Shakespeare's Tragedy: Antony and Cleopatra - Book Report/Review Example

Antony and Cleopatra By William Shakespeare 2008 Antony and Cleopatra puzzles the reader. In comparison with other tragedies of the playwright, suchad Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet, the play arouses neither sorrow nor fear about its characters. This fact has been emphasized by critics, who even related this “tragedy without terror” (Caputi 1965) to a comedy (Oates 1964) and discussed its comic visions and patterns (Caputi 1965, Simmons 1969). The tragedy also caused embarrassment as to the posture of a tragic hero. Critics could not decide whose tragedy it is: Antony’s or Cleopatra’s. The play seems to tell quite another story having little relation to the traditional tragedy. Joyce Oates (1964) argues that Shakespeare’s plan was to produce a work where “brute reality” is refined into “lyric illusion”. Oates’ suggestion helps us to understand why the tragedy lacks tragic intonation. Antony and Cleopatra purposefully deny prosaic reality consciously choosing the world of their imagination and pleasure. Antony doesn’t quite fit in the category of a tragic hero. First, he lacks the greatness of a tragic hero. Second, he actively pursues pleasure. Though we are constantly reminded of his military glory, we do not observe it in his actual actions. Instead we see a man living according to the moment, having little regard for the future or the consequences of his actions. This feature of his becomes evident from the very beginning of the play. In Act I, scene i we see Antony enjoying the life in Egypt and entirely neglecting his duties of the Roman ruler. “Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch/Of the ranged empire fall (I.i.35-36). He declares his desire to live “for the love of Love” (44) and to enjoy his life as an endless holiday: “There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch/Without some pleasure now” (46-47). Ironically, in the next scene he becomes preoccupied with his duties, frightened to “lose himself in dotage” (I.ii.106). As soon as Antony returns to Rome, he forgets his oaths to Cleopatra and marries Octavia. He promises Octavia to avoid the sexual affairs of his past, but only several lines further an Egyptian soothsayer predicts that Antony will return to Egypt. In Act II scene vii during the revelry on Pompey’s ship drunk Antony persuades Caesar to forget of his duties for the night and to “be a child o’th’ time” (103), thus confirming his real longing to live for the pleasure of the moment. Antony continues rushing between the two worlds throughout the play. Anthony Caputi (1965) argues he actually chooses between “different ways of being alive” and his commitment remains with Cleopatra. As a tragic hero he should eventually see the light of the truth and recover from his blindness. Yet, as Oates (1964) points out, his agony is “curiously muted”, and finally, Antony refuses to accept the reality dictated by his Roman education. The sole kiss of Cleopatra makes him reconcile with his shame after the defeat in the sea battle. Moreover, his claims about Cleopatra’s betrayal and leading him into infamy are childish. It was he who followed his passion instead of reason. When the Egyptian fleet betrays him for the second time, Antony seems to see the reality. The Roman man of honor prevails in him again, but like the rest of the play’s characters, Antony measures honor primarily by the appearance, by whether the world sees him as honorable. His rigid vision of the self as a victorious general fails through the defeat in the battles, Antony losing himself. “Here I am Antony,/ Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave” (IV.xv.13-14), exclaims the hero. Antony is lost in the complexity of his own personality. He has to restore his heroic halo and yet, cannot refuse pleasure either. Death allows him to combine both parts of his self. His suicide becomes his triumph, returning his heroic status and his faith in love. The very idea of the suicide comes to him after he gets the news of Cleopatra’s death. “All length is torture: since the torch is out” (IV.xiv.57), declares Antony. “I come, my queen”…”Stay for me:/ Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll hand in hand,/And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze:/Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,/And all the haunt be ours” (IV.xiv.61-65). The issue of honor emerges next, but the loss of Cleopatra (i.e. the source of pleasure) is the major reason of the suicide. Ironically, he fails to kill himself at once and even his long dying acquires comic features, while Cleopatra denies leaving her monument and then organizes show with the last kiss. Antony loves hyperbole during his life. He resorts to it in his death. Though dead Antony gains qualities of a god-like hero embracing the whole