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Ep 86 - Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)
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Benjamin McAvoy
Welcome back to Hardcore Literature. Your favourite book club deep dives into the greatest books ever written. Provocative poems, evocative epics and life changing literary analyses. We don't just read the great books, we live them together. We'll suck the marrow out of Shakespeare, Homer, Tolstoy and many more. We'll relish the most moving art ever committed to the page and stage from every age. Join us as and me, your host, Benjamin McAvoy on the Reading adventure of a lifetime with Hardcore Literature. Hello and welcome back. Today we are spending some time in Alexandria and we are talking about Anthony and Cleopatra. Where does one begin with this endless play? This work completes the tetrad of plays that I call Shakespeare's tragic procession. In a period of dark, compulsive creativity, the Bard gifted the world Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and then this work, which is absolutely of the sublimity and eminence of his prior tragedies. It's a crowning duel in the playwright's canon and Cleopatra joins the company of characters who A.C. bradley rightly called inexhaustible. The Queen of the Nile sits alongside Helen Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, Falstaff, the wit of Eastcheap and Diego, the Machiavellian webspinner. When it comes to astonishing cognitive power and a sense of reality, of real existence, these characters feel more real than almost anyone we will actually encounter in our lives outside of the theatre. And it's all the more startling to contemplate Cleopatra's existence as a vivid character, when we know her, of course have been a very real historical personage. Just like Mark Antony, the other half of this tragic love affair, and just like the supporting cast of Octavius, Lepidus, Pompey and so forth, as is the case for so many grand historical figures, the reputation that has endured of them owes a great debt to William Shakespeare. And so we might think, where does history stop and fiction and myth begin? Is history simply gossip that has endured? For example, what we think we know of Richard III is thanks to the Bard. And of course, his villainous reputation has been contested in recent years. And the Bard's play has been seen more as Tudor propaganda than an attempt towards faithful history. What we know of Henry V again is very heavily inflected by the ink that spilled from Will's pen in what was ultimately an incredibly idealised and patri play. Shakespeare is more than happy to bend history to suit his dramatic purposes, but I do believe that history was ultimately his favorite genre to work in now. He was naturally gifted when it came to comedy right from the start of his career. He was very funny. Tragedy was the mode that he needed to work relentlessly at. And we see that when he finally gets it right, he gets it very right. And his tragedies are some of the supreme aesthetic achievements in all of humankind. But history had his heart, because in history both genres could meet, and we see that in abundance with Antony and Cleopatra, which is high tragedy, whilst also being one of the funniest plays in his canon, at least in my opinion. And at the hardcore literature book club@patreon.com hardcore literature, we have read through the complete works of Shakespeare together in chronological order. And at time of recording we have just two plays left in that saga. And lectures are still available on demand for you to enjoy at any time. And of all the plays we have read together, the ones that I personally find funniest are the Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, Henry iv, parts one and two, but primarily part one, Hamlet and Anthony and Cleopatra. So of the funniest plays, we have one comedy, two histories and three tragedies. Very interesting. What many of us know of Cleopatra today is heavily influenced by Shakespeare's tragedy and offshoots of it, adaptations inspired by it. Indeed, there are many films, many great films about Cleopatra, the history of her life. There are biopics that are captivating and enthralling. And even if they are not adaptations of Shakespeare's play, we can still discern a palpable influence when it comes to her character, what we think of her character. And I find one am very happy about this because having re immersed myself in the world of Anthony and Cleopatra again recently, deeply, I am convinced that Shakespeare ultimately cast these two tragic lovers in a dignified mould. And that might sound rather ludicrous were we watching the same play here. Aren't these two behaving like hormonal teenagers who are definitely old enough to know better? Aren't they making a grand spectacle of themselves? Aren't they making fools of themselves? Shouldn't we be laughing at them and scorning at them? Well, if you go back to Plutarch's lives, and if you read the ancient historian's life of Antony, which is the longest of his biographies, you would definitely think so. And Plutarch, along with Holinshed and along with Ovid, would be one of Will's go to sources for inspiration and material. Though we see that by the time we get to the tragic sequence, the greatest influence upon the playwright is the playwright himself. He is Firmly in the midst of an agonistic gladiatorial wrestling match with his former self and his previous creations. But Will was obsessed with Plutarch's Lives in the Sir Thomas north translation, very popular at the time. And evidence for that is in the fact that there is extraordinary faithfulness to Plutarch's work in this play. You can hold whole passages up from the play next to Plutarch, and I encourage you to do this. Use your reading of Shakespeare as a springboard into classical literature, and you can do that by exploring his sources. You can hold whole passages up to Plutarch and you'll see there is almost word for word faithfulness. Will, of course, injects an astonishing amount of poetic vitality and psychological complexity that isn't there in the source material. But Will also adds something more to the text. And I find it fascinating that Shakespeare is able to be so faithful to his source material and yet also add so much and diverge so much in Plutarch's original. There is practically no sympathy for the pair for Anthony and Cleopatra. And indeed there is a heavily judgmental, moralistic and scorning tone. Will, as is usual for him, as is one of his defining aesthetic traits, holds back from that. He holds back from the judgment. But the characters surrounding the two lovers certainly do not. They definitely do judge the pair. And Shakespeare also presents a challenge to playgoers as we have to navigate this world and form our opinions of the pair. Whilst everything they do seems performative and we're actually given no real intimate moments of privacy between the two, they're always surrounded, surrounded by people. James Shapiro captures the challenge to playgoers when he, Plutarch offered almost no moments of self reflection or shared intimacy, steering clear of what the lovers might have felt. While at this stage of his career, Shakespeare could have easily created an interior life for each of his lovers through sympathetic and self revealing soliloquies. He decided not to soliloquies in which he excelled had to go playgoers in 1606, watching Antony and Cleopatra must have experienced a growing sense of unease as scene after scene passed without any soliloquies or unmediated access to what the lovers think or feel. And when Shakespeare does allow a character to speak briefly in soliloquy, it reveals nothing we don't already know. Rather than inventing intimate scenes not found in Plutarch, Shakespeare follows his source and never lets us see Anthony and Cleopatra alone together on stage. This too must have come as something of a surprise for playgoers. We need only compare this with how memorably he had captured the private moments of earlier couples. Romeo and Juliet confessing their love for each other, or the Macbeth's plotting Duncan's murder, where we get a chance to glimpse what they are like together. Since what Anthony and Cleopatra say and do is always witnessed by onstage audiences, then judged by them, we end up evaluating the lovers through the observers perspectives. And since these lovers are also political figures, figures who are also conscious that they are being observed, we are left wondering whether what they are doing or saying publicly is simply part of a performance. There's no way of knowing Now. I do believe we are afforded privileged glimpses of Anthony and Cleopatra's inmost feelings. Their hearts are on display for all the