Antony and Cleopatra anyone?

[Schokokeks]

Oh please concentrate on that. That is really important. Good luck.

Thank you very much, Virgil .

But now that I've posted here, I couldn't resist and have just reread II,7:

Perhaps some of you here have trouble with A&C because it's a play of middle aged characters ands middle age issues.

Yes, I'm beginning to see that, too. Though I'm by no means familiar with middle age problems, I think I've spoted two instances in the scene reminding me of it.Two servants are introducing the drinking scene and are giving their observations both specifical (as to Lepidus being urged to drinking) and more general:

1 SERV:
To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in't, are the holes where eyes should be...

This might be a hint to the pressure both Antony and Caesar experience vis-à-vis their responsabilities as triumviri. They had to pave their own way very carefully beforehand, anticipating as many events as possible, planning their actions and thus always hunting political success. Especially Antony seems to be tired of it at the time of the play, as he says to Caesar later in the scene:

ANTONY:
Be a child o' the time.
CAESAR:
Possess it, I'll make answer:...

Caesar, in contrast, does not want to lose control, to abandon himself, even if it's 'only' to wine, but desires to have a firm hold of things, to go on shaping, whereas Antony gives me the impression as if he is aware that he has already reached his peak and cannot advance any further.
So far my two cents .

At the risk of having Janine and msdirector mad at me, I would say that as I get older I find Hamlet a little whiney.

That's interesting, I actually find it quite intriguing . But maybe it really has to do with the age of the reader...I'll let you know how I think about it in 20 years time .

[Virgil]

Yes, I'm beginning to see that, too. Though I'm by no means familiar with middle age problems, I think I've spoted two instances in the scene reminding me of it.Two servants are introducing the drinking scene and are giving their observations both specifical (as to Lepidus being urged to drinking) and more general:

This might be a hint to the pressure both Antony and Caesar experience vis-à-vis their responsabilities as triumviri. They had to pave their own way very carefully beforehand, anticipating as many events as possible, planning their actions and thus always hunting political success. Especially Antony seems to be tired of it at the time of the play, as he says to Caesar later in the scene:

Caesar, in contrast, does not want to lose control, to abandon himself, even if it's 'only' to wine, but desires to have a firm hold of things, to go on shaping, whereas Antony gives me the impression as if he is aware that he has already reached his peak and cannot advance any further.
So far my two cents .

You know I did not really look that carefully at what the servants were saying. That is an interesting line you quote. I'll need to look at that more. Yes, Ceasar's reaction is predictable. We already know that from other scenes. And we already know that Antony can't help himself. But what I find puzzling is how the three leaders would put themselves in a precarious position, without protection. And it's highlighted by pompey's underling, who says they could kill them and get away with it. I also find the scene extremely masculine. It's all men in a bachanal, not a sexual one, but a male drinking party. You're probably only reading the text. I wish I could show you the video version of the drama. The men are dancing and stumbling drunk and singing. Here:

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
All take hands.
Make battery to our ears with the loud music:
The while I'll place you: then the boy shall sing;
The holding every man shall bear as loud
As his strong sides can volley.

Music plays. DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS places them hand in hand

THE SONG.
Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!
In thy fats our cares be drown'd,
With thy grapes our hairs be crown'd:
Cup us, till the world go round,
Cup us, till the world go round!

It's an incredibly visual dance. And like I said, nothing in the scene propells the plot along. So it's all thematic.

That's interesting, I actually find it quite intriguing . But maybe it really has to do with the age of the reader...I'll let you know how I think about it in 20 years time .

OK, I'll see you in 20 years. But by then I will be talking about King Lear, a play that deals with late life. And I'll be really OOOOLD then.

[msdirector]

At the risk of having Janine and msdirector mad at me, I would say that as I get older I find Hamlet a little whiney.

No argument from me, Virgil. But I really don't think it is a function of our ages (I'm no spring chicken either!), but rather of perception and patience. Hamlet does get a bit "whiney". Or at least philosophically rambling. But that's because it is very much a psychological study, and you can't have that without exploring his psyche. We all tend to get whiny (in our minds) when faced with difficult choices that seem to have no clear answers, even when we put on a macho facade for the public.

Connecting this to the current play, I tend to find Antony incredibly whiny! He does a lot of whining on how none of this is his fault, as well as being completely out of touch with what is going on in his world in his obsession with Cleopatra.

