Octavian can be seen as either a noble
and good ruler, only wanting what is right for Rome , or as a cruel and ruthless politician.
A major theme running through the play is opposition. Throughout the play
oppositions between Rome and Egypt , love and
lust, and masculinity and femininity are emphasized, subverted, and commented
on. One of Shakespeare's most famous speeches, drawn almost verbatim from
North's translation of Plutarch, Enobarbus's description of Cleopatra on her
barge, is full of opposites resolved into a single meaning, corresponding with
these wider oppositions that characterize the rest of the play. Shakespeare
constantly juxtaposes the world of Egypt
with the world of Rome .
The leaps in space are greater here then in any Shakespearean play: we move
from Egypt to Rome to Athens
to other parts of the world in a matter of moments. Shakespeare uses Rome and Egypt
to deal with a number of themes, organized in terms of oppositions: change
versus the status quotient, martial values versus self-indulgence, masculine
authority versus feminine authority, the values of an erstwhile Republic versus
the values of despotism.
One cannot deny
that Antony 's
love for Cleopatra is a weakness and even a fault. His passion makes him forget
his duty, his honor as a soldier. He leaves the battle against Caesar because
of Cleopatra, and he is an unfaithful husband to Fulvia and Octavia. On
Cleopatra's advice he decides to fight at sea although his chances would be
much better on land. On the other hand, his passion is not voluntary. He tries
to resist it - by marrying Octavia, he tries to give politics a higher priority
than love but fails. As a result, one cannot but feel compassion for him, even
if he more or less 'deserved' his terrible end. Cleopatra, even if many traits
of hers are unpleasant (she mistreats the unfortunate messenger who announces
the marriage of Antony
and Octavia, and she is particularly mean to her rival) deserves our compassion
too. Shakespeare creates in her a character that is much more likely to awaken
pity than the Cleopatra described in Plutarch, the main source of the play. To
her, Antony was
nothing more than a puppet she had to seduce for political reasons. She did not
care about his person but only about his power. In Shakespeare's play, she is
truly in love with Antony .
When he is away, she asks for mandragora, 'That (she) might sleep out this
great gap of time', while 'My Antony
is away' (Act I, scene V). We do not see any reason why she should feign in the
presence of Charmian. This true passion makes us sympathies with her.
Another characteristic
feature of tragic heroes is that their personal fate is always linked to the
destiny of a community. Their unhappiness is not merely a domestic catastrophe,
but concerns many people. This is particularly clear when heroes have a
political role, which is very often the case, especially in Greek tragedies.
But even when the heroes are not sovereigns or leaders, their fates have an
impact on community life. In Romeo and Juliet the two young heroes are of noble
origin and their deaths is what eventually seals reconciliation between their
families. In Antony and Cleopatra, this characteristic is particularly
obvious: nothing less than the future of the Roman Empire
- that is to say, the whole world for Romans of the time - is at stake. The
rivalry between Caesar and Antony is a tragedy
for Rome , since
it leads to civil war. Antony 's death is of
great consequence for the Roman Empire: 'The death of Antony / Is not a single doom, in the name
lay / A moiety of the world' (Act V, scene I) says Caesar as he hears about his
rival's suicide. The fall of Cleopatra is also the fall of Egypt , which becomes eventually a part of the Roman Empire . By killing herself, Cleopatra does not only
save her honor and dignity, but also the dignity of her nation.
If the conflict between
the two leaders is inevitable, so is the decline of a country, and a
civilization The independence of Egypt is doomed from the beginning
of the play. Cleopatra tries to preserve it but she has no chance. The love
between Antony and the queen of Egypt may seem
to offer some hope, but the submission of one nation to another is as
inevitable as the victory of one of the two competitors. When Antony
leads the battle by sea, it is because of his passion for Cleopatra; she makes
him defend her country: 'I made these wars for Egypt ', he says, believing himself
betrayed by the queen (Act IV, scene XIV). As soon as Antony
has lost, Cleopatra has no political power and has to submit herself to the
master of Rome .
The ambassador explains to Caesar, even before Antony 's death.
We can say that the
tragic takes a prominent place in Antony and Cleopatra and has various
aspects. The play is tragic in the greatness of the main characters, but also
in the situation that leaves no possibility of compromise or a happy ending.
Eventually, even if it is hard and probably hazardous to want to see a
transcendence working through the play, there are in Antony and Cleopatra many
features that show a determinism which constrains the freedom of the
characters, making their free will fail. In fact, we can conclude that the
tragic in this play is for the most part of a 'Classical' type, since several
features of it can be compared with classical Greek or French tragedies. In
fact the tragic might be more prominent in this hybrid play (both historical
play and tragedy)Antony Antony Rome Antony
G.K
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