Antony and Cleopatra (1921) Yale/Appendix B
APPENDIX B
The History of the Play
An entry in the Stationers' Register dated May 20, 1608, lists 'A booke Called. Antony and Cleopatra.' It is not certain that this is Shakespeare's play, but probabilities strongly favor such a conclusion. Internal evidence of versification, and the tone and temper of the story alike indicate that Antony and Cleopatra was written after Macbeth, but before Timon of Athens and Coriolanus, which, like the earlier Julius Cæsar, were also largely drawn from North's Plutarch. We may safely date the play in 1607–1608.
There is no evidence, however, that Antony and Cleopatra was printed at this time, nor is there any trustworthy contemporary reference to a performance. Our first real knowledge, and our sole text of Antony and Cleopatra, come from the First Folio of 1623, where it is printed between Othello and Cymbeline.
Nothing whatsoever is known of the stage history of Antony and Cleopatra in Shakespeare's own day. It must have been extraordinarily difficult to find a youth, even among the excellent young actors of the period, who could 'boy' the 'greatness' of Cleopatra. After the Restoration, Dryden's reworking of the story in All for Love took its place and held popular favor at least until 1788, when Mrs. Siddons appeared as Cleopatra, and was still being acted as late as 1818. The great actor, Garrick, revived Shakespeare's own tragedy in 1758–1759, but without success. In 1813 Young and Mrs. Faucit gave an acting version of the play at Covent Garden, and in 1833 Macready also revived it, with remarkable scenery, but little popular favor. Phelps included Antony and Cleopatra in a series of Shakespeare revivals at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, Clerkenwell, London, in 1849. Thanks, apparently, to Miss Glyn's Cleopatra and to the conscientious acting characteristic of all these revivals, the play was this time well received, and ran for some time. Miss Glyn repeated her success in later years. Although Miss Rose Eytinge, in 1878, Kyrle Bellew, in 1889, and Mme. Modjeska, in 1898–1899, seem to have had fairly successful seasons in America, and Sir F. R. Benson and Ben Greet in later times also presented the play, there was no other really important revival of Antony and Cleopatra until Sir Herbert Tree in 1906–1907 rather sumptuously put it on in London. Contemporary criticism, however, gives the impression that it was the splendor of the setting as much as the play itself which drew praise from the audiences. A very satisfactory presentation was that of the New Theatre in New York in 1910, when both cast and scenery were of great excellence. And yet the best judgment of those who saw the performance was that Antony and Cleopatra is not a good acting play. Its fire is too scattering, its plot too broken, and the conflict between the imperial interests of the story and the human interest of the love affair is never entirely resolved. In sum, Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's greatest characterizations, Antony is only less high in the register, certain scenes are among Shakespeare's very best, but the play as a whole lacks that continuity of dramatic interest and unity of situation which are necessary for complete theatrical success.
In all fairness it should be added, however, that Antony and Cleopatra, with its profusion of scenes and rapid shift of place, is particularly injured by the usual conditions of modern stage presentation. And it is further prejudiced by the temptation (apparently irresistible) to overload its more triumphant scenes with stage decoration, by which the action is still more impeded. Apparently the play has never had a truly Shakespearean performance since Jacobean days. Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, in Shakespeare's Theater, pp. 124–125, presents a scheme by which the third and fourth acts could be given panoramic continuity and rapidity without confusion, by the use of the inner stage and its curtains as they were in the theatre of 1608.
Many other writers have taken the story of Cleopatra for dramatic presentation. The theme has been especially popular in France, from the Cléopâtre Captive of Estienne Jodelle in 1552, the first tragedy to appear in the French language, on into the nineteenth century, including the version by Marmontel, where an automatic asp hissed at the breast of Cleopatra in a day when hissing in the theatre was forbidden. 'Je suis de l'avis de l'aspic,' said a man in the audience, and the play failed. In English, The Tragedie of Cleopatra, which Samuel Daniel modelled after the tragedies of Seneca, antedates Shakespeare. The False One, written by Fletcher and Massinger about 1620, goes back to the 'salad days' of Cleopatra for its story; and so does the Cæsar and Cleopatra of Bernard Shaw. But the only play upon this theme which has seriously challenged comparison with Shakespeare is, curiously enough, Dryden's All for Love, written in avowed imitation. 'In my stile I have profess'd to imitate the Divine Shakespeare,' says Dryden in his Preface, and writes blank verse accordingly; and again and quite truly, 'Yet I hope I may affirm, and without vanity, that by imitating him, I have excell'd myself throughout the play.' What he did was to regularize Shakespeare's story by reducing it to unity as the French critics understood the word. It is probable that he did succeed in making a better acting play by his concentration of the story, but the character of Antony suffers degradation, Cleopatra loses her charm, and the whole action of the piece moves on lower levels of poetry and human experience.
A full account of the various dramatic versions of the Cleopatra story may be found in the Appendix to the Variorum edition of H. H. Furness.