In response to some of the earlier posts on Antony's political abilities compared to Cleopatra's, I think they different in a very, very basic way. Cleopatra is a ruler. She was born and raised as ruler and, by all accounts, her belief in the inherent superiority of Egypt as a country, of all things Egyptian as a culture, a political force and a life style was unshakeable, and her main focus was first and foremost for what was best for her country. She IS Egypt (she is even referred to and refers to herself that way in the play). She learned politics when barely more than a child, not only from her own struggles for her own life and throne, but also from, arguably, the most political man of his times, Julius Caesar, and she learned well. She loves Antony and would do just about anything for him, but NOT to distraction and NOT at the expense of her country. She, like Elizabeth I, could have honestly said "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king."

Antony, on the other hand, is a soldier. Despite having been put in the position of being a member of the Triumvirate, of wanting power and fighting for it, he really is not a political animal. His interests are personal, not for his country. He is a sensualist and fights - and loves - from emotion, not for principal or beliefs. He was never trained to rule and has no conception of how to weigh the interests of his country against his own desires. He abandons Rome and Roman interests for his own passions - something that Cleopatra never does. He is simply not the ruler or the politician she is and her wit and manipulative powers are far and away beyond his. It's not a question of functioning in a man's or woman's world - although that is part of it - but rather the inner strength and understanding of both those worlds that makes Cleopatra so much stronger, both as a ruler and politician, and as a person, than Antony is.

Opposites attract?

I find it interesting that Cleopatra's strength, political skills and focus on her country makes her seem far more Roman than Antony (perhaps partly though innate qualities and partly through J. Caesar's training) and that Antony's sensuality and passionate self-focus gives him far more like what the Romans (and Shakespeare) described as Egyptian qualities. There is a paradox there. And since ultimately it is the Roman world that triumphs in the story (and history), perhaps it is that which ultimately defeats Antony and that allows Cleopatra, even in her own death, to emerge victorious over her foes.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hamlet is a young person's play. At the risk of having Janine and msdirector mad at me, I would say that as I get older I find Hamlet a little whiney.

Gee, I'm only gone a couple of days and Virgil has turned into Polonious on us all of a sudden.

It looks like you guys are getting into a great discussion of 2.7, but I wanted to take us back for just a moment, since I see that no one's brought out the most famous lines in the play (indeed, some of the most famous from Shakespeare), from 2.2, and I think they should at least be on the table. They come just after the big players (Antony and Caesar) have had their diplomatic sitting match and marriage negotiations, and Enobarbus and Agrippa are left to talk things over:

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. 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.

AGRIPPA
O, rare for Antony!

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.

AGRIPPA
Rare Egyptian!

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,
Invited her to supper: she replied,
It should be better he became her guest;
Which she entreated: our courteous Antony,
Whom ne'er the word of 'No' woman heard speak,
Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast,
And for his ordinary pays his heart
For what his eyes eat only.

and later in the scene:

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Never; he will not:
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 vilest things
Become themselves in her: that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.

Like the woman they describe, these passages never seem to stale for me, no matter how many times they're read. The description of Cleopatra on the barge actually follows a passage from Plutarch extremely closely, and it's very interesting to compare the Shakespeare with the source passage and see what changes Shakespeare made to the prose description in order to transform it into this (in my opinion anyway) nearly flawless verse. For anyone interested in the Plutarch, here's a link to the pertinent passage in the North translation, which is the same one Shakespeare would most likely have referred to: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin...=Plut.+Ant.+26

This passage also connects with 2.7, but I'm going to move to that in the next post, since this one's long enough already.

[Petrarch's Love]

I quoted the passage describing Cleopatra in her barge at length not only because it's beautiful poetry, but because I think it's thematically linked to 2.7. In the earlier passage the water becomes the location for both intense pleasure and political power, one might almost go so far as to say political overthrow, since it is in this scene that Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, overcomes the General Antony. She entices him off the land into a world of sensuality where he gets caught off guard and his identity as Antony the soldier is first put in jeopardy.