world to see. I do believe we know something intimate about them, who they are at their core, despite the noise of the peripheral characters opinions. But I also have a feeling, and this is Shakespeare's art, that much of what I see in the play, in the characters is placed there by me. What's reflected is projected. It's a grand Rorschach test. And Shakespeare gives us an abyss between the lines that we cannot help but fill in. Harold Bloom, in his study of the play put it best and this applies to everything we read. This is a word of wisdom that I always keep in the forefront of my mind when I read Harold Bloom says in Anthony and Cleopatra. How you see is who you are. If you think Anthony a ruffian in Decline and Cleopatra an aging whore, then you know better how you feel. But the greatness has evaded you. Should you find Anthony the Herculean hero, still glorious as he wanes, and Cleopatra the sublime of erotic womanhood burning to a final kindling, you are far closer to joining in the sad yet wonderfully comic celebration. Now I must admit, though I have personally always found a great allure in Cleopatra, on previous readings I have seen Anthony as something of a ruffian in decline. My recent readings however, find him to be that herculean hero still and find her to be the sublime of erotic womanhood. Indeed, I see them both as gods brought down to earth and taking human form. And I marvel at the curious and invigorating de and re mythologizing process going on in the play. Both Anthony and Cleopatra saw themselves as gods, or would be gods or demigods, or descendants from the gods. And they wanted all to see them so. And Shakespeare captures that. Anthony is Mars, a waning Mars, but the martial God of warfare nonetheless. He is alternately referred to as Mars, but Also alluded to as Jupiter and Jove, which are both names for the same deity, Zeus, the sky God. And when the sky God swears, the heavens do shake, funnily enough, we see that several characters are in the running for this godly parallel and title. But we do not watch this tragedy for Pompey. We do not watch for Octavius. We watch for Antony, and of course, we watch for Cleopatra. And that should answer the question as to who the gods really are. Cleopatra refers to her love as the Herculean Roman. And indeed Plutarch tells us of the tradition that saw Anthony's family as descended from the Greek mythological figure. But he is also thought to have been descended from Bacchus, the God of wine. And that seems a little more appropriate because indeed, Mark Antony very much liked a drink. Hercules, the embodiment of manly strength, was said to be Anthony's diamond or demon, his genius, his guardian spirit. Cleopatra also calls Anthony a demi Atlas. Atlas, as you likely know, was the God that held up the world. And for a time, Atlas was relieved of his duty and Hercules held up the world. And we think that the image of Hercules with the globe on his back was actually on the sign at the Globe Theatre. So Anthony is Mars and Jupiter, Hercules and Atlas. And there's a sublime irony there because in this play, rather than hold up the world, Anthony has absconded from his duty and is only adding to the burden of it. Cleopatra also sees Anthony as a kind of perspective picture. This kind of art was very popular in Shakespeare's time, where if you looked at this kind of painting from one angle, you would see one image and a very different image if you looked at it from another angle. Cleopatra says that he is painted like a Gorgon one way and the other way he's painted like Mars. This is an interesting assertion on her part because the Gorgon sisters, of whom Medusa with the serpent hair is the most iconic, would turn one to stone when you looked at them. One thinks that it's interesting that Cleopatra sees Anthony as a Gorgon, because from our perspective, it can seem to be quite the other way around. And Shakespeare's plays are sublime perspective pictures. That's why we reread and re watch them. Each fresh immersion gives you another angle and you take your new seat in the theatre of your mind by virtue of your lived experience since your last engagement with the play. So if Ant Antony is Mars, then Cleopatra is surely Venus, the embodiment of love, sensuous, passionate love, and also lust. Now, prior to her love affair with Mark Antony. Cleopatra was entangled with Julius Caesar. And Julius Caesar was thought to be descended from Venus. And she helped deify him after his death. But whilst he was alive, he had erected in the temple of Venus a statue of Cleopatra cast in the form of Venus. So she's Venus. Though she is of course also aligned with the goddess Isis. So we have her with a Roman alignment and an Egyptian alignment. Isis is the goddess of love, fertility, healing, motherhood. Indeed, Isis is the most famous single mother in mythology. Cleopatra very much aligned herself with Isis. She dressed up as her. She called herself the daughter of Isis. And you may know that Isis was married to Osiris, but he died and he went to lord it over the underworld. And Isis was mother of Horus. The would be king of Egypt. And Cleopatra very much would have seen her son by Caesar. Caesarion and historians are in debate as to whether this was Caesar's son, but I believe so she would have seen her son as Horus figure. Cleopatra put herself firmly at the center of Egyptian theological belief in order to legitimize her rule. Ahenobarbus in the play conveys the magnitude and godliness of her mortal movements. Indeed they are mortal movements, but they absolutely do not seem such. He conveys the magnitude of everything she does when he says we cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears. They are great storms and tempests than almanacs can report. She makes a shower of rain as well as Jove. And there's a moment when Anthony says that he wished he had never seen her. He'd never seen Cleopatra and Eno Barbas, who in my mind is forever Patrick Stewart, because he was absolutely perfect in the role in Trevor Nunn's production Enobarbus, echoing Hamlet's speech in which he sees man as tightrope walking between God and beast. Sex. Oh, sir, you had then left unseen. A wonderful piece of work indeed. There's a moment in the play when Cleopatra's eunuch Mardian alludes to a story of Venus and Mars, a story that we find in Ovid's Metamorphoses. God and goddess are lying in bed together. They're indulging in their passion. But then they are trapped. They're ensnared in a net that Venus husband Vulcan placed around the be lovers are caught and then exposed to the humiliation of the gods. And maybe that's what this play is. Lovers trapped in their passion for an audience's ridicule. Except such a plan fails because we see that these two lovers are aware of it. They're aware of the net they are caught in the play that they are trapped in, and they choose to put on a grand show for us in a final fiery defiance. What I love about what Shakespeare did in this play is the fact that he took two historical personages that actually existed who have, over the course of history, become mythologized. They have been elevated, they've been raised up to the heights of gods in the collective imagination. And what he does is he de pedestals them. He knocks the gods down to earth, only to raise them up again. So we have mortals becoming gods who become mortals who become gods again. And if we think these two lovers are acting like fickle, hormonal high school students, then one only needs to look to the ancient stories of gods and goddesses to see that such behaviour would be very much in keeping with those of the heavenly council. Now, everything about this high tragedy is sublime. The two focal personages who dominate the stage are given what feels like the entire world and all of time to roam about. At the very opening of the play, we have Anthony's man, Philo, delivering the thesis statement of the work in what is, I think, one of the most powerful entrances to and expositions for a play in all of Shakespeare. The play begins with Philo saying, nay, but this dotage of our generals o'erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes that o'er the files and musters of the war have glow'd like plated Mars. Now bend. Now turn the office and devotion of their view upon a tawny front. His captain's heart, which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst the buckles on his breast. Renage is all temper and is become the bellows and the fan to cool a gypsy's lust. That's fantastic. The very first word of the play is a negative nay, nay. And we are also dropped mid conversation. We're dropped in the world in medias res. And we can see that the poetry is dense, it's complex, and we can tell that this is the same Shakespeare who had just