SHAKESPEARE'S SHAVIAN CLEOPATRA

Author(s): Annie Papreck King

Source: Shaw , 2007, Vol. 27 (2007), pp. 165-174
Published by: Penn State University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40681825

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 Annie Papreck King

SHAKESPEARE'S SHAVIAN
CLEOPATRA

The differences between Shakespeare's portrayal of Cleopatra and

portrayal of Cleopatra could easily be dismissed by the disparity in
ages: Shaw writes of a sixteen-year-old Cleopatra, whereas Shakesp
picks up her story much later. Yet Shaw himself makes it perfectly clea
his notes to the play that the contrasting characterizations are muc
than simply a function of age:

The childishness I have ascribed to [Cleopatra], as far as it is c

ishness of character and not lack of experience, is not a matte
years. It may be observed in our own climate at the present d
many women of fifty. It is a mistake to suppose that the diffe
between wisdom and folly has anything to do with the differ
between physical age and physical youth.1

Shaw's Cleopatra is not simply a younger, more immature vers

Shakespeare's, for the playwright himself suggests that he could have g
his queen a wisdom that surpasses her sixteen years. Instead, Shaw
his Cleopatra as a sort of precursor to Shakespeare's.2 Though at t
in his contempt for late-Victorian bardolatry, Shaw attempts to ex
improve on Shakespearean elements in his characterization of Juliu
sar, the two Cleopatras fall into a much different pattern. Perhaps
ing that he could never match the sexuality, leadership, rheto
cunning of his rival playwright's creation, Shaw seems not even t
instead reserving those elements for his later heroines. Shaw's Cle
definitely stands in contrast to Shakespeare's Cleopatra, but S
speare's Cleopatra is far more Shavian than her truly Shavian count

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 166 ANNIE PAPRECK KING

If Caesar and Cleopatra is Shaw's attempt to elevate Julius Caesar to hero

status and glorify him as Shakespeare never did, then it seems fitting that
the play should have no female heroic counterpart to compete for Caesar's
limelight.3 And indeed, as Shaw has created her, this Cleopatra would
never overshadow his Caesarian Superman. Ra describes her in his pro-
logue as simply "a child that is whipped by her nurse" (361). She pouts
when Caesar orders her about and declares, "When I am old enough I
shall do just what I like" (376). This is not a formidable opponent for
Caesar in either love or war. Michael Mason argues that "to increase Cae-
sar's stature, Shaw has weakened Cleopatra's, reserving such a contest be-
tween equals for Man and Superman. . . . [H]e has belittled Cleopatra
almost to the level of a juvenile delinquent confronting an understanding
but firm probation officer."4
Shaw attempts to take his Cleopatra through a maturing process over
the course of the play, to move her character closer to the Shakespearean
Cleopatra she will eventually become, but she never quite metamorphoses
from a girl to a woman who could - anything but momentarily - tempt
and distract Caesar. Even after Caesar begins to instruct Cleopatra in how
to be an effective ruler, she never feels comfortable in a position of power
as Shakespeare's Cleopatra does. Shaw's stage direction for Cleopatra as
she argues with her brother indicates that she "¿5 rent by a struggle between
her newly-acquired dignity as a queen, and a strong impulse to put out her tongue
at [Ptolemy]" (395). This inner struggle between childishness and dignity
continues throughout the play. Time spent with Caesar as her mentor,
Cleopatra complains, makes her "terribly prosy and serious and learned
and philosophical" (436), and yet she still giggles whenever Caesar mis-
pronounces the name of Ftatateeta, causing Caesar to exclaim, "What! As
much a child as ever, Cleopatra! Have I not made a woman of you after
all?" (469). Shaw tries to give her a "wildcat ferocity" akin to that of Shake-
speare's Cleopatra, putting the murder of Pothinus in her hands, but even
in this act of defiance she remains impulsive and petulant, first serving
the immediacy of her own political needs and then seeking the approval
of others for a questionable order.5
In spite of a few attempts to alter the course of Cleopatra's trajectory as
a character rather than as a historical figure, Shaw's creation remains a
desexualized child who must take a backseat not only to the male star of
her play but also to the strong women of the corpus of Shaw's work who
overshadow her - Saint Joan and Ann Whitefield. And though Shaw him-
self would not hesitate to omit his Cleopatra from this pantheon of heroic