In 2.7 we once again see Antony, and this time the rest of the triumvirate as well, on board a ship and caught off guard, lost in sensuality. This time it is not Cleopatra's but Pompey's ship and it is in him that we see the potential--though not the acheivement--of overthrow. I don't want to say too much for those who haven't read the play before, but those who either have read the play, or who know the history may want to think about the role of the sea versus the land as the location for power struggle at the end of the play. I tend to think of 2.7 as the "worlds collide" scene. Not only does it show the meeting between, to use Virgil's terms, the "male" or martial centered world of the Romans now located in what was earlier described as the "feminine" sensual world of the Egyptians, but the three parts of the known world are metaphorically present in the three leaders. When they all sing "cup us till the world go round," for example, the line means not only that they will drink until it seems to them that the world goes around them, but that when they are spinning around drunkenly then the world will also spin around, since they are the world.

It's a wonderfully complex scene, and I think part of its importance lies in showing an instance of the way the triumvirate interact together in their down time. Shakespeare's covering a daunting amount of history in this play (nearly ten years) so I think this scene partly functions as a slice of time to show how unstable and precarious the political situation between these three men could be.

Incidently, I've always liked the bit about the crocodile in this scene:

LEPIDUS
What manner o' thing is your crocodile?

MARK ANTONY
It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad
as it hath breadth: it is just so high as it is,
and moves with its own organs: it lives by that
which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of
it, it transmigrates.

It is purposefully an incredibly ambiguous description at the same time as it is entirely straightforward and truthful. In a way it's similar to the way people consistently describe Antony as either being like or unlike Antony but without specifically deciding what Antony is.

Anyway, I could go on about this scene, but I suppose someone else may want to get a word in edgewise.

Oh, I just saw MsDirector's post. Yes, I think you have an excellent point about Cleopatra having been raised as a ruler. She's certainly a strong political force. I wouldn't necessarily say that Antony was politically naive though. I think you raise an interesting question as to whether Cleopatra is really the one to blame for Antony becoming "un-Roman" or if there is something about Antony himself that is attracted to the Epicurean lifestyle.

[Virgil]

Great post Petrarch. I can't seem to get enough of Act 2, Scene 7. It mesmorizes me. I don't think you've even scratched the surface. More on it later, when I get more time.

As to Antony being politically naive, I think that isway too strong a statement. Sorry Arlene. He certainly knows the importance of marrying Octavia, he defends himself against Ceasar's charges even when he's actually in the wrong, and going back to the Julius Ceasar play he politically out manuevers Brutus and Cassius. Nor is Cleo all that astute either. She completely screws up the battle, pushing Antony into a fight he can't win. Her best chance would have been a diplomatic treaty with Caesar, but she actually wanted more. And she wanted Antony, who was going to be the loser against Ocativious no matter what. What is interesting is that they both seem to make wrong choices for their love.

The politics are an interesting overlap to the love situation between Cleo and Antony. Why would Shakespeare be so interested in the politics of 1600 years before him in a different world? One doesn't see politics in Romeo and Juliet or Cymbeline or any other play that a love relationship is the critical theme. Here the politics of middle aged people are entangled because adults don't live in an isolated love experience. The world interacts with an adult relationship.

[Virgil]

More on Act II, Scene 7:

As Schoky pointed out, the servants introductary dialogue is presaging:

First Servant
But it raises the greater war between him and
his discretion.

Second Servant
Why, this is to have a name in great men's
fellowship: I had as lief have a reed that will do
me no service as a partisan I could not heave.

First Servant
To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen
to move in't, are the holes where eyes should be,
which pitifully disaster the cheeks

Notice how it echoes several of the temes of the play: war, discretion, men's fellowship, global conflict.

The whole scene is a trip into another world, if I may be metaphoric. The drinking has an effect of creating this mythical imaginary world. The playing Antony teasing the drunk Lepidus about an absurd Egypt and crocodile is an excurision out of reality, sort of like in a Mid Summer Nights Dream, only it's not tangibly real here but from an altered state of mind.

The intoxicated state emphasizes several things. Several have mentioned that Ceasar's and Antony's personalities, one restraining himself, the other completely letting go. What is shown here is one half of the binaries that flow throughout the play: Masculine, imagination (as opposed to cold reality), indulgence (as opposed to stoicism), irresponsibility (as opposed to duty), Rome (as opposed to Egypt).

Another motif here is that wine acts as a poison, which takes the drinkers into a very dangerous place. Poison runs throughout the play as a motif, and of course is how Cleopatra ends her life.

