Antony and Cleopatra: And there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.’

 

CLEOPATRA

Noblest of men, woo’t die?
Hast thou no care of me? shall I abide
In this dull world, which in thy absence is
No better than a sty? O, see, my women,
MARK ANTONY dies

The crown o’ the earth doth melt. My lord!
O, wither’d is the garland of the war,
The soldier’s pole is fall’n: young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.

I am rereading Antony and Cleopatra. It is utterly compelling to read and exercises a hypnotic power over the audience/reader, not least because of the  multifaceted , multiple  perspective through which we engage with  the two protagonists.   This sophisticated and most  challenging perspective, makes our reading of either Anthony or Cleopatra both  difficult and exciting:  for at any one moment, we harbour conflicting views towards them;   as they move inside and outside of themselves.

In the famous scene above. Anthony has just died in Cleopatra’s arms. Romantic grief is palpable ‘ the crown o’the earth doth melt’  but so realistically, is self love.’Hast thou no care of me?’ Cleopatra the bereaved lover is also still Cleopatra the egotistical , attention seeking, ever theatrical Queen of Egypt , ‘deserted’ by the death of her lover Anthony! So in this scene we encounter both versions of ‘being’ Cleopatra and they are both deeply and convincingly  affecting as their coincidence reveals the duality of human nature. Cleopatra is ever fascinating because of this conflict, this coincidence. She cannot help but view herself grieving even when she is so upset. She is not false, she is fallibly herself:  authentically contradictory- ‘shall I abide in this dull world which in thy absence is no better than a sty?’  YOU have consigned me to this misery by YOUR dying…your greatness dwarfs everything, consigns what remains to a ‘sty’ BUT my first thought is of myself…

And on she processes her loss…

For who  can resist the utter truth of the final declaration of Cleopatra, ‘And there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon’? The grief of Cleopatra synthesizes with her own self identity. The ‘great’ , the ‘remarkable’ are now overtaken by the banal. Heroism eschewed for bureaucracy. The ‘time’ of the great characters has now been overtaken by the likes of Augustus Caesar; bathetic diminishment  leaves no room for the ‘remarkable.’

This palpable sense of emptiness and desolation anticipates Cleopatra’s inevitable suicide. Who is great enough to   to share the world she once conquered? No one.