Cleopatra the Femme Fatale
The Fatal Cleopatra
• The fact that Cleopatra was fatal to Antony was a
commonplace even in the Augustan period. Octavian
declared war on Cleopatra and his propaganda
portrayed Antony as helplessly under the Queen's
spell.
• As we go forward in time, we have seen portrayals like
Dryden's in which Cleopatra is the cause of "The World
Well Lost."
• Cleopatra was always acknowledged as being fatal to
others as well. The tradition that she tested poisons on
condemned prisoners goes back to antiquity.
Reception
• It is in the Romantic period that Cleopatra's
cruelty and sexuality merge. The prime period for
killer Cleopatras was from the defeat of Napoleon
to the beginning of WWI, a time of peace in
which, as Freud notes "life is impoverished, it
loses in interest, when the highest stake in the
game of living, life itself, may not be risked." This
idea perhaps explains to some extent the
fascination with the vicarious danger offered by
stories of the fatal Cleopatra.
Pushkin
• In 1825, Alexander Pushkin revived a neglected
story that Cleopatra demanded a man's life as the
price for a night in her bed (and all of the killer
Cleopatras derive from this one ancient source,
the 4th c. AD historian Sextus Aurelius Victor who
includes this brief anecdote: "she was so lustful
that she often prostituted herself, and so
beautiful that many men paid with their lives for
a night with her."
• The story may have been canonical invective.
Diodorus says the same thing about Semiramis.
Alexander Pushkin, Egyptian Nights,
“Cleopatra”
At last the Queen pronounces, lifting
Her brow again, with cloudless gaze:
“Is not my love your dreamed-of treasure?
Well – you may buy such bliss divine.
Hear me! This night it is my pleasure
To grant you equal right to mine.
Behold the marketplace of passion!
For sale is now my love divine;
Who dares to barter in this fashion
His life against one night of mine?”
Thus she. All hearts are set aflutter
By passion blent with dreadful qualm.
To their abashed and doubtful mutter
She listens with a brazen calm.
Her scornful glances sweep the verges
Of her admirers’ silent throng …
There – of a sudden one emerges,
Two others follow soon along.
Their step is bold, their eyes unclouded;
The Queen arises to their stride;
Three nights are bought: the couch is shrouded
For deadly raptures at her side.
At last the Queen pronounces, lifting
Her brow again, with cloudless gaze:
“Is not my love your dreamed-of treasure?
Well – you may buy such bliss divine.
Hear me! This night it is my pleasure
To grant you equal right to mine.
Behold the marketplace of passion!
For sale is now my love divine;
Who dares to barter in this fashion
His life against one night of mine?”
Thus she. All hearts are set aflutter
By passion blent with dreadful qualm.
To their abashed and doubtful mutter
She listens with a brazen calm.
Her scornful glances sweep the verges
Of her admirers’ silent throng …
There – of a sudden one emerges,
Two others follow soon along.
Their step is bold, their eyes unclouded;
The Queen arises to their stride;
Three nights are bought: the couch is shrouded
For deadly raptures at her side.
Murderous Cleopatra
• Others even adapt the ancient tradition: in 1775 the
Italian playwright Vittorio Alfieri has Cleopatra kill
Antony so that she may more easily seduce Octavian,
demonstrating the ultimate cold and calculating pursuit
of self-preservation (or in another version she
deliberately causes the defeat at Actium to insure
Antony's allegiance).
• Alexandre Soumet in his Tragedie de Cleopatre (1824)
invents an episode in which Cleopatra murders Octavia
and terrorizes her son. This descent into general
mayhem not only departs from the ancient sources but
also radically changes the characterization of
Cleopatra, making her more of a villain than a powerful
individual pressed by extreme circumstances.
Cleopatra’s male victims
• These blatantly villainous Cleopatras tend to be
the exception. More often in the Romantic
period, Cleopatra's male victims long for their
own ruin.
• This idea, however, is no less shaped by misogyny
(although it is an oversimplification to say that
the femme fatale is simply a projection of
misogyny; rather it seems that undercurrents of
misogyny shape and more importantly give these
portrayals credence with the audience).
