Antony and Cleopatra: A Very Short Revision Sheet

Written 1606/7, seven or eight years after Julius Caesar. The action of Antony and Cleopatra begins two years after the defeat of Brutus by Antony at the end of the previous play. The Republican forces are all but defeated and Rome is ruled by a triumvirate comprised of the young Ocatavius, who has taken the name of ‘Caesar’ from his granduncle in order to exploit its political weight, Lepidus, who is here depicted as old and superannuated, and Antony, whose mind has wandered from the business of Roman conquest. Egypt is a client state of Rome and Cleopatra its amenable Queen.

Themes

• The Personal in the Political: Shakespeare’s presents history in Antony and Cleopatra as the product of individual desires. History is the sum of the actions of great individuals rather than the interaction of a variety of social, political and cultural forces. Here, the civil wars of Rome are a result of Antony’s love affair.

• Orientalism: How the West perceives the East. Shakespeare draws upon a historical tradition in the West of perceiving distant countries, especially Muslim countries, as mysterious, sensual and exotic. As an Asiatic woman, Cleopatra represents everything that is ‘other’ to masculine, bureaucratic Rome. Like the crocodile Antony describes, she is strange and monstrous, and cannot conform be contained in Western taxonomies.

• Masculinity: Antony’s downfall is largely a result of the effeminization he undergoes through his association with Cleopatra. Roman concepts of masculinity fetishize warfare and make a virtue of self-denial, endurance and administration

• Femininity: Cleopatra is represented as a demonic woman, sexually active, loquacious, reckless, dissipated and false. Cleopatra blurs gender distinctions and induces Antony to cross-dress. Octavia is demur, honorable, largely silent and unimpeachably virtuous.

• Incompatible Ideologies. The configurations of Rome and Egypt establish them as the opposite of one-another. While fascinated and drawn by the feminine sphere, it is necessary for Anglo-protestantism to defeat it.

Antony             Cleopatra

Mars                            Venus

Civilization                    Mythology

Occident                      Orient

Empire                         Colony

Politics             Petulance

Privation                       Indulgence

Land                            Sea