written Macbeth. The dotage of their general overflows the measure. My goodness, there is so much going on here. I can hardly contain and measure my excitement. It's in danger of overflowing too. We get an immediate sense that Marc Antenna Antony is no longer what or who he once was. And Shakespeare continues to flex his incomprehensible ability to deliver two central protagonists in one the person they were and the person they now are. He did this with Hamlet, the general, the martial man, the warrior, the leader. Mark Antony has lost himself in dotage, we think. Is he in love? Is he gripped by lust? Maybe some combination of the two. Whatever this dotage is we see, the magnitude of it is unfathomable. It's spilling over, it's overflowing, it cannot be contained. And you know what else overflows the measure? The play itself. This is Shakespeare's most sublime defiance of the classical unities, the dramatic rules which sought to impose the limitation of one central action, one block of 24 hours for the action and one space for the play. Would this play really be improved if it were reduced down to such restrictions? I ask you this. Well, the answer can be found in John Dryden's reduction in his play all for Love, because he sought to do that very thing. And I love Dryden. But the answer is no, this play is definitely not improved because firstly, how could you improve something like this? But it's not improved by reducing it down. The sublimity is part of the effect. It needs to overflow, it needs to over spill. What I love about Shakespeare's defiance of the classical unities is the fact that it improves the experiential lifespan of us theatre goers, because we experience an extraordinary time dilation and we have the impression, leaving the theatre, that we have lived more lives in our narrow one. And this is why reading deeply can make one wise beyond their years. This tragedy spans almost 10 years, though it perhaps feels as though the action takes place in a manner of weeks and we traverse constantly between continents. It's Rome and the Roman Empire versus Alexandria and Egypt. And symbolically that's Mars versus Venus on Mars versus Isis. And on the Roman side we have a land of measure, of restraint, of order, of the masculine. On the Egyptian side we have the overflowing passion and the feminine. Now, I think it's very interesting that we see Cleopatra as dwarfing and subsuming Anthony. At least that's how I see the dynamic. She kind of swallows him up. That's interesting because politically it was very much the other way around. So there's an irony there. Egypt was being dwarfed by the new hegemonic power of Rome and was very much dependent upon Rome and was in Rome's debt. Now, the capital of Egypt was prosperous, luxurious and cosmopolitan. It was very Greek influenced. You can see that in the architecture. It was diverse. And Alexandria was a cultural and intellectual hub. And though the Roman Republic was impressive, the Romans would have been impressed with Alexandria very much so because there was nowhere in their republic that could match the splendor of Alexandria under the rule of Cleopatra. So the world has been been split into these two domains which become kind of like locales of the psyche. These are like the binaries of man and woman. And we see as usual with Shakespeare that domestic strife leads to political conflict. In fact, domestic strife is political conflict. The heated love affair of these two demigods overspills and threatens to melt the entire world. Indeed, one wonders how many disastrous geopolitical situations could actually be attributed to the mishaps of our leaders lives in the bedroom. There is added sublimity in the fact that this play does not stand alone, though it can. But this play is the Bard sequel to Julius Caesar. Remember that Caesar was assassinated. He was brutally stabbed to death and betrayed, betrayed by Brutus in the Senate. Now that happened in 44 battles. And after that, Mark Antony, Octavius, and that's Julius Caesar's nephew, and Lepidus joined to rule the Republic. Now Cleopatra would have been in Rome when that happened, when Julius Caesar was killed. And there's a real deep and complex and fascinating history there with their relationship to compress it down and be really, really reductive. Cleopatra, Cleopatra had been in exile from Egypt after trying to bump off her brother, her brother ruler now the Ptolemies. She was of the Ptolemy family, the dynasty of the Ptolemies built their power on brother sister marriages. So there was a lot of intermarrying and there was a lot of inter fighting. There was a lot of bumping off of one's relations and siblings. Now when Caesar came and occupied Alexandria, Cleopatra smuggled herself in, she was wrapped up up in a carpet and then unfurled before him so she could get into Alexandria. Now whether this happened or not, historians do wonder. There's a lot about Cleopatra's life that gives us pause. But there is so much theatricality in the very best anecdotes of her life. And I personally think that there's got to be at least a kernel of truth in legend. I do believe that she probably did smuggle herself in in a carpet. If you want to see a really great dramatization of this, I highly recommend four hour long epic. The 1962 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Cleopatra, absolutely phenomenal film. What supposedly happened, though it's not confirmed, is Cleopatra seduced Caesar and was able to reinstate Ptolemaic rule under her. Now her ambitions were such that she wanted her son, Caesar Caesarion, her son with Caesar. She wanted him to unite Rome and Egypt. She wanted to settle the balance of power and she wanted to rule too. So when Caesar died, when he was assassinated and the Triumvirate was announced after lengthy civil war, Cleopatra was not happy. Indeed, we see after the death of Caesar, her brother mysteriously disappears and we think that she probably bumped him off. So she was sole ruler for a moment, but without Roman support. And then we have the Triumvirate coming in. Now, the historical events of this tragedy take place three years later, three years after the assassination of Julius Caesar, and they stretch from 41 to 30 BC. In producing this play, Shakespeare is asking his theatre goers to recall the events of a play that was performed during opening season at the Globe and was potentially the very first Globe performance. And that would have been about half a decade back. And so there's a nice parallel between the real world and the events in question. Though of course, Julius Caesar was popular and was continuing to be performed. This interconnectedness, this imploration to hark back to a previous play, shows Shakespeare's heterocosm to exist in the same universe and really exemplifies the rewards of reading his entire works as an extended saga. This play is all the more rich, layered and textured for having a knowledge of of Julius Caesar. Because in that play, Mark Anthony was a grand figure, wasn't he? When we think of the tragedy of Julius Caesar, we think of Anthony's powerful oration over his body. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. But the question on everyone's lips in this tragedy is, where did that Anthony go? What has he become? As I said, like in Hamlet, we have two hamlets, don't we? We have the prince that everyone used to know, and we have the prince we meet in the play. Here we have two Anthony's, the once great general who we used to know, the personification of stoic measure, and the man he has become or transformed into. Here and transformed, here's a great word. It's a thoroughly Ovidian word and it's a Shakespearean preoccupation. Shakespeare's great characters are constantly in flux. Anthony seems to be going through a midlife crisis in this play and he's neglecting his duties in a rather out of casual character way. He's neglecting his duties for the love or lust of this woman. Mark Anthony, one of Rome's finest generals, is perhaps now a shadow of his former self and his men know it. And he knows it too, though he seems powerless to do anything about it. Very early on, he Says these strong Egyptian fetters, I must break or lose myself in dotage. That's very interesting. In romantic, sexual loving union, halves become a whole. And there's long been an awareness that you lose something. In sex, climax is like a little death, but in a healthy relationship you lose perhaps half of yourself, but that loss is actually a gain. You gain another half and you merge together. Now, to lose oneself completely is to be chained up in strong fetters. Losing oneself is also like being swallowed up, engulfed by one party. And that seems to be what has happened with Anthony and Cleopatra. This once great stately