Cleopatra as a character
• The word character has 2 senses: in the dramatic
sense, a character in a play; in the moral sense, to
have character, to be moral
• We tend to assume that a character will have
consistency. As we saw with Shakespeare, this
does not necessarily apply to Cleopatra: she
defies definition; she is not one character but
many; she is a gendered figure who gives the lie
to gender or at least to the outmoded notions of
gender adhered to by the other characters in the
play.
Character analysis
• These fatal Cleopatras often are linked to
contemporary notions of and prejudices about
female roles. Heinrich Heine in 1891 in
“Shakespeare's Maidens and Women”:
– “It is a mistake to think that women when they betray
us have ceased to love. They only follow their inborn
nature: and if they will not empty the forbidden cup,
they like at least a sip from it, or lick the brim just to
see what poison tastes like. ... Yes, this Cleopatra is a
woman in the blessedest and cursedest sense of the
word! ... [Cleopatra was one of those wives who]
torment and bless their titular spouses with love.”
The female perspective
• Contemporary society however has another influence on how
Cleopatra is seen: the growing feminist movement provides a
model for Cleopatra in the woman who asserts her
independence by refusing to marry. A biographical dictionary
(1844) betrays this anxiety:
– “[Cleopatra's worst failing was that] she never learnt to see her
own glory in that of the object of her choice; she persisted in
placing herself first, before her beloved, and that, in a woman, is a
serious fault.”
• In a novel by Rider Haggard, Cleopatra calls marriage "the iron
link of enforced, unchanging union" and exclaims "Marriage! I
to marry! I to forget freedom and court the worst slavery of
our sex!"
– This is quite a departure from the Cleopatra's we have seen in
Dryden and Shakespeare who may say that they do not want the
status of wife but in fact long for it.
Cleopatra and gender
• Despite sexist readings, the fatal Cleopatra is more
complex. She is an ambiguous image, as much desired as
she is feared.
• Gautier describes Cleopatra thus as she has each lover
killed after a night of passion: "Sublime cruelty! ... Great
sensualist, how well you knew human nature, and what
profound wisdom there is in this barbarous act!”
• A Freudian interpretation suggests further gender-bending:
perhaps the men in these relationships, given their
masochistic desires are placed in a "female" situation of
desiring to be the passive partner.
• Generally, however, the fatal Cleopatra is loved despite
(and indeed because of) her antisocial qualities, loved by
the characters who play opposite her and by the authors
and artists who portray her.
Swinburne, “Cleopatra” (1866)
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• And soft as dew on a soft night.
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• IV.
• As if the very eyes of love
• Shone through her shutting lids, and
stole
• The slow looks of a snake or dove;
• As if her lids absorbed the whole
II.
Her great curled hair makes luminous • Of love, her soul the soul thereof.
Her cheeks, her lifted throat and chin. •
• V.
Shall she not have the hearts of us
• Lost, all the lordly pearls that were
To shatter, and the loves therein
• Wrung from the sea’s heart, from the
To shed between her fingers thus?
green
I.
Her mouth is fragrant as a vine,
A vine with birds in all its boughs;
Serpent and scarab for a sign
Between the beauty of her brows
And the amorous deep lids divine.
III.
Small ruined broken strays of light,
Pearl after pearl she shreds them
through
• Her long sweet sleepy fingers, white
• As any pearl’s heart veined with blue,
Swinburne, “Cleopatra” (1866)
• Coasts of the Indian gulf-river;
• Lost, all the loves of the world – so
keen
• Towards this queen for love of her.
•
• VI
• You see against her throat the small
• Sharp glittering shadows of them
shake;
• And through her hair the imperial
• Curled likeness of the river snake,
• Whose bite shall make an end of all.
•
• VII
• Through the scales sheathing him like
wings,
• Through hieroglyphs of gold and gem,
• The strong sense of her beauty stings,
• Like a keen pulse of love in them,
• A running flame through all his rings.
•
• VIII
• Under those low large lids of hers
• She hath the histories of all time;
• The fruit of foliage-stricken years;
• The old seasons with their heavy
chime
• That leaves its rhyme in the world’s
ears.
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• IX
• She sees the heart of death made bare,
• The ravelled riddle of the skies,
• The faces faded that were fair,
• The mouths made speechless that were
wise,
• The hollow eyes and dusty hair;
Swinburne, “Cleopatra” (1866)
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The shape and shadow of mystic things,
Things that fate fashions or forbids;
The staff of time-forgotten kings
Whose name falls off the Pyramids,
Their coffin-lids and grave-clothings.
