Antony & Cleopatra - BBC Shakespeare Collection [1981] [DVD]

That is a major play, and it is rendered as such. Shakespeare insists particularly on the political dimension of the soldier and on the military dimension of the politician. A soldier needs a woman he loves to support him fully. Any doubt he may feel in this support will crush him down into indecision and will make him go to defeat, make him defeat himself. In fact we can even wonder if love is warranted for a soldier, except the love of the immediate subordinates who are in the Greek tradition the real boost of the heart of a warrior. It appears clearly in this play, at the end, when Antony asks Eros to do what he has sworn to do in his compact with him when he was hired: kill the general when he is close to defeat so that he won't face defeat. This means this young man would become the murderer of the general and would be put to death in the most horrible way, but that's the price to pay for the love of the general, for the privilege of loving and being loved by the general. But the love of or the love for a woman when it becomes a passion is dangerous for the general and his success. It should be kept away. As for the politician love does not even exist. A politician, is supposed to have a wife and children but love is out of the question because politics is all but love and it may even require that you put to death the very woman you love and are married to. In politics there is no sentiment, no emotion, no faithfulness. It is only treachery and a traitor's land or should I say marsh or even pit. So Antony can lose one wife. He remarries straight away with the sister of his main antagonistic associate, Caesar himself. But it is not love. It will not be consumed, or hardly. It is only a necessary circumstantial union. This play shows that marvelously. But it shows something else. On one side the lover, infatuated in his mistress. On the other side the politician who is constantly seeing treachery in his mistress. Every single time she yawns or sighs Antony sees some political innuendo, underground meaning, some dagger swerving in his back ready to sheath itself between his ribs and vertebrae. And the general is literally destroyed in his leadership by this impossible constant doubt to the point of losing two battles one after the other. The question remains open whether Cleopatra pulled her vessels out of the battle twice with any intention or just out of incompetence and negligence. Did she have a pact of some kind with Caesar? I am afraid there is a deeper and worse meaning. The "triple pillar of the world" that is Rome with power divided among three men is not feasible and things have to be simplified and power reduced to one man. The elimination of two of these three will enable then, as Caesar says, a true unification of the Roman world in peace: "the three-nooked world shall bear the olive freely." The charm of that "shall" that will bring peace under the sole authority and will of one man who will bring that issue out through war and the defeat and death of the other two. And then "the triple turned whore" that Cleopatra is, is the other side of that triple fate, the reflection of the triple pillar and its fate to be destroyed and replaced by a single pillar. And then Eros who is "thrice nobler than myself", as Antony says, becomes clear: Eros killing himself in front of his master instead of accepting to be the murderer of his master for the sole sake of love becomes a direct accusation leveled against and at Antony: you are a coward who cannot even kill himself, and anyway I will not survive this moment since I will be put to death no matter whether I survive alone or you survive along with me. I will be the pet of the general everyone will torture to death in front of the general that no one will dare put to death in public, only in a back alley after the triumph. And the conclusion is clear, as clear can be when it is said, and it does not matter who says it: "Patience is sottish and impatience does become a dog that's mad?" Note the "does" that makes this verb "become" the synonym of "fit" or "suit" or "match". And the noblest part of this play is the mysterious, slightly ironical but long discourse of the Nile peasant that brings the two "worms". His heavy repetition of the word makes it sound like some kind of tolling bell that suspends the end and makes us mad with impatience. And there is the mad dog. We are the beast staring and tom-peeping at that intimate scene of total defeat and deconstruction. A good experience, maybe just one iota too expansive and vocal. Some reserve and modest discretion might have served the depth of the message a little bit better.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID