Imagining Cleopatra: Performing Gender and Power in Early Modern England

Description

Shakespeare’s characterization of Cleopatra may dominate the collective consciousness, but he was only one of several 16th-century writers fascinated by the enigmatic queen of Egypt. Early modern conceptions of Cleopatra offer a rich, complex, and variable set of models for understanding the period’s responses to race, female sovereignty, and classical antiquity. This interdisciplinary study investigates images of Cleopatra in the early modern period and examines how her story was mediated and used – from drawing lessons from history to being a symbol of female heroism. It draws on early historiographical works, political and philosophical treatises, coterie dramatic productions, and gender, race and performance studies, as well as evidence from material culture, to consider what was known and thought about Cleopatra in the period This book provides a new literary and cultural history of one of the world’s most contested and politically-charged iconic female figures. It combines a close reading of literary and dramatic works with historical and political contexts, paying particular attention to the three major early modern Cleopatra plays: Mary Sidney’s translation of Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine, Samuel Daniel’s The Tragedie of Cleopatra, and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. By examining these conflicting historical and fictional identities, Yasmin Arshad offers a diverse and ground-breaking study of Cleopatra’s ‘infinite variety’. Cover Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Note on spelling and list of abbreviations Introduction 1 ‘Sight of that Face’: Passion and politics in Mary Sidney’s Antonius 2 ‘Twixt majestie confuz’d and miserie’: Samuel Daniel’s Tragedie of Cleopatra 3 ‘Will Yet this Womans Stubborne Heart be Woone?’: Lady Anne Clifford and Daniel’s Cleopatra 4 ‘Then thus we have beheld’: Staging Daniel’s Cleopatra 5 ‘She did make defect perfection’: The paradox and variety of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra Epilogue and conclusion: Cleopatra after Shakespeare Appendix: The Cleopatra statue and the poems at the Vatican Notes Select bibliography Index