figure now cuts a rather small image. When I think about characters that change significantly in Shakespeare, I also think of Prince Hal turned Henry V. Now, it's interesting. His character arc is inverse to Anthony's because he goes from delinquent ruffian to strong king. And when he renounces his former self, he warns Falstaff. Indeed, he warns all that I am not what I was. We see this over and over again in Shakespeare. So what is Anthony now? Well, if we take Philo's opinion, then his captain's heart has become the fan to cool a gypsy's lust. And he goes further than that and he says that the triple pillar of the world has been transformed into a strumpet's fool. That triple pillar of the world is the Triumvirate. Anthony is one of the three rulers of the Republic. He rules the eastern part, whilst Octavius rules the western part and Lepidus rules the southern part. Now, the fact that Anthony has been wasting the lamps of night in Revel is cause for a lot of concern and a very frosty relationship between him and the other two pillars of the Republic. But to be honest, there's always been tension there from the get go, specifically between Mark Antony and Octavius. Caesar says, and that's Octavius, by the way. He inherits the title of Caesar, so that's worth bearing in mind. He says, we are the ones bearing so great a weight in his lightness. Indeed, he says he's like a boy who, though mature in knowledge, has pawned his experience for his present pleasure. So Anthony's pleasure seeking is a selfish punting of responsibility onto Octavius and Lepidus. In a Triumvirate, if one pillar falls down, everything collapses. You're only as strong as your weakest part, and this is causing a very real threat. Whilst away and living it up, Anthony's abandoned wife Fulvia raises an army and wages a war, an uprising, along with Anthony's brother against Rome, and so that means against Octavius. Her motivation for this was due to her belief that Anthony should have been sole ruler and not sharing it with the second Triumvirate. And we see that there's a weakness opening up or being exploited by the enemies of Rome. We see the Parthians are trying to expand their control of Asia, whilst Pompey challenges Rome on the Mediterranean Sea. And we get news that Pompey is growing loved and supported by those who only obeyed Caesar because they were afraid of him. Octavius says in one of my favorite passages in Shakespeare, he says in Act 1, Scene 4, Line 41 onwards, it hath been taught us from the primal state that he which is was wished until he were. And the ebbed man ne'er loved till ne'er worth love comes dear'd by being lacked. This common body, like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide to rot itself with motion. Now, firstly, I think the thing we notice immediately is the musicality. We get a sense of. Of ebb and flow, the rocking backwards and forwards. The alliteration is sublime, the musicality is gorgeous. And I love the cognitive power of this sublime poetry. In fact, this is so cognitively challenging that you need to read this a dozen, maybe two dozen times and really pick it apart. There's no way that someone in the audience in the first production would have immediately got this. Not all of it, not the entire power of it. This is a very difficult passage indeed. It reminds me of some of the really difficult passages. Macbeth. What's he saying? Well, what he is doing here is making a political comment that is always contemporary, always enduring, always relevant. It's as relevant today as it was in Shakespeare's time, as it was in the ancient times, and it will always be relevant. People always wish for their leaders to gain power until they actually have gained power. And fallen leaders are not loved until they are no longer worth loving and they become dear to people because they are gone. And so the common body, that's us, the common people, is like a vagabond flag upon the stream, like a loose piece of cloth floating on the tide. The tides of time, we might say. The common body simply goes back and forth, rotting itself in motion. Ebb and flow, back and forth, and nothing ever changes. We can see why Octavius and Lepidus are unhappy with Mark Antony from the get go. Let's look at the very first exchange we're treated to the Exchange between the lovers in the opening. This is act one, scene one. Cleopatra's first words are, if it be love, indeed, tell me how much. So she's issuing an imperative. She's telling Anthony, who's a bit like her lap dog, tell me how much you love me, if you do love me. And Anthony says, there's beggary in the love that can be reckoned. Cleopatra says, I'll set a bourne. How far to be beloved then must thou needs find out New heaven, new earth. And a messenger interrupts this exchange. And Cleopatra says, hear the messenger. Fulvia, perchance is angry. Or who knows, if the scarce bearded Caesar have not sent his powerful mandate to you, do this or this, take in that kingdom and enfranchise that. Perform it, or else we damn thee. So what she's doing, she's taking a dig at Caesar, who can't grow a beard. That's very funny, of course, because the one playing Cleopatra would have been a boy actor, would have been very feminine looking, probably wouldn't have been able to grow a beard themselves, certainly wouldn't have one in the performance. So that's a nice little meta commentary there. But she is going right to the heart of his male ego. She's saying, well, you're just gonna come running, aren't you? You're just gonna go running back to your wife. The shrill tongued Ful scolds in this mockery. We get domestic comedy at its heights. And as she prods him, Anthony responds and says, let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch of the ranged empire fall. Here is my space. Kingdoms are clay, Our dungy earth alike feeds beast as man. Now, very interestingly, Cleopatra says, and she says to herself, excellent falsehood. So he makes all these protests of love and wanting to be here. Here is my space. But this is a lie. And she says to herself, why did he marry Fulvia and not love her? I'll seem the fool. I am not. Anthony will be himself. Now, Cleopatra indeed was very intelligent. She could speak seven languages with great fluency. She was very learned, she knew a lot of things. She was very shrewd, she was Machiavellian, she knew how to work with people, she knew how to manipulate people. So she says, I'm no fool, I can seem the fool. But I know that Anthony will be himself. He's going to be predictable, so I'm going to be able to play him. Now, what I think is also interesting is it's a lot easier to understand Cleopatra if you have ever known Someone who is possessively jealous. Freud would tell us that jealousy is a narcissistic wound. And it contains the grief of loss. And we see that this very much colors these characters. They are suffering from a narcissistic wound. They are grieving loss even when they're in each other's company. Now, I love Cleopatra's creed. Her creed is to seem something other than she is. Perhaps one thinks of Iago, I am not what I am. Cleopatra isn't the only strong woman character in Shakespeare who knows how to direct and influence and sway her man. One thinks of Lady Macbeth with her, her husband. She knew exactly what to say in order to prick the sides of her husband's intent. Now, when I read this, I cannot help but think that Shakespeare must have been writing from personal experience, not just from his source material from the history books. And whenever I read Cleopatra's lines, I always wish I could have seen those first performances with the King's Men. It's thought that Shakespeare wrote the lines specifically for a boy actor who must have been very talented. It's thought that part of the reason why Shakespeare has such profoundly well developed female protagonists, particularly in the later half of his career, was due to his infatuation for this young actor. Perhaps will, of course, would frequently write the characters for the actor. So we have Richard Burbage to thank in part for the tragic roles. It's also thought that Cleopatra was inspired by the figure who is the dark lady of the sonnets. I personally really cannot see how anyone could have created a character like Shakespeare's Cleopatra, even with descriptions of what she was like, without having a very deep, intimate emotional knowledge and extensive experience with being in the grips of a jealous and possessive love. And I find it very interesting to compare Cleopatra's words with Juliet's words, her expression of love for Romeo. Because she tells him that her bounty is as boundless as the sea, her love as deep. And the more she gives to him, the more she has, because both are infinite. But here we see from the get go, Cleopatra