‘Antony and Cleopatra’: Life Imitating Art Or Art Imitating Life?
Love will tear us apart
“But yet let me lament
with tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts […]
that our stars, irreconcilable, should divide
our equalness to this.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
Yes, I have seen the film Cleopatra (1963) with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Every time I watch it I am faced with the same question about the fate of Mark Antony and Cleopatra who both — at different times — had the Roman Empire in the palm of their hand, then lost everything together and ended their incredible lives by committing suicide.
Edmund Spenser has already asked the question in a work of unsurpassed eloquence and beauty,
‘Nought under heaven so strongly doth allure
The sense of man, and all his mind possess,
As Beauty’s lovely bait, that doth procure
Great warriors oft their rigour to repress,
And mighty hands forget their manliness;
…..
And so did warlike Antony neglect
The world’s whole rule for Cleopatra’s sight;
Such wondrous power hath women’s fair aspect
To captive men, and make them all the world reject.’— Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, Book V, Canto VIII, stanzas 1–2
Their rise and fall are the stuff of legend and human tragedy and are somewhat mirrored…
