Customer Reviews

Caesar and Cleopatra (Penguin Classics)

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I can't resist any chance I can get to peek into the mind of a genius, and Shaw was a true genius. This story was delightful and brilliant.

This was great. Instead of a love affair, we get a high-stakes game of chess with Cleopatra making calculated moves to secure the throne of Egypt, but her opponent, Caesar, excels at the game as well. Shrewd takes on Wise in this excellent battle of wits, giving us a refreshingly original story that portrays Cleopatra as a crafty politician seeking power rather than a romantic siren interested in an affair of the heart.

This story was smart and funny. I loved it and wanted more when it was over. I'll have to buy another one of his books. I just love his style.

This is a wonderful, and much more likely, interpretation of Cleopatra's romantic involvement with Caesar. Most writers are tempted to turn it into a great love affair, but Shaw reveals a clever and ambitious Cleopatra whose reasons for sinking her claws into Caesar are entirely political. As much as I'm a sucker for a good romance, I found this tale of sly and loveless manipulation to be much more intriguing.

This story takes place when Caesar has occupied Egypt. Cleopatra wants to steal the throne out from under her brother and realizes that Caesar has the power to give it to her. The lengths she goes to in order to gain Caesar's favor or even stand in his presence are zany. She even goes so far as to roll herself up in a carpet that's to be delivered to him.

Shaw is my favorite of the Victorian playwrights. His works were revolutionary in many ways. Use of humor was rare and exceptional for playwrights during that era, but Shaw was not afraid to make audiences laugh. He also tackled serious moral, political, and social issues in his plays at a time when sappy dramas were all the rage. He was truly bold and innovative and greatly contributed to dramatic art. He had an amazing gift, the ability to make people think while simultaneously making them laugh.

Reading Shaw's works are a genuine treat. All of his plays are fabulous. His characters are memorable, and his humor is brilliant.

This is a wonderful book, charming, significant, and insightful. I can't recommend it enough.

Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

This is a fine edition of the delightful Shaw play. Shaw's Caesar is a man of self-doubt and good humor, a vivid counterpoint to the haughty, aristocratic Caesar of Shakespeare.

This is no love story. The wise and manipulative sixteen year old Cleopatra, one of two claimants to the throne of Egypt, tries to outmaneuver Caesar, the over fifty year old Roman general who had grasped control of her country, who is also wise, and who understands Cleopatra's subtlety, her desire to wrest political control over Egypt from her ten year old brother/husband Ptolemy.

How could Shaw portray people who lived in a different culture close to two thousand years ago? Shaw tells us that despite the passing of so many centuries, people do not really change. Thus he can portray the people in his comedy and their reactions as if they were living today. Thus, also, in reverse, he is able to show the folly of the English people of his own age in his portrayal of the ancients. At the outset of the play, for example, the Egyptians speak of themselves as if they are the descendants of the gods. Is this any different than humanity today, who also act as if they are the greatest beings of creation and that they can do to the world as they see fit.

Cleopatra is depicted as a kittenish, childish, immature, frightened, young girl who is also afraid of her servants and who wants to hide from the Romans. Caesar is shown as a seasoned warrior, afraid of nothing, yet with a sense of humor, a womanizer who is fascinated and charmed by the kittenish Cleopatra.

This work is an excellent and pragmatic look at Caesar's and Cleopatra's relationship, character, and motives. Caesar is portrayed as a wise and benevolent ruler who understands the value of clemency. Cleopatra, on the other hand, engages in a different form of politics. She is less forgiving and wise in the art of manipulation. Putting these two together brings their character traits to the forefront.

Another thing we are able to take away from all of this is that people never change. Civilization and technical advances do not make people any better or smarter than their early ancestors. Regardless of how far we think we have come, we will always say and do and chase after the same things as those who came before us.

George Bernard Shaw created numerous masterpieces over the span of his writing career. He has the distinction of being the only person to ever be awarded both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a very humble and conscientious man, a political activist and a vegetarian. His conscientiousness shows in his work by his inability to write meaningless fluff at a time when fluff dominated the stage. His trademark is his classic use of ample humor in dramas with serious subject matter. It takes a special kind of genius to be able to pull that off as flawlessly as he did.