is asking, asking her lover to qualify and quantify his love. And she's telling him she will set the limits of how far she can be beloved. And we might think that she would actually have limitless affection and always be asking for more. This really does exemplify the dynamic between the two of them. Anthony is subsumed by his love. Cleopatra swallows him up and dwarfs him. And it's funny, we see this when Eno Barbas says. When Cleopatra is approaching, he says, here comes Anthony now. That's a joke. But what he's saying is essentially she might as well be Anthony. Anthony now only behaves and acts as an extension of Cleopatra. He's lost himself. And yet I get the feeling that Cleopatra acts the way she does because she herself feels equally lost in dotage. Now, it's an enduring question. How much love is there really? Is the relationship Machiavellian scheming? Are they using one of another to advance their positions politically? Are they in lust? Is it just an infatuation? Is it a mix of the two? Now, we, the audience, may find Cleopatra to be the more magnetic and alluring of the two, and quite easily she is one of Shakespeare's show stealers. But we mustn't forget that yearning for power can also be understood as a fear of being powerless, of losing control. And as much as it may seem that Antony ensnared in her net, she is very much enmeshed in his too. Unlike with Juliet, the more one feeds upon Cleopatra, the hungrier one becomes. This is another idea that Ahenobarbus hits upon in one of the greatest Shakespearean set pieces in poetry when he describes Anthony seeing Cleopatra for the first time. Now he. He had invited her, or should we say summoned her to him, and she refused. As far as she's concerned, she's the Queen of the Nile. I'm not coming to you after the death of Caesar. No, no, no. I'm not stepping foot outside of Egypt. If you want to see me, you come to me. So there was this real power play going on at the beginning of their relationship. And ultimately he did have to come to her. And she came on a barge and it was real display. You can look up paintings of this, you can watch dramatizations of this scene. It's really incredible. In Act 2, Scene 2 of the play, lines 200 onwards, we get this marvelous poetic set piece. And I marvel at this because I can see it all. The Jacobean stage would have been rather bare. They didn't have our special effects, but Shakespeare's audience had a fuller and more vivid amount. Imagination. And the theatre of their minds would put our HD color big screen surround sound entertainment to shame as we appreciate this passage. Note the musicality, note the cognitive power, note the visuality. Shakespeare's strong on all three. Eno Barber says the barge she sat in like a burnished throne burned on the water. The poop was beaten and gold purple the sails and so perfumed that the winds were love sick with them. The oars were silver, which to the Tune of flutes kept stroke and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes. For her own person it beggared all description. She did lie in her pavilion, cloth of gold, of tissue, o'er picturing that Venus where we see the fancy outwork. N so she looked even more impressive than representations of Venus. On each side her stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids with diverse colored fans whose wind did seem to glow. The delicate cheeks, which they did cool, and what they undid did so. She's like a goddess being rowed across mortal land. And Dinobarbus continuing to capture the allure of Cleopatra. I saw her once hop 40 paces through the public street, and having lost her breath, she spoke and panted that she did make defect perfection. And breathless poor breath forth. I love the syntax because you have to slow down. You have to say the words very distinctly. You can't say them too quickly. And there are pauses there. So when he's saying this, it's. It's almost like he's mimicking the breathlessness. But do you notice, he says, she made defect perfection. Isn't that incredible? That's how alluring she is, that even the things that are not virtues, even the mistakes and mishaps and the flaws, end up seeming perfect. And he goes on and says, and this is really powerful. Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies. We see early on that Mark Antony is recalled to Rome upon news of his wife's death and the growing geopolitical tensions. But Ahenobarbus warns him that Cleopatra won't be happy about this and she herself will die instantly. At the least noise of this, she dies instantly. I have seen her die 20 times upon far poorer moments. She hath such celerity and dying. I love that. So Cleopatra is sublime. She has infinite variety. She's very alluring and enchanting. She's inexhaustible. Her consciousness is inexhaustible. But she is also narcissistic and neurotic. She's jealous, she's possessive, she's anxious. In fact, I think she's top percentile for volatile neuroticism. She's an absolutely brilliant character because she plays her role. She makes a performance, a drama of her life, dying all of the time, dying 20 times over. When she hears of things she does not like. All this constant dying seems to be a foreshadowing and a rehearsal of her real death to come. And when she does learn that Anthony is leaving momentarily due to his wife's death, Cleopatra says she has been betrayed. Why should I think you can be mine and true? And she makes a very fair point. She judges him by his behavior with others. How am I to think you're going to treat me well if this is how you treated your wife? Also notice the mind games that Cleopatra is playing. We do perhaps question her sincerity now. I think she's very sincere. I think she is very jealous and possessive. I think she loves him. But I do think there's also a lot of scheming and power plays and manipulation going on. She's very, very good at it. Notice that all of Shakespeare's characters, the great ones, do this. They orchestrate events or try to manipulate those around them. They influen and direct other people. And we can see that with Cleopatra. When Anthony is not around, she is constantly asking after him, where is he? Or she's wondering where he is, what's he doing if he's thinking of her. But when he is around, she coldly and calculatedly withdraws her attention. She punishes him, in effect, by her absence. By withdrawing, we see that when he turns up, she says, let's go. She's just been asking after him, but let's go. We won't look on him. And she tells her attendants to gather reports on what he's doing, who he is with, and to not tell him that they were sent by Cleopatra. She says, if you find him sad, say I am dancing. If in mirth, report that I am sudden sick. And this is act one, scene three. Charmian says, madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly, you do not hold the method to enforce the like from him. Cleopatra says, what should I do? I do not. Charmian says, in each thing give him way, cross him in nothing. And she says, thou teachest like a fool the way to lose him. So this feels more like a romantic comedy at the start, doesn't it, rather than a tragedy. This is all about how to keep a guy, how to not lose a guy. This is like an inversion of the Taming of the Shrew and Charmian, showing that Shakespeare's reading of Machiavelli didn't bleed out just into Othello says, tempt him not so too far in time. We hate that which we often fear. When she learns that Antony needs to return to Rome to take care of business, to quell civil war and international threat, essentially he needs to go and do his job. He needs to Return to work. When this happens, she shows how strong her Egyptian fetters are, and she mocks him using what we presume were his own words. His own mouth made vowels which break themselves in swearing. You might have noticed by now, if you're following along with the Shakespeare project, that characters in Shakespeare often have their speech inflected by other strong, influential characters. One character will say something and you'll think, that's not quite them. That's actually another character that they've obviously interacted with. And we don't get to see that interaction. That obviously happens in an unrecorded moment. That's the magic of the subtext, the Shakespearean subtext. In Henry iv, for example, we see that Hal speaks the language of Falstaff until, of course, it comes time to reject him and break away from him. In Macbeth, we see that Macbeth speaks the language of his wife, Lady Macbeth. Her words appear on his lips. And in Antony and Cleopatra, and this is where we get beautiful psychological complexity. Though Cleopatra dwarfs and subsumes her lover, she's a leviathan, and he is swallowed up, we see that the one who most uses the words of the