together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director’s viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare’s plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear directors of highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways.
FOUR CENTURIES OF
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
: AN OVERVIEW
Although there is no record of any production of
Antony and Cleopatra
before the Restoration, scholars believe it was written and firstperformed in 1606. Versions of two earlier plays revised in 1607, Samuel Daniel’s
Cleopatra
and Barnabe Barnes’s
Devil’s Charter
, both contain probable allusions to Shakespeare’s play. The Lord Chamberlain’s records of 1669 report it was “formerly acted at the Blackfriars,” the indoor venue of Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, from 1609 to the closure of the theaters in 1642. It was most likely staged at the Globe Theatre also, and it is assumed that Richard Burbage, the company’s leading tragedian, would have played Antony. Speculation as to the identity of the talented, charismatic boy player entrusted with the part of Cleopatra has been great, particularly in view of her anxiety expressed at the idea of seeing “Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.” It has been suggested that Enobarbus may have originally been played in a red wig (his name means “red-beard”), aligning him emblematically with the character of Judas Iscariot in the medieval morality plays, who was traditionally bewigged in red. 1
When the theaters reopened after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660,
Antony and Cleopatra
was assigned to Thomas Killigrew’s company, the King’s Servants, but never performed. Restoration audiences preferred John Dryden’s neoclassical adaptation,
All for Love
,
or The World Well Lost
(1677), which takes place in a single day after the Battle of Actium. David Garrick was the first to stage Shakespeare’s play again, in a text prepared with the scholar Edward Capell, but it proved one of his less successful ventures, despite Garrick’s considerable expenditure on scenery and costumes. Thomas Davies, who played Eros, wrote an assessment of the production in which he argued that Garrick’s slight physique was inadequate for Antony:
His person was not sufficiently important and commanding to represent the part. There is more dignity of action than variety of passion in the character, though it is not deficient in the latter. The actor, who is obliged continually to traverse the stage, should from person attract respect, as well as from the power of speech. 2
Spectacle dominated nineteenth-century revivals such as John Philip Kemble’s 1808 production at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and William Charles Macready’s at Drury Lane in 1833.
The Gentleman’s Magazine
complained that Kemble had “merely dovetailedShakspere [
sic
] and Dryden; vamped speeches from one with speeches from the other; welted scenes together and in fact ‘cobbled’ the affair…It did not succeed, as Shakspere’s play has since done, when acted with more regard for the author.” 3 Shakespeare’s play was still seen as problematic, though, not least for the role of Cleopatra. Kemble is said to have tried to persuade his sister, Sarah Siddons, the greatest actress of the era, to play the part, but she refused on the grounds that “she should hate herself if she were to act Cleopatra as she knew it ought to be acted.” 4 The role continued to pose a problem for actresses. Ellen Tree, for example, who played the part in the first American production in New Orleans in 1838, was described as “impeccably pure and decorous in the proper Victorian manner”: 5 decorum is hardly the characteristic Shakespeare was looking for in the part. The first New York production at the Park Theater in 1846 “only ran for six performances despite expensive scenery and costumes and competent acting.” 6
Samuel Phelps staged the first
FOUR CENTURIES OF
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
: AN OVERVIEW
Although there is no record of any production of
Antony and Cleopatra
before the Restoration, scholars believe it was written and firstperformed in 1606. Versions of two earlier plays revised in 1607, Samuel Daniel’s
Cleopatra
and Barnabe Barnes’s
Devil’s Charter
, both contain probable allusions to Shakespeare’s play. The Lord Chamberlain’s records of 1669 report it was “formerly acted at the Blackfriars,” the indoor venue of Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, from 1609 to the closure of the theaters in 1642. It was most likely staged at the Globe Theatre also, and it is assumed that Richard Burbage, the company’s leading tragedian, would have played Antony. Speculation as to the identity of the talented, charismatic boy player entrusted with the part of Cleopatra has been great, particularly in view of her anxiety expressed at the idea of seeing “Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.” It has been suggested that Enobarbus may have originally been played in a red wig (his name means “red-beard”), aligning him emblematically with the character of Judas Iscariot in the medieval morality plays, who was traditionally bewigged in red. 1
When the theaters reopened after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660,
Antony and Cleopatra
was assigned to Thomas Killigrew’s company, the King’s Servants, but never performed. Restoration audiences preferred John Dryden’s neoclassical adaptation,
All for Love
,
or The World Well Lost
(1677), which takes place in a single day after the Battle of Actium. David Garrick was the first to stage Shakespeare’s play again, in a text prepared with the scholar Edward Capell, but it proved one of his less successful ventures, despite Garrick’s considerable expenditure on scenery and costumes. Thomas Davies, who played Eros, wrote an assessment of the production in which he argued that Garrick’s slight physique was inadequate for Antony:
His person was not sufficiently important and commanding to represent the part. There is more dignity of action than variety of passion in the character, though it is not deficient in the latter. The actor, who is obliged continually to traverse the stage, should from person attract respect, as well as from the power of speech. 2
Spectacle dominated nineteenth-century revivals such as John Philip Kemble’s 1808 production at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and William Charles Macready’s at Drury Lane in 1833.
The Gentleman’s Magazine
complained that Kemble had “merely dovetailedShakspere [
sic
] and Dryden; vamped speeches from one with speeches from the other; welted scenes together and in fact ‘cobbled’ the affair…It did not succeed, as Shakspere’s play has since done, when acted with more regard for the author.” 3 Shakespeare’s play was still seen as problematic, though, not least for the role of Cleopatra. Kemble is said to have tried to persuade his sister, Sarah Siddons, the greatest actress of the era, to play the part, but she refused on the grounds that “she should hate herself if she were to act Cleopatra as she knew it ought to be acted.” 4 The role continued to pose a problem for actresses. Ellen Tree, for example, who played the part in the first American production in New Orleans in 1838, was described as “impeccably pure and decorous in the proper Victorian manner”: 5 decorum is hardly the characteristic Shakespeare was looking for in the part. The first New York production at the Park Theater in 1846 “only ran for six performances despite expensive scenery and costumes and competent acting.” 6
Samuel Phelps staged the first
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