The aims and claims of this lecture are to offer an anthropological analysis of Skakespeare's tragedy Antony and Cleopatra. We'll try to see how the play fits in the Egyptian mythological interpretation of the creation of the world. What theory of the origination of the universe, then, underpins the play ? Two main themes will lead us : the twinship theme and the river Nile. Let's embark on our pre-Christian voyage. Hopefully, we dispose of the Globe theatre
Everybody knows that the Egyptian divided the world into two halves : the masculine earth and the feminine sky, a primordial split which the Greeks inverted to refer to the earth mother and the sky father, a mythology strangely similar to the Polynesian one. Now, it is easy to realize that sundering the wholeness of the universe into two equal shares which you personify in a 'he' and a 'she' to obtain the founding ancestors can hardly be more totalitarian. Who can rule such immensity, who can span so much space ? The sun, of course. We've been witnessing the emergence of the solar cult whose epitomy in Egypt was Akhenaten and Tane in the Pacific.
Kinship thus posited at the very beginning, incest becomes unavoidable. A man and a woman inaugurating life can't survive through their own descent without meddling with their offspring. That's exactly what Akhenaten did. Unfortunately for him, he never got a son. The sun had no son, no male heir, only daughters. So much for his dynasty. In the Pacific, fatal embrace, Tane first separated the loving pair of his cosmic parents by severing the arms of Rangi the sky, then proceeded to the Mount Veneris of Papa the earth mother, moulded the first woman object, Hine ahu one, mated with her and sired Hine titama. The latter objected so strongly to that incestuous origin that she decided to go back into her grandmother's womb, the chthonian world, there to look after the souls of the dead, under the name of Hine nui te Po.
The sun is the very embodiment of what he has torn asunder to come to life : earth and sky, whatever their respective gender. He is fundamentally bivalent, a quality his cycle maintains in allowing him to spend half of his life in the sky, the other half in the earth. Akhenaten is represented with the same elongated neck, broad hips, swelling breasts and plump thighs as beautiful Nefertiti, his queen. This epicene shape is obviously the manifestation of the bisexual aspect of the sun-god, the demiurge, 'the father and mother of mankind' who impregnated himself in Chaos in order to create the diversity of the universe from the oneness of his self (Aldred). Tane is the ancestor of the Maori chief and priest whose masculine martial valence and feminine religious valence enabled him alone to explore the tapu sky and earth parents, a deadly prohibition when it came to rule access to the very palpable resources of the earth mother. Incest was Tane's prerogative. To make it plain, Maui, the demi-god who had fished out all the Polynesian archipelagoes, was stifled, in the guise of a little bird, between the thighs of Hine nui te Po, the great Dame of the Dark. Back to chaos through women if you dare challenge the high chiefs who alone can ape the gods. This founding Maori fantasy was acted out in Hawai'i where, as in Egypt, the ideal aristocratic match was that of the twin brother and sister. Why ? It simply harked back to the very beginning, founded a new dynasty. The world was born anew.
This seminal return to chaos was enacted year after year in Egypt by the flooding Nile whose fertile and destructive ambivalence was feminine par excellence. The ambivalence of a lioness, of a fiery woman able to play the part of man, and who, once duly placated, was called the golden one. Was it because Egypt was regularly submerged one third of the year that her cosmogony conjures up the cosmogony of the most oceanized people on earth : the Polynesians, who have settled one third of the globe ? This cycle enabled the Egyptian Dead to hope for immortal renewal thanks to this regular return into the womb. Land would rise again, like an island, like a pyramid, to issue forth a new sun, to invigorate Pharaoh in the Abyssinian red breaking waters heralding the welcome deluge. Sirius, the most luminous star in the constellation of Canis Major, vanishes 70 days from the Orient and re-appears at dawn in mid-July, just before the sun, then roars the flood, then begins the calendar year, then is staged the royal jubilee equating Sirius with Isis, Pharaoh's mother, then starts grape picking.
Once the Romans were in Egypt, Julius Caesar and Octavius Caesar relinquished the lunar calendar to adopt this solar calendar which seemed much more natural. We still use it ! And speak of an eponymous 'chaleur caniculaire' (Desroches Noblecourt). Even those who must have been thinking we were wide off the mark realize that we can now go back to the play for the stage is set to account for the ambivalence of both Antony and Cleopatra, account for their relentless quest for equality, the equality of the incestuous twin model able, phoenix-like, to recreate sky and earth from chaos.
