Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, and the Nature of Fame
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Western Michigan University Medieval Institute Publications/Arc Humanities Press Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture Medieval Institute Publications 2-15-2018 Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, and the Nature of Fame Robert A. Logan University of Hartford, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_rmemc Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Modern Literature Commons Recommended Citation Logan, Robert A., "Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, and the Nature of Fame" (2018). Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. 4. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_rmemc/4 This Monograph is brought to you for free and open access by the Medieval Institute Publications at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, and the Nature of Fame RESEARCH IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE Medieval Institute Publications is a program of Th e Medieval Institute, College of Arts and Sciences WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, and the Nature of Fame by Robert A. Logan Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture MEDIEVAL INSTITUTE PUBLICATIONS Western Michigan University Kalamazoo Copyright © 2017 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Logan, Robert A., 1935- author. Title: Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, and the nature of fame / Robert A. Logan. Description: Kalamazoo : Medieval Institute Publications, [2018] | Series: Research in Medieval and Early Modern culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2017046070 | ISBN 9781580443197 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Antony and Cleopatra. | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Characters. | Fame in literature. Classifi cation: LCC PR2802 .L64 2018 | DDC 822.3/3--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046070 ISBN: 9781580443197 eISBN: 9781580443203 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or trans- mitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every eff ort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. To John J. Wright for his immeasurable “bounty” Contents Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: Viewing Shakespeare’s Kinetic 1 Characterizations 2 Antony and Cleopatra in Seventeenth-Century 17 Contexts 3 “Immortal Longings”: Shakespeare’s Perspective 31 on Fame 4 Standards of Measure in Antony and Cleopatra 53 5 “Th e Varying Shore”: Changing Perceptions, 93 Sustaining Illustriousness 6 “A Pair So Famous”: Achieving Permanent Renown 125 7 Shakespeare’s Imperishable Fame 155 Bibliography and Further Reading 181 Index 189 Acknowledgments MPOSSIBLE AS IT IS to acknowledge the many infl uences of schol- Iarly publications, conference sessions, and classroom experiences on my understanding of Antony and Cleopatra, three people who have contrib- uted either directly or indirectly or both to the following book must be mentioned. To Sara Munson Deats, I owe a career-long debt of gratitude, but am specifi cally grateful to her for commenting on a draft version of the manuscript with such care, rigor, and astute suggestions. To Erika Gaff ney, a senior editor who has guided me wisely in more than one publication, I am most grateful. Her candor, detailed suggestions, and high standards are exemplary and inspiring; as editors go, she stands out as an exceptionally superior role model. Finally, to my husband and champion, John Wright, I am thankful beyond my ability to express the depth of my gratitude. His unfailing desire to free up my time and give encouragement have displayed a magnanimity that even Antony could not match. I am truly honored to have had these three people in my life over the years but especially during the current project. Chapter 1 Introduction: Viewing Shakespeare’s Kinetic Characterizations O MUCH HAS BEEN written about the life and works of William SShakespeare that a new monograph on Antony and Cleopatra, one of the playwright’s most controversial works, might well begin with a dis- cussion of how it marks an advance over both longstanding and recent criticism in subject matter, structure, and focus, including some explana- tion of why it approaches the play from diverse vantage points. I should note fi rst that, in reviewing the scholarship on Antony and Cleopatra, I found that the fl ow of criticism has been relatively less since the turn of the twenty-fi rst century than it was during the second half of the twentieth century. Th e most penetrating criticism began to emerge in the nineteenth century (e.g., Coleridge and, on Shakespeare more generally but applica- ble to this play, Keats) and reached its strongest and most fecund period in the twentieth century (e.g., Adelman, Barroll, Bevington, Bradley, Brower, Charnes, Charney, Danby, Knight, Macdonald, Mack, Markels, Neill, Spevack, Wilson). Th e Modern Language Association Bibliography lists 304 entries of articles, book chapters, and books written between 2000 and 2016. Of the fi ve books listed, none bears on the subjects of the present study: Shakespeare’s imaginative portrayals of internationally famous historical fi gures as they measure up to self-standards of conduct and understand their relation to imperishable fame. Nor has previous criti- cism applied in a concentrated manner these subjects to Shakespeare and to this play. My contention is that Antony and Cleopatra refl ects the play- wright’s understanding of and fascination with the nature of fame more completely than any of his other works. Marvin Rosenberg’s The Masks of Anthony and Cleopatra, edited and completed posthumously by his wife in 2006,1 does a scene-by-scene discussion of the play, focusing on performance, but by dividing the “view- ers and readers” (10) of the play into yay sayers and nay sayers imposes unnecessary limitations on its observations. So far during this century, the only collection of essays on the play, edited by Sara Munson Deats and 2 CHAPTER 1 entitled Antony and Cleopatra: New Critical Essays, appeared in 2005.2 Deats finds the play to be Shakespeare’s “most anamorphic drama” (1) and hopes that the “original essays written for this anthology … will sig- nifi cantly expand the critical contexts within which [the play] can be read, viewed, and analyzed” (ix). Deats’s introductory essay surveys criticism on the play and its performances on the stage and screen, while the essays in the collection range in approaches and in topics, covering new ground even when the subjects are familiar—e.g., sources, infl uences, the import of the confl ict between Egypt and Rome, stagings of the play. I have not discovered any articles that concern themselves with the combination of subjects, diversity of foci, and the methodological varia- tions of the present study. Interestingly, since the turn of the century, the fi eld of commentary on the play has not been overcrowded. Th e present study of the play’s heightened emphasis on standards of measure and their connection to fame has never been the major focus of a book or any of the articles that I have come across, especially given the present mix of approaches. Th e importance of fame as a subject for scholarly study was thrust into the spotlight in October, 2011 when the Publications of the Modern Language Association (PMLA) devoted an entire issue to “Celebrity, Fame, Notoriety” (Vol. 126, No. 4). Without treating Antony and Cleopatra specifi cally, the issue gave imposing support to my eff orts, already well underway, to address this overlooked topic, covering not only a wide range of articles on the celebrityhood of actual and fi ctional fi gures but also including a section on theories and methodologies. Most of what has been written about this topic has been in the form of a sociological study. Th e PMLA issue makes clear that there is a need for literary stud- ies on the topic, making use of sociological fi ndings of course; the issue further suggests that the subject invites close reading, an approach that has not been tried with literary texts.3 Apart from Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra have a more longstanding and renowned fame than any of the other historical characters in Shakespeare’s plays. Th us, to address Shakespeare’s concern with the nature of fame, this play, rather than his other Roman works4 or his English histories, has from the outset seemed the perfect choice. In an attempt to open up diff erent avenues to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, my intention has always been to approach the play from several interpretive perspectives rather than from just one. Whereas the characterological, historical, cultural, and textually analytical perspectives employed here are familiar individually, as is the notion of a combination, INTRODUCTION 3 I believe that this combination provides a distinctiveness that is without precedent. The overall movement of the book is from external ground- work concerns to a close reading of the play, mindful that such a reading needs always to be related to the main subjects—the constantly shift ing complex of portrayals of standards of measure and their relation to the establishment of the imperishable fame of Shakespeare’s protagonists, as distinguished from their mere celebrityhood. The study closes with an examination of the reasons for Shakespeare’s fame, including a brief his- tory of its progress, and the parallels between the attributes of fame in the play and the attributes of his fame.