Anthony and Cleopatra: ‘Age Cannot Wither Her, Nor Custom Stale Her Infinite Variety’

**Philip Rowe** (0:10)
Welcome to The History Of European Theatre podcast, and thanks for joining me on this journey through millennia of theatrical history. Episode 221, Anthony and Cleopatra. Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.
Last time I took you into the world of the court mask, with the help of Kristen Macdermott, who I think you will agree, painted a very detailed picture of that very particular theatrical form, and the way the Stuart court embraced it. As we heard, masks were often written by playwrights and performed by actors, who also wrote and performed for the public playhouses, so it's no surprise that a few plays feature masks. We've already encountered short masks in Much Ado About Nothing and Timon of Athens, and the best known example from The Tempest is still to come. And Shakespeare's next offering, Anthony and Cleopatra would, you might think, have been another opportunity to include a mask featuring exotic characters to add to the glamorous setting.
Although in fact Shakespeare chose not to include a mask specifically, we can see that he was using the attributes of the mask throughout the play. It's as if the mask at this time was pervading the theatrical scene and was a useful tool for the playwright. Both Cleopatra and Anthony adopt mythological personas, just as courtiers did when they performed in a mask. Cleopatra manifests the goddess Venus and Anthony is likened to Hercules. Their lives are extremely performative and they know it. Not for the first time, Shakespeare presents very self-consciously theatrical characters who are part of a visual spectacle. In the playhouses, that spectacle never reached the scale it did at court, but such scenes of pomp and grandeur are visualised, as in this famous description of Cleopatra's barge in act two, scene two, given by Enno Barbas, a character who is close to a chorus in the play.
The barge she sat in like a burnished throne burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold, purple were the sails, and so perfumed that the winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes. For her own person it beggared all description. She did lie in her pavilion cloth of gold, of tissue, or picturing that Venus were, we see, that fancy outwork nature. On each side of her stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids, with diverse coloured fans, whose wind did seem to glow the delicate cheeks which they did call, and what they undid did.
And that is only the first part of the description, but surely it's a description of just how such a scene would have been presented in a court mask, with Inigo Jones working his magic to make the barge come to life. But in the play, Shakespeare's scope and intent went further than just honouring his king, and presenting as spectacular as Johnson and the others did in masks. But before we get to all of that, here are the hard facts about the play.
With no contemporary references to early performances, dating Antony and Cleopatra is difficult. But most scholars agree on 1606 as the most likely date, although some have argued for as early as 1603 or 1604 The play is thought of as very different stylistically from its near companions, King Lear and Macbeth, a fact that has actually helped in the dating. Echoes of Shakespeare's version of the Antony and Cleopatra story have been detected in Samuel Daniel's play Cleopatra, which was published in 1607, and in a play called The Devil's Charter by Barnaby Barnes, which is known to have been acted by the King's Men in February 1607 So if this is correct, then Shakespeare's version must have been seen by the public by 1606 at the latest.
The play was registered with the Stationer's Office in May 1608, but there was no printed edition before its inclusion in the first folio in 1623 Study of the folio, which has shown apparent errors, like characters entering scenes and then playing no part in the action, or out-of-place speech prefixes, suggests that the printing is based on Shakespeare's foul papers, rather than a prompt book copy, which would have eliminated this sort of error. Hence, the text is considered a good, authoritative one.
As with Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's primary source is Plutarch's Life of Mark Antony, in a translation by Thomas North that was published in 1579 Shakespeare takes the story that Plutarch describes as happening over a decade and compresses the action considerably, as well as making a few other changes for dramatic effect.
The play is comprised of 40 scenes, more than he used in any other play. This is due to the way the action moves between several locations Alexandria, Italy, Sicily, Syria and Athens in the main, but also other parts of Egypt and the Roman Republic. The rapid scene changes give a sense of great fluidity in the play, with even the longer scenes having a sense of montage about them, as one set piece follows onto another. Although not popular with all critics, the swift movement between scenes helps to build the dramatic tension. And give a sense that these events although driven by highly personal relationships between the three main protagonists have world changing consequences.