XI
Dank dregs, the scum of pool or clod,
God-spawn of lizard-footed clans,
And those dog-headed hulks that trod
Swart necks of the old Egyptians,
Raw draughts of man’s beginning God;
XII
The poised hawk, quivering ere he smote,
With plume-like gems on breast and back;
The asps and water-worms afloat
Between the rush-flowers moist and slack;
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The cat’s warm black bright rising throat.
XIII
The purple days of drouth expand
Like a scroll opened out again;
The molten heaven drier than sand,
The hot red heaven without rain,
Sheds iron pain on the empty land.
XIV
All Egypt aches in the sun’s sight;
The lips of men are harsh for drouth,
The fierce air leaves their cheeks burnt white,
Charred by the bitter blowing south,
Whose dusty mouth is sharp to bite.
XV
All this she dreams of, and her eyes
Are wrought after the sense hereof.
Swinburne, “Cleopatra” (1866)
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There is no heart in her for sighs;
The face of her is more than love A name above the Ptolemies.
XVI
Her great grave beauty covers her
As that sleek spoil beneath her feet
Clothed once the anointed soothsayer;
The hallowing is gone forth from it
Now, made unmeet for priests to wear.
XVII
She treads on gods and god-like things,
On fate and fear and life and death,
On hate that cleaves and love that clings,
All that is brought forth of man’s breath
And perisheth with what it brings.
XVIII
She holds her future close, her lips
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Hold fast the face of things to be;
Actium, and sound of war that dips
Down the blown valleys of the sea,
Far sails that flee, and storms of ships;
XIX
The laughing red sweet mouth of wine
At ending of life’s festival;
That spice of cerecloths, and the fine
White bitter dust funereal
Sprinkled on all things for a sign;
XX
His face, who was and was not he,
In whom, alive, her life abode;
The end, when she gained heart to see
Those ways of death wherein she trod,
Goddess by god, with Antony.
Frederick Sandys, “Cleopatra” (1866)
Swinburne on Michelangelo’s drawing
of Cleopatra
• “The subtle and sublime idea
which transforms her death by
the aspic's bite into a meeting of
serpents which recognize and
embrace, an encounter
between the woman and the
worm of the Nile, almost as
though this match for death
were a monstrous love-match ...
so closely do the snake and the
queen of snakes caress and
cling. ... For what indeed is
lovelier or more luxuriously
loving than a strong and
graceful snake of the nobler
kind?”
Michelangelo, “Cleopatra” (1553-1554)
Killer Cleopatras: Conclusions
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As for the character of these killer-Cleopatras: they are untamed and animal-like in that
they seem to rely on natural instincts, however taboo, and to be incapable of emotions
such as tenderness and pity. These Cleopatras often condemn their victims to death and
then disregard the sacrifice, in some accounts being to busy to watch the execution or,
as in the Cabanel painting, watching but remaining aloof. There, she seems consumed by
boredom and not even the drama of life and death can stimulate her senses. Ironically,
she represents for her victims what she cannot attain for herself.
We have seen the Cleopatra in the Middle Ages who became great when she killed
herself. In the Romantic period Cleopatra offered men the opportunity to prove their
own greatness by allowing themselves to be killed by her.
Cabanel, “Cleopatra”
(1887)
Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra
Shaw’s Prologue
• Spoken by the god Ra
– Subject: old Rome and new Rome
• Pompey the soldier represents old Rome: military achievement is the way to
virtue
• Caesar represents the new Rome: "any man with wit enough could become
what he would"; Caesar was a politician
• Caesar broke the law of old Rome and Pompey upheld it: civil war resulted
• Oppositions:
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Old rome/new rome
Mankind/gods
Pompey/Caesar
Old england/New England
• Moral: beware if you are the type who would like to be Pompey
• Ra mocks the audience and frustrates their expectations: if they have come for
a tale of an unchaste woman they will be disappointed because Cleopatra is still
a child and the play will tell them the story of Caesar for the good of their souls.
– What kind of comment on Shakespeare is this dismissive treatment of Cleopatra?
– What about the characterization of Cleopatra? Will she grow up to be
Shakespeare's Cleopatra?
