The End of Politics in Antony and Cleopatra

• In Event: Interpreting Shakespeare as a Political Thinker: The Achievements of David Lowenthal and Paul Cantor

Abstract

For both Paul Cantor and David Lowenthal, “Antony and Cleopatra” was a magnificent play that portrays the tragic end of the Roman republic and, hence, the end of political life, in Rome itself and the wide world it governed. For Cantor, “Antony and Cleopatra” is the conclusion to Shakespeare’s Roman trilogy, the final blow to the ancient model of manly heroism once represented by the now dissipated and declining Antony, a shell of his former self and the end to a world in which the people and the nobles balanced political power and practice among themselves and between the classes to maintain some semblance of civic life. Instead, the Rome of “Antony and Cleopatra” is that of a sterile administrative state, managed by one imperial ruler, with no room for competing claims to glory. Lowenthal’s published treatment of the play is briefer, but his concern is with the transition from the focus on public life in the early Roman plays to the private, from the pagan to the Christian. This transition, he argues, Shakespeare illustrates through a series of betrayals, Antony of Cleopatra, Cleopatra of Antony, Enobarbus of Antony, and which represent the way in which private love has taken the place of privilege of the political in the lives of the Romans, even for a great Roman hero like Mark Antony. For both Cantor and Lowenthal, “Antony and Cleopatra” represents Shakespeare’s treatment of the end of the ancient world and the advent of the influence of the modern and Christianity.

Author

• Carol McNamara, SCETL, Arizona State University