But “Antony and Cleopatra” presents much deeper problems for any PC police who want to explain away uncomfortable themes. Because the basic message of the play is: Don’t Give in to a Woman’s Wishes, or She Will Unman You and Be Your Undoing. It’s on nearly every page, in the mouth’s of a dozen different characters, and even in some not-so-subtle stage directions. It says: A great man will attract the most desirable women, but to maintain his greatness, he must never fully give in to their entreaties.
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Shakespeare was a sensitive motherfucker. He could write from a woman’s perspective more convincingly than most women can. Yes, all his greatest roles go to men, but considering the time in which he was writing, his female characters show an incredible diversity of interior experience. He could write innocent teenagers (Miranda); lustful teenagers (Juliet); insane power hungry harridans (Lady MacBeth); crazy poetic young women (Ophelia); graceful poetic young women (Portia); and devoted, loyal women who were morally better and yet more humble than all the conniving, power-hungry men surrounding them (Cordelia).
And yet for all his sensitivity, it’s pretty clear how Shakespeare felt about men who let their women control them. Right from the first page of “Antony and Cleopatra,” the great Mark Antony is painted as a fool who has given up his manhood to Cleopatra. The first speech of the first scene goes to Antony’s friend, Philo:
“His captain’s heart, which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst the buckles on his breast, reneges all temper, and is become the bellows and the fan to cool a gypsy’s lust.” (I, i, 6-10) Gypsy here means both “Egyptian” and also the pejorative “hussy.” Not only has Antony laid down his manly sword in order to drink and carouse with a woman and her eunuchs, but that woman herself, Cleopatra, mocks his valor with her own loose ways. Remember, Cleopatra used to fuck Antony’s best friend Julius Caesar before he was murdered.
Right from her first lines, Cleopatra is manipulative and emasculating. Antony professes his love to her, and she demands, “If it be love indeed, tell me how much.” Talk about milking compliments! Tell me how much you love me, now!
Of course, Antony is only too happy to oblige, praising her up and down and east to west. In our supposedly ultra-modern world of evo-psych enlightened sexual dynamics and game, we know that tripping over yourself to praise a woman (especially her physical beauty) will only elicit a woman’s contempt. She will demand you worship her alone, but if you turn a sucker and fall for this, she will immediately see you as less manly and less desirable. Well, my friends, our man Shakespeare knew this too.