Editing Antony and Cleopatra (section)

==== Empire ====

===== Sexuality and empire =====

The textual motif of empire within ''Antony and Cleopatra'' has strong gendered and erotic undercurrents. Antony, the Roman soldier characterised by a certain effeminacy, is the main article of conquest, falling first to Cleopatra and then to Caesar (Octavius). Cleopatra's triumph over her lover is attested to by Caesar himself, who gibes that Antony "is not more manlike/ Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolemy/ More womanly than he" (1.4.5–7). That Cleopatra takes on the role of male aggressor in her relationship with Antony should not be surprising; after all, "a culture attempting to dominate another culture will [often] endow itself with masculine qualities and the culture it seeks to dominate with feminine ones"<ref name="Little" />—appropriately, the queen's romantic assault is frequently imparted in a political, even militaristic fashion. Antony's subsequent loss of manhood seemingly "signifies his lost Romanness, and Act 3, Scene 10, is a virtual litany of his lost and feminised self, his "wounder chance".<ref name="Little" /> Throughout the play, Antony is gradually bereaved of that Roman quality so coveted in his nostalgic interludes—by the centremost scenes, his sword (a plainly phallic image), he tells Cleopatra, has been "made weak by his affection" (3.11.67). In Act 4, Scene 14, "an un-Romaned Antony" laments, "O, thy vile lady!/ She has robb'd me of my sword", (22–23)—critic Arthur L. Little Jr. writes that here "he seems to echo closely the victim of [[raptus]], of bride theft, who has lost the sword she wishes to turn against herself. By the time Antony tries to use his sword to kill himself, it amounts to little more than a stage prop".<ref name="Little" /> Antony is reduced to a political object, "the pawn in a power game between Caesar and Cleopatra".<ref name="Moore" />

Having failed to perform Roman masculinity and virtue, Antony's only means with which he might "write himself into Rome's imperial narrative and position himself at the birth of empire" is to cast himself in the feminine archetype of the sacrificial virgin; "once [he] understands his failed [[virtus (virtue)|virtus]], his failure to be Aeneas, he then tries to emulate [[Dido (Queen of Carthage)|Dido]]".<ref name="Little" /> ''Antony and Cleopatra'' can be read as a rewrite of Virgil's epic, with the sexual roles reversed and sometimes inverted. James J Greene writes on the subject: "If one of the seminally powerful myths in the cultural memory of our past is Aeneas' rejection of his African queen in order to go on and found the [[Roman Empire]], than it is surely significant that Shakespeare's {{sic}}... depicts precisely and quite deliberately the opposite course of action from that celebrated by Virgil. For Antony... turned his back for the sake of his African queen on that same Roman state established by Aeneas".<ref name="Little" /> Antony even attempts to commit suicide for his love, falling short in the end. He is incapable of "occupying the... politically empowering place" of the female sacrificial victim.<ref name="Little" /> The abundant imagery concerning his person—"of penetration, wounds, blood, marriage, orgasm, and shame"—informs the view of some critics that the Roman "figures Antony's body as queer, that is, as an open male body... [he] not only 'bends' in devotion' but... bends over".<ref name="Little" /> In reciprocal contrast, "in both Caesar and Cleopatra we see very active wills and energetic pursuit of goals".<ref name="r4" /> While Caesar's empirical objective can be considered strictly political, however, Cleopatra's is explicitly erotic; she conquers carnally—indeed, "she made great Caesar lay his sword to bed;/ He plough'd her, and she cropp'd" (2.2.232–233). Her mastery is unparalleled when it comes to the seduction of certain powerful individuals, but popular criticism supports the notion that "as far as Cleopatra is concerned, the main thrust of the play's action might be described as a machine especially devised to bend her to the Roman will... and no doubt Roman order is sovereign at the end of the play. But instead of driving her down to ignominy, the Roman power forces her upward to nobility".<ref name="Moore" /> Caesar says of her final deed, "Bravest at the last,/ She levelled at our purposes, and, being royal,/ Took her own way" (5.2.325–327).