Shaw: Background
• b. 1856 Dublin
• Shaw became a socialist disciple: he was the
force behind the Fabian Society founded in 1884
(a middle class socialist group that aimed at the
transformation of English society not through
revolution but through "permeation" [Sidney
Webb's tem] of the nation's intellectual and
political life).
• Permeation: attempting to push through Fabian
policies by converting persons of power and
influence irrespective of their political affiliations
• Through the Fabians Shaw assisted in the birth of
the Labour Party in 1893
• Labour Party: major democratic socialist party in
Britain since early in the 20th c. Historical links
with trade unions led it to promote an active role
for the state in the creation of economic
prosperity and the provision of social services.
George Bernard Shaw
Shaw as literary and cultural critic
• He also carried on a campaign to displace the artificialities and
hypocrisies of the Victorian stage with a theater of vital ideas. It
required the unmasking of "Bardolatry" as Shaw described the
pompous and reverential portrayal of Shakespeare whom he admired
beyond all other dramatists but whose words he insisted were not holy
writ but only lines for players to speak. It required a contemporary
drama of wit and substance to replace the melodramas and farces
which were the staple of the commercial theater but other than the
comedies of Wilde and the dramas of Ibsen there was little around
which Shaw could rally.
• To the outside world he was ruthless as a critic, devastating in wit,
irreverent about people, careless of feelings, impudent toward
convention, iconoclastic toward institutions, hyperbolic for effect, coldblooded about politics
• Perhaps we can see in Shaw 2 new Englands--the one that was
emerging (British empire) and the vision Shaw championed (socialist)
Caesar and Cleopatra
• Written 1898; performed 1901
• Shaw's first attempt at a play of Shakespearean scope for a heroic
actor
• By choosing a 16 year old Cleopatra rather than the 38 year old
temptress of Antony and a Caesar in Egypt who has not yet been
enticed into the domestic demagoguery against which Brutus
reacts, Shaw seemingly evades the "better than Shakespear?"
challenge of his preface
• His feline Cleopatra however is a logical precursor to Shakespeare's
voluptuous one and Shaw's aging Caesar (as much philosopher as
soldier in this mentor-disciple play) is meant to be a study in
credible magnanimity and original morality rather than a
superhuman hero on a stage pedestal: in Shaw's words a hero "in
whom we can recognize our own humanity"
• Caesar and Cleopatra is a serio-comic chronicle play which rises to
prose-poetic eloquence and wisdom; it may be the best theatrical
work written in English in the 19th c.
Other ways of seeing the play
• Caesar and Cleopatra can also be seen as a military
melodrama that asks us to think about violence and justice
• Also a religious allegory dramatizing the conflict between
Old Testament and New Testament morality
• Even the exotic setting is part of the pattern: where
unpleasant plays conjure the gloom of city slums and
pleasant plays conjure the sunshine of parks, the plays for
puritans take place on remote imperial frontiers where
what passes for civilization clashes with what is
conventionally regarded as barbarism
• Egypt under Roman occupation becomes a proving ground
for the conflict between the subhuman and superhuman
elements in man's nature
Shaw and heroism
• We see Shaw attempting to define his idea of heroism
• The popular view of Caesar in Anglo-Saxon countries is
a hostile one: Caesar as a usurping tyrant who seized
political power for selfish ends (Plutarch and
Shakespeare, Lucan too)
• But there is a heroic view also (Dante has Brutus share
with Judas a place in the jaws of Satan)
• Plutarch: Caesar as a great subversive who plotted to
overthrow the Roman Republic but Plutarch makes him
a great man
• Shakespeare's Julius Caesar however is a petty selfglorifier while Brutus is exalted
Shaw and Politics
• Shaw saw himself as a Republican in that he preferred the American and
French systems of government to the feudalism of prewar Russia, Germany
and Austria
• Caesar's remark: "were Rome a True republic then were Caesar the first of
republicans"
• Shaw's admiration of Caesar is not at odds with his democratic socialism
• Caesar's championing of the populace against the patricians in the class war
made him anathema to Lucan, Suetonius, and Shakespeare but the 19th c.