world, this hyperbole obviously contradicts the picture of Antony in the earlier acts, notes Oates (1964). All this suggests that the play is not about Antony. Though Cleopatra is great in everything she does, her vivacity deprives her of a tragic status. Her major power lies in her sexuality. But her beauty is so outstanding and her charms are so strong that the “vilest things/Become themselves in her, that the holy priests/Bless her when she is riggish” (II.ii.243-245). This talent of turning the “vilest things” into objects of beauty and transforming the whole systems of morality making priests re-examine their notions of the holy and sinful is her main strength. She is a woman of “infinite variety” (II.ii.243). One moment she is a charming royal lover and seductress, the next moment she is a petty tyrant hitting her servant for delivering bad news. Whatever she does she does it with equal passion and flair. In Act IV, scene xiv Antony points to her mutability comparing her to clouds of different shapes. In Act I, scene i he says that Cleopatra is a woman “whom everything becomes – to chide, to laugh,/ To weep (I.i.51-52). Anthony Caputi (1965) identifies Cleopatra’s world as “a density that insists on multiple angels of vision, on simultaneously comic, pathetic and even tragic perspectives” (p.190). This mutability remains charming due to Cleopatra’s theatrical talents. Cleopatra is a perfect and great actress. She lives in the world of ceremonies, and like Caesar, realizes the importance of appearance. She makes performance out of her romance with Antony, her concerns lying mostly in public sphere. She earns not merely Antony’s love, but additional political power. Her performance is necessary both for her royal position and personal pleasure. From the very first scene she demonstrates her ability to create public spectacle, shifting from one emotion to another at astonishing speed and constantly fueling her actions. Cleopatra’s grief is always very theatrical. Cleopatra is unable to stop performing even in the face of Antony’s death. Public display is so important to her that preparing herself to his death she states: “out size of sorrow,/ Proportioned to our cause, must be as great? As that which makes it” (IV.xvi.4-6). Her over-the-top behaviors make us even doubt the sincerity of her emotions and see her grief as more performance than real feelings. Throughout the play her character remains the shift of clouds as described by Antony. One moment she performs love with Antony, and the next moment she makes agreement with his enemy. Yet, this inconstancy is her major characteristics and she loves it. In Act I, scene iii she says to Antony: “But sir, forgive me,/Since my becomings kill me when they do not/ Eye well to you” (96-98). Her “becomings” are not only the graces suiting her, but also her many moods, and multiple identities and fluid transformations. She cannot allow Caesar stripe her of these various versions reducing her to nothing but the “posture of a whore” (V.ii.217). Her suicide becomes her greatest performance. Interestingly, she doesn’t kill herself at once, but waits an entire act, learning more about Caesar’s plans, as if hoping to begin her life anew. In her death she chooses a novel role, that of a wife and nursing mother. Using the asps to kill herself, Cleopatra resorts to an effective and quick death in proper Roman style. She declares that this way she gains nobility worth of her Roman lover and becomes “from head to foot/… marble-constant” with “the fleeting moon” being no planet of hers (V.ii.234-236). However, it would be a mistake to understand her act as the one of a desperate lover. Before dying she demands her robe and crown to be put on her. Finally, she doesn’t betray her nature reminding us that she is made of the substance much more fluid than marble: “I am fire and air, my other elements/ I give to baser life” (V.ii.280-281). Both Antony and Cleopatra love pleasure and this passion of theirs creates an atmosphere of a holiday, a masquerade. This association is especially raised by the lines: “and all alone/ To-night we’ll wander through the streets and note/ The qualities of people (I.i.52-54). The tragedy acquires numerous comic patterns and visions. Simmons (1969) calls the tragedy “delightful”. His analysis of the play’s structure and characters leads him to a conclusion that in many ways it follows the familiar patterns of Shakespearean comedy (p.494). Cleopatra’s Egypt is the world where “the ‘now’ is the only reality, a constant present in which the considerations and responsibilities of past and future do not exist” (p.495). Simmons calls her a “queen of non-rule”. The Roman world, where Antony belongs, “with its gap between moral appearance and moral reality”, is “wide open to comic exposure” either. It is a place where “personal feelings and relations, along with all loyalties, are