Arthur L. Little, in agitative fashion, suggests that the desire to overcome the queen has a corporeal connotation: "If a black—read foreign—man raping a white woman encapsulates an iconographic truth... of the dominant society's sexual, racial, national, and imperial fears, a white man raping a black woman becomes the evidentiary playing out of its self-assured and cool stranglehold over these representative foreign bodies".<ref name="Little" /> Furthermore, he writes, "Rome shapes its Egyptian imperial struggle most visually around the contours of Cleopatra's sexualised and racialised black body—most explicitly her "tawny front", her "gipsy's lust", and her licentious climactic genealogy, "with Phoebus' amorous pinches black".<ref name="Little" /> In a similar vein, essayist [[David Quint]] contends that "with Cleopatra the opposition between East and West is characterised in terms of gender: the otherness of the Easterner becomes the otherness of the opposite sex".<ref name="Quint" /> Quint argues that Cleopatra (not Antony) fulfils Virgil's Dido archetype; "woman is subordinated as is generally the case in ''[[The Aeneid]]'', excluded from power and the process of Empire-building: this exclusion is evident in the poem's fiction where [[Creusa]] disappears and Dido is abandoned... woman's place or displacement is therefore in the East, and epic features a series of oriental heroines whose seductions are potentially more perilous than Eastern arms",<ref name="Quint" /> i.e., Cleopatra.

===== Politics of empire =====

''Antony and Cleopatra'' deals ambiguously with the politics of imperialism and colonization. Critics have long been invested in untangling the web of political implications that characterise the play. Interpretations of the work often rely on an understanding of Egypt and Rome as they respectively signify Elizabethan ideals of East and West, contributing to a long-standing conversation about the play's representation of the relationship between imperializing western countries and colonised eastern cultures.<ref name="Hall" /> Despite Octavius Caesar's concluding victory and the absorption of Egypt into Rome, ''Antony and Cleopatra'' resists clear-cut alignment with Western values. Indeed, Cleopatra's suicide has been interpreted as suggesting an indomitable quality in Egypt, and reaffirming Eastern culture as a timeless contender to the West.<ref name="Freeman" /> However, particularly in earlier criticism, the narrative trajectory of Rome's triumph and Cleopatra's perceived weakness as a ruler have allowed readings that privilege Shakespeare's representation of a Roman worldview. Octavius Caesar is seen as Shakespeare's portrayal of an ideal governor, though perhaps an unfavourable friend or lover, and Rome is emblematic of reason and political excellence.<ref name="Politics" /> According to this reading, Egypt is viewed as destructive and vulgar; the critic Paul Lawrence Rose writes: "Shakespeare clearly envisages Egypt as a political hell for the subject, where natural rights count for nothing."<ref name="Politics" /> Through the lens of such a reading, the ascendancy of Rome over Egypt does not speak to the practice of empire-building as much as it suggests the inevitable advantage of reason over sensuality.

More contemporary scholarship on the play, however, has typically recognised the allure of Egypt for ''Antony and Cleopatra''{{'}}s audiences. Egypt's magnetism and seeming cultural primacy over Rome have been explained by efforts to contextualise the political implications of the play within its period of production. The various protagonists' ruling styles have been identified with rulers contemporary to Shakespeare. For example, there appears to be continuity between the character of Cleopatra and the historical figure of [[Queen Elizabeth I of England|Queen Elizabeth I]],<ref name="r13" /> and the unfavourable light cast on Caesar has been explained as deriving from the claims of various 16th-century historians.<ref name="r11" />

