30:38 Antony and Cleopatra

Day 30 of 38:38
Antony and Cleopatra

I learned a lot about this play back in 2008 when the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC did the Roman Repertory: Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra with the same cast. As part of the festivities, they held an all day symposium where they had scholars come to the theatre and talk about the plays. One of the speakers I particularly remember was Sara Munson Deats. Incidentally, Deats was at SAA this year, in a session on Shakespeare and Marlowe, but I couldn't audit that one due to not being able to not attend the Theatrical Reconstructions session. Anyway, back in 2008 Deats spoke on the Private Sphere vs. the Public sphere in Elizabethan England. Deats talked about how in Elizabethan England the nuclear family replaced the extended family. The public sphere of business was the job of the husband and the private sphere of home and hearth, the wife's. Elizabethans had to reconcile this with the fact that they had a woman monarch. This public/private theme comes into play in Antony and Cleopatra, which can be seen as setting Roman virtues in opposition with Egyptian virtues, and the characters being torn between the two. (Roman: public, honor, duty, martial prowess, political power, reason, pragmatism, stoicism, coldness, masculine; Egyptian: private, love, sensuality, pleasure, passion, hedonism, warmth, feminine.) Deats argued that only in their deaths were Antony and Cleopatra able to find a balance between the two - by dying in high Roman fashion, by their own hands, but dying for love.


In my mind, I like to fancy that I am just like Cleopatra. But I know in reality that I am so ridiculously low maintenance in relationships that I will never come near her. ;-)

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Favorite Female Character:
Cleopatra
Favorite Male Character:
Enobarbus

Laugh out loud:
Enobarbus Or, if you borrow one another’s love for the instant, you may, when you hear no more words of Pompey, return it again.

"That's what she said!":
Charmian Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it?
Iras Not in my husband’s nose.

How insulting:
Antony Triple-turned whore

Shakey loves his meta:
Cleopatra and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness
I'th' posture of a whore.

Oh, misogyny:
Enobarbus But there is never a fair woman has a true face.

Boys are silly:
Octavius From Alexandria
This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike
Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy
More womanly than he

Favorite Moment/Line:
Enobarbus Age cannot wither her, not custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.