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 Shakespeare's Shavian Cleopatra 167

women, he would most likely be quite loath to allow S

tra to enter, even though by his own characterizatio
inexperienced Cleopatra he has inadvertently called at
riority of the character inhabiting Antony and Cleopatra

ii

One of the biggest differences between the two Cleopatras, and one that
makes Shakespeare's Cleopatra stand out as the Saint Joan or Ann White-
field of her time, is the power that each has over the people - especially
men - who surround her and the extent to which those people acknowl-
edge her power. The specter of the Elizabethan Cleopatra looms large
over Shaw's version every time Caesar does not succumb to the young
Cleopatra's pouting and instead remains fixed on his military mission.
Here, Shaw very subtly invokes his nemesis, for Shakespeare indicates that
this single-mindedness of purpose is one of the defining characteristics of
his Antony: in Act I, scene iv, Octavius Caesar recalls what a strong and
dedicated soldier Antony used to be, one who would never be distracted
by "this enchanting queen."6 Shaw's Cleopatra is not a strong enough
character to detain or distract her Caesar, but the heroic earlier Cleopatra
has Joan's "there's-something-about-the-girl" quality that makes it impos-
sible for Antony to break "these strong Egyptian fetters," even when mili-
tary or marital duty calls.7 Just as the Dauphin or the peasant soldiers
blindly follow Joan, albeit with no sexual intentions, so too do acolytes
such as Antony or Enobarbus follow Shakespeare's Cleopatra, with com-
plete deference and complete, if grudging, acknowledgment that she, as
Saint Joan and Ann Whitefield, will "do just exactly what she likes."8
That Shakespeare's Cleopatra gets her way, in an often consciously
straightforward manner, stands in sharp contrast to the childish manipu-
lations of Shaw's portrayal. A very small yet telling parallel arises between
the two works in the manner in which each Cleopatra plays - or does not
play - to her onstage audience. In Caesar and Cleopatra, when Caesar chas-
tises Cleopatra for her role in the murder of Pothinus, Cleopatra becomes
quite upset: "You are wrong to treat me like this. ... I am only a child. . . .
I cannot bear it"; and then comes Shaw's stage direction: "She purposely
breaks down and weeps. . . . She looks up to see what effect she is producing" (455).
This immature Cleopatra manipulates others' (hoped-for) sympathies to
garner the attention that her underdeveloped womanliness cannot.
Shakespeare's heroine, on the other hand, has the strength of character

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168 ANNIE PAPRECK KING

to wield power with more strategized mani

that Cleopatra is "cunning past man's thou
fends this Egyptian queen's use of tears: "
made of nothing but the finest part of pur
and waters sighs and tears; they are great
almanacs can report. This cannot be cun
Cleopatra does not play the juvenile gam
but she is aware of the effect she produces
politician would have of her constituents, a
her have far greater respect for her as a ru
Whereas both Shaw's Joan and Shakespe
over men much more effectively than the
they do so with contrasting portrayals of f
has strayed quite far from the sexualized
in his creation of Saint Joan, he has noneth
between the two plays in the way that each pl
reversal. Part of Joan's effectiveness as a le
ity: she dresses and cuts her hair like the
the ranks of the male army as much as po
in fulfilling her mission. Likewise, but much
heroine, Shakespeare's Cleopatra is so pow
femininity, because she does not, paradoxi
sexuality in order to be thought as capa
himself alludes to the dominance of Cleop
activities of his former military partner:

[Antony] fishes, drinks, and wastes

The lamps of night in revel; is not m
Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Pto
More womanly than he.10

Cleopatra seems to be so strong on both en

whereas Joan resides more in the middle, n
both command respect as a woman and fem
characteristics as a ruler, which the time
masculine.

in

In the opening of the Shaw play, an enigmatic stranger whose identity has
not yet been revealed claims that people "will know Cleopatra by her

