"Antony & Cleopatra" |
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Antony & Cleopatra Cast H. Andrew Greeley Musicians
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Antony and Cleopatra Opening Night Gala—FST Board of Directors Return to the top of this page.
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TRANSFORM US NOT TO WOMEN
Since directing “Julius Caesar” for FST in 2003 I’ve longed to explore this glorious story further by staging “Antony and Cleopatra.” It’s much more than a sequel. Harold Bloom in his book on all of Shakespeare’s plays, “The Invention of the Human,” calls it his “masterwork” adding “It is certainly the richest of the 39 plays...it is funnier than any of the great comedies...If you want to find everything Shakespeare was capable of doing, it is here.”
This play is astonishingly modern both in its subject matter and structure. Famously it has more scenes than any other Shakespeare play—many just a few lines—and this has lead it to be dubbed ‘Shakespeare’s film script.’ It’s easy to see why. It has the swiftness of a movie—but what a movie! Great battles, high drama, passionate love, and— even for some modern tastes— an outrageously explicit sexuality.
The scope of its argument is breathtaking. It’s setting the entire world. There is a constant tension between sex and politics, a tension on which not only the futures of Antony and Cleopatra hinge but the future of the known world and everyone in it.
What fascinated me most about the play is its constant use of juxtaposition: Rome/Egypt, land/water, Venus/Mars even the title is “Antony AND Cleopatra.” (Shakespeare’s source, Plutarch, called the story “The Life of Antony”)
If you ever doubted Shakespeare’s genius just take a look at how he uses pairs of SINGLE WORDS almost exactly the same amount of times ‘Antony’ is used 133 times in the play, ‘Caesar’ 132; ‘shall’ 127 times, ‘will’ 125; ‘give’ 51, ‘take’ 48; ‘would’ 65, ‘should’ 64 and so on. (The least used word is “Temperance”!).
The language itself is in conflict, just as the characters are. Everybody in the play seems to be at war with somebody else, personalities are split, lines and thoughts broken; they search for an identity which they cannot possibly live up to.
The most important juxtaposition, and one on which the whole narrative turns, is gender. From Mardian the eunuch to the cross dressing games of the two protagonists, there is barely a scene which doesn’t touch on it. There are constant references to Antony’s “sword” (a fairly obvious phallic symbol), Cleopatra is mistaken for Antony, Thidias beaten until he repents he was not made his father’s daughter, “We are women’s men” laments Canidus before deserting Egypt and joining Rome.
This is not literary flamboyancy on Shakespeare’s part but a crucial plot device. The sexually repressed Romans both fear and envy the easy mores the Egyptians enjoy. Rome is a male world that celebrates “That magical word of war” and is terrified of the effeminacy that Egypt—with its Queen and female gods—represents. “For shame, transform us not to women.”
—Graham Watts
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