I don't think I've put a complete statement of what the purpose of the scene is. I too have only poked around and noticed elements. I still can't articulate the scene's function.

It is a magnificent scene to see dramatized. Sleepywitch, when you go to London and see the play, you must tell me what you think of this scene.

[SleepyWitch]

It is a magnificent scene to see dramatized. Sleepywitch, when you go to London and see the play, you must tell me what you think of this scene.

yep, I'll do that... argh, I need to take another break from reading A&C.. there's too much going on at univ

[dramasnot6]

I am so so behind here guys...i think ill have to quit on the play I hope you have fun though! Looks like you have some great analysis going on

[Virgil]

If I post something, will I be talking to myself? I will say something on Act III later.

[Virgil]

I'm moving forward with discussing Act III.

Act III is a mostly a plot transitionary secton. There is lots events that take place in a quick stage time, but I think implied that they happen over a much story longer time span.

Scene 1, Ventidius, Antony's underling, proclaims victory over the Parthians, but is reluctant to overly brag.
Scene 2, Antony and Octavia now married depart for Greece.
Scene 3, Cleo asks about Octavia's looks.
Scene 4, Antony tells Octavia he must prepare for war because Ceasar is preparing against him.
Scene 5, We learn that Antony seems to be procrastinating in his preparations.
Scene 6, Ceasar makes claims that Antony is traitorous and has spurned Octavia.
Scenes 7 Antony against his genreals advice decides to engage Ceasar in a Naval battle.
Scenes 7, 8, 9, 10 The battle is engaged.
Scene 11, Antony retreats from the battle and so loses. He sends to Ceasar terms for peace.
Scene 12, Ceasar rejects Antony's terms but will allow Cleo amnesty if she gives up Antony.
Scene 13, There is finger pointing in Antony's camp as to the loss, Antony has Ceasar's messenger whipped, and Antony and Cleo decide they must continue to battle Ceasar, this time on a ground battle.

Certainly a busy and even confusing Act. But there are a number of things to point out.

1. Ceasar's defeat of Pompey despite their truce is remarkable in showing Ceasar's calculating character. They were just drinking up a party in the previous act. And also Ceasar has turned on Lepidus and found fault with Antony. One wonders if his giving of Octavia in marriage was sincere.

2. I find Antony incredibly genteel, first with Octavia in scene 2. He doesn't love her, we know, but treats her with respect. And then at the end of the act, while he seems convinced that he has lost the battle to Ceasar becuase of Cleo actions, he treats her tenderly and with love (after he blows his fuse).

3. It's incredibly ambiguous as to how Antony has lost. Is it his cowerdous, or has Cleopatra confused the battle and lured Antony away? What exactly happened? I'm not sure.

4. Antony seems to have decided to give up a number of times. Each time he does return to his duty. Is he tired? Does he feal he cannot beat Ceasar no matter what? Is he old?

[Schokokeks]

1. Ceasar's defeat of Pompey despite their truce is remarkable in showing Ceasar's calculating character. They were just drinking up a party in the previous act. And also Ceasar has turned on Lepidus and found fault with Antony. One wonders if his giving of Octavia in marriage was sincere.

2. I find Antony incredibly genteel, first with Octavia in scene 2. He doesn't love her, we know, but treats her with respect. And then at the end of the act, while he seems convinced that he has lost the battle to Ceasar becuase of Cleo actions, he treats her tenderly and with love (after he blows his fuse).

I wonder whether these two parts might be connected:
Caesar married his beloved sister to Antony in order to settle their formal reconciliation, although he was well aware of the latter being still drawn to Cleopatra, an arrangement which is bound to make his sister unhappy by and by. As follows, Antony faces the need to prepare for war against Caesar, and grants his wife everything she needs to travel back to Rome as a mediator between the two men she's devoted to. Octavia leaves and is received by her brother as a castaway (III,6), although she herself does not feel this way, but Caesar persists:

OCTAVIA:
Is it so, sir ?

CAESAR:
Most certain. Sister, welcome: pray you,
Be ever know to patience: my dear'st sister!

Now that adulterous Antony has obviously spurned his wife and Caesar's sister, has not Caesar all the more a reason to prepare for battle ?

