Taking a deeper look at Cleopatra

by Gwen Herat

As always, Shakespeare took punches at his female characters; often making them wild, ambitious, passionate, crafty, wicked, suicidal, homicidal and more often, very destructive. He only spared the two Portias; one from 'The Merchant of Vanice' and the other from 'Julius Caesar'.

Having said that, let's look at Cleopatra, the woman whom he made all total, singling out her virtues as well as her darker side he poured out his feelings upon her character. I may not be wrong if I am to say that he idolised her based on his knowledge. He had of Elizabeth I. We are all aware of her glorious reign but given to tantrums when she could not get away with what she wanted. So, very much like Cleopatra. Elizabeth knew how to present a spectacular image of herself despite no longer being young. Since 'Antony and Cleopatra' was written four years after Elizabeth's death, Shakespeare would have felt safe and confident to poke fun at both of them. Did I see something of Plutarch's 'Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans' which may have been a source of character development upon Cleopatra? The poet goes on to describe her virtuously. He get Antony's friend, Enorbabus to speak the famous account of Cleopatra in her barge on Cyndus which is apparently a passage snatched from his source Plutarch with a few changes here and there.

Francis Barber as Cleopatra in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ at the Shakespeare’s Globe, in 2006.

'The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne

Burned on the water, the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfum'd that

The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke'.....

The lines do full justice to Cleopatra only in the last act. She is still very cunning and still a match to Octavious. She is still a wife for the godlike Antony. She beats Octavious at his own game and frustrates his lead to her captivity in triumph who with her dead body draws from him the praise he would not have offered in life. His reaction was typically calm when he heard about their deaths. His observation modulates at once into his much admired tribute though it was not the language of the brusque Octavious;

'She looks like sleep

As she would catch another Antony

In her strong toil of grace'....

Did Cleopatra truly love Antony or was she attracted to his power? I would presume both. She was exceptionally a very passionate woman who had affairs with Pompey abd Caesar before she enticed Antony. But I think she really loved Antony because she can talk nothing but of him when he is not with her. She is devastated when she hears his marriage to Octavia and is absolutely heart-broken. She is also torn between her son, Caesarion by Julius Caesar.

Shakespeare never commenced his descriptive homage to Cleopatra with an idea of Idolising her but ended up glorifying a royal harlot who has had several stormy affairs with powerful rulers such as Pompey and Caesar until she ended up with Antony whom she really loved and because of whom she committed suicide at the end.

But we rarely see them together on stage but they are constantly performing. They are only together on stage for a short time in Act IV. She becomes a little helpless girl here whereas she is the powerful Queen of Egypt very much in charge. Most of the time she is seen enticing Antony for speaking lustily about him. After the debacle of the Battle of Actium when she has fled and Antony has followed her, she is aware that she could never mend his shame and she was the cause of it. But at this point what mattes for the audience or the reader is the luxuriate in her falling in love with him again and for the first time after she has lost him. Her descriptions of Antony to Dolabella are tender and wonderful. She believes it to be an extraordinary power as she had been treated by Caesar badly and discarded cruelly. This experience had given her a fierce independence but it had also given her an insecurity and besides Cleopatra was 39 years old at that time, an age considered old for a new and fiery relationship.

After Antony's death, she makes provision for her own suicide. Dollabella tells her that Caesar would drag her through the streets of Rome. This was her greatest horror and she is helpless with Antony gone. Shakespeare gives strength to her character. Her pride is enormous. She knows how Romans treat their women and how they despise anyone who is not Roman. The last thing she would do is not to allow Romans to mock her as a captive. She behaves in the magnificent way as a Queen would. She puts on her royal garb and her queenly crown as she prepares to die. She looks like a goddess.

What follows is great as Shakespeare always intended. On stage, it is a huge and challenging space. And we all realise how Shakespeare was trying to connect with his audience. Filled with grandeur and majesty and rich Roman history, culture along with Egyptian exotic beauty, 'Antony and Cleopatra' is so spectacular, that is not so often that the drama is boarded.

The rich and fantastic film with Elizabeth Taylor as the tragic Cleopatra still haunts us.