other is her. She repeats what we take to be Anthony's words. And what does this tell us? Sure, she might be manipulating him, but I also take it that she's very much in love, and she's jealous and she's possessive and she's lusting. But there is love there, too. Mad, passionate, true love. And that's where the tragedy comes in. These two are both completely toxic together, but they do love each other. So she uses his words when she says, eternity was in our lips and eyes, bliss in our brows bent. So we take it that this is what Anthony has been saying to her in more private moments. And they are still, or thou, the greatest soldier of the world, are turned the greatest liar. I would I had thy inches. Thou shouldst know there were a heart in Egypt. So I would I had thy inches. She's envying his inches. What does that mean? Well, it's a bawdy pun referring to his male genitalia. And with so many of Shakespeare's plays, we see a lot of gender questioning and probably probing into what is a man and what is a woman. And this is explored tremendously in this play. Indeed, Cleopatra talks of getting Anthony drunk, getting him in bed, and then putting her headdress on him whilst she wore his sword, the sword he used at the Battle of Philippi, in which Anthony and Octavius defeated Brutus and Cassius. So he's dressed up in women's clothing, whilst she is branding this phallic emblem of masculinity, of domination and control and conquering. And again, this is metatheatricality, because all of Shakespeare's players were men, so the women were always men dressed up. So here we have the image of a man dressed up as a woman, who herself is a man dressed up. But notice that she goes from talking about eternity, so endless time, to inches, which is a small stature existing in space. And so their love might be eternal, their dotage overflowing the measure. But ultimately, maybe they are not gods shaking the throne of heaven. They're humans. They're mortal. Now I see, I see, she says in Fulvia's death, how mine received shall be. Now, when she says this, I don't think it's just manipulation. Sure, she is manipulating him, but I feel some sincere heartache here. This makes me feel very sorry for her. I kind of pity her. And as Aristotle taught us, pity is instrumental in a tragedy. We have to feel pity for the protagonists for it to work, for the death to result in catharsis. Shakespeare challenged us in King Lear because we didn't feel pity for the aging king until at least the second or third act. Here I find I sympathise with Cleopatra from the start. She is magnetic, but also insecure. I see her as having a lot of insecurities. I also feel like I know Cleopatra as well, if perhaps more well than any other of Shakespeare's characters. I think she wears her heart on her sleeve, but perhaps that's just me being duped and manipulated too. I think she might be telling us and telling everyone how she really feels. Sounds like an odd thing to say, because she does instruct her servants to hide how she feels. She plays hot and cold with Anthony, but I think this is surely rather see through. Would she act in this way if her heart wasn't in the palm of Anthony's hand? Oh, my oblivion is a very Anthony, and I am all forgotten, she says. And again I marvel at Cleopatra's cognitive power. It's staggering. Aristotle said that thinking in metaphor was the highest form of cognition. Metaphor is where one thing is another and we can see. Incredibly dense, difficult and abstract concepts become concrete in Cleopatra's mind. Her oblivion is an Anthony. Normally we'd say something like, Anthony is my oblivion, or he be the end of me. But no, oblivion itself. Complete destruction, ruin, melting into black nothingness, is a form of Anthony. And if he has lost himself in dotage, she fears that she will too. I am all forgotten. So she wants to be loved, she wants to be remembered. She's hyper anxious about being abandoned and scorned and forgotten. I think we know she loves him in how she deals with his absence poorly. We see she asks her servants for mandragora or mandrake so that she can sleep out this great gap of time. That's love sickness, that's depression, that's unhealthy codependency. When he's away, she wants to drug herself up until he returns. And whilst he's away from Egypt, Cleopatra warns that Anthony shall I every day have several greetings messages. So she's going to inundate him with messages from her. It's funny, when he's around, she hides herself and withdraws and she's playing with him. But when he's away, she won't leave him alone. She won't leave him be to get on with his work. She says, I will inundate him with messages, otherwise I'll unpeople Egypt. Returning to Rome results in Pompey ceasing his campaign. He hadn't banked on going up against the full force of the truck power. And we see that Octavius and Antony try to make things up and aim to strengthen their alliance by Anthony marrying his sister Octavia. And we can see that Antony is as concerned about his reputation as Cleopatra is about her. As he tells Octavia, read not my blemishes in the World's Report. We might think what's worse? Being forgotten completely or having an unfavourable reputation? Sustained, of course, with Cleopatra, her blemishes could be seen as part of the perfection she makes defect. Perfection. So Octavia and Anthony are married hot on the heels of Fulvia's death. So we see that women are used to solidify male, male homosocial bonds. Caesar thinks that this will cement their ties because they're brothers now. But Anthony is of course, still ensnared in Cleopatra's net. Though I make this marriage for my peace in the east, my pleasure lies, he says. And we see that although Mark Anthony's heart is still very much in Egypt and very much with Cleopatra, Cleopatra does not take the news of the marriage well at all. This is a really hilarious scene where we see that her messenger really feels her wrath. You don't want to be the messenger bringing bad news when you're serving Cleopatra. Act two, scene when the messenger first turns up, Cleopatra doesn't even let him get a word out. She says, antonio's dead. If thou say so, villain, thou killest thy mistress but well and free. If thou so yield him. There it's gold. And here my bluest veins to kiss a hand that kings have lipped and trembled kissing. The messenger says, first, madam, he is well. Why, there's more gold. But, sirrah, mark, we used to say the dead are well. Bring it to that the gold I thee, I will melt and pour down thy ill uttering throat. Good madam, hear me well. Go to. I will, but there's no goodness in thy face. If Anthony be free and healthful. Wilt please you hear me? She says, I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speakest. Yet if thou say Antony lives, is well, or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him, I'll set thee in a shower of gold and hail rich pearls upon thee. Madam, he's well. Well said. And friends with Caesar. Thou art an honest man. Caesar and he are greater friends than ever. Make thee a fortune from me. But yet, madam. And Cleopatra cuts him off. I do not like. But yet it does allay the good precedence. Fie upon. But yet. But yet it as a jailer to bring forth some monstrous malefactor. Notice the cognitive power, her power of abstract thoughts. But yet is a jailer. So this speech. But yet. Wait, there's more. This little assertion has become concrete, has turned into the image of a jailer. In her mind. She says, prithee, friend, pour out the pack of matter to mine ear. The good and bad together. He's friends with Caesar in state of health, thou sayest. And thou sayest, free. Free, madam. No, I made no such report. He's bound unto Octavia. For what good turn? For the best turn in the bed. Cleopatra says, I am pale, madam. He's married to Octavia. And she strikes him down. The most infectious pestilence upon thee. He cries out, good madam, patience. What say you? She strikes him again. Hence, horrible villain, or I'll spurn thine eyes like balls before me. I'll unhair thy head. And she starts dragging him up and down. Thou shalt be whipped with wire and stewed in brine, smarting in lingering pickle. The messenger cries out, gracious madam, I that do bring the news made not the match. When he continues to convey the bad news that he's married, Cleopatra says, rogue, thou hast lived too long. And she draws a knife. You've got to have comedy in a tragedy. And I find this very funny. With a good performance. This is a very funny scene. It's just absolutely Absurd. It's farcical, isn't it? And she cries out when Charmian protests the messengers. Innocent. Cleopatra says, some innocents scape not the thunderbolt. So she's still aligning herself with the heavens. She's still a goddess. And she, she