Customer Reviews

Antony and Cleopatra (The Pelican Shakespeare)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A great deal of argument has been in the air during the last couple of decades over Shakespeare's rendering of the famous history of Cleopatra , the once upon a time queen of Egypt and her so- called wanton nature and habits that brought her in relation with two Roman military leaders namely ,Mark Antony and Julius Caesar .
From a purely feminist perspective, Cleopatra has been the butt of male-oriented chauvinistic attack and criticism that deemed her a `sexual glutton and `as old as sin itself `. In a male-dominated world like the one we live, woman's beauty is her scourge. No body blames the customer of the prostitute; people are always after the prostitute ,because she is a woman but the male her customer goes unpunished, he has the privilege to enjoy every thing without the least censure. Cleopatra as a matter of fact, is more sinned against than sinning; she was the victim of male-oriented criticism which saw in her an apt image of the `Other `, so why not projecting centuries-long and long-nursed grudge on her as a symbol of women ,of course not as a mother, a sister or even a wife but as a mistress who takes delight in wrecking peaceful house-holds and disrupting the coziness of family life. She is an Amazon woman or a man-eater with lewd insatiable passion that does not stop at any thing to satisfy her sexual urge
Shakespeare seems to subscribe to the above-mentioned misconceptions about Cleopatra; his is a woman , ready to do any and everything cost what it may to live in the mood of love. She shuns the business of the state and neglects her duties as a queen of a strategic country. According to Shakespeare's distorted image of history, Cleopatra's bent for sex and desire makes her interweave a web to enmesh even her arch enemies. Shakespeare does not seem to believe that true faithful love knows no boundaries. Cleopatra's love for Antony and Julius Caesar could have been true love that could have bridged gaps of difference and enmity between Egypt and Rome if not looked upon from the wrong end of perspective.
Further more, if this kind of love has been, in the eyes of those of us -the hapless romantically inclined lovers- who believe only in platonic love, sensual and momentary, the child of momentary sexual infatuation, why do we always blame the woman? - Cleopatra in this case - why do we not fix an equal share of the blame on Caesar and Antony? . In our eyes, male as they are, Cleopatra is "the belly dancer sans merci" whose magical web can not be helped and works with even the most powerful of men in the world. In the eyes of male-hegemony, woman is an object to be loved but never capable of love

The greatest tragicomedy Shakespeare wrote wasn't "A Winter's Tale" or "The Tempest," but this wonderfully cockeyed take on one of history's great unhappy love affairs, between the Queen of Egypt and a man who holds a "third o' th' world" in his hands but dismisses it as "dungy earth."

Liz and Dick were not enough to play these guys on film; they would have been better served by Sid and Nancy. Their appetite for destruction fuels this play, written around 1607 a bit after Shakespeare wrote his best-known tragedies. "Antony And Cleopatra" works as a tragedy, too, but in such an offbeat way it wins you over by playing with your head.

Right away the play catches you off-base, with a scene showing the title romance well underway. We don't get an insight as to how it began until Act 2, scene ii, by which time we have a pretty good idea these guys, unlike say Romeo and Juliet, are lovers crossed not by the stars but by themselves. Antony has a chip on his shoulder from knowing he deserves to rule over Rome and not serve in tandem with two lightweights. Cleopatra is a woman who likes to make her men dance, even to the point when it isn't good for her, but she's such fun and so luminous a presence even when she is the butt of the humor you have to love her with Antony's blind passion. Just watch her play Punch & Judy with a luckless messenger who has to tell her about Antony's new wife.

Two elements stand out in the reading of this play, beyond the glorious leads. The figure of Enobarbus, Antony's sardonic aide-de-camp, offers a great insight into the romance and the political backdrop with his cagy asides and singular wit. "That truth should be silent I had almost forgot," he tells his boss, but it never really is with Enobarbus on the job.

The other element is "Antony And Cleopatra's" cinematic quality, with no less than 42 scenes set in Rome, Greece, and Egypt. Lovemaking, drinking, battles, and jump-cuts abound. There are longish scenes, like the final one, but even there the action moves fast. It might be considered a failing that so much of what happens on stage up until the last two acts is basically reaction action to storylines that occur off-frame, but Shakespeare makes the drama come so alive, and draws his focus so remarkably on his imperfect central lovers, that you only marvel at what he is able to accomplish without, say, a staged first meeting between Antony and Cleopatra, or a more direct falling out between Antony and Octavian Caesar.

One of the great attractions for me of reading this play is it works as a kind of antidote to Shakespeare's other celebrated romance. Romeo And Juliet are lovers in the full bloom of youth, toyed with by others' ambitions. Antony and Cleopatra are older and more in charge of their lives, yet make an even bigger hash of things. A street fight in Verona pales in comparison to Actium, yet I find Antony and Cleopatra as I get older far more rewarding company, with their refusal to live their lives in accordance with other's wants.

"I shall show the cinders of my spirits/Through th' ashes of my chance" says Cleopatra late in the play, and you get exactly that here. Doom is everyone's portion of life, but glory is a rare compensation. Here we get to watch a lucky pair enjoy it to the full.

In the history of femme fatales, Cleopatra is still the queen -- she wasn't pretty, but she had charm, wit and power.

And she's the center of Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," a play that follows the tragic affair between Cleopatra and her second high-profile Roman lover. The tragedy is undermined by the fact that Cleopatra and Antony aren't very likable people, but the story does have an empire-ending grandeur.

Mark Antony has been neglecting his duties as a Roman soldier ever since he fell in love with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. But eventually Octavian calls him back to Rome, and Antony is even pressured into marrying Octavia's sister -- which unsurprisingly throws a wrench into his relationship with Cleopatra. She's only soothed by the assurances that Octavia is ugly.

In the meantime, tensions between the Romans and the increasingly Egyptophilic Antony are getting worse, until finally they break into full-out war -- despite the prophecy that Antony will lose if he fights Octavian. And the tempestuous love between Cleopatra and Antony takes a terrible turn as Egypt is about to fall...

"Antony and Cleopatra" is sort of a sequel to "Julius Caesar," and it's also half epic romance and half tragedy. On one hand, it's all about the passionate, stormy love affair between Antony and Cleopatra; on the other, it's also about the final crash of an empire that had endured for thousands of years, and its last monarch.

Shakespeare manages to fill the story with a sense of epic grandeur, and his writing really gets across that these conflicts and people are deeply important. Aside from the famous "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/her infinite variety" speech, there's a lot of powerful writing in here, particularly the climactic scene between Cleopatra and her maidservants.

The biggest drawback of the play is... well, Antony and Cleopatra are pretty nasty people. Antony is no longer the heroic Roman soldier of "Julius Caesar," and Cleopatra throws bratty tantrums and spreads false rumors to keep her boyfriend in love with her. They're a little like A-list celebrities -- they're weirdly fascinating, but you wouldn't want them as friends.

"Antony and Cleopatra" is a grand, engaging epic about how a love affair helped bring down the last remnants of an empire, and its nasty characters don't stop it from being fascinating.

I believe this is a poorly rendered version of Antony and Cleopatra. The organization of the notes made it difficult to read. Instead of putting the archaic meanings of words at the bottom as footnotes, it would have been much more helpful to place them in the margins. The constant going back-and-forth between footnotes and the text made my reading of this play less enjoyable.

One of the classics, what else can I say? Sure, a bit melodramatic, but this is Shakespear after all.