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 Shakespeare's Shavian Cleopatra 169

pride, her courage, her majesty, and her beauty"

text, this at first reading would easily be mistaken
work, but read further to the terse yet telling stage
looks very doubtful" - and a very different impres
fits of unwarranted jealousy, Shakespeare's Cleop
her own pride, courage, majesty, or beauty. She is
"trained professional queen," whose skills as a lea
the Shavian Cleopatra and whose confidence as
with her turn-of-the-century counterpart and mo
male heroes.11
Much of the first half of Shaw's play is dominated by Caesar helping
Cleopatra acquire the necessary skills to become an effective leader.
(Whether or not his motives are self-serving is a question of Caesar's char-
acter, not Cleopatra's.) The young Cleopatra we first meet has a tendency
to ask her servants to perform certain tasks, a habit that Caesar tries his
best to break. "You are not commanding [Ftatateeta] to go away," he ad-
monishes her: "You are begging her. You are no Queen" (381). Even as
she outwardly becomes more commanding, she still lacks the confidence
to match her actions. She is comfortable on the throne of Egypt only as
long as she has Caesar's power to back her up, but she knows that "if
[Caesar goes] away, [she] shall not be Queen" (394). Again, Shaw must
downplay his Cleopatra's skills as a leader in order to exalt Caesar's. Yet
given Shaw's oft-repeated desire for the women of his time to stand up to
male-dominated institutions, it seems odd that he should take the inequal-
ity of power in this relationship to such an extreme; after all, Ann White-
field's strong, dominant character in no way diminishes that of Jack
Tanner.

Michael Mason argues that

[i]n Cleopatra Shaw seems to have wanted to show us an unedu-

cated woman in a position of great influence, and for that reason
highly dangerous to any idea of stability, political or other. An edu-
cated woman is more likely to use her influence wisely, and real
power wisely too. As Shaw portrays her, Cleopatra is more fitted to
survive in a jungle condition of society than in any State recogniz-
ably civilised in the modern interpretation.12

Although this is true to a certain extent, Cleopatra's inability to govern is

not solely a function of her lack of education. One need look no further
than Saint Joan to see a young, illiterate girl with commanding, albeit un-
conscious, skills as a leader. Rather, as Shaw portrays her, Cleopatra's
shortcomings as a queen arise from her lack of 5¿//-knowledge, of aware-
ness of her own power. Whereas Shakespeare's Cleopatra cannot imagine

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 170 ANNIE PAPRECK KING

why someone would not follow her, Shaw's c

would. The education that the young Cleopatr
influence wisely" is not simply the pragmatic
and defying Ptolemy that Caesar tries to inst
that teaches her to be the heroine that others would want to be near and
want to follow.
After six months under Caesar's tutelage, Shaw's Cleopatra begins to
offer the reader glimpses of the Shakespearean Cleopatra that the teen-
aged queen will eventually become. Shaw's queen summarizes for Pothi-
nus the entirety of her character's trajectory, just before ordering his
murder:

When I was foolish, I did what I liked, except when

Ftatateeta beat me; and even then I cheated her and did it
by stealth. Now that Caesar has made me wise, it is no use
my liking or disliking: I do what must be done, and have
no time to attend to myself. (438)

Although Shaw's Cleopatra may revert to her childish ways in her giddy
anticipation of Mark Antony's arrival at the close of the play, for a moment
we see the beginnings of the maturity of a ruler who, like Shakespeare's
Cleopatra, actively participates in the governance of her country. Just as
the Elizabethan Cleopatra enters (and sometimes surpasses) the mascu-
line arena of battle strategy as Antony and his army plan a nautical attack
on Caesar's troops, so too does Shaw's queen adopt the dispassionate dis-
position of a male ruler in momentarily setting aside her infatuation with
Caesar to preserve the stability of Egypt. Shaw never fully develops his
Cleopatra's skills as a leader, but we see in Shakespeare the effective head
of state Shaw is foreshadowing.