says, melt Egypt into Nile and kindly creatures turn all to serpents. Do you notice that this is an echo of Anthony's words again, his earlier sentiment of letting Rome in Tiber melt. How does something melt? From heat, from burning up. So their love affair is fiery. And there's a great line from the messenger who says, to punish me for what you make me do seems much unequal. So don't tell me to give you the report and then punish me. And that's Cleopatra all over now. I gotta say, I do feel sorry for Cleopatra when she finds out that Anthony is married and she tells Alexas to go and see her report. Her features, her years, the color of her hair. So she's feeling threatened that Antony is not hers. Now we see on the conflict front that Pompey capitulates without fighting. But Caesar renews the conflict and brings new wars against Pompey, which Antony thoroughly disagrees with. He's also aggrieved at the fact that Caesar is giving him no credit for helping Rome. So he is feeling dishonoured. And he says, if I lose mine honour, I lose myself. Anthony is also angry that Octavius has taken Lepidus out of the Triumvirate by imprisoning him. Both Octavius and Anthony are becoming increasingly enraged at one another. And Anthony slips back to Egypt. He goes back to Cleopatra, leaving Octavia to try to broker peace between her new husband and her brother. But Caesar isn't having any of it. This conflict between them two has been a long time coming. He says he hath given his empire up to a whore. Caesar, now turning full on against Antony, talks in Act 3, Scene 6, how it's reported in the marketplace of Alexandria. And Shakespeare never lets us forget that history is actually gossip. History was once news and news is gossip. And so what endures and remains with us is town prattle. In Alexandria, it's reported that on a tribunal silvered so a silver raised platform. Cleopatra and Anthony are publicly enthroned in chairs of gold. She's dressed up as the goddess Isis and at their feet Caesarion was seated. So this is a really strong part of the backstory, the historical backclo. Cleopatra and Julius Caesar slept together and they had a son, Caesarion. In the words of Agrippa, Caesar laid his sword down when he went to bed with her and he ploughed her. And that's the first usage of that to mean had sex. So we have Shakespeare to thank for that vulgarity. He ploughed her and she cropped. The report continues that Anthony had given the establishment of Egypt to Cleopatra. He's made her of Lower Syria, Cyprus and Lydia, which is part of Turkey, absolute queen, and proclaims his sons the kings of kings. He gave rule of Media, Parthia, Armenia to his son with Cleopatra. Alexander, who was aged 10 at the time, and daughter Ptolemy, aged four, was assigned Syria Cilicia, which is also part of Turkey, and Phoenicia or Lebanon. Now, there's a shift halfway through the play and it turns into a battle play. And at this point in Shakespeare's career, he was at the absolute heights of his fame. And I think audiences who were going to see a play by the king's men would at this point be expecting deep psychological complexity. They wouldn't have known what to do. When Hamlet first launched into the world and strode about the stage pondering to be or not to be, that would have been confusing and revolutionary. What is he doing? He's talking. He's thinking. He's thinking out loud. But I think by this point in his career, audiences would have come to crave that psychological complexity, that introspection, that inwardness. But it's interesting that what we see in Antony and Cleopatra is that Shakespeare decides to keep it stately throughout and ornate, like Julius Caesar. Antony and Cleopatra is very much like Julius Caesar, but it has more heart and more warmth. Julius Caesar was a cold play. This one is red hot. And audiences would have been in need of some warming up because it's further performance would have been in a very cold winter, so cold that the Thames froze over. And indeed they put market stalls up on the frozen Thames. We see midway through the play, the tragedy becomes like a return to the good old days of traditional battle plays. We think that this play would have been performed at the Blackfriars Theatre first, also the Globe, but potentially Blackfriars first, and that had a reputation for battle plays. Back at the beginning of his career, Shakespeare cut his teeth on the histories with the string of Henry sixth plays. And they would feature a lot of running about the stage, a lot of noise, a lot of simulated action. And we see that again in Anthony and Cleopatra. Anthony starts raising an army to challenge Rome and Cleopatra wants to join him. But everyone's aware, as Ahenobarbus puts it, that in Warring against Anthony. They aren't warring against him. They're actually warring against Cleopatra, her eunuch and her maids, because he is following her, not the other way around. His advisors tell Anthony not to challenge Caesar at sea, but just draw him onto the land because his army is stronger there. But he won't listen. He listens instead to Cleopatra that her 60 Egyptian ships will be strong enough to help him. And we see that this general is now a shell. All of his command is deferred to his lover. Act three, scene seven. Ahenobarbus implores Anthony. He says, your ships are not well manned. Your mariners are muleteers, reapers, people engrossed by swift impress in Caesar's fleet are those that often have gainst Pompey fought. Their ships are ye're yours heavy. No disgrace shall fool you for refusing him at sea, being prepared for land at Antony says, by sea. By sea. And it doesn't matter what Aino barber says. He is resolved. He says, I'll fight at sea. He doesn't say much. He just says, by sea. By sea. Anthony is more lost than ever and he absolutely should not go to sea. Why is he doing it? Because he was dead. There is absolutely no shame in Anthony fighting where he is strongest on land. Who is he trying to prove himself to? His men beg him not to fight at sea, but he refuses to listen. And Canidius, a follower of Anthony's, says, so are leaders led and we are women's men. And Dinobarbus says, oh, transform us not to women. And so we see that Anthony loses the famous Battle of Actium. This was the naval battle fought between Octavian's fleet, led by Agrippa, and the combined forces, the combined fleets of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. And I'd love to really know what the atmosphere of the Battle of Actium would have been like in the original performance. They would have created a lot of noise off stage. And then, of course, we have Ahenobarbus and the character Scaris relating what has happened. We learn that the Antoniad, the flagship of the Egyptian navy, turned and fled. Cleopatra left the fray and Anthony ordered his ships to follow hers. And Anthony, of course, heavily regrets leaving the fight. I have lost my way forever, he says, oh, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? Thou knewest too well. My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings, and thou shouldst tow me after. So he puts the blame on her. This is very poor leadership. He says, you knew you were my conqueror, and my sword was made weak by my affection. You knew I would obey you on everything, on all cause. In the wake of defeat, Cleopatra asks Xenobarbus what to do. And his response evokes the wife of Job. He says, think and die. So become melancholy, lapse into despondent thought. Let's lick our wounds, be depressed and then die. Cleopatra asks if the fault is in Anthony or her, and Dino Barbas says Anthony only that would make his will lord of his reason. So Anthony has subverted his reason to his sexual desire, his will. And Shakespeare would frequently pun on his own name whenever he ruminated upon the concept of will. He has made his desire lord of his reason. Even though the domestic is often political and matters of the bedroom influence matters on the battlefield or at sea, they really shouldn't. We see that Ahenobarbus likens Anthony to a leaking sinking ship from which the rats himself and Cleopatra including would do well to flee. Indeed, Ahenobarbus does desert Antony, and he is so ashamed of doing so that he ultimately dies of a broken heart. Now, after Antony's loss at Actium, Octavius rejects the peace terms that Anthony proposes. Anthony just wishes to live peacefully with Cleopatra in Alexandria. But Octavius would rather try to pit these two against each other. He wants Cleopatra, Cleopatra to give up Antony and come to his side. And we see that Antony whips Octavius servant, he dares him to combat. And they engage in conflict again. And on the first day of the fight, Anthony is doing surprisingly well. But on the second day, his troops desert