The more recent influence of [[New Historicism]] and [[Post-colonial theory|post-colonial]] studies have yielded readings of Shakespeare that typify the play as subversive, or challenging the status quo of Western imperialism. The critic Abigail Scherer's claim that "Shakespeare's Egypt is a holiday world"<ref name="r14" /> recalls the criticisms of Egypt put forth by earlier scholarship and disputes them. Scherer and critics who recognise the wide appeal of Egypt have connected the spectacle and glory of Cleopatra's greatness with the spectacle and glory of the theatre itself. Plays, as breeding grounds of idleness, were subject to attack by all levels of authority in the 1600s;<ref>Greenblatt, Stephen. "General Introduction: The Enemies of the Stage." ''The Norton Shakespeare, Vol. 2: Later Plays''. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.</ref> the play's celebration of pleasure and idleness in a subjugated Egypt makes it plausible to draw parallels between Egypt and the heavily censored theatre culture in England. In the context of England's political atmosphere, Shakespeare's representation of Egypt, as the greater source of poetry and imagination, resists support for 16th century colonial practices.<ref name="Crane" /> Importantly, [[King James I of England|King James]]' sanction of the founding of [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]] occurred within months of ''Antony and Cleopatra''{{'}}s debut on stage. England during the Renaissance found itself in an analogous position to the early Roman Republic. Shakespeare's audience may have made the connection between England's westward expansion and ''Antony and Cleopatra''{{'}}s convoluted picture of Roman imperialism. In support of the reading of Shakespeare's play as subversive, it has also been argued that 16th century audiences would have interpreted ''Antony and Cleopatra''{{'}}s depiction of different models of government as exposing inherent weaknesses in an absolutist, imperial, and by extension monarchical, political state.<ref name=Yachnin />

===== Empire and intertextuality =====

One of the ways to read the imperialist themes of the play is through a historical, political context with an eye for intertextuality. Many scholars suggest that Shakespeare possessed an extensive knowledge of the story of Antony and Cleopatra through the historian Plutarch, and used Plutarch's account as a blueprint for his own play. A closer look at this intertextual link reveals that Shakespeare used, for instance, Plutarch's assertion that Antony claimed a genealogy that led back to Hercules, and constructed a parallel to Cleopatra by often associating her with [[Dionysus]] in his play.<ref name="r9" /> The implication of this historical mutability is that Shakespeare is transposing non-Romans upon his Roman characters, and thus his play assumes a political agenda rather than merely committing itself to a historical recreation. Shakespeare deviates from a strictly obedient observation of Plutarch, though, by complicating a simple dominant/dominated dichotomy with formal choices. For instance, the quick exchange of dialogue might suggest a more dynamic political conflict. Furthermore, certain characteristics of the characters, like Antony whose "legs bestrid the ocean" (5.2.82) point to constant change and mutability.<ref name="Wolf" /> Plutarch, on the other hand, was given to "tendencies to stereotype, to polarise, and to exaggerate that are inherent in the propaganda surrounding his subjects."<ref name="Miles" />

Furthermore, because of the unlikelihood that Shakespeare would have had direct access to the Greek text of Plutarch's ''[[Parallel Lives]]'' and probably read it through a French translation from a Latin translation, his play constructs Romans with an anachronistic Christian sensibility that might have been influenced by [[St. Augustine]]'s ''[[Confessions (Augustine)|Confessions]]'' among others. As Miles writes, the ancient world would not have been aware of interiority and the contingence of salvation upon conscience until Augustine.<ref name="Miles" /> For the Christian world, salvation relied on and belonged to the individual, while the Roman world viewed salvation as political. So, Shakespeare's characters in ''Antony and Cleopatra'', particularly Cleopatra in her belief that her own suicide is an exercise of agency, exhibit a Christian understanding of [[Salvation (Christianity)|salvation]].

Another example of deviance from the source material is how Shakespeare characterises the rule of Antony and Cleopatra. While Plutarch singles out the "order of exclusive society" that the lovers surrounded themselves with—a society with a specifically defined and clear understanding of the hierarchies of power as determined by birth and status—Shakespeare's play seems more preoccupied with the power dynamics of pleasure as a main theme throughout the play.<ref name="r8" /> Once pleasure has become a dynamic of power, then it permeates society and politics. Pleasure serves as a differentiating factor between Cleopatra and Antony, between Egypt and Rome, and can be read as the fatal flaw of the heroes if ''Antony and Cleopatra'' is a tragedy. For Shakespeare's ''Antony and Cleopatra'', the exclusivity and superiority supplied by pleasure created the disconnect between the ruler and the subjects. Critics suggest that Shakespeare did similar work with these sources in ''[[Othello]]'', ''[[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]'', and ''[[Coriolanus]]''.