subsumed under public affairs and ambitions”. Its comic flaw lies in its precedence of being perfect and “in justifying its demand from complete commitment to it by professing the ideal of honor as a reality”, explains Simmons (p.495). Another love of theirs, love to hyperbole, makes them overact, which produces a very comic effect. Their exchange of love declarations in Act I scene i sounds rather funny indeed, taking into account their royal positions and not that young age. The scene with Cleopatra getting furious with her servant, who brings her news of Antony’s marriage to Octavia, makes her remind us of a common scandalous woman. Act III provides us with a delightful little scene, when Cleopatra questions her Messenger about Octavia’s appearance and he lies to her or at least exaggerates for her benefit. In a moment Charmian joins in to keep the tone. Now fully certain of the game being played, the messenger goes on with relishing the ugly portrait of Octavia. “Clearly this is a wryly humorous, nimbly ironic scene”, concludes Caputi (1965, pp.188-189). Cleopatra’s love to hyperbole adds comic notes even to the scene of Antony’s dying. When he begins to speak his last words (certainly, sounding rather pathetic), she abruptly interrupts him: “ANOTNY: I am dying, Egypt, dying./ Give me some wine, and let me speak a little. CLEOPATRA: No, let me speak, and let me rail so high/ That the false hussy Fortune break her wheel, /Provoked by my offence” (IV.xvi.43-47). Performing a grief-stricken lover with the dying Antony she rises the scene to a near comedic level interrupting him and pulling everyone’s attention to herself. Finally, to understand the nature of the protagonists fully, it is necessary to dwell upon the imagery of death. As Katherine Vance MacMullan (1963) observes, death is an integral part of the life-game both Antony and Cleopatra play. It always goes in a union with love. For Cleopatra death presents a bright staging opportunity. As Enobarbus puts it at the beginning of the play: “Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment: I do think there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying” (I.ii.145-149). In death she is as seductive as in love. When she dies indeed, Caesar remarks that “she looks like sleep,/ As she would catch another Antony/ In her strong toil of grace” (V.ii.349-351). Her vitality and enticement remain with her even in death. Antony becomes infected by Cleopatra’s enchantment with death. He wants death to love him in battles (III.xiii.193). As he learns of Cleopatra’s false death, his own death becomes for him a way of rejoining his beloved: “I will be / A bridegroom in my death, and run into ‘t/ As to a lover’s bed” (IV.xiv.97-101). Cleopatra echoes him in the next act: “The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch,/ Which hurts, and is desired” (V.ii.296-299). The protagonists seek the pleasure of love even in the arms of death, summarizes MacMullan (1963). The language of the play makes the picture complete. According to Oates (1964), unlike most of works of literature that develop toward a dramatic confrontation with objective reality, the play is based solely on its poetic language, rendering reality as irrelevant. This penetration into illusions relates the play to comedy, tragic dimensions being not anticipated in early acts. The poetic magic works for the characters, so that in Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare manages to entirely deny the prosaic reality and turn it into magic. “It is reality that is defeated in this play, and its defeat goes unmourned,’ - concludes Joyce Oates. – ‘The uses of poetry are nowhere in Shakespeare so well imagined as in this work about godly creatures who delight in their humanity, and who leave their traces upon all corners of their gigantic world.” Antony and Cleopatra is the story of two very effective people. Both protagonists deny the prosaic reality in the name of their divine game. They use all the available means to win and remain on their positions of the “godly creatures”. Their passionate characters, love to hyperboles and performance turn the play into a vivid narration full of comic patterns and visions. Even death becomes a part of their romance and life triumph. Committing suicides Antony and Cleopatra immortalize their names and enter the rows of glorious heroes. That is why Antony and Cleopatra is the “delightful” “tragedy without terror”, the “tragedy of imagination”. Works Cited: Caputi, Anthony. Shakespeares Antony and Cleopatra: Tragedy Without Terror. Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Spring, 1965), pp. 183-191. MacMullan, Katherine Vance. Death Imagery in Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Autumn, 1963), pp. 399-410. Oates, Joyce Carol. The tragedy of Imagination: Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”. Originally published in Bucknell Review, Spring 1964. Available at: http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/southerr/antony.html Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra. Simmons, J.L. The Comic Pattern and Vision in Antony and Cleopatra. ELH, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Sep., 1969), pp. 493-510. Oates, Joyce Carol. The tragedy of Imagination: Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”. Originally published in Bucknell Review, Spring 1964. Available at: http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/southerr/antony.html Oates argues that Antony and Cleopatra best of all reveals Shakespeare’s longing for “the constant refinement of brute reality into lyric illusion”. Antony acquires a role of a mythological poet, who strives to break free through the world of fantasies. Yet his agony is “curiously muted”. The peculiarities of the play begin with its very basis. Unlike most of works of literature that develop toward a dramatic confrontation with objective reality, the play is based solely on its poetic language, rendering reality as irrelevant. This penetration into illusions relates the play to comedy, tragic dimensions being not anticipated in early acts. The comic patterns appear in the first act, with Antonio and Cleopatra revealing their worst sides and paradoxical nature. Philo’s first description of Antony points to the main in him, his living according to the voice of his heart. Once serving his glory of a military man, this quality of his has made him a toy in the hands of Cleopatra. However, this commitment to passions is active in Antony, so that he doesn’t remind us of a tragic figure at all. Neither Cleopatra, nor Antony seriously treats the signs of fate, enjoying their “self-divinity”. This equality to gods explains the variety of the protagonists’ selves. Good and evil merge in them into one cosmic unity. On the contrary, Caesar is earthbound. The conflict of the play is built not around appearance vs. reality or good vs. evil, but comes from the tension between two different views of the world, the Roman and the Egyptian, the world of reason and that of passion. However, this conflict remains unresolved, the play being focused on consideration of both. The idea is that these two ways of viewing the world are simply different sides of reality. Both of the worlds are highly ceremonial. The Egyptian world is the place where social conventions and inner world are merged. This is the world of “defect perfection”, which the logical Roman world is not able to understand. Cleopatra’s complexity and tendency to treat life comically is perceived as baseness by the Romans. However, the ambitious Roman world with its sober ceremonies turns to be no more meaningful. The booze-up of “the pillars of the world” on the ship reveals imperfections of this world. The Roman world is the world of sham, where suicide becomes the way of escape to preserve the nobility of the self. In both of the worlds reality loses itself in appearance. The characters defend their illusions, which require them to perform. If Cleopatra and Caesar realize the importance of “show” in state affairs, Antony abandons his role of a military hero, for the sake of love show. This romance is a public matter, elevating the royal lovers. The defeat at Actium shakes their divine world and they reveal their human features. This humanity threatens Antony’s honor, but suits Cleopatra. Antony’s commitment to Cleopatra soothes his fears, until eventually he gets glimpses of the reality, his life losing its sense and completeness. His suicide becomes the act of return to the faith in love. However, the description of this long dying lacks the tragic tone due to Cleopatra’s unromantic circumspection, lovers’ affirmation of themselves, and the hyperbolic force of the poetry. Antony’s death turns him into a god-like hero, the one who embraced the entire world, and without whom the world loses its order. Evident hyperbole does not correspond to the picture of Antony is the earlier acts, which makes us think that the play is not about him. With his death Cleopatra understands the vanity of life and risks to become the servant of Caesar. Once again she becomes human. This combination of greatness and baseness makes her memorizable. From the Roman point of view, Antony’s death is the result of his careless surrender of his reason to passion. However, the poetic magic works for the characters. In Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare denies the prosaic reality turning it into magic. This effect is achieved due to the language he uses. Its ambiguity provides space for imagination and mystery. As a result, reality is defeated in the play, the work telling a story of “godly creatures who delight in their humanity, and who leave their traces upon all corners of their gigantic world”. Read More