The dueling political ethics of King Lear and Anthony and Cleopatra two entirely different political worlds and ecomonies of salvation
"Blow winds, blow/ Blow winds and crack your cheeks," cries King Learin the infamous storm scene that defines the central image of the play,namely the King's madness and utter debasement in the nakedness of theearly pre-Christian British wilderness. (3.2) "Where's my serpent of oldNile," intones Cleopatra as she reclines, envisioning her absent Anthonyspeaking to her in pre-Christian Egypt. (1.5) Lear summons a cruel stormthat matches his desperate mood. Cleopatra summons in her mind the visionof Anthony to pass the time while she waits for his return, reclining in When considering these two images visually, one may be at firstsurprised that they spring from the mind of the same playwright. The coldand harsh world of Lear seems to be strikingly different from the Egypt ofCleopatra. The play "King Lear" depicts a rich monarchy at its onset,which is slowly and cruelly stripped bare after Lear's poor leadership inhis dotage leaves his kingdom over to his daughters Regan and Goneril andtheir husbands. In contrast, "Anthony and Cleopatra" is structured in aseries of contrasts. For every scene of a regal and cool republican Rome,
When Cleopatra demands that he fight by sea, Anthony does so, merelybecause she asks him to, even though he thinks from a tactical standpointthis is a foolish action. But her servant is willing to die with her,rather than to dissuade her from death. Thus, Cleopatra's world can still create the image of a heroicsuicide, where lovers can be united after death and even in the absence ofa kingdom on land, the great queen can assume a kingship on high, in theEgyptian afterlife. It is he who describes her in the most florid terms. Even the relatively unromantic Enobarbus,Anthony's trusted military advisor, can appreciate the beauty of Cleopatra. In "Lear," the characters, and by the extension theaudience is faced with a life without a clear image of an heroic afterlife,or of morality punished or rewarded in a kingdom to come. Interestingly enough, though "Anthony and Cleopatra" ends with astripping to the barest of essentials, and the image of a loyal servant, ascontained in the storm scene of "King Lear. In contrast, in "King Lear's" political world, theworld of Lear is so harsh that love is the only sure constant for thecharacters that can sustain life. Octavius Caesar,the cool successor to Julius, emerges as a leader not despite the fact thathe refuses to accord Anthony respect and homage for Anthony's protection ofhim after the murder of his uncle Julius, but because Octavius can easilyput aside personal feelings when politics requires this. Edgar solemnly takes the throne, but with littlejoy. As Lear is eventually stripped bearof his kingship, his clothing, his shelter, and finally his sanity and theonly child that actually loves him, so Anthony is undone over the course ofhis own play. " In "Lear," honesty in theform of understanding madness and nakedness is what earns one the right tothe throne. She does not have her Anthony or hercrown, much like Lear has neither his daughter nor the leadership hedisdained. It is also interesting to parallelthe fact that Charmian willingly dies beside her mistress, withoutquestioning Cleopatra's decision to commit suicide, while Edgar refuses tolet his father, even after his father has been blinded, do the same. The onlysimilarity between the two worlds of "King Lear" and "Anthony andCleopatra" seems to be in Lear and Cleopatra's imaginative capacity to,respectively, create a storm in the mind that becomes reality, and tocreate her lover's presence that becomes a reality in the form of amessenger that brings news of Anthony.
Common topics in this essay:
Anthony Cleopatra,
King Lear,
Cleopatra's Charmian,
Anthony Lear,
Egypt Rome,
Regan Goneril,
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Rome Anthony,
Octavius Caesar,
Enobarbus Anthony's,
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Acceptance Essays
