Essay — Antony and Cleopatra (A)

Act 5 Scene 2, Antony and Cleopatra In this moment building up to Cleopatra’s suicide, Shakespeare cleverly gives the audience one last look at Cleopatra’s multi -faceted character: as a vanquished queen of Egypt whose dignity is about to be stripped away, as an indomitable tragic heroine det ermined to be the master of her fate, and an exemplification of erotic sexuality. In this way, Shakespeare uses Cleopatra to meditate on the extent of human agency, the importance of honour and the ambiguous ethicality of suicide. Cleopatra begins by narrating her peripeteia, discussing the extreme indignity she will suffer at the hands of her Roman captors and highlighting the limited control man has over the uncertainties of fortune and fate. Cleopatra tells Iras that they will be “Egyptian puppet[s]… shown / in Rome”: they are compared to inanimate dolls devoid of agency, with their actions fully controlled by ‘puppet -masters’ pulling the strings. Additionally, Cleopatra’s metaphor is infused with an element of performance: just as puppet shows are put on to entertain, Cleopatra and Iras will be dishonourably put on display (“shown / in Rome”) as a trophy marking Caesar’s victory. In this way, Cleopatra’s undignifying objectification reveals her steep fall from her royal past, an abrupt reversal of fortune characteristic of Renaissance tragedy. Cleopatra further laments that they will be handled by “mechanic slaves / with greasy aprons, rules, and hammers”; the base and crude nature of the lowly labourers is reinforced by the unpleasant tactile image of “grease” and the cumulative list of the rudimentary tools they carry. In the strictly hierarchical societies of both ancient Egypt and Shakespeare’s England, the prospect of a sovereign ruler like Cleopatra being forcibly lifted by commoners would be a deeply dishonourable one, representing a great fall from high degree. Cleopatra adds that “[they] shall be enclouded” in the Romans’ “thick” and “rank” breaths, “forced to drink their vapour”. Not only does the selection of “drink” as a verb for gaseous “vapour” — as if it were liquid — evoke the choking heaviness of their foul breaths, but the omission of the pronoun “we” in the sentence also mirrors how they are shrouded and concealed by a cloud of odour. Most dreadful of all, their modesty will be violated: “s aucy lictors / will catch at [them], like strumpets”, the hissing sibilant alliteration evincing Cleopatra’s outrage. While “catch” denotes the profane way Roman officials will grab at their bodies, its accompanying connotations of ensnarement highlight th eir trapped state, unable to free themselves from this undignifying fate. In response to this treatment, Iras repeatedly cries for divine intervention (“The gods forbid!”, “O the good gods!”), only to be met with Cleopatra twice affirming that such a fate is “certain”; man is frail amidst the changing winds of fortune and power, a common insight among Renaissance tragedies.

However, Cleopatra is less distressed by being presented as a trophy than by being re- presented in art: these reductive caricatures con stitute a greater assault on her honour, revealing the little agency man has over his legacy. Cleopatra foresees that rhymers will “ballad [them] out o’ tune” and comedians will stage them “extemporally”, the careless, improvised nature of these representa tions revealing the little care paid to preserving their honour. This clumsiness is reinforced by the discordant metre: “ballad us out o’ tune” is a mouthful of dactylic feet reminiscent of a song with too many notes, and the extra syllable in “will catch at us, like strumpets, and scald rhymers” breaks the rhythmic flow of blank verse. These portrayals are not only maladroit in manner but also unflattering caricatures: Antony will be played by a “drunken” actor and Cleopatra by “some squeaking Cleopatra bo y”. By specifically mentioning the high “squeaking” pitch of his voice, Shakespeare meta-theatrically breaks the audience’s suspension of disbelief: given that female characters were played by prepubescent boys in Shakespeare’s age, he reminds the audience that they are watching “some squeaking boy” play Cleopatra right then and there. In this manner, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra renders the audience complicit in her degrading caricaturisation, creating keen pathos for her plight. Eventually, this crossdressing portrayal reduces Cleopatra’s “greatness” to the “posture of a whore”: this transformation is so horrific and disgraceful that Iras hyperbolically promises to tear her eyes out to avoid seeing it (“my nails / are stronger than mine eyes”). Left without con trol over her reputation, Cleopatra’s tragic lack of agency is foregrounded once more. In spite of this, Cleopatra remains determined to reassert her agency and defend her dignity at the cost of her life, elevating her to the rank of a tragic heroine. She calls her suicide a “noble deed” that delivers “liberty”, echoing the common Stoic conception of suicide as a dutiful and dignified way of escaping from disgrace. Preparing for her suicide, Cleopatra staunchly declares that her “resolution’s placed” and th at she has “nothing / of woman”: not only does the fixed, rooted nature of her “resolution” highlight the strength of her determination, she also rejects in absolute terms (“nothing”) the fickleness associated with femininity. Hence, Cleopatra asserts her utmost commitment to preserving her honour. Cleopatra subsequently cements her determination in figurative terms: she calls herself “marble -constant”, not only imbuing herself with the immovable, unflinching fearlessness of a stone statue, but also reflecting her desire to immortalise her honour via an enduring effigy. Further, she casts away the “fleeting moon” — a symbol of inconstancy due to its ever -shifting shape — from her “planet”; not only does she remind audiences of her status as Egypt’s sovereign queen by casting herself as the ruler of a “planet”, but she also reaffirms her resolve to defend her honour through death. Reminiscent of a tragic hero, Cleopatra reveals her courage in the face of injustice, taking her life in a final attempt to protect the dignity of herself and her country.

However, this unidimensional view of Cleopatra is complicated in the second half of the extract, as the Clown takes centre stage. First, despite Cleopatra’s repulsion at any prospect of her immodesty, the Clown imbu es her suicide with vulgar undertones of sexuality. The Clown enters by bringing Cleopatra a basket of “figs”, with the carnal associations of the fruit with sex and fecundity tainting her purportedly “noble deed” of suicide. Additionally, in stark contrast to Cleopatra’s dignified verse, the Clown’s use of prose immediately distinguishes him as crude and common, preparing the audience for his bawdy humour to come. He then employs a sexually-charged double entendre: he parenthetically slips in a joke about a woman “given to lie” and comments that she should not do so unless it is “in the way of honesty”. Both “lie” and “honesty” hold dual meanings: while the Clown could mean that the woman ought not to tell falsehoods unless it is done with the intention of being truthful, his statement could also entail that she should not sleep with someone unless it is chaste to do so (i.e. with her husband). This intrusion of risque humour into an imminent suicide, while providing comic relief from the seriousness of Cleopatra’s tragedy, also paves the foundation for the audience to consider Cleopatra in an erotic light. This humour culminates in the Clown’s discussion of the devil “eat[ing]” and “mar[ring]” women, euphemisms for oral sex and the taking of a woman’s virginity respectively. Given the association of the serpent with the devil in the Bible, the Clown’s obscene description of the devil violating a woman mirrors the asp biting Cleopatra