historiographers reacting against the aristocratic feudalism hailed Caesar as
the long overdue reformer of an outmoded constitution
• Hence the admiration of Caesar in Goethe, Hegel, Mommsen
• Shaw's play is permeated with Mommsen's anti-aristocratic and anticonstitutional point of view
• The soldier's prologue ridicules the snobbish pretensions of the royal guard
whose class prejudices and chivalric code limit their effectiveness as fighters
• The Ra prologue in its devastating judgment of Pompey echoes the scorn
Mommsen pours on the legalism and political myopia of pomp
• Shaw further extends the criticism to Egypt's rulers
Caesar’s Rome and Imperialist England
• For Roman historian Warde Fowler, Julius Caesar and
the foundation of the Roman imperial system show
how Roman capitalism had by Caesar's day spread
from Italy to the whole Mediterranean world
• For Fowler, Caesar's greatest achievement was the
replacement of a self seeking city oligarchy by a
genuine imperial system providing the foundation for
modern civilization
• This idea lies behind the Ra prologue
• The Egyptian god represents the zeitgeist or spirit of
the time and castigates modern Britain for following
way of Rome at home and abroad and hails Caesar as
one man who has risen above the level of exploiters to
grasp the necessity for change.
Shaw’s Caesar and Evolution
• Shaw's Caesar is not a reformer of codes but a man who
has outgrown them; he stands for evolutionary progress (cf.
Darwin reference in Caesar description at end of play)
• Shaw on Caesar's writings in “Notes”
– "they reveal some of his qualities just as the voyage of a
naturalist round the world reveals some of Darwin's without
expressing his private personality.”
• Caesar wrote books of travel and campaign histories in a
style so impersonal that he refers to himself in the third
person. They reveal some of his qualities just as the Voyage
of a Naturalist Round the World reveals some of Darwin's,
without expressing his private personality.
• Doing what he wants to do he serves humanity or as Shaw
puts it "having virtue he has no need of goodness"
Caesar: Good or Bad?
• We could see Shaw's Caesar as a plunderer, destroyer of
national freedom, tyrant, condoner of incest, reveler, hypocrite,
dandy, and in the library burning episode a soldier callously
indifferent to literature and history, a type of anti-Christ
• But: it would be equally easy on the basis of his paternal
kindness, freedom from resentment, horror of treachery,
devotion to followers, and paraphrase of the sermon on the
mount to make him a type of Christ
• Shaw is not trying to establish one or the other as the true
Caesar but to show that this kind of moralizing is childish name
calling whose categories any clever writer can invert at will
• But Caesar is like Nietzsche's great man: he has a loneliness in
his heart neither praise nor blame can reach, courage even for
unholy means
• Loneliness expressed in Caesar's opening soliloquy
Rome vs. Egypt
• In Shaw's play Caesar stands for humanity in
its highest development and Cleopatra for
untamed natural passion
• Aggressive and greedy Romans are likened to
monsters, bulls and dogs
• Feminine and treacherous Egyptians are
catlike and snakelike
Cleopatra on Egyptians…
• CLEOPATRA: My greatgrandmother's greatgrandmother was a
black kitten of the
sacred white cat; and
the river Nile made
her his seventh wife.
That is why my hair is
so wavy. And I always
want to be let do as I
like, no matter
whether it is the will of
the gods or not: that is
because my blood is
made with Nile water.
“Caesar and Cleopatra” (1945) starring Vivien Leigh
And Claude Rains
…And Romans
• CLEOPATRA: Oh, they would
eat us if they caught us.
They are barbarians. Their
chief is called Julius Caesar.
His father was a tiger and
his mother a burning
mountain; and his nose is
like an elephant's trunk.
[Caesar involuntarily rubs
his nose]. They all have long
noses, and ivory tusks, and
little tails, and seven arms
with a hundred arrows in
each; and they live on
human flesh.
Caesar’s Character
• Caesar is kind to Romans and Egyptians but it is the sort of kindness
you show another species
• Shaw's and Shakespeare's Caesar are simply 2 different men though
their Cleopatras are recognizably the same woman
• Shaw's point: Cleopatra's temperament was formed at early age
since it is a kind of arrested development
• Shaw goes beyond Shakespeare in emphasizing Cleopatra's
murderous and sadistic side because of Shaw's attempt to present
what might be called the dynastic view of Cleopatra
• Historically Ptolemaic kings and queens showed brutality in
disposing of relatives close to the throne and Shaw seems to have
thought Cleopatra a typical Ptolemy in this respect
• After Caesar influences her she changes only her external manner.
