Shakespeare--Antony and Cleopatra (1606)

I did a series on this for my original blog back in 2009, (Here and Here) to which I do not have anything substantial to add at this time. Antony and Cleopatra still ranks as one of my personal favorites in the Shakespeare ouevre, along with the other Roman plays, mostly because I don't have the sense that too many other people have claimed it as one of theirs. I need some patch of ground in the realm of Shakespeare appreciation on which to stake a foothold. Also its cleanness and formal perfection of composition has always impressed me, though I suppose other writers are able to give us something approaching this, and the most forcefully sentient people are more drawn to the robust protean energy of the most essential works.

This is the second Shakespeare play to come up on the IWE list, and the first tragedy. The alphabetical order is fine for this as I will be reading most of the plays that are on it for the second, third, fourth, etc, time. I have been on a bit of a Shakespeare binge lately--four plays in the last month for my "A" list plus this one and I am evidently overwhelmed as far as being able to pick out any especial insights or mildly interesting thoughts I had in reading it. I seemed to have had more to say directly in 2009. At that time I had not read any Shakespeare in several years, and I also think my mind was in one of those periodic windows in one's life where it is receptive to new impressions of old things. Also the rhythm of how I read now, especially for this IWE list, has seemingly been adjusted to consume the long novels which dominate it, so when plays come up, especially the super classics like Sophocles and Shakespeare, I want to spend some time with them, but my perception is not adjusting to the scale and density of the work. In truth, I am having difficulty in organizing and executing this essay. For one thing, though one of the purposes of this program of reading is to detach myself somewhat from the contemporary mental environment, it still seeps in, and of course I still crave a certain degree of intellectual camaraderie with the living, which I have never been able to obtain to my satisfaction. On this latest occasion I kept noting Shakespeare's attitudes with regard to what men should be like and what women should be like, which seemed to exist within a more or less traditional framework, though of course as with most of the better authors it recognized the existence of outliers, even if he largely maintained that the ideal even for these was ultimately to be constrained within a version of the traditional roles that was acceptable to them. Like a lot of people, the election, and the intense reactions and emotions it is provoking in people, are having effects on me. I was never attracted to Trump, but trying to persuade myself that Hillary Clinton is as wonderful as we are increasingly pressured to concede that she is only causes me to be unhappy and surly. The contempt and lack of respect for men that she projects and legions of her supporters openly revel in is not something I am able to embrace or celebrate. I told people, jokingly as I thought, that as long as Hillary Clinton demonstrated at any point in the campaign anything resembling respect for men who are not potentially large donors that she would have my vote. We are now two weeks from the election and I am still waiting. I am not going to vote for Trump, and I don't understand beyond the most primitive level why his supporters have put their hopes in him, but in my own life it is the increasingly aggressive and obnoxious progressives who loom as the greater problem, because I don't agree with their attitudes where men, particularly of the heterosexual, European descended variety are involved. I do not want a full restoration of 1950s gender roles and attitudes even if that were possible, but men do need to figure how to reassert themselves and play a strong and at least an equal part in life and regain some of the respect they have lost with women as well as among themselves, or I think we will continue to see very ugly politics centered around gender divisions and other various resentments. The current atmosphere is untenable.

But what of Antony and Cleopatra? The political choice wasn't really that appealing in that conflict either, to one of a democratic mindset. It was probably for the best that Augustus Caesar prevailed. He was the more modern man, though symbolically at least, more associated in the mind with despotism and unassailable power, while Antony symbolically represented the last link to the Republic, and a less absolute state. But I guess you should read my older posts on this play, since I really have not come up with any new thoughts since the last time.

The Challenge

Once again the magic words invoke so blatantly the great characters of the play that nearly all of the contestants in the Challenge can claim a Roman theme:

1. Hail, Caesar (movie).................................................................1,055
2. Stacy Schiff--Cleopatra: A Life....................................................731
3. Bernard Cornwell--Death of Kings................................................513
4. Tom Holland--Rubicon: Last Years of the Roman Republic.........259
5. Suetonius--Lives of the Twelve Caesars........................................200
6. Julius Caesar (movie--1953).........................................................194
7. Clay Griffith--The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire #1).......................154
8. Anthony Everitt--Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor....148
9. Barry Strauss--The Death of Caesar..............................................139
10. Colleen McCullough--The October Horse...................................129
11. Joanne DeMaio--Beach Blues........................................................80
12. Isaac Asimov--Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.............................66
13. Joseph Max Lewis--The Diaries of Pontius Pilate........................66
14. Steven Saylor--The Triumph of Caesar.........................................62
15. Chris Scarre--Chronicle of the Roman Emperors..........................45
16. The Last Days of Pompeii (movie--1935)......................................40


Round of 16

#16 The Last Days of Pompeii over #1 Hail, Caesar

Hail, Caesar is probably a better movie, but the general custom of the Challenge favors older movies in head-to-head matchups.

#15 Scarre over #2 Schiff


Scarre is shorter by 77 pages.


