Editing Antony and Cleopatra (section)

=== Cleopatra's race ===
Theatrical portrayals of Cleopatra in Shakespeare and beyond have a complicated history. In the Pelican edition of ''Antony and Cleopatra'', Professor Albert R. Braunmuller discusses how, in the play she is insulted by Philo by being called a "gypsy" which is a derivative of the word "Egyptian" but also evokes imagery of "Romany people, dark-haired, dark-skinned" which would be in line with a much more racialized version of Cleopatra.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Shakespeare |first=William |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/980523095 |title=Antony and Cleopatra |date=2017 |others=A. R. Braunmuller |isbn=978-0-14-313172-4 |location=New York, New York |oclc=980523095}}</ref> The other notable insult used towards Cleopatra in the play is when Philo calls her "tawny". Braunmuller notes that "tawny" is "hard to define historically" but that it "seems to have meant some brownish color, and Shakespeare elsewhere uses it to describe suntanned or sunburnt skin, which Elizabethan Canons of beauty regarded as undesirable."<ref name=":0" />

Braunmuller contextualizes all of this by reminding modern audiences that viewers and writers during Shakespeare's time would have had more complicated perspectives on race, ethnicity and related subjects and that their viewpoints were "extremely hard to define".<ref name=":0" /> There were also precursors to Shakespeare's ''Antony and Cleopatra'' that portrayed Cleopatra as having "Macedonian-Greek descent.<ref name=":0" />

Pascale Aebischer's analysis of race in Shakespeare's ''Antony and Cleopatra'' further discusses the historically and culturally ambiguous nature of Cleopatra's race. The paper enters into and gives context to the existing academic conversation surrounding the racial identity of Shakespeare's Cleopatra. Aebischer reviews the historical portrayals leading up to and including Shakespeare's portrayal of Cleopatra and uses them to analyze the opposing analyses of Cleopatra as either black or white and also to look at how race even functioned during the time period that plays like this were written. She concludes that portrayals of Cleopatra have been historically complicated and varied widely. Although, factually, she was of European ethnic origin, her racial identity on stage becomes intertwined with the cultural and social identity she is portraying in a way that makes determining her precise racial identity difficult. Aebischer points to scholars like 'Linda Charnes [who] cannily observe, "descriptions of Cleopatra in [Shakespeare's] play are never more than descriptions of the effect she has on the onlooker"'. Aebischer eventually concludes that "we must accept that Shakespeare's Cleopatra is neither black nor white, but that should not stop us from appreciating the political significance of casting choices, nor should it fool us into thinking that, for a character like Cleopatra, any casting choice will ever be 'colourblind.'" Within the context of theatrical portrayals of Cleopatra, Aebischer asserts that "racial attributes are not properties that are embodied, but theatrical properties to be deployed and discarded at will."<ref>{{Citation |last=Aebischer |first=Pascale |title=The properties of whiteness: Renaissance Cleopatras from Jodelle to Shakespeare |date=2012-11-08 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/SSO9781139170000A023/type/book_part |work=Shakespeare Survey |pages=221–238 |editor-last=Holland |editor-first=Peter |edition=1 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/sso9781139170000.018 |isbn=978-1-107-02451-9 |access-date=2022-12-16}}</ref>