Passions made of nothing but the finest part of pure love?

Modalities of Passion in Two Seventeenth-Century ‘Egyptian’ Plays: Shakespeare’s Antony and

Cleopatra and Dryden’s All for Love <dias 1>

PP comment: Please note, first, that I narrowed down the material from the original three plays announced in

the programme to two plays only; second, that I reproduce various sources of the Antony-Cleopatra affair in this

handout in case anyone would like to study the subject a little more either here or at home.

[1. OVERVIEW: MORAL INTERPRETATION OF A & C LOVE STORY]

Ever since Antiquity, the fatal liaison between the legendary Egyptian queen Cleopatra and the charismatic

Roman general Mark Antony was seen as an allegory of the final fate of unbridled passion — an edifying story

about the necessary downfall of those who give in to emotion and loose self-control.

An important part of this tendentious image of the controversial affair was the rather well-known

demonization of Cleopatra as a depraved sensualist and irresistible temptress <dias 2>, frivolous to the core,

ensnaring one brave Roman hero after the other in order to use them in her cynical struggle for political

power.

This portrait of a shameless and ambitious woman was essentially the one painted by Roman writers,

historians as well as poets; during the Middle Ages it apparently fused with the Biblical Whore of Babylon, a

female monster using her sexual charms to entangle the world’s princes in her web of sin.

PP comment: see, for example, John of Salisbury’s description of the Queen as a ‘presumptuous and wanton

creature’ with ‘a harlot’s charm and courtesan’s face’.

On this backdrop, Renaissance emblematists depicted ‘false religion’ — the worship of worldly beauty and the

indulgence in earthly joys — drawing on the Cleopatra iconography that had gradually emerged from the

Medieval fusion of Roman ascetism and Christian misogyny. <dias 3>

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PP comment: Observe how Alciato’s emblem plays on Cleopatra’s famous impersonation of the goddess Isis,

exploiting the connection between the Queen’s legendary beauty, genius for manipulation, and her notoriously

orgiastic parties.

Antony himself did not fare much better <dias 4>. Both ancient and medieval historians presented him as a

pompous playboy and a boastful drunk, a rioting Bacchus to Cleopatra’s lustful Venus who — knowingly or

unknowingly — co-operated in her evil schemes against Rome.

PP comment: As the biographer of a great man, Plutarch naturally endeavoured to give a positive presentation

of his subject; yet, as this quotation shows, a fundamental ambiguity toward Antony’s life and person pervades

his text. With Christian writers, such as John of Salisbury, the tone grew more explicitly hostile.

Thus, the once invincible general known for his moral inviolability became the epitome of frailty and

corruption: a man who betrayed his best friend, his wife, and his country to follow a harlot’s command,

overcome by emotion, blinded by passion, and apparently ever intoxicated by a dangerous mixture of libido

and alcohol <dias 5>.

PP comment: Headed by a quotation from the Aeneid pondering Love’s power over the human heart, Paradin’s

emblem — translated into English in 1591 under the heading “Filthy love constraineth men to commit all

wickednesse” — shows Antony acting most ridiculously as Cleopatra’s taster, willing to swallow poision when she

bids him do so. The text concludes with the moral “And hereby we may see what may be the audacitie, and

impudent boldnes of a shamelesse woman”.

As such an edifying story of the downfall of the majestic warrior hero through the moral corruption caused by

an unworthy amorous infatuation, the Antony and Cleopatra love affair persisted over the centuries. <dias 6>

Passed over from ancient to medieval writers, from there to Renaissance emblematists, and from them to

seventeenth-century dramatists, the moral interpretation of what had become known as ‘the ancient world’s

greatest love story’ survived the historiographical awakening of the Enlightenment period and even reached

Modernity proper.

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Thus, in what may be termed the ‘popular historiography’ of the twentieth century, the historical film epics of

the fifties and sixties, Antony remained a symbol of the moral ruin of the obsessed lover ... <youtube klip>

Clip comment: This scene from Mankiewicz’ 1963 production, illustrates the persistence of the moral

interpretation of the Antony-Cleopatra affair.

… In Shakespeare, of course, things are not quite so simple.

[2. SHAKESPEARE’S APOLOGY FOR ANTONY: DIALECTIC OF PERMISSIVENESS]

Basing his rendering of the Antony and Cleopatra affair on Plutarch’s Life of Antony, Shakespeare in many

respects continued the conventional allegorical interpretation of their story as a warning against affective

excess and the closely related loss of self-control. Thus, the Plutarchan basis of Antony and Cleopatra

involves an entire moral ‘design’, which shows, for instance, in the Roman soldiers’ description of the

Egyptian queen as an immoral, lascivious woman and the contrasting representation of Caesar as an epitome

of stern masculinity.

On the face of it, the whole play is, indeed, an allegorical tale of how the City of Virtue finally came to prevail

over the Kingdom of Pleasure, and the presence of Antony between these poles, a Roman lingering in Egypt

torn between duty and delight, only strengthens the impression of an underlying moral design.

