a whereabouts have been far surpassed.[1] The characters themselves, their costumes, the matter of the scenes, tell us all we need to know of their whereabouts. But how little we do need to know! We are (like the soldiers in the Great War) “somewhere in Egypt,” or in Italy, or Rome. Not till we have left Alexandria is Alexandria named; not for seventy-five lines of this first scene of Cæsar’s, and then only by the indirect
Let his shames quickly
Drive him to Rome;
are we told whither we have moved. This, however, both seems natural and is dramatically sufficient. People do not name Alexandria, being in it, and for the play’s purpose where Cæsar is is Rome. Modern editors kindly tell us that Act II. Sc. i. passes in Pompey’s house in Messina. Shakespeare neither points nor hints at either house or place. Act III. Sc. iv., by the same authority, is at Athens in a room in Antony’s house. Not till two scenes later does the play itself give any colour for even half the statement. Now no dramatist leaves matters of any current importance to ex post facto disclosure. Nor—though the editors never fail us with their rooms in houses and “another room in the same”—are there through the first two acts any suggestions for interior or exterior backgrounds, nor is any problem presented of their provision, unless, as for the scene on Pompey’s galley, the action of the play absolutely requires it. Cleopatra might receive the messenger indoors or out; there must be seats for Antony and Cæsar, but they might sit outdoors or in. And when we reach the third and fourth acts the dramatic advantage in this apparent vagueness (and it might be contended that Shakespeare is a little—but only a little—more vague than usual) is to be seen, Look at Act III. Scenes viii. and ix. Enter Cæsar and Taurus with his army, marching. Six lines are spoken and the scene ends. Enter Antony and Enobarbus. Four lines are spoken and the scene ends.
Surely here all considerations of the validity of backgrounds are knocked endways. Not only can no stage-manager—Elizabethan or other—face such a material problem, but it is absurd to suppose that Shakespeare ever meant so to dissipate his play’s strength
- ↑ It does not follow that Shakespeare thought them crude merely because they were simple. But in Antony and Cleopatra he happened to have a theme in which characters and localities fell naturally (with one exception) into “a concatertion accordingly.” ‘The whereabouts did not need explicit elucidation.