IV

Ruskin claimed that "Shakespeare has no heroes, only heroines."1* Al-

though Ruskin may have had in mind Shakespeare's more comedie hero-
ines - Rosalind, Beatrice, and so on - if we are looking for a sexualized
Shavian heroine, we need look no further than Shakespeare's Cleopatra.
This Egyptian queen bears a strong resemblance to Shaw's heroine of Man
and Superman in the manner in which both she and Ann Whitefield are

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 Shakespeare's Shavian Cleopatra 171

the pursuers in the love chase, the heroines who pr

that "man is no longer . . . victor in the duel of sex"
"There are two classes of stories that seem to me to
mentally false but sordidly base," Shaw once wrote:
religious story. . . . The other is the romance in which
nothing except for the sake of the heroine."14 Shaw
tionship between his Caesar and Cleopatra to reflect
ing Caesar practically immune to the flirtations of
and by making Cleopatra's connection to Caesar one
son's words, "parasitism."15 Shaw's Cleopatra is also
love chase, but in a much different manner from th
or Shakespeare's queen: unlike Shaw's Caesar, Jack T
actually desire the attentions and affections of thes
Cleopatra's infatuation with Caesar gives her neithe
in the male-female relationship.
Very early on in the play Shakespeare establishes C
who controls the tempo and intensity of her relatio
Enobarbus recalls that "when [Cleopatra] first me
purs'd up his heart upon the river of Cydnus."16 Yet
invited her to supper, "she replied, / It should be b
guest."17 At once being willing and playing hard to g
the dominant (i.e., male, if you will) figure in the rel
playwright who perhaps abhorred the prevalent fem
time, much as Shaw did in the nineteenth century.
Although Shaw's stingy praise of Shakespeare neve
admiration for this strong queen, Shaw must hav
some of the same elements he tried to instill in his own heroines. Cleo-
patra creates the boundaries for Antony's attachment by setting "a bourn
how far to be belov'd" and controls her lover's emotions by ordering
Charmian to

See where [Antony] is, who's with him, what he does.

I did not send you. If you find him sad,
Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report
That I am sudden sick.18

Her behavior at times suggests her own strong infatuation with Antony,
but just as Shaw has Ann Whitefield make clear to Jack that marriage to
him is a choice - and her choice at that - not a necessity, Shakespeare cre-
ates Cleopatra - in a manner that Shaw would have loved had the source
been different- as so complete a female character as to desire but not to
need a male in order to advance on her creative-evolutionary trajectory.

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 172 ANNIE PAPRECK KING

Much as with the disparate endings of Shaw's Saint Joan and Shake-
speare's Joan la Pucelle, the conclusions of the two Cleopatras' respective
dramatic reigns - one in death over the loss of Antony and the thought
of being held prisoner, and one still awaiting Antony's arrival - become
indicative of the two characters' priorities and regal comportment. In the
death of Shakespeare's Cleopatra, we see the playwright creating a perfect
balance between the queen's private and public lives; we see a heartbroken
woman mourning the loss of her lover and an indignant ruler who will not
allow her person or her country to be disgraced by Roman captors. This
Cleopatra refuses to undergo the humiliation of being dragged back to
Rome and paraded as a trophy and instead engages in the type of final
defiant oratory that, as M. L. Stapleton pointed out in regard to Shake-
speare's Joan la Pucelle, is usually reserved for male characters:

Sir, I will eat no meat, I'll not drink, sir;

If idle talk will once be necessary,
I'll not sleep neither. This mortal house I'll ruin,
Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I
Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court,
Nor once be chastis'd with the sober eye
Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up,
And show me to the shouting varlotry
Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt
Be gentle grave unto me! rather on Nilus' mud
Lay me stark-nak'd, and let the water-flies
Blow me into abhorring! rather make
My country's high pyramides my gibbet,
And hand me up in chains!19

In her exertion of control, this is a Shavian heroine. In her refusal to

play by the proper rules of engagement, this is a Shavian heroine. Shake-
speare makes her so much more than a lovesick Juliet. For even as her
grief over her lover drives her toward suicide, she puts on her robe and
crown and dreams of an Emperor Antony, thus acknowledging her own
public role as Egypt's ruler and desiring the return of Antony not only for
her own benefit but for the stability of her country as well.
The final impression Shakespeare leaves of a defiant, mature, and
strong Cleopatra differs markedly from the last glimpse both Caesar and
the audience get of Shaw's young queen. The young Cleopatra seems