The total absence of theatrical suspense is blatant from the
outset. The amourous contest between two mature lovers vying with
each other like young ones :
" Cleo. If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
Ant. There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
Cleo. I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.
Ant. Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth. "
Can escalate until the pair is caught in its own tomb to be, Act
IV, scene 13 :
" Cleo. Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself ()
And bring me how he takes my death to the monument. "
We already assume that equality will only be achieved though Thanathos,
since Eros is reduced to a game of hide and seek. Cleopatra, living
up to her name, humbles Antony into a little boy cowed by both
Caesar and Fulvia. The he-man protests in appropriate cosmic anger
:
" Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the rang'd empire fall ! Here is my space,
Kingdoms are clay : our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man ; the nobleness of life
Is to do thus : when such a mutual pair,
And such a twain can do't, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless. "
This noble goal is instantly brushed aside by clearsighted Cleopatra
: " Excellent falsehood ! ", rebuking her ostrich-like
lover looking forward to more love-making instead of listening
to the ambassadors. The stage belongs to two dedicated masochists.
All that within Act I, scene I.
The theme of parity is taken up again by the soothsayer warning
Charmian : " You shall be more beloving than beloved. "
and Iras : " Your fortunes are alike. " To hammer the
point home, Enobarbus takes one lover for the other : " Hush,
here comes Antony. Enter Cleopatra. Not he, the queen.
", the latter hastening to side-step the former : "
Alex. My lord approaches. Cleo. We will not look upon him : go
with us. " Thus spurned, idle Antony realizes the pressing
real enemy makes him feel guilty. He even uses the very first
word of the play employed against him, 'dotage' :
" These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
Or lose myself in dotage.
Enter another Messenger, with a letter.
Fulvia thy wife is dead. "
The pressure is total, weighted by the symmetry of the figurative
death Antony's departure would inflict on a forlorn Cleopatra
and the real departure of Fulvia. His wife is gone. The to-ings
and fro-ings, however, continue. " Cleo. If you find him
sad, Say I am dancing ; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick.
" Despite Charmian's foreboding : " Tempt him not so
too far. " and the dramatic irony of Cleopatra's exclaiming
: " O most false love ! () Now I see, I see, In Fulvia's
death, how mine receiv'd shall be. " Antony puts an end to
her accusation of dissembling by ejaculating : " Now, by
my sword " ! The queen next mulls over her enforced solitude,
longs for a near death mandragoran sleep : " He's speaking
now, Or murmuring, 'Where's my serpent of old Nile ?' For so he
calls me. Now I feed myself With most delicious poison. "
End of Act I ! The play will indeed come full-circle !
The misunderstanding is bound to widen between the two lovers
: in Rome, despite his former pledge to make love, not war, which
Cleopatra has debunked, Antony places war and love on the very
same plane, passing from the theme of pre-arranged marriage to
political strategy without the least transition ! (Act II, scene
2) Who wipes out this strategic match ? Enobarbus whose love at
first sight narration of the first encounter between Antony and
Cleopatra reaches mythical levels. Antony boards the solar bark
of Pharaoh. The Amon celebrations were wont to attain their dazzling
climax with the cruise on the Karnak-Luqsor canal. Here comes
the sun :
" The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne
Burn'd on the water : the poop was beaten gold ;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them ; "
The elements seem indeed mastered for good. A very pedestrian
Antony, sitting prosaically on the market-place, thinks he can
invite ! " She replied, It should be better he became her
guest. " Hadn't he realized that the air, " but for
vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too, And made a gap in
nature " ? The sort of gap the sun needs between heaven and
earth ! Meantime, Antony broaches upon the set phrases concerning
what his new bride will have to put up with : " The world,
and my great office, will sometimes Divide me from your bosom.
" A far cry from the cosmic separation
The lack of suspense is again reiterated : the soothsayer makes
it clear to Antony :
Ant. " Hie you to Egypt again.
Say to me,
Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar's or mine ?
Sooth. Caesar's.
Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side. "
Cleopatra now handles messengers as roughly as Antony. With good
reason : the news of the Roman wedding is broken to her. Hell
hath no fury as a woman scorned The end is forecast, emphasizing
the overriding solar cycle : " Melt Egypt into Nile ! and
kindly creatures Turn all to serpents ! " In the meantime
again, off Misenum, Antony gone Egyptian extolls the river Nile,
indulging unwittingly in a dramatic irony stretched by inebriated
Lepidus expanding on serpents and crocodiles. Act II dissolves
into a drinking bout.
From the start, Act III shows that military ground can be regained
without Antony. The feat enhances the excellent relationships
the triumvir enjoys with his men. Antony is even compared with
the phoenix : " O Antony, O thou Arabian bird ! " The
renaissance theme applies as well to Cleopatra. How could she
have a rival ? Charmian's two allusions to Isis prove that Osiris-Antony
will be retrieved. A third allusion to Isis-Cleopatra is uttered
by Caesar himself ! Treacherous Octavius seizes the opportunity
of Antony's return to Egypt, the playwright judiciously avoiding
a live description which would have been redundant with Enobarbus's
purple patch. In terms of balance, Caesar has rid himself of Sextus
Pompeius and Lepidus, Antony has deceived Octavia. Brimming over
with ontological bivalence, Cleopatra claims equal footing at
war !
" Sink Rome, and their tongues rot
That speak against us ! A charge we bear i' the war,
And as the president of my kingdom will
Appear there for a man. Speak not against it,
I will not stay behind. "
A single cue, however, portends woe : " Let the Egyptians
and the Phoenicians go a-ducking " Hunting ducks in the swamps
was a rite amounting to despatching fiends Bathos is inevitable.
We reach the watershed, the middle of the play. The theme of parity
between man and woman finds its best expression : " i' the
midst o' the fight, When vantage like a pair of twins appear'd
Both as the same ". The fall from sublime to ridiculous is
instantaneous : " Antony, Claps on his sea-wing, and (like
a doting mallard) Leaving the fight in heighth, flies after her
: I never saw an action of such shame. " Antony is in tow,
admits himself he has " lost command ", forsakes his
gold. Is he back to his original pledge to make love, not war,
or does he need defeat for that ?
" Ant. You did know
How much you were my conqueror, and that
My sword, made weak by my affection, would
Obey it on all cause.
Cleo. Pardon, pardon !
Ant. Fall not a tear, I say, one of them rates
All that is won and lost : give me a kiss,
Even this repays me. "
Can this magnanimity be tranferred to the political field ? Lame
duck Antony is misled again. How on earth could Caesar envisage
a duel with him ? Can't he realize he has to fall back on friends
in need, friends indeed ? Is it jealousy or political spite or
both which fuel his childish chiding of messenger Thidias ? The
only way out is to pass from one extreme to another : " I'll
make death love me. " A soldier's desperate reaction or a
premonition ? So much for Act III.
Magnanimity is the one unswerving virtue of Antony : instead
of taking offence at Enobarbus's betrayal, the triumvir sends
him his share of the bequeathed booty, hastening his friend's
doom in the process. One more herald of the dénouement,
the poignant scene is here to show that one cannot part from Antony.
Against all odds, the triumvir beats the foe with Scarus living
up to his name : scaring the wits out of the enemy. The valiant
warrior has the honour of erasing the former shameful hand kissing.
Antony and Cleopatra are young again. This respite is short-lived.
Caesar wipes out the fleet. Antony bursts into a volcanic eruption
: young Octavius and young Cleopatra must have colluded. Exit
Scarus, now Eros is the confident. Thanatos is abroad.
" Ant. The witch shall die,
To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall
Under this plot : she dies for 't. Eros, ho ! "
An ashamed Cleopatra will sham death to level out the threat.
The pit is now wide open to engulf both lovers. There will be
no way out. For Antony will himself flatten out his verbal escalation
: he does love Cleopatra and will follow suit in this escape from
Caesar. " I () condemn myself, to lack
The courage of a woman, less noblemind
Than she which by her death our Caesar tells
'I am conqueror of myself.'