him en masse and Cleopatra surrenders. Anthony cries out, all is lost. And he says he's been betrayed by a triple turned whore. He even threatens to murder her. He tells her, vanish or I shall give thee thy deserving and blemish Caesar's triumph. Let him take thee and hoist the up to the shouting plebeians. It had been better if she had fallen to his fury, he says. And he resolves that she will die for this. She'll die for the betrayal. Now we see that Cleopatra's servants lie at her behest and they tell Anthony that she has killed herself. She has slain her herself at the monument. And the very last word she said was his name Anthony. And we see that he quickly goes from feeling murderous feeling that she was to blame, to suddenly having her fill up his heart again. He was going to kill her, but news of her death makes him want to kill himself. And that's very interesting. He can't live without her and he throws himself on his own sword. Now his soldiers take him to Cleopatra. It's obviously revealed that she hasn't killed herself, and they say their farewells. We see that Caesar offers peace to Cleopatra, but he actually intends to make her a war trophy. He intends to humiliate her in the streets of Rome. And so faced with that, faced with the death of Anthony, she decides to kill herself instead with poisonous snakes, with asps. And the symbology of snakes is rather different when it comes to Egyptian mythology compared to Judeo Christian mythology. Serpents were revered, they were worshipped. There's a lot of serpent symbolism in the theology of ancient Egypt in a positive way, indeed, Cleopatra was known as the serpent of the Nile. And so it's only fitting that she would choose to end her life this way. It's a triumphant, it's a victorious way of ending things. Now, we don't actually know if this happened in reality. She could have just administered poison. Again, this is something that's gone into the mythologizing of Cleopatra. Now, when it comes to my favorite passage for this play, I have to personally go for what Cleopatra says before she dies. But I think we get a very nice compliment to her words in Anthony's moment of recognition. This is Act 4, Scene 14. Anthony says, asking his man if he yet beholdest me. And he says, aye, noble lord. And Anthony says, sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish, a vapor, sometime like a bear or lion, a towered citadel, a pendant rock, a forked mountain or blue promontory with trees upon it that nod unto the world and mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs. They are black vespers, pageants, that which is now a horse. Even with a thought, the rack dislimns and makes it indistinct as water, as in water. Now thy captain is even such a body. Here I am, Anthony, yet cannot hold this visible shape. This is another constant Shakespearean preoccupation. Everything you see before you, everything you see on stage is but a shadow. But air, thin clouds, these towered citadels, these dragons, Anthony himself. It's all smoke and mist and air, words, breath molded into words and then created in your minds. And so we're left wondering, who is Anthony really? What do we really know of the man, of any historical personage beyond what is reported? And in Cleopatra's sublime final moment, we get an allusion to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls in one of the most extraordinary assertions of any of Shakespeare's characters. Before her death, Cleopatra says, I am fire and air, my Other elements I give to baser life. So who's Cleopatra? Well, who are we? She has become the elements themselves. She's become fire and air. She. She is fire and air. And the baser parts of her have mixed with the common dust as Hamlet knew and feared he would be and have since been recycled and reborn in us. And what we see on stage is what we are. And so Anthony and Cleopatra remain alive. They remain alive in performance and alive in our minds. And ultimately, I find Shakespeare gives Cleopatra some dignity by even throwing a little bit of scorn on his own craft, his own performance. Act 5, Scene 2. About 210 or so lines in Cleopatra outlines her reasons for not wanting to be taken to Rome. She doesn't want to get paraded through the streets. She doesn't want to surrender to Caesar. She doesn't want to keep on living under these conditions. She says that Roman officers saw lictors will catch at us like strumpets and schooled rhymers, ballad us out of tune. So ballads are going to be made about them, made about Cleopatra and Anthony's love. Scathing satirical poems and stories. Lambasting them, she says the quick comedians extemporally will stage us and present our Alexander Alexandrian revels. Anthony shall be brought drunken forth and I shall see some squeaking Cleopatra boy, my greatness, in the posture of a whore. This is a metatheatrical nod to the one playing Cleopatra, the squeaking Cleopatra boy. And she knows that she's going to be cast in the posture of a whore, her greatness, that's what that's going to become. Anthony is going to be shown to be some drunk. And this is what they're going to do to both of them. No, what I love about this, and this has to be my one passage, what I love about this is the fact that yes, this play is funny. It is pretty hilarious. Yes, these characters do look rather ridiculous and ludicrous. But Shakespeare has done them a service and he has elevated them into a tragedy. And I do think that our lasting impression of these two lovers isn't ridiculous. Mark Antony isn't this drunken ruffian. Cleopatra's greatness has survived. She's not cast in the posture of a whore. Even though a squeaking boy actor might be bringing her to life. We think that that actor was very, very good. I think we are left thinking of her infinite variety. Given what the source material was like, Shakespeare could have been very judgmental, but instead he decided not to. And what he did was he gave us highly conscious characters that have endured and you cannot reduce either of them. They are endless. And in their deaths, in choosing to die, this iconic larger than life pair have secured their lasting reputation. They have ensured that they will endure not as callous, half forgotten mockeries, perhaps not as hero and queen either, but but they have endured as the very elements that make up our existence. Cleopatra is fire and air and she and Anthony are melted into one another for all eternity. Now I'm going to leave it there for today though. I could really talk about this play endlessly and I always find something fresh to marvel at when I return to Antony and Cleopatra. But I would like to to say a huge thank you very much for listening. And if you're interested in diving even further into Shakespeare, as I mentioned we have the Shakespeare Project over at the Hardcore Literature Book Club, which is@patreon.com hardcore literature. We have journeyed through the saga that is the complete works of Shakespeare, including chronological order. And I have to say that this is the lecture series I'm personally most proud of. And this is also the reading adventure that book club readers have told me they are most proud of having conquered. At time of recording we are nearing the end of the project and we've just discussed the Tempest and we'll soon be discussing Henry VIII and the two noble kinsmen. And then I'll be putting together a huge ranking video where I rank and review all of the plays and give them a grading. But all of the lectures are still available on demand and the book club is set up for readers to go at their own pace with everything. We have an extensive back catalogue and in addition to Shakespeare, we've got read throughs for writers like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Lady Murasaki, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, James Joyce, John Steinbeck, and many, many more. And at time of recording We've just read 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ovid's Metamorphoses and we are now kicking off a brand new exclusive read through for Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. After Flaubert this year will be reading Faulkner and Chaucer and Homer and many more together. For Shakespeare you can pick and choose the plays you want to read and the lectures you want to listen to, and you might like to treat yourself to a play a month alongside your other reading. Or you can answer the call to adventure, begin at the beginning and read every single Shakespeare play with me and with our wonderful community and feel enormous personal growth along the way. Once again, that is@patreon.com hardcore literature. But for now I would like to say that I appreciate you deeply and I hope you have a lovely day. Happy reading everybody and bye bye for now.