Lust for Survival in Shakespeare's ANTONY & CLEOPATRA | ArtiFact 57: Laura Woods, Keith Jackewicz

Myths of Rome and the Orient, as well as questions of race and sexuality all play major roles in William Shakespeare’s underrated play, Antony and Cleopatra. It follows the final years of Roman triumvir Mark Antony and Egypt’s queen Cleopatra VII, as they engage in affairs, neglect their imperial duties, and wage war against Octavius Caesar (Augustus). In ArtiFact 57, authors Laura Woods, Alex Sheremet, and Keith Jackewicz discuss Antony & Cleopatra through the lens of Roman history, key aspects of Shakespeare’s writing, and ways of assessing the play as modern readers. You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/igBzg1B9Wro

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B Side topics: Cleopatra’s ambivalence over love; Cleopatra through time; sex, politics, psychology; Keith: love and power’s maintenance can be similar; power as mutual agreement on common myths; Enobarbus is underrated; Antony & Cleopatra as Shakespeare’s most cynical play; Roman propaganda during the time of civil war; the facile comparisons between America and Rome; comparing American and Israeli politics; how liberal/conservative politics get coded, weaponized; Laura: social media has Americanized political discourse in Ireland; Apple vs. Android vs. Microsoft products; Alex: the best, most stable phone I’ve ever owned was an off-brand Chinese product; America, Russia, China; assessing Chinese cultural exports; the lack of penetration of “closed” cultures; why there has been no English-language documentary on Vladimir Vysotsky; Laura on the Irish language, Alex on the Latin Vulgate Bible; Laura on nursing politics in Ireland; Keith: I have little respect for psychiatry as a discipline; mental health is too de-contextualized from everyday reality; the South African genocide against in the ICJ; Ireland’s Palestinian experience, Palestine’s Irish experience; Iran’s Bobby Sands virtue-signal; Michael Hoffman is useless for Palestinian activism; anti-Talmud theories are similar to Islamophobia; Israel & genetic ancestry

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Cleopatra thumbnail photo by Siednji Leon on Unsplash.

Timestamps:

1:00 – introducing Antony & Cleopatra; Irish poet Laura Woods on Antony and Cleopatra in the Shakespeare pantheon; how Shakespeare manages length; sexual innuendo in Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra; Keith Jackewicz: Antony and Cleopatra has no obvious villain; do readers have empathy with a “soft” & emotional Antony; Cleopatra, race/ethnicity, and Orientalism

15:48 – how 17th century conceptions of race crystallize in Shakespeare; there are no great (extended) soliloquies in Antony & Cleopatra; tensions between prosaic and poetic elements in Shakespeare; austere Rome vs. Egyptian fantasy; moments of humor; why elites ignored the Eastern Roman Empire

25:30 – Alex on the ancient tension between Roman citizens & Greek migrants; Homeric vs. Hellenistic Greece; Roman history never seems to hit a