[Virgil]

Now that adulterous Antony has obviously spurned his wife and Caesar's sister, has not Caesar all the more a reason to prepare for battle ?

Yes. I've read in someone's criticism that he believed that Ceasar had planned it so he could find a rationale to attack Antony. I'm not so sure. I believed Ceasar was looking to cement their union with the offer of Octavia in that scene where they decide this. (Was that Actii, scene 1?) But he certainly jumps on it when Octavia is spurned. And frankly that too is ambiguous. Was she spurned? So much of Act III seems opaque.

[Virgil]

I'm going to continue. I found Scene 13 of Act III very interesting.

We see the psychological drama of an aging hero who has lost and feels it. Antony to compensate for his military failure challenges the "boy" Ceasar to a duel.

MARK ANTONY
To him again: tell him he wears the rose
Of youth upon him; from which the world should note
Something particular: his coin, ships, legions,
May be a coward's; whose ministers would prevail
Under the service of a child as soon
As i' the command of Caesar: I dare him therefore
To lay his gay comparisons apart,
And answer me declined, sword against sword,
Ourselves alone. I'll write it: follow me.

And later in the scene he chastises Ceasar's messenger for trying to lure Cleo away from him:

MARK ANTONY
Approach, there! Ah, you kite! Now, gods
and devils!
Authority melts from me: of late, when I cried 'Ho!'
Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth,
And cry 'Your will?' Have you no ears? I am
Antony yet.

"I am Antony yet." is the cry of a older man feeling his potency being dissipated. The psychology that Shakespeare creates is an over compensation of exertion of power (he has the man whipped) and self-aggrandizing emotion:

MARK ANTONY
...
Re-enter Attendants with THYREUS

Is he whipp'd?

First Attendant
Soundly, my lord.

MARK ANTONY
Cried he? and begg'd a' pardon?

First Attendant
He did ask favour.

MARK ANTONY
If that thy father live, let him repent
Thou wast not made his daughter; and be thou sorry
To follow Caesar in his triumph, since
Thou hast been whipp'd for following him: henceforth
The white hand of a lady fever thee,
Shake thou to look on 't. Get thee back to Caesar,
Tell him thy entertainment: look, thou say
He makes me angry with him; for he seems
Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am,
Not what he knew I was: he makes me angry;
And at this time most easy 'tis to do't,
When my good stars, that were my former guides,
Have empty left their orbs, and shot their fires
Into the abysm of hell. If he mislike
My speech and what is done, tell him he has
Hipparchus, my enfranched bondman, whom
He may at pleasure whip, or hang, or torture,
As he shall like, to quit me: urge it thou:
Hence with thy stripes, begone!

Twice he says "he makes me angry." And notice how different he speaks to Cleo. He rails at her in a supercilios manner, unlike that of Act I where she lorded over him. He tells her "You have been a boggler ever" and "I found you as a morsel cold upon dead Ceasar's trencher; nay, you were a fragment of Gneaus Pompey's".

And counterpointing this self-agrrandizement are Enobarbus's comments:

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
[Aside] Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will
Unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show,
Against a sworder! I see men's judgments are
A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them,
To suffer all alike. That he should dream,
Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will
Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued
His judgment too.

and

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
[Aside] Mine honesty and I begin to square.
The loyalty well held to fools does make
Our faith mere folly: yet he that can endure
To follow with allegiance a fall'n lord
Does conquer him that did his master conquer
And earns a place i' the story.

and

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Now he'll outstare the lightning. To be furious,
Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood
The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still,
A diminution in our captain's brain
Restores his heart: when valour preys on reason,
It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek
Some way to leave him.

In some respect Enobarbus functions here similarly as Thersites in Troilus and Cressida. However, while everyone can clearly characterize Thersites as cynical, I don't think that Enobarbus is cynical here. I would characterize them as realistic. Antony's motives are not striving to reach for some unachievable idealism from which a deflating cynacism is required; Antony's is trying to reach back to what he once was, from which a deflating realism counterpoints nicely.

[ShoutGrace]

I think that this scene is perhaps best appreciated as the first appearance of the word "S A U C Y" in the play.

Were't twenty of the greatest tributaries
That do acknowledge Caesar, should I find them
So saucy with the hand of she here,--what's her name,
Since she was Cleopatra?

Only posted that for you, Brit and Mar.