In a deeper sense he has not influenced her and she remains
ambivalent towards him wanting his fatherly approval but also
longing to be free of his paternal surveillance
Shaw’s Caesar
• In Shaw, Egypt is real and Rome a
fantasy world, refuting Shakespeare's
portrayal of Alexandria as a fantasy
world
• And Caesar is a species unto himself
• CAESAR: Sphinx, you and I, strangers to
the race of men, are no strangers to
one another: have I not been
conscious of you and of this place
since I was born? Rome is a madman's
dream: this is my Reality. These starry
lamps of yours I have seen from afar in
Gaul, in Britain, in Spain, in Thessaly,
signaling great secrets to some eternal
sentinel below, whose post I never
could find.
What is Caesar?
• So if he isn't Roman, Egyptian, even man at all, or
accessible through his words, what is he?
• Something entirely new: like Shakespeare's Antony, Shaw's
Caesar doesn't fit in at Rome or Egypt
• Old and new apply to Rome and Egypt and to England as
well and also align with the Old and New Testaments
• CAESAR: Can Rome do less that slay these slayers, too, to
shew the world how Rome avenges her sons and her honor.
And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder,
always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the
gods are tired of blood and create a race that can
understand.
Uniqueness of Shaw’s Caesar
• How is Shaw's Caesar different from those we have seen?
• Politically
• In Caesar and Cleopatra Shaw is preoccupied with
questions of just and good leadership
• Influenced by Shaw's own politics
• He believed that the human species had not evolved
perceptively within historic time and that civilization had
reached the point at which empires have always broken
down; the British empire was showing signs of breaking
down because the management of the empire overtaxed
the political capacity of it's human units
• The remedy: a new sort of man (can be taken as an
argument for eugenics)
Shaw vs. Shakespeare
• Caesar and Cleopatra was one of "three puritan plays"
• Shaw objected to making sexual infatuation a tragic theme and to the
glorification of immoral behavior
• A major motive for the play: the feeling of the inadequacy of
Shakespeare's dramatization of Julius Caesar and at the same time Caesar
and Cleopatra was penned as a protest vs. Antony and Cleopatra.
• From the preface:
– Shakespear's Antony and Cleopatra must needs be as intolerable to the true
Puritan as it is vaguely distressing to the ordinary healthy citizen because after
giving a faithful picture of the soldier broken down by debauchery and the
typical wanton in whose arms such men perish, Shakespear finally strains all
his huge command of rhetoric and stage pathos to give a theatrical sublimity
to the wretched end of the business, and to persuade foolish spectators that
the world was well lost by the twain.
• Of course it was Dryden who said the world was well lost but Shaw takes
issue with Shakespeare's foregrounding of romantic love by not showing a
specifically sexual relationship between Caesar and Cleopatra and ignoring
Caesar's reputation as a womanizer, Cleopatra's visit to Rome, and
Caesarion
Shaw and Reception
• Shaw was aware of his own status as a receiver of the tale of
Cleopatra, that his perspective was shaped by his own historical
context
• From the preface: "and the playgoer may reasonably ask to
have historical events and persons presented to him in the light
of his own time, even though Homer and Shakespear have
already shewn them in the light of their time. For example,
Homer presented Achilles and Ajax as heroes to the world in
the Iliad. In due time came Shakespear, who said, virtually: I
really cannot accept this spoilt child and this brawny fool as
great men merely because Homer flattered them in playing to
the Greek gallery. Consequently we have in Troilus and Cressida
the verdict of Shakespear's epoch…on the pair. This did not in
the least involve any pretense on Shakespear's part to be a
greater poet than Homer."
Shakes vs. Shav (1949)
• Shaw even wrote script for a
puppet play to go with puppets of
himself and Shakespeare sent to
him by the greatest puppet master
of the time.
• The 2 playwrights confront each
other and gently challenge the
greatness of each other's works.
Shaw reaffirms his evolutionary
optimism in the face of
Shakespeare's alleged pessimism.
They even debate each other's lines
as in Aristophanes' Frogs
• There are specific echoes of Antony
and Cleopatra throughout Caesar
and Cleopatra