#14 Saylor over #3 Cornwall


Two basically identical books, genre novels published 2 years apart, both available. Saylor is 9 pages shorter.


#4 Holland over #13 Lewis


History (I think) beats more genre work.


#12 Asimov over #5 Suetonius


Suetonius would have been the choice, especially as Asimov clocks in at over 800 pages, but Asimov has an upset coming in this tournament, and he gets it in the first round.


#11 Demaio over #6 Julius Caesar

#7 Griffith over #10 McCullough

Battle of genre novels. Griffith about 400 pages shorter.

#8 Everitt over #9 Strauss

I can't tell if the Strauss is a serious book or not. Otherwise, they look pretty similar. Strauss is slightly shorter, but Everitt too is entitled to an upset. Which he does not need to get by here however.


Round of 8

#4 Holland over #16 Last Days of Pompeii

#7 Griffith over #15 Scarre

Griffith also had an upset in reserve.

#8 Everitt over #14 Saylor

#12 Asimov over #11 Demaio

The Asimov is 843 pages but I can't have it lose to a literal beach novel.

Final Four

#4 Holland over #12 Asimov

#8 Everitt over #7 Griffith

Championship

#4 Holland over #8 Everitt

The Holland is about 30 pages longer but it looks like a more solid book. Plus Holland also has an upset in reserve, which cancels out Everitt's unused upset in an extremely tight title game.

All For Love, or The World Well Lost--Dryden (1678)

I think this is the third time I have read this; I wonder if it probably will be the last. The first time was in October of 2004, and I thought it very good. The second time, a small report of which I made on my other blog in 2009, I thought much less of it, probably because on that occasion I was reading it alongside other Cleopatra plays, Shakespeare especially, but also Shaw and even Samuel Daniel, to which I thought it compared unfavorably. My judgment on this third reading is somewhere in between those of the previous two. The verse struck me once more as admirable and worthy of respect in itself; and as I was not as immersed in the story and particular set of characters over multiple versions as I had been on the second occasion, the manner in which they happened to be depicted here was not as off-putting to me. I am sure that none of these plays/novels/movies written 1500+ years after the events that inspired them are particularly accurate in terms either of history or characterization; however Dryden's characterization struck me as the weakest and least probable of the set when read alongside the others. However as I said, It did not bother me much on this occasion, and indeed I scarcely noticed it.

There is a picture on the page I linked to of my then 5, now 11 year old son holding up my Modern Library copy of Twelve Famous Plays of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century. My other book list loves Restoration drama, so I have read eight of the twelve famous plays for that, and numerous others from the period besides. At least five of the twelve are also on the IWE list and there may be as many as seven--I am not certain off hand whether Goldsmith and Congreve made it or not--so it has proven to be a volume worth having.

I have come over the years to enjoy Restoration plays when it chances that I have to read them, as I have come, I must admit, to enjoy sampling from most of the major genres and periods in literary history. I am not a very fierce reader, particularly with regard to the authors of the past, the value of whose surviving work, at least in the better examples, always seems to me to outweigh their deficiencies. The Restoration was not, I will say, one of the literary eras that I took to right from the start; as a teenager especially, I could make nothing out of it at all. Over a period of years and reading many plays and poems and other books from and about the period I have attained enough familiarity with it that it has acquired an interest for me as something definite and fairly important, and I even have a little fondness for it as a distinct entity in the family, or college, of literary history, people I look forward to seeing at a party every once in a while, especially here at holiday-time. That said, my feeling in reading them is still different from that I have in reading certain other genres to which I am perhaps closer in spirit. Reading long passages of formal verse especially requires some degree of alertness and concentration, and does an admirable job of keeping fuzzier emotions at bay.

I thought this was the only Dryden play to make the IWE list, but I see that The Conquest of Granada has also made it, so we aren't quite done with him yet. Like most modern people, I do not respond to Dryden overly strongly (as you see, I am having difficulty in writing about him)--indeed, it is hard to tell whether anyone has really done so, even in his own time. He was the poet laureate and the leading playwright and public critic and literary man of his age, but even then he doesn't seem to have had a lot of rabid disciples or imitators. He was very good in the technical aspects of writing. His sentences and verses have a kind of neat quality about them as far as being constructions of words and sounds meant to convey thought. Like a lot of writers of his general class, I suppose he ultimately lacks power in the high degree. But to my mind he and his period are still worth knowing in some degree.

The Challenge

I've decided to keep the Challenge as it has been for a little while, take it up if anything interesting should chance to win, and if not, then keep moving along the main list.

1. Jack Campbell--The Last Fleet: Guardian..........................................241
2. Vicki Alvear Shecter--Cleopatra's Moon..............................................56
3. Jacob Abbott--Cleopatra.......................................................................39
    H. Rider Haggard--Cleopatra................................................................39
5. Si Sheppard--Actium 31 B.C.: Downfall of Antony and Cleopatra.........6

I don't remember what this time's winner is about--I think it's a modern sci-fi/fantasy type thing, of limited literary interest. My library doesn't even have it. So I will move right on to the next book on the list.