History and Myth

To say I'm way behind on blogging is like claiming that Cleopatra is "only a little needy"....gross understatement. Anyways, here goes.

I found that Antony and Cleopatra provided the best mix of tragedy, comedy and history that I've read thus far. In Egypt (Cleopatra) and Rome (Antony and then Octavius) we have figures of such historical importance that they are raised nearly to the level of myth just by how their short time on earth shaped the destiny of western civilization, yet Shakespeare manages to both demythologize Caesar Augustus and reshape they mythology of Antony and Cleopatra, elevating them to god'like status whilst using the prodding of comedy to question whether they deserve that distinction.

As we discussed in class, the play and its characters are very much separated into Egypt and Rome. Rome is historical, linear, rational. Rome is passionless ambition, duty, the occident. Egypt is the orient, exotic, erotic and without rhyme or reason.

It is little wonder that Eliot made a nod to Cleopatra in The Wasteland. The second section, whose title, "A Game of Chess", is in itself a nod to machinations of history, explores one distinction that Egypt and Rome embody, the difference between historical and mythological time. "Hurry up please, it's time" says Eliot's Cockney woman at the end, mirroring the perception of Rome, describing a time that presses forward. For Octavius and his ilk time is a constant, linear thing moving inexorably through history. For Cleopatra, however, and, I think, for Eliot, time is not a linear matter. It is cyclic, it is an eternal recurrence. Cleopatra is "fluid" because she is a recurrence of Isis, of the Mother Goddess, and Antony, although he seems to shed his herculean ancestry as he removes the fetters of his Roman past, is also a reincarnation of Hercules. Both are, in the end, profoundly mythological.