Yet it is exactly through the elaboration of his character that Shakespeare transforms the material basis of his

play softening its dichotomic set-up: the innovative — investigative — characterization of Antony on the

basis of his ‘Herculean’ psychomachy <dias 7> transforms the traditional moral stereotype into a live human

being full of conflicting emotions.

PP comment: As Shakespeare several times reminds us, the mythological hero Hercules was said to be Antony’s

ancestor. Projecting the story of his legendary choice between pleasure and virtue onto the Roman general’s

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choice between the joys of love in Alexandria and his sense of duty toward Rome, the playwright creates a rich

psychological portrait.

Concretely, the play effectuates this transformation through the exploitation of what may be termed the

dialectic of the General’s permissiveness <dias 8>, that is: the good and bad aspects of what may for lack of a

better neutral term be called his ‘mental permeability’. PP comment:I have made a graphic presentation of this

dialectic whose manifestations in the text I will now briefly discuss.

From the beginning of Antony and Cleopatra, we are presented with the familiar image of Antony’s moral

decadence: in the very first lines of the play, we are told about his fall from the height of manly, military

virtue to the feminized sphere of the harlot’s boudoir: madly in love, the General has let himself become

absorbed by his mistress’ decadent Egyptian life style and lost his own Roman-martial self.

Thus, a little later, Caesar ponders Antony’s adoption of the Alexandrian way of life — the revelry, the orgies,

and the Eastern extravagance — as the reason for their growing antagonism. In the black/white moral logic

represented by Octavius, the General’s permissiveness toward everything Egyptian can be nothing but a flaw,

a betrayal of Rome and its ideals (discipline, abstinence, self-control); it is, thus, unequivocally negative.

And yet, just as the word ‘permissiveness’ carries both positive and negative meanings, Antony’s mental

permeability is also the source of his famous liberality, generosity, magnanimity, and joviality, pondered by

Plutarch on several occasions.

In Antony and Cleopatra, a dialectical presentation of the General’s permissiveness — espousal of Otherness,

or assimilation of that which is different — replaces the character’s traditional one-sidedness and the

recurrent denunciation of his moral weakness.

Turning to the evidence, more things support the assumption that the dramatist’s characterization of Antony

is dialectical in essence, bringing out positive as well as negative aspects of his permissiveness. <dias 9> Apart

from his unprejudiced love for a foreigner, the most obvious example of its positive representation in the play

is Antony’s reaction to Enobarbus’ treason.

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Official sources from Shakespeare’s time demonstrate Elizabethan and Jacobean authorities’ unpardoning

attitude toward traitors, yet faced with Enorbarbus’ betrayal Antony orders his men to send him his

belongings together with ‘gentle adieus and greetings’, assuming the entire responsibility of his former

follower’s moral corruption (soon after, Enobarbus dies of remorse after praising Antony’s spiritual

nobleness).

Other passages can be adduced, which point in the same direction, notably Antony’s dealings with the rebel

Pompey, whose services to himself he acknowledges. In all these cases, the General manifests himself as a big-

hearted, large-minded, and generous human being — qualities that are the reverse side of the susceptibility to

influence or psychological moldability lamented by his fellow Romans as a sign of moral weakness.

This thematic inquiry into the dialectic of the General’s permissiveness is fundamentally sustained through

what may be termed the play’s ‘poetic of permissiveness’ <dias 10>, stylistically reflecting and arguably

endorsing Antony’s lavish life style.

[3. SHAKESPEARE’S ‘POETICS OF PERMISSIVENESS’]

In Life of Antony, see handout, Plutarch said that Antony “adopted what was called the Asiatic style of

oratory, which was at the height of its popularity in those days and bore a strong resemblance to his own life,

which was swashbuckling and boastful, full of empty exultation and distorted ambition”.

To the extent that Antony’s adoption of an ‘Asiatic’ rhetoric may be seen as yet another example of his

permissiveness — in the positive sense of openness of mind —, Shakespeare’s much-noted recreation of this

style in Antony and Cleopatra may be seen as his most notable transformation of the play’s moral basis:

through its poetic of permissiveness, Antony and Cleopatra becomes a virtual celebration of the Alexandrian

world of passionate love, high-wrought rhetoric, and vital poetic existence — even if its basis in the moral

tradition ultimately gives it quite an ambiguous flavour.

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Important stylistic features of the play’s Asiatic or Alexandrian style include: the use of conceit to describe

complexity of feeling and extrapolate the bittersweet magnetism of passion beyond moral occupation;

elaborate rhetorical figures; intertextual allusion; neo-Platonic imagery and mythological references.