Do't, the time is come :
Thou strik'st not me, 'tis Caesar thou defeat'st'. "
The very presence of Caesar as a third party, however, testifies
the two lovers are not just by themselves, yet
Eros kills himself instead. Antony botches up. Naked truth
can at long last perspire : " I will be A bridegroom in my
death, and run into't As to a lover's bed. " All he needs
now is the coup de théâtre of Cleopatra turning out
to be still alive to make a last meeting possible. Hearing she
has extorted Antony's ultimate token of love, Pharaoh knows instantly
what is afoot : "O sun, Burn the great sphere thou mov'st
in, darkling stand The varying shore o' the world. " Her
sun is indeed on his nocturnal way into the feminine night. Faced
with death, she reacts the same way as her lover :
" Ant. Not Caesar's valour hath o'erthrown Antony,
But Antony's hath triumph'd on itself.
Cleo. So it should be, that none but Antony
Should conquer Antony, but woe 'tis so ! "
Can no one conquer Antony, not even Cleopatra ? Then she can also
indulge in self-esteem :
" Not the imperious show
Of the full-fortun'd Caesar ever shall
Be brooch'd with me, if knife, drugs, serpents, have
Edge, sting, or operation. I am safe :
Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes,
And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour
Demuring upon me. "
It is only when Antony, prompted by love, leaves the victor's
way free for Cleopatra's sake and then actually passes out that
Pharaoh is moved and rediscovers the twinship of the primordial
night :
" Noblest of men, woo't die ?
Hast thou no care of me, shall I abide
In this dull world, which in thy absence is
No better than a sty ? "
The fourth act can end, transforming the last one into Cleopatra's
adagio. Caesar's himself echoes Pharaoh's own words on hearing
that his last rival, his equal, has immolated himself : "
A moiety of the world. " He also senses at once that despite
his promises, Cleopatra will probably follow suit. Even his blackmail
will be of little avail. Though himself bewitched, he fails to
recognise her : " Which is the Queen of Egypt ? " Cannot
Cleopatra be singled out at once ? Caesar will nevertheless admit
Antony and Cleopatra are inseparable :
" She shall be buried by her Antony.
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous ; "
Thus merge Eros and Thanatos, Cleopatra is " again for Cydnus,
to meet Mark Antony. "
Let's go back to the cosmogony of Heliopolis : Before the development
of a structured cosmos there existed in darkness a limitless ocean
of inert water. It was envisaged as the primeval being called
Nu or Nun. This vast expanse of lifeless water never ceased to
be and after creation was imagined to surround the celestial firmament
guarding the sun, moon, stars and earth as well as the boundaries
of the underworld. There was always a fear in the Egyptian mind
that Nu would crash through the sky and drown the earth. When
this Götterdämmerung occurs the only survivors will
be the gods Atum and Osiris in the form of snakes, unknown to
mankind and unseen by other gods (Hart). More than a mere sexual
hint, the two asps which kill Cleopatra in a final scene paralleling
Antony's own end on his sword are but a symbol of the eternity
of love in the endless cycle of life. The two lovers eclipse the
bachelor's triumph.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Serge DUNIS, Cultes solaires ou de l'inceste en Egypte et en Polynésie, in LE PACIFIQUE, Odyssée de l'espèce, bilan civilisationniste du grand Océan, Paris, Klincksieck, 1996, pp. 97-140
Serge DUNIS, Sans Tabou Ni Totem, Inceste et pouvoir politique chez les Maori de Nouvelle-Zélande, Paris, Fayard, 1984, 460 p.
Serge DUNIS, Homme de la Petite Eau, Femme de la Grande Eau, Ethnologie d'Hawai'i, Paris, Presses Universitaires Créoles-L'Harmattan, 1990, 379 p.
Cyril ALDRED, Akhenaten, King of Egypt, London, Thames & Hudson, 1988, paperback edition 1991, 320 p .
Christiane DESROCHES NOBLECOURT, Amours et fureurs de La Lointaine, clés pour la compréhension de symboles égyptiens, Paris, Stock/Pernoud, 1995, 255 p.
George HART, Egyptian Myths, the legendary past, London, British Museum, 1990, 80 p.
J.C. TREWIN, The Pocket Companion to Shakespeare's plays, London, Mitchell Beazley, 1995, 192 p.