Book Review: Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

Eponymous Challenge #2
Royalty Rules Challenge #3

The world as the Romans know it is divided between three men, but those three are about to be reduced to one. With Aemilius Lepidus out of the way, the fight is between Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar. Antony prefers to spend his time in luxury in Egypt with the still-beautiful Cleopatra, while Octavius concentrates on the running of the empire. They are united for a time by the threat posed by Pompey and by Antony’s marriage to Octavius’s sister. But the lure of Cleopatra is too strong, and the desertion of Octavia gives her brother the perfect excuse for war. Antony is confident of victory; but his pride goes before the fall not only of himself, but of Cleopatra.

It was hard not to read this and not compare it to what I know of Roman history. A reasonable amount of compression took place; Lepidus was dispensed with some years before the Battle of Actium. This realisation didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the play; after all, Shakespeare is hardly reliable history (Richard III, anyone?). Besides, the rearrangement of the empire took second place to the relationship between the two main characters. Antony was entranced by Cleopatra, happily ignoring official business where possible so that he might stay with her, while she was not content unless he was in Alexandria with her. For a famous monarch, Cleopatra had moments of surprising clinginess and emotional erraticness; for someone who controlled a kingdom, she didn’t always have much control over herself. Her powers of seduction being legendary, however, I didn’t stop to think overmuch about what he saw in her.

The structure of the play was impressive, but I couldn’t avoid the thought that it must be hard to stage. Several acts run to more than a dozen scenes, and some of those fill less than a page; just enough to establish the who, what, and where. (The mind boggles at the idea of the backstage chaos created by having groups of people entering and exiting in such quick succession.) The main characters leave plenty to think about, being so drawn as to allow for the reader’s own judgement. A hero, or a fool? A tragic queen, or an emotionally unstable manipulator hoist by her own petard? A political schemer, or a man genuinely concerned for the empire he’d inherited? The play doesn’t decide. Its downside is that, compared to other tragedies, it feels . . . well, rather un-tragic. It doens’t inspire the if-onlys as, say, Romeo and Juliet does; it prompts no listing of things which might have changed everything if they’d just turned out differently. Antony and Cleopatra carries a sense of leaden inevitability.

Rating: B

Now reading: The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (EC)
                                The Big Over-Easy - Jasper Fforde (888C)

Whatever Would Shakespeare Think?

That’s the question my mother’s been asking about tonight’s viewing on the ABC. They’ve been screening a British series called Shakespeare Retold, which began with Macbeth set in a restaurant kitchen followed byMuch Ado About Nothing in a television newsroom. Tonight it was The Taming of the Shrew transposed to the political arena. Since I quite enjoy modernisations, and since Waking the Dead had been canned in favour of the cricket, I decided to check it out. I read the play in Year Twelve English, where we also watched the Elizabeth Taylor film adaptation and the modern teenage version 10 Things I Hate About You, and I was interested to see what other permutation the screenwriters could come up with.

I’ll probably never stop marvelling at the number of variations upon a Shakespeare it’s possible to create. The bare bones of the original were all there: A shrewish spinster, a beautiful younger sister who rids herself of an unwanted suitor by promising to marry when Katherine does, and a Petruchio left comtemplating marrying money after his father was so inconsiderate as to die and leave him nothing. But Katherine was a potential opposition leader who needed to improve her image, Bianca was one of those famous-for-being-famous types, and Petruchio was, to quote his best mate, an unstable, unbalanced exhibitionist. Shakespeare would have recognised it, though I doubt he envisioned his leading man as an occasionally-cross-dressing earl. But then that’s the fun of such modernisations: Seeing how far the story can be stretched while still keeping something of the original.

The purists might think it’s a sacrilege, but I think of it as highly complimentary to Shakespeare and his work. It’s a tribute to the quality of his plots that they’re still seen as worthy of telling and retelling. And it’s a tribute to his characters that we can still relate to them after four hundred years, and fit them so easily into any number of settings.

Any author would be enormously pleased just to have their work persist for four centuries in the original form. I’d be thrilled enough to write something that would last four decades. But to have your work not only endure, but to remain so relevant that events and characters can be plucked out and deposited in the present day and the story still ring true, is surely an even greater honour. I like to think that Shakespeare would be happy to see that his plays are still performed, in whatever manner; and that they are considered significant enough to update.

Of course, his opinion of the casting of Heath Ledger could be an entirely different matter.

Now reading: Fathers and Sons - Ivan S. Turgenev (WCRC)
                                 The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer (WCRC)
                                 Emotionally Weird - Kate Atkinson
                                 The City of Falling Angels - John Berendt