The two lovers in particular have a pronounced tendency to express themselves in a complex or even loaded

manner, which contrasts with the Roman characters’ more restrained Ciceronian rhetoric and reflects the

refined beauty and beguiling sophistication of the Alexandrian way of life. <dias 11>

Shakespeare’s both thematic and formal apology for Antony culminates in Cleopatra’s encomium for her

lover, a ‘reply’ to the Roman soldier Philo’s initial moral denigration of the General at the beginning of the

play. PP comment: As the confrontation of these two descriptions of Antony suggests (opening and —almost —

closing the play), there seems to be a development toward a more positive evaluation of the General’s person in

Shakespeare’s play.

In Cleopatra’s ‘Asiatic’ rhetoric — a counter image of Caesar’s composed encomium with its decorous style

and unsentimental imagery of war and heroic masculinity — Antony appears as a virtual cosmic creature or

demi-god, a mythological figure whose death is, indeed, a loss to the world no matter his possible moral

shortcomings. Shakespeare’s placement of this high-strung eulogy in the last scene of the play is surely no

coincidence. Besides offering the ‘proof’ of the Queen’s love, invariably questioned by writers of the moral

tradition, it provides the basis of the dramatist’s transformation of the play’s material basis through the

insertion of genuinely compassionate elements.

<dias 12> Thus, at the end of Antony and Cleopatra, Antony no longer appears as an unequivocal figure of

frailty and corruption. In the course of the play, his downfall is shown to be the result of the very same

‘permissiveness’ that was the source of his greatness: his ability to love another human being without reserve

and the fatal choices that his making this other person the mistress of his heart impelled him to make.

At the end of the play, we are convinced that the protagonists’ passions were, indeed, ‘made of nothing but

the finest part of pure love’ (not a shameful and reprehensible obsession). Although Antony himself asks us

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not to lament his death, we cannot help feeling tragic ‘pity and fear’ beholding his end, although we are well

aware that his fall is to a great extent the result of his fallible personal choice: from a moral example of frailty

and corruption, Shakespeare elevates his protagonist into the sphere of tragic greatness.

Effectuating the rebirth of the tragic hero from the moral ruins of the romantic lover, he reinvents

Renaissance tragedy.

[4. EXCURSUS: JOHN DRYDEN’S “ALL FOR LOVE”, 1678]

The particularity of Shakespeare’s tragic vision in Antony and Cleopatra may be illuminated through a brief

comparison with a later work on the same theme, John Dryden’s well-acclaimed All for love. Or The World

Well Lost. <dias 13> As sometimes happens, this ‘lesser’ — though certainly not uninteresting or

unaccomplished — work, a free Restoration adaption of Shakespeare’s Egyptian play, highlights the structure

of its artistically superior precursor through small but significant shifts in emphasis.

Thus, stressing the ‘excellency’ of the story’s moral, that ‘our passions are, or ought to be, within our power’,

Dryden’s “Preface” at once directs attention to the moral substrate of Shakespeare’s play and suggests the

successor’s more rigid interpretation of the Antony and Cleopatra affair.

Though strongly dependent on the moral interpretation of the material, Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra

rose far above such easy moralization, in fact even deliberately countered it. This was, as I have shown,

principally due to its ingeniously dialectical representation of Antony’s permissiveness, which Dryden

officially adopts stating that his hero is neither too virtuous to suffer his fatal end nor too wicked to be

beyond tragic interest.

Yet, although the Aristotelian ‘middle course’ thus announced in the “Preface” seems to promise a dialectical

treatment of character challenging the proclaimed moral — that Antony and Cleopatra ‘got what they

deserved’ — such Shakespearean dialectic is not actually effectuated in the play proper.

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To the contrary, spelling out Antony and Cleopatra’s underlying Herculean conflict by making the General’s

Roman wife turn up in Alexandria with their daughters to quarrel with Cleopatra over his soul, All for Love

represents Antony as a near-to schizophrenic character who alternately poses as a frantic, deluded lover and

a repentant, self-reproaching sinner. <dias 14>

Torn between Pleasure and Virtue to the very last, Dryden’s Antony does not manifest the dialectic of

wickedness and virtue announced in the “Preface”, but rather appears as a dichotomic unity of conflicting

features and emotions, which contrasts conspicuously with the Shakespearean character’s unification of

moral opposites.

For reasons that I cannot explore here, but which surely relate to the development of the Restoration theatre

with its increased emphasis on the edifying function of drama and pertaining call for moral transparency, All

for Love thus does not achieve — does not aim at — the ambiguous synthesis of moral greatness and moral

weakness that ultimately qualified Antony and Cleopatra as a tragedy in the Aristotelian sense.

Emphatically separating moral judgment and empathy where the Shakespearean play seemed to challenge

any such distinction, and thus in effect impeding tragic katharsis, Dryden’s All for Love indirectly highlights

the merit of Shakespeare’s play as that of demonstrating the tragic interest of the all-too-human hero: that

grand, but exactly not perfect human being defamed by moral narrowmindedness of which Antony had

become the epitome. Raising the stakes, as it were, Shakespeare even transforms Renaissance neo-

Arostotelian tragedy by showing the tragic interest — not of the average human being who accidently falls

into error, but of the notorious sinner.