Vastness of Scope in Antony and Cleopatra
Immensity in Character, Plot, Setting and Other Aspects
Dec 12, 2008
Critics have reached a general consensus that ‘if you want to find everything that Shakespeare was capable of doing, and in the compass of a single play, "here it is [in Antony and Cleopatra]"(Bloom). This article looks further into the merits for this claim.
Genre
Attempting to classify the play gives an idea of its broad scope.
Play Structure
The structure of Antony and Cleopatra is can be characterized by quick and short scenes. The effects are debatable and varied to different readers and audiences, but significant as a unique feature in the play.
For the war scenes in Act IV, dramatic tension is created by truncating the battle scenes away from the theatre; audiences are instead given verbal reports, and the scene’s attention alternatively focuses on one side before flitting away to the other. Within the chaos stride several characters whose actions make them stand out:
- The calculative Caesar, who gives orders to "Plant those that have revolved in the van/That Antony may seem to spend his fury/Upon himself."
- Enobarbus, plagued by guilt at his betrayal to Antony, who finally declares "That life, a very rebel to my will,/May hang no longer on me."
- Antony, who heroically battles and encourages his troops, yet is fated to lose: "the god Hercules, whom Antony loved,/Now leaves him."
- Cleopatra, who cheers Antony zealously initially: "He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might/Determine this great war in single fight!" yet mysteriously betrays him and flees from the scene of war.
The war, portrayed in this manner, might be better understood in the light of Mark Van Doren’s comments that Antony and Cleopatra presents a world that "is too large to be rendered in anything but fragments, too much alive in its own right to care for extended compliment and discourse."
Settings
Antony and Cleopatra notably spans a geographic scope from Rome to Egypt, and this affect is accentuated by the play structure. For the West and East, the sober, masculine military ethos is portrayed as opposites to a comically frivolous and pleasure loving court in Egypt(Walter Cohen). As such,a drama production might conceivably create splendid sets to display this range of settings.
However, the effect of setting might be most strikingly revealed in the individual representation of the characters.
Character Representation
The key characters in Antony and Cleopatra might be considered representations of the worlds they come from.
- Octavius
Caesar is the ruler and embodiment of a new Augustan Rome which is characterized by adept political maneuvering and efficiency, having an army that "dealt on lieutenantry" and effaced heroism was a key to success. Yet although Caesar finishes the play as the victor, he is paradoxically smaller than both Antony and Cleopatra.
Although there is little supernatural element in the play, Hercules abandoning Antony, and fortune instead residing with Caesar’s forces is a significant detail to explain the final outcome. Yet, as Cleopatra accurately and disdainfully states: "Tis paltry to be Caesar. Not being Fortune, he’s but Fortune’s knave,/A minister of her will", suggesting his lack of mastery of the events within the play.
Caesar’s final words which close the play, as he pays respect to Antony and Cleopatra, declaring "their story is/No less in pity than his glory which/Brought them to be lamented", are to Marjorie Garber "at once an attempt at control and an acknowledgement of his limits." These reinforce the sense of a pyrrhic victory; Octavius might have won the battle, but loses out in terms of greatness in the theatre.
Antony
Antony is someone who is fallen before the curtain has even risen(Bloom), and his abandonment of issues of importance for Cleopatra’s love strikes as undesirable: "His captain’s heart…is become the bellows and the fan/To cool a gipsy’s lust", and a stark contrast to his zealous and competent figure in Julius Caesar.
Nevertheless, his heroic actions and his final suicide enable to reach, at least in Cleopatra’s eyes, a heightened state. Before her death as Cleopatra yearns for Antony, she describes him as a "sovereign creature’ whose ‘face was as the heav’ns," "legs bestrid the ocean", and whose delights "showed his back above/The element they lived in."These hearken back to Antony’s representation as a tragic hero in the story.
Cleopatra
For all of Antony’s good qualities, it is Cleopatra which captures the attention of readers, critics and audience, and who plays the greatest role.
Antony Cleopatra as a Great Play
King Lear has been considered impossible to perform to satisfaction on stage, as the personal sufferings of the titular king are too demanding for any actor in practice. Antony and Cleopatra is the opposite; Harold Bloom opinions it is "better perceived upon the right stage than in even the most acute study."
However, to consider the energy dispersed among the play’s characters would be incorrect, and the play hence to be overall weak, would not do it justice. The vastness of scope could be said to have a reverberating effect on the play’s dramatic impact. Hence, whilst Antony and Cleopatra is markedly different from the typical Shakespearean tragedy, it might still be considered a great work in its own right.
Bibliography:
- The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean Howard, Katherine Eisaman Maus
- Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom
- Shakespeare after All by Marjorie Garber
- Shakespeare by Mark Van Doren
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