My annotated Oxfordian edition of this play is available: Anthony and Cleopatra.
(Shakespeare’s intention, as the First Folio consistently makes clear, was to have the character’s name no longer as Antony, as in Julius Caesar, but as Anthony. The motive for the change is unknown. One hopes the softened sound is not intended to match any softening of Anthony’s character, as his detractors inside the play would probably have it. The th sound in Italian would remain a hard t. More compelling is the th ligature, key to arcane Shakespeare studies and relevant later in this play.)
Shakespeare uses Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives (which he used for Julius Caesar as well) concerning the historical events between about 40 bce and 30 bce when Antony and Cleopatra died. He develops characters and mostly invents Enobarbus, or at least invests in the name reference enough to make him into an intriguing focal point.
Cleopatra is maybe the original “diva,” and I think we wouldn’t have Scarlett O’Hara nor Erica Kane without Shakespeare’s Cleo. It’s a knotty character phenomenon to try to explain, involving ironic self-awareness of outrageous egomania, but, you know, it’s cheeky and charming. Any frustrated theater major who believes in reincarnation insists that (s)he lived as this Queen of the Nile, but apparently the historical Cleopatra was rather unprepossessing, yet she obviously knew how to enter a room and generate a mystique. For a fascinating and conscientious history of Cleopatra and Cleopatra in popular culture, with important implications also discussed, check out Hughes-Hallett (citation below). Roman propaganda vilified Cleopatra — a prototype for all patriarchal hatchet jobs on women in power.
Although the play smoothly contains all Shakespearean skills and could almost be classified as a history, comedy, or tragedy, the dominant mode of tragedy emerges from the clash of demands between the private life and the public. The play is surprisingly not moralistic. It has more to do with awareness of how others see one. Goddard calls it “a study in the power of personality versus the impersonality of power” (Goddard, II185). And for Anthony it’s life crisis time!
Anthony and Cleopatra, Act by Act
Anthony and Cleopatra Introduction
Further Resources
Filmography
Cleopatra. Starring Helen Gardner. The Helen Gardner Picture Players, 1912.
Cleopatra. Starring Theda Bara. 1917. Only a few bits survived the 1934 Fox Studios fire, one of which which can be viewed here.
Cleopatra. Dir. Cecil B. DeMille. Starring Claudette Colbert. Universal, 1934. More a precursor to the 1963 Cleopatra (with the Julius Caesar portion) than any Shakespeare.
Caesar and Cleopatra. Starring Vivien Leigh and Claude Rains. Gabriel Pascal Productions, 1945. Basically the George Bernard Shaw story, here it is.
Due notti con Cleopatra. Starring Sophia Loren. Excelsa Rosa Film, 1953. Here is the trailer.
Cleopatra. Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison. Twentieth Century Fox, 1963. A few more touches of Shakespeare than the 1934 film, but see the next entries here. For Cleopatra’s entrance into Rome, see here.
Antony and Cleopatra. Starring Charlton Heston. Agamemnon Films, 1972. Heston, yes! The Cleopatra actress? A few attempts at Katharine Hepburn, but it doesn’t work on a dark-haired Mia Farrow. Here it is.
Antony and Cleopatra. Starring Richard Johnson, Janet Suzman. ITC Entertainment Group, 1974. Here it is.
Antony and Cleopatra. Starring Lynn Redgrave, Timothy Dalton. Made for TV, 1984. Dalton may look to feline for Antony, but we also get Anthony Geary of “Luke and Laura” fame (General Hospital); plus both Uhura and Chekov (urging one instantly to cast the rest of the Star Trek characters in this play — too obvious to list). Here it is.
Best Editions
Bevington, David, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 6th ed. Pearson Education Inc., 2009. 1331-1383.
Delahoyde, Michael, ed. Anthony and Cleopatra. The Oxfordian Shakespeare Series, 2015.
Furness, Horace Howard, ed. The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra. A New Variorum Edition. Vol. 15. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1907.
Oxfordian Resources
Clark, Eva Turner. Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays. 3rd ed. by Ruth Loyd Miller. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1974. 349-357.
Farina, William. De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2006. 213-218.
Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth & The Reality. 2nd ed. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, Inc., 1992.
Ogburn, Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn. This Star of England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Pub., 1952. Esp. 258-265, 1166-1173.
Rollett, John. “The Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra.” In Dating Shakespeare’s Play’s. Ed. Kevin Gilvary. Tunbridge Wells, UK: Parapress, 2010. 415-422.
Other Resources
Goddard, Harold C. The Meaning of Shakespeare. Vol II. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951. 184-208.
Hughes-Hallett, Lucy. Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions. NY: Harper & Row, 1990.
Smidt, Kristian. Unconformities in Shakespeare’s Tragedies. NY: St Martin’s Press, 1990. 163-179. Smidt finds numerous time discrepancies suggesting significant revision of scenes.
Shakespeare Authorship Organizations
The Shakespeare Foundation. Dir. Alan W. Green. The sponsor of Shakespeare Illuminated. You say you want a revolution. Well….
The De Vere Society. Our Oxfordian friends and collaborators across the pond.
The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. Browse, get hooked, become a member. Tell them I sent you.
The Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable. We consider all possible authors behind the “Shakespeare” name.