The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra

3.5 stars

Tl;dr

- Caesar and Antony are bros, until they're not, because war/greed/Cleopatra.
- Eno has a tragic, senseless death because of his misguided interpretation of events.
- Eros has a tragic, senseless death because Antony is an idiot.
- Cleopatra betrays Antony, twice, so she kills herself, but not really. However, Antony thinks she did, so he (tries to) kill himself too, à la Romeo & Juliet.
- Meanwhile, Caesar rules pretty much the whole world because he's gotten rid of all of his friends and taken their lands.

Right away the play catches you off-base, with a scene showing the title romance well underway. We don't get an insight as to how it began until Act 2, scene ii, by which time we have a pretty good idea these guys, unlike say Romeo and Juliet, are lovers crossed not by the stars but by themselves. Antony has a chip on his shoulder from knowing he deserves to rule over Rome and not serve in tandem with two lightweights. Cleopatra is a woman who likes to make her men dance, even to the point when it isn't good for her, but she's such fun and so luminous a presence even when she is the butt of the humor you have to love her with Antony's blind passion. Just watch her play Punch & Judy with a luckless messenger who has to tell her about Antony's new wife.

Two elements stand out in the reading of this play, beyond the glorious leads. The figure of Enobarbus, Antony's sardonic aide-de-camp, offers a great insight into the romance and the political backdrop with his cagy asides and singular wit. “That truth should be silent I had almost forgot,” he tells his boss, but it never really is with Enobarbus on the job.

The other element is “Antony And Cleopatra's” cinematic quality, with no less than 42 scenes set in Rome, Greece, and Egypt. Lovemaking, drinking, battles, and jump-cuts abound. There are longish scenes, like the final one, but even there the action moves fast. It might be considered a failing that so much of what happens on stage up until the last two acts is basically reaction action to storylines that occur off-frame, but Shakespeare makes the drama come so alive, and draws his focus so remarkably on his imperfect central lovers, that you only marvel at what he is able to accomplish without, say, a staged first meeting between Antony and Cleopatra, or a more direct falling out between Antony and Octavian Caesar.

One of the great attractions for me of reading this play is it works as a kind of antidote to Shakespeare's other celebrated romance. Romeo And Juliet are lovers in the full bloom of youth, toyed with by others' ambitions. Antony and Cleopatra are older and more in charge of their lives, yet make an even bigger hash of things. A street fight in Verona pales in comparison to Actium, yet I find Antony and Cleopatra as I get older far more rewarding company, with their refusal to live their lives in accordance with other's wants.

This is truly one of his best plays. Cleo Parra wife a Shakespearean woman character like no other.

Maybe 3.5 stars, but Shakesman can take it - we can chip away at his stars!! 500 years later!! WHO CARES, AMIRITE?!Anyway, so this was my second SPQR hangover read/listen (the first being Oedipus Rex), and - despite it making me want to puke - I preferred Oedipus. I mean, this ALSO made me want to puke, but more from annoyance/cringe. This was like “Yoko Ono breaking up the Beatles”, mixed with heavy doses of groan-inducing Orientalism and dick jokes (so many dick jokes. : ) and weird tonal shifts that led me to - as Antony (played by Kenneth Branagh) semi-kills himself and then chokes out, “Not dead. Not dead!” - laaaaugh.So Wiki says this is sometimes considered a “problem play”. Reviews have historically been mixed. I can see why it's not often staged. I actually saw this years ago in London. I remember laughing when Antony was dying then as well. I put it down to the directorial choices in that specific production. But maybe this is what Shakespeare originally intended? Because there's a sort of... horrible, pitying, pitch-black slapstick quality to all of this, to the teenage-level raging hormones of Antony and Cleopatra, to the shrill vanity of Cleopatra and the lurching drunkenness of Antony, while nearly all other characters roll their eyes. It's just like: they're not sympathetic at all, until they VERY briefly are, and then you just feel awful for them (tragedie!). Things that start in media res are great, and this play starts very nicely AFTER much insanity has already occurred: Pompey the Great is dead (and his son, Pompey Jr., is fighting the Second Triumvirate), Julius Caesar is dead (and his adopted son, Octavius Caesar - who would become Augustus - is leading armies around), Brutus is dead (duh), Marc Antony has gone to seed, and there is a general feeling of “has-been-ness” and the younger generation (Pompey Jr and Octavius/Augustus, especially) starting to edge the older ones (Marc Antony, everyone else) out. It was a tectonic shift in Rome's history; politically surviving such an earthquake would have been miraculous.The Orientalist qualities of this play are also - goddamn just wow. This is pure Orientalism, in what Edward Said originally described: the stereotype of a effete, feminizing, debauched, besotted East. Nearly every scene in Egypt features Antony very clearly ensnared in booze and Cleopatra, while all the other Romans shake their heads. Both Antony and Cleopatra are also hot blooded stereotypes of rits of fealous jage, to the point that you (or I, at least) start to lose patience with them. ROME COULD BE YOURS, ANTONY, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.And that, I guess, was the point?P.S. Alex Kingston plays Cleopatra in the BBC version, and if you wanna talk romance and epickal tragedie, then this scene from Doctor Who is just my goddamn faaaaave. “Spoilers.” Yeah, you're welcome for the cathartic cry.