Inside Shakespeare’s mind:

Cleopatra

For whom many laid down their lives

Cleopatra, the most beautiful of all women, the passionate Queen of the Nile whose beauty and crafty wisdom the Bard celebrates in Antony and Cleopatra. She is no spring chicken, a hard hearted woman before a queen, mid-aged, plump and fleshy but with the most gorgeous face that two countries fought for her keep. Enobarbus praises in one of the most quoted speeches of all:-

Maecenas – Now Antony must leave her utterly;

Enobarbus – Never, he will not. Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale. Her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetite 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.

We meet her early in the play, the time Antony is married to Fulvia. It bothers her but to the extent when she comes face to face with Caesar's sister, Octavia, later in the play:- (Enter Enobarbus)

The dying Cleopatra

Eno. – What's your pleasure Sir?

Antony- I must be haste with from hence

Eno. - Why, then we kill all our women. We see how mortal an unkindness is to them. If they suffer our departure, death's word.

Antony – She is cunning past men's thoughts (reference to Cleopatra)

Eno. - Alak, Sir no. Her passiona are made of nothing but from the finest part of pure love.

Antony – Fulvia is dead.

Eno. - Sir?

Act. I, Sce. II

The play turns tragic for the lovers, henceforth. He is weighed down with the task of defending Rome, being faithful to Caesar and the rest of the triumvirs. His patriotic senses and responsibilities for the Romans are upper most in his mind. He is caught up in a situation because his heart and soul lay in Egypt. Torn between the two, he becomes a widower. Cleopatra on the other hand, is restless, impatient for the outcome of the battle. She despises his alliance to Caesar; she is suspicious of all the Roman generals. What Caesar is plotting against her love for Antony and for putting him under pressure.

Antony – I will leave you Lady.

Cleopatra – Courteous lord; one word. Sir you must part ... but that's not it. Sir, you and I have lov'd .... but there's not it. That you know well. Something, it is I would. O' my oblivion is very Antony. And I am all forgotten.

Antony – But that your royalty holds idleness your subject, I should take you.

Act. I, Sce. III

While he is in Rome, with time on her hand awaiting news, Cleopatra turns childish going back on her years, behaves like a love-sick teenager only to be reprimanded by her ladie-in-waiting, forgetting her position as the Queen of Egypt.

(Alexandria, Cleopatra's palace)

The beautiful Cleopatra holds the poisonous asp to her breast in order to commit suicide

Cleo – Charmian

Charmian – Madam?

Cleo. - Ha, ha. Give me to drink mandragora;

Char. - Why madam?

Cleo. - I might sleep out this great gap of time. My Antony is away.

Char. - You think of him too much ....

(Still later; Enter Alexas)

Alex. - Soveriegn of Egypt; Hail.

Cleo. - How much unlike art thou Mark Antony. Yer, coming from him, that great medicine hath with his tinct gilded thee. How goes, it with my brave Antony?

Act. I, Sce IV

With much heartburn Cleopatra learns of Antony's marriage to Octavia, Caesar's sister and understands he was forced into it as one of the triumvirs, the three joint-rulers of Rome. It was to patch up a quarrel between them. Yet, Antony remained close to Cleopatra and would not give her up. He and Caesar leave to meet up with Pompey and make peace with him. They attend a friendly feast hosted by Pompey. That done, Caesar meets Antony and oppose him at sea-battle in Actium and defeat Cleopatra's squadron who flies. Antony is defeated but wins the first day of land fighting but on the second day, the Egyptian fleet surrenders.

Antony falls on his sword after hearing a false report of Cleopatra's death, is mortally wounded. He is carried to Cleopatra's mausoleum and breathes his last.

She is traumatised, desperate without her Antony and would leave no room for Caesar to drag herthrough the streets of Rome but rather die. It was Caesar's dream to drag her through as a slave. He hated her so much. She asks her maids to ready her for death, be decked as the powerful Queen of Egypt, the wondrous lover of Antony for whom she would lay down her life. Earlier she had asked a peasant to let have a poisonous asp which she kept in readiness, to sting her to death and after she dies, for her maids too to die the same way.

She is dead by the time Dolabella comes inquiring for her, for the second time after Antony dies. She implores upon Charmian to let her die as a queen so that she may go to Cydnes to meet her beloved Antony. (Enters Iras with her robes, Crown etc.)

Cleopatra – Give me my robe; put on my crown. Immortal longing in me. Now no more. The juice of Egypt's grapes shall moist these lips.

Yare, yare, good Iras: quick: me thinks I hear Antony call. I see him rouse himself to praise my noble act. I hear him mock the luck of Caesar which the Gods gives men to excuse their after wrath.

Husband, I come, .... Come then and take the last warmth of my lips.

She kisses Iras and Charmian, applies the asp and dies but still before, she applies the asp to her breast and whisper -

Cleo. - As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle;

O' Antony, Nay; I will take thee too.

Char. - In this vile world; So, fare thee well Act. V, Sce. II

Caesar bursts in too late only to find the Queen of Egypt and her maids, dead. Filled with remorse, he orders:-

Caesar – She hath pursued conclusions infinite of easy ways to die. Take up her bed and bear her women from the monument. She shall be buried by her Antony. No grave upon the earth shall clip in it. A pair so famous. High events as these strike those that make them and their story is; no less in pity than his glory which brought them to be lamented. Our army shall in solemn show attend the funeral. And then to Rome ......

Act V. Sce. II

Thus ends a true love story from history; not fabled as Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet. In my opinion and vast experience with Shakespeare work, I hold this pair as the greatest to have sacrificed their love for each others while they remained in high power and glory, not in teenage love and romance but in the true spirit of sacrificial love.

In performance

The play is imperial, embracing Roman Empire. None has verbal glory as found in it. The magnificent Antony is mourned as no man has been in the world's drama. Shakespeare's main source is North's text of Plutarch's lives.

The pair has been transfigured as much as 42 times in scenes. It is a difficult play to be staged and though fairly easy, character-casting is a problem – no one befit the pair's virtuosity.

The director who is obsessed by its spectacle is doomed. He cannot come up with its challenge because the splendour is in language and speed. So many actresses over the years acted Cleopatra but none matched her beauty nor wisdom. The closest her character got to was in a result from a world-wide search, was the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor who acted in a mighty film as never seen before.

Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety