I've read through act 3 and act 4, scene 8. I've been away from the text for a while. Mostly because I've been busy with homework, but Act 3 put me off the story. I found it hard to care about these characters after the battle of Actium. Both Cleopatra and Antony had their petty moments and even their upswings seemed vapid.
I guess I've just gotten tired of the "love makes you stupid and leads to tragic downfall" story. Othello did that much better. Othello didn't just love Desdemona, he also loved and trusted Iago. That's what allowed Iago to magnify Othello's sliver of self-doubt into crippling insecurity. That's what makes the story interesting. Othello begins and ends the story as two starkly different people, but I can believe that one grew from the other.
Antony and Cleopatra are just two people who find each other really, really attractive. They have interesting traits--Cleopatra's expressiveness and Antony's occasional magnanimity--but none of those traits push them to evolve. Their fatal flaw is that they won't let anything separate them from each other. That was already done to death before Shakespeare. Worse, Antony's allowed to have a personality beyond his all-consuming lust for Cleopatra. Cleopatra...isn't.
To be fair, Shakespeare's version already treats Cleopatra more kindly than the source material (Plutarch). Plutarch casts Cleopatra into a narrow role as "temptress who seduced away Antony's manliness". She's there to highlight how far Antony's fallen and how great he once was. I guess it would be difficult for Shakespeare to rewrite her character entirely. To be unfair, Shakespeare totally did that with his other history plays. He invented Falstaff out of a single line in Holinshed! He clearly knows how to write well-developed women. This play would've been so much more interesting if he'd allowed Cleopatra a bit of Viola's grit. Viola's charming because we get to see Orsino knock her off-balance and--crucially--she's clever enough to make jokes about it. Even in the midst of her suffering, Violet retains her kindness and self-awareness. I really wish I were reading her play instead of this one.
Cleopatra's just so...ditzy. It's jarring. We know (and Shakespeare knew!) that she outmaneuvered her siblings to claim the throne. She charmed her way into Caesar and Antony's graces by turn and maintained Egypt's independence the whole time. She's clearly a gifted strategist. But here she's vain, stubborn, and completely ignorant. She runs away at Actium [1], costing her side almost all its allies, and her first response is to pin the blame on Antony. Never mind that Octavius would've easily captured her lone ship if Antony hadn't followed her. Her ineptitude consistently dogs her characterization. For instance, it appears when she insists on fighting at sea despite her and Antony's complete inexperience with naval battle.
Antony accedes to her whims on both occasions. But he's allowed to retain some of his nobility. His first response is to offer his soldiers amnesty if they want to desert him. "Observe how Antony becomes his flaw," Octavius says. He does get some pretty smooth lines in the post-Actium debrief with Cleopatra.
I guess I've just gotten tired of the "love makes you stupid and leads to tragic downfall" story. Othello did that much better. Othello didn't just love Desdemona, he also loved and trusted Iago. That's what allowed Iago to magnify Othello's sliver of self-doubt into crippling insecurity. That's what makes the story interesting. Othello begins and ends the story as two starkly different people, but I can believe that one grew from the other.
Antony and Cleopatra are just two people who find each other really, really attractive. They have interesting traits--Cleopatra's expressiveness and Antony's occasional magnanimity--but none of those traits push them to evolve. Their fatal flaw is that they won't let anything separate them from each other. That was already done to death before Shakespeare. Worse, Antony's allowed to have a personality beyond his all-consuming lust for Cleopatra. Cleopatra...isn't.
To be fair, Shakespeare's version already treats Cleopatra more kindly than the source material (Plutarch). Plutarch casts Cleopatra into a narrow role as "temptress who seduced away Antony's manliness". She's there to highlight how far Antony's fallen and how great he once was. I guess it would be difficult for Shakespeare to rewrite her character entirely. To be unfair, Shakespeare totally did that with his other history plays. He invented Falstaff out of a single line in Holinshed! He clearly knows how to write well-developed women. This play would've been so much more interesting if he'd allowed Cleopatra a bit of Viola's grit. Viola's charming because we get to see Orsino knock her off-balance and--crucially--she's clever enough to make jokes about it. Even in the midst of her suffering, Violet retains her kindness and self-awareness. I really wish I were reading her play instead of this one.
Cleopatra's just so...ditzy. It's jarring. We know (and Shakespeare knew!) that she outmaneuvered her siblings to claim the throne. She charmed her way into Caesar and Antony's graces by turn and maintained Egypt's independence the whole time. She's clearly a gifted strategist. But here she's vain, stubborn, and completely ignorant. She runs away at Actium [1], costing her side almost all its allies, and her first response is to pin the blame on Antony. Never mind that Octavius would've easily captured her lone ship if Antony hadn't followed her. Her ineptitude consistently dogs her characterization. For instance, it appears when she insists on fighting at sea despite her and Antony's complete inexperience with naval battle.
Antony accedes to her whims on both occasions. But he's allowed to retain some of his nobility. His first response is to offer his soldiers amnesty if they want to desert him. "Observe how Antony becomes his flaw," Octavius says. He does get some pretty smooth lines in the post-Actium debrief with Cleopatra.
Antony: Fall not a tear, I say; one of them ratesAll that is won and lost: give me a kiss;Even this repays me.
It's just...it's so saccharine. Antony's central conflict is his love for Cleopatra and literally everything else (honor, worldly fortune, staying alive). He flips between the two without reflecting on which one he wants more. We could argue that his whole character revolves around not thinking things through. Still, shouldn't his relationship with this conflict change throughout the play? It's easy to remember his beautiful climactic scene with Cleopatra while forgetting that he called her a 'triple-turn'd whore' the last time he saw her. It's difficult not to imagine that, if he had been allowed to live longer, he would've flipped back eventually.
Maybe we're not supposed to imagine that, though, just like we're not supposed to imagine Romeo and Juliet as a middle-aged bickering couple. But Romeo and Juliet was compelling because its significance, like Othello, didn't rely on the love story. The tragedy lies in their pyrrhic victory over their families' feud. Antony and Cleopatra doesn't have this kind of apotheosis. They commit suicide, sure, but I don't feel sorry for them. Neither of them has the excuse of being an impulsive teenager. In fact, their tragic double suicide left their twins in Octavia's lap. I guess that doesn't matter when you get a dramatic death soliloquy though.
Or maybe that's the point? Maybe everyone's a little despicable, and the best you can hope for is that you die in a nobler moment.
[1] Which, yes, actually happened, but Shakespeare could've tried to give us a better explanation for why she did it.
Maybe we're not supposed to imagine that, though, just like we're not supposed to imagine Romeo and Juliet as a middle-aged bickering couple. But Romeo and Juliet was compelling because its significance, like Othello, didn't rely on the love story. The tragedy lies in their pyrrhic victory over their families' feud. Antony and Cleopatra doesn't have this kind of apotheosis. They commit suicide, sure, but I don't feel sorry for them. Neither of them has the excuse of being an impulsive teenager. In fact, their tragic double suicide left their twins in Octavia's lap. I guess that doesn't matter when you get a dramatic death soliloquy though.
Or maybe that's the point? Maybe everyone's a little despicable, and the best you can hope for is that you die in a nobler moment.
[1] Which, yes, actually happened, but Shakespeare could've tried to give us a better explanation for why she did it.
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