Antony and Cleopatra

The tragedy is mainly set in the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Egypt and is characterized by swift shifts in geographical location and linguistic register as it alternates between sensual, imaginative Alexandria and a more pragmatic, austere Rome.

In a famous passage, he describes Cleopatra's charms: "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."

For her own person, It beggar'd all description: she did lie In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold of tissue— O'er-picturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature: on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did.

Some scholars speculate that it derives from Shakespeare's own draft, or "foul papers", since it contains minor errors in speech labels and stage directions that are thought to be characteristic of the author in the process of composition.

The large number of scenes is necessary because the action frequently switches between Alexandria, Italy, Messina in Sicily, Syria, Athens, and other parts of Egypt and the Roman Republic.

Conversely, we understand Cleopatra at her death as the transcendent queen of "immortal longings" because the container of her mortality can no longer restrain her: unlike Antony, she never melts, but sublimates from her very earthly flesh to ethereal fire and air.

Arthur Holmberg surmises, "What had at first seemed like a desperate attempt to be chic in a trendy New York manner was, in fact, an ingenious way to characterise the differences between Antony's Rome and Cleopatra's Egypt.

This thirst for control manifested itself through Cleopatra's initial seduction of Antony in which she was dressed as Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and made quite a calculated entrance in order to capture his attention.

Braunmuller notes that "tawny" is "hard to define historically" but that it "seems to have meant some brownish color, and Shakespeare elsewhere uses it to describe suntanned or sunburnt skin, which Elizabethan Canons of beauty regarded as undesirable.

"[34] Braunmuller contextualizes all of this by reminding modern audiences that viewers and writers during Shakespeare's time would have had more complicated perspectives on race, ethnicity and related subjects and that their viewpoints were "extremely hard to define".

An example of the body in reference to the container can be seen in the following passage: Nay, but this dotage of our general's O'erflows the measure ... His captain's heart, Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper And is become the bellows and the fan To cool a gypsy's lust.

(1.1.1–2, 6–10) The lack of tolerance exerted by the hard-edged Roman military code allots to a general's dalliance is metaphorised as a container, a measuring cup that cannot hold the liquid of Antony's grand passion.

For Aristotle these physical elements were the centre of the universe and appropriately Cleopatra heralds her coming death when she proclaims, "I am fire and air; my other elements/I give to baser life", (5.2.289–290).

[40]: p.180  As John Gillies has argued "the 'orientalism' of Cleopatra's court—with its luxury, decadence, splendour, sensuality, appetite, effeminacy and eunuchs—seems a systematic inversion of the legendary Roman values of temperance, manliness, courage".

"[46] The highlighting of these starkly contrasting qualities of the two backdrops of Antony and Cleopatra, in both Shakespeare's language and the words of critics, brings attention to the characterization of the title characters, since their respective countries are meant to represent and emphasise their attributes.

"[28]: p.297  Fitz argues that previous criticisms place a heavy emphasis on Cleopatra's "wicked and manipulative" ways, which are further emphasised by her association with Egypt and her contrast to the "chaste and submissive" Roman Octavia.

One of Shakespeare's most famous speeches, drawn almost verbatim from North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, Enobarbus' description of Cleopatra on her barge, is full of opposites resolved into a single meaning, corresponding with these wider oppositions that characterise the rest of the play: The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water... ...she did lie In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold of tissue— O'er-picturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature: on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did.

this grave charm,— Whose eye beck'd forth my wars, and call'd them home; Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,— Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose, Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.

[55] Even though loyalty is central to secure alliances, Shakespeare is making a point with the theme of betrayal by exposing how people in power cannot be trusted, no matter how honest their word may seem.

Antony remarks on Cleopatra's power over him multiple times throughout the play, the most obvious being sexual innuendo: "You did know / How much you were my conqueror, and that / My sword, made weak by my affection, would / Obey it on all cause.

Antony's "obsessive language concerned with structure, organization, and maintenance for the self and empire in repeated references to 'measure,' 'property,' and 'rule' express unconscious anxieties about boundary integrity and violation."

What is said about Cleopatra is not always what one would normally say about a ruler; the image that is created makes the audience expect "to see on stage not a noble Sovereign, but a dark, dangerous, evil, sensual and lewd creature who has harnessed the 'captain's heart".

Rackin points out that "it is a commonplace of the older criticism that Shakespeare had to rely upon his poetry and his audience's imagination to evoke Cleopatra's greatness because he knew the boy actor could not depict it convincingly".

[75] Throughout the play, Antony is gradually bereaved of that Roman quality so coveted in his nostalgic interludes—by the centremost scenes, his sword (a plainly phallic image), he tells Cleopatra, has been "made weak by his affection" (3.11.67).

James J Greene writes on the subject: "If one of the seminally powerful myths in the cultural memory of our past is Aeneas' rejection of his African queen in order to go on and found the Roman Empire, than it is surely significant that Shakespeare's [sic]... depicts precisely and quite deliberately the opposite course of action from that celebrated by Virgil.

Interpretations of the work often rely on an understanding of Egypt and Rome as they respectively signify Elizabethan ideals of East and West, contributing to a long-standing conversation about the play's representation of the relationship between imperializing western countries and colonised eastern cultures.

For example, there appears to be continuity between the character of Cleopatra and the historical figure of Queen Elizabeth I,[79] and the unfavourable light cast on Caesar has been explained as deriving from the claims of various 16th-century historians.

In support of the reading of Shakespeare's play as subversive, it has also been argued that 16th century audiences would have interpreted Antony and Cleopatra's depiction of different models of government as exposing inherent weaknesses in an absolutist, imperial, and by extension monarchical, political state.

A closer look at this intertextual link reveals that Shakespeare used, for instance, Plutarch's assertion that Antony claimed a genealogy that led back to Hercules, and constructed a parallel to Cleopatra by often associating her with Dionysus in his play.

[89] Scholar Marilyn Williamson notes that the characters may spoil their Fortune by, "riding too high" on it, as Antony did by ignoring his duties in Rome and spending time in Egypt with Cleopatra.