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 Shakespeare's Shavian Cleopatra 173

childishly myopic, as Caesar prepares to depart fo

send her a present. "His name, his name?" she dem
being, according to Shaw's stage direction, "palpitat
she seems unconcerned with the political future of
leadership of Rufio and instead cares only for the
tony.20 She is, as Elsie B. Adams describes her, "t
ningly dressed in black,' waiting - Salome fashion
for a young, strong, beautiful lover."21 We leave bo
found them, one anachronistically Shavian, with a l
in history, and one looking no further than the arr
visitor.
In a rare moment of acknowledgment of influenc
overlap between his plays and those of Shakespear
male protagonist. In the preface to Man and Superm

In Shakespear's plays the woman always takes t

problem plays and his popular plays alike the
interest of seeing the woman hunt the man do
own plays that Woman, projecting herself dramat
(a process over which I assure you I have no mo
I have over my wife), behaves just as Woman
Shakespear. (496)

Shaw sets up a sort of reflexivity between the two pla

acters, with Ann and Joan following in the foots
heroines and serving as dominant women for the ea
and the Elizabethan Cleopatra appearing more an
held against Shaw's own Cleopatra. Although Shaw
amends to the feminist side of both himself and hi
terfully rehabilitating the image of Joan two decad
of Shakespeare's Caesar leaves his Cleopatra lacking
maturity, and sexuality to compete with Shakespea

Notes

1 . Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra, in Seven Plays by Bernard Shaw (New York: Dodd,
Mead, and Co., 1951), p. 476. All further references are to this edition and are given paren-
thetically in the text.
2. This idea was first suggested in Stanley Weintraub, The Unexpected Shaw: Biographical
Approaches to George Bernard Shaw and His Work (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982), p. 7.

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 1 74 ANNIE PAPRECK KING

3. Although Shaw did not hold back in expressing his v

many instances, see in particular his review of an 1 898 L
which Shaw calls Shakespeare's Caesar the "travestying of
"there is not a single sentence uttered by Shakespear's Ju
worthy of him, but even worthy of an average Tammany b
1898).
4. Michael Mason, "Caesar and Cleopatra: A Shavian Exer
Belittlement," Humanities Association Review 25 (1974): 10. A
first published in 1901; the addition of Ra's prologue did
Many directors were making prodigious cuts in the text, an
the prologue so the first scene could be omitted.
5. Ibid., p. 7.
6. William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed., ed.
G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), I.iv.55-70, I.ii.128.
7. Ibid., I.ii.116.
8. This is Tanner speaking of Ann. Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, in Seven Plays by
Bernard Shaw (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1951), p. 528. All further references are to
this edition and are given parenthetically in the text.
9. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, I. ii. 145-50.
10. Ibid., I.iv.4-7. For further discussion of gender bending in Antony and Cleopatra, see
Susan Muaddi Darraj, "The Sword Philippan: Female Power, Maternity, and Genderbending
in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra," Schuylkill: A Creative and Critical Review from Temple
University 4, no. 1 (2001): 23-32.
1 1 . Bernard Shaw, Shaw on Shakespeare: An Anthology of Bernard Shaw's Writings on the Plays
and Production of Shakespeare, ed. Edwin Wilson (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1961), p. 17.
12. Mason, "Caesar and Cleopatra," p. 9.
13. Emphasis added.
14. Bernard Shaw, Three Plays for Puritans (London: Penguin Books, 1946), pp. 17-18.
15. Mason, "Caesar and Cleopatra," p. 8.
16. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. 186-87.
17. Ibid., II.ii.219-21.
18. Ibid., I.i.16, I.iii.2-5.
19. Ibid., V.ii.49-62.
20. This is a sign, J. L. Wisenthal claims, of "her preference to be in Shakespeare's play
rather than Shaw's" (Shaw's Sense of History [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988], p. 61).
21. Elsie B. Adams, Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra: Decadence Barely Averted," SHAW: The
Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 18 (1975): 82.

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