The republic is dead, long live...

Gwen HERAT

The Empire. With the dissolution of the republic and creation of an empire ruled by Octavius Caesar, Mark Antony and Lepidus, Antony and Cleopatra is in some ways a sequel to Julius Caesar beginning where the earlier play ended. Julius Caesar is remembered through frequent references to Brutus and his attempt to liberate Rome from tyranny by killing Crasar at which his noble suicide Antony weeps. However, Antony and Cleopatra is in many ways a strikingly different Roman play. Some of these differences are witnessed by Antony in his famous first speech.

‘Let Rome in Tiber melt; and the arch Of the rang’d empire fall. Here is my space.

Kingdoms are clay. Our dungy earth alike Feeds beasts as man. The nobleness of life is to do thus.....

The extraordinary expansion of Rome across the globe testify his words. The play is similar and exorbitant, moving with great rapidity between Cleopatra’s palace and Caesar’s House in Rome. It also takes over Messina, Syria, Athens and Actium in its stride. Rome is not play’s focus and refers to landmarks like the Capital and the Senate. Here we find that the Roman politics and Roman customs are barely sketched. The plebeians are mentioned and the patricians have disappeared altogether. Yet, these are conditions that prove inimical to an austere code on military bravery, constancy and subordination towards public good.

Once again Shakespeare’s Romans ask themselves what it means to be Roman and the Bard reveals mystery as the play moves on tragically and always charismatically embodied through its hero, Mark Antony.

Antony’s attitude is clear and comes out very strongly from the start when he says; ‘Let Rome in Tiber melt’. Yet, his disillusionment are not direct unlike the other Roman soldiers. Antony seeks pleasure in drinking, feasting and sex. This is the outcome of Cleopatra seducing him. She dresses him in Egyptian clothing that disturbs the Romans who feel it represents a cultural threat. Shakespeare has willingly established a powerful binary opposition between Rome’s honour, constancy and a heroic masculinity while Egypt’s self-indulgence, vacillation and alluring femininity. By this, Shakespeare makes Egypt everything that Rome denies itself. Though immediately obvious from these descriptions, they also serve the interest of Rome’s noble conception. Nor is Cleopatra the sole agent of Antony’s choices. Antony does not only choose Egypt but also rejects Rome. Thus the republican ideal is barely a memory in the play. If Anthony is no longer the Roman that he once he was, then this is related to Rome’s own fall.

For a while Antony displace political ambition with erotic pleasures and throughout the play he vacillates between an Egyptian and a Roman sense. He decides to throw himself into being a lover rather than a soldier. But Cleopatra is too fickle to provide a permanent basis for anyone’s identity and Antony cannot abandon the self defined by Rome. In desperation he turns back to Octavious believing that if he can overthrow him, he can win sole claim to Rome’s honour and restore it.

But like many of Shakespeare’s Romans, Antony finds that his opponent play by different rules. Throughout Shakespeare’s Roman plays, we find a sense of a divided Rome.

Lastly, Antony proves a point. By killing himself, he asserts his own free will, depriving Caesar of his imagined triumph and secures his own honour and fame. Antony’s suicide makes clear his commitment to Egypt. His suicide represents the ambiguity about Rome that Shakespeare never resolves in the play.

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