Caesar and Cleopatra

Bernard Shaw
Caesar and Cleopatra is a play written in 1898 by George Bernard Shaw that depicts a
fictionalized account of the relationship between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.
Shaw wanted to prove that it was not love but politics that drew Cleopatra to Julius
Caesar. He sees the Roman occupation of ancient Egypt as similar to the British occupation that
was occurring during his time. Caesar understands the importance of good government, and
values these things above art and love.
Caesar and Cleopatra opens as Caesar’s armies arrive in Egypt to conquer the ancient
divided land for Rome. Caesar meets the young Cleopatra crouching at night between the paws
of a sphinx, where—having been driven from Alexandria—she is hiding. He returns her to the
palace, reveals his identity, and compels her to abandon her girlishness and accept her position
as coruler of Egypt (with Ptolemy Dionysus, her brother). Caesar and Cleopatra was
extraordinarily successful, largely because of Shaw’s talent for characterization.
A second theme, apparent both from the text of the play itself and from Shaw's lengthy
notes after the play, is Shaw's belief that people have not been morally improved by civilization
and technology.A line from the prologue clearly illustrates this point. The god Ra addresses the
audience and says, "ye shall marvel, after your ignorant manner, that men twenty centuries ago
were already just such as you, and spoke and lived as ye speak and live, no worse and no better,
no wiser and no sillier."
Another theme is the value of clemency. Caesar remarks that he will not stoop to
vengeance when confronted with Septimius, the murderer of Pompey. Caesar throws away
letters that would have identified his enemies in Rome, instead choosing to try to win them to
his side. Pothinus remarks that Caesar doesn't torture his captives. At several points in the play,
Caesar lets his enemies go instead of killing them. The wisdom of this approach is revealed
when Cleopatra orders her nurse to kill Pothinus because of his "treachery and disloyalty" (but
really because of his insults to her). This probably contrasts with historical fact. The murder
enrages the Egyptian crowd, and but for Mithridates' reinforcements would have meant the
death of all the protagonists. Caesar only endorses the retaliatory murder of Cleopatra's nurse
because it was necessary and humane.
Cleopatra was only sixteen when Caesar went to Egypt; but in Egypt sixteen is a riper
age than it is in England. The childishness I have ascribed to her, as far as it is childishness of
character and not lack of experience, is not a matter of years.

Caesar is one of the best brain children of Shaw. Caesar and Cleopatrais purely an anti-
romantic comedy. In this play Shaw tries to establish the principle that passion in its various
aspects must be disciplined and controlled by reason. He presents Caesar as a man of practical
wisdom, a man of reconciliation and a man who is master of his mind.
The central theme of the play ‘Caesar & Cleopatra’ is the wickedness and futility of
revenge. Shaw’s aim was neither to present Cleopatra as an immortal lover nor to idealise
Caesar a mighty warrior and the conqueror of the world. Shaw’sCaesar is tired of war. As an
iconoclast, Shaw wants to break the idealism on war and revenge. So he presents Caesar as a
man of clemency and a messenger of the Life Force.
As he does in his other plays, Shaw uses his sword against sentimentalism, revenge and
romantic illusions on war.Shaw tries to give Caesar the justice that Shakespeare denied him.
He makes deviations from history in order to project him as the greatest man that ever lived.
History tells us and Shakespeare supports it that Caesar fell a preyto the charms of Cleopatra,
the serpent – queen of the Nile. But Shaw ignores these facts to project Caesar’s greatness as a
man and this makes Caesar and Cleoptra’an anti-romantic comedy.Shaw’s Caesar is bold and
anti romantic. He is not infatuated with Cleopatra. Caesar transforms her. He makes her a real
queen from a timid teen-aged girl. She becomes as woman, ‘from a kitten to a cat.’ Caesar
shows the characteristics of Fabianism . He is against revenge. In the climax of the play in
Act.IV,he expresses ‘ murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and
peace, until the gods are fired of blood and create a race that can understand.” Shaw’s plea for
an evolutionary change is revealed here.Like Bluntchli in ‘Arms and the Man’, Caesar
expresses Shaw’s anti-idealism.In the end of act two of the play, Caesar speaks to Cleopatra,
‘No, Cleopatra, Noman goes to battle to be killed’. Caesar is against killing. He never accepts
the killing of Pompy by Lucius. As Shaw tells in his notes on Caesar, “Caesar is greater off the
battle field than on it”.In the fourth act of the drama, Caesar clearly proves that he is the
spokesman of Shaw Caesar and Cleopatra are more as symbols of opposing standards ofconduct
than as persons that they stay in memory. He is the instruments of the‘Life Force’.Caesar is not
romantic before Cleopatra. She wants to use Caesar to terminate her enemies. But Caesar is not
so. Cleopatra is only a foil to Caesar.Shaw stresses on the genius of Caesar and not on the
beauty of Cleopatra.

"Caesar and Cleopatra":

- the 20th century literature is characterized by a rebirth of dramatic interest both in
Great Britain and in the United States. In England the influence of Ibsen made itself strongly
felt in the problem plays of G.B. Shaw and in the realism of John Galsworthy and Somerset
Maugham. T.S. Eliot revived and enriched the verse drama, John Osborne expressed the
rebellious attitude of the "Angry Young Men" in Look Back in Anger. Eugene O'Neill,
Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller gave America a serious drama, with modern features,
influenced by the European experiments.
- the modern "drama of ideas" is exemplified in the plays of Ibsen, Shaw, Galswworthy,
and many others. The problem plays represent in dramatic form a general social problem, a
philosofic idea, shown as it is confronted by or must be solved by the protagonist.
- Shaw's plays are conflicts of ideas and his characters prime reason for existence is to
put forward these ideas. His heroes were often created as mothpieces for the playwright's ideas.
They tend to make a lot of witty, intellectual speeches through which Shaw's ideas are conveyed
to the audience.
- the true subject of a debate drama being an idea, the events in the plot are less
important. Shaw said about his plots: "Shavian plots are as silly as Shakespearean plots and,
like Shakespeare's they are all stolen from other writers".
the innovatory technique is based on reversal: Shaw takes a familiar theatrical type or
situation and reverses it so that his audience is forced to reassess things radically. In Caesar and
Cleopatra Shaw reverses the traditional view on the two legendary characters. His Caesar has
no trace of heroism and grandeur. He loos like an old gentleman, a well-educated member of
the English middle-class, endowed with a sense of dry humour. Cleopatra, the glamorous,
ambitious and clever Queen of Egypt, appears in Shaw's play as a rather common, timid young
girl who has nothing from the majistic figure of the legendary queen.
-in Shaw's plays paradox is the most important comical device.
Shaw's reinterpretation of history:
 Shaw's historical plays deglamorize history, underlining the discrepancy between the
legend surrounding historical personalities and the reality that lies beneath the "myth". The
technique of reversal functions with great comic effect when applied to famous historical
characters like Caesar and Cleopatra. Caesar, far from being a heroic figure, is seen by
Cleopatra as an elderly gentleman, who cannot scare even a girl. What is even funnier, he is
told by a girl (for that is Cleopatra's image in Shaw's play) how to govern: "You are very
sentimental, Caesar; but you are clever; and if you do as I tell you, you will soon learn to
govern".
G.B. Shaw explained in his Notes to Caesar and Cleopatra that he intended "to produce
an impression of greatness by exhibiting Caesar as a man, not mortifying his nature by doing
his duty, but as simply doing what he naturally wants to do"