Cleopatra’s Death: Commentary on Act v Scene ii

Abstract

The final scene of Antony and Cleopatra is crucial in bringing together the theme, purpose and theatricality that have pervaded the work. At the beginning of the century, George Bernard Shaw, reacting against romantic interpretations, condemned the scene as sentimentally unrealistic. ‘Shakespear’, he says, ‘finally strains all his huge command of rhetoric and stage pathos to give a theatrical sublimity to the wretched end of the business, and to persuade foolish spectators that the world was well lost by the twain’ (Preface, Three Plays for Puritans, Penguin edition, p. 29). In the light of subsequent criticism and the insight of twentieth-century dramatic theory, Shaw’s view can be challenged as a misreading of the particular episode and consequently of the whole play. The epic quality of the drama ensures that the final scene neither lapses into sentimentality nor fosters an undue empathy between the audience and the stage. Throughout Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare’s art has been episodic, and this is continued in vii which can be divided into five contrasting phases: Proculeius and Dolabella; Caesar and Seleucus; Clown; Death; Epilogue.