Passion & Power: Love in the Courts of Elsinore and Egypt
Emily Trace
June 12, 2012
Passion and Power: Love in the Courts of Elsinore and Egypt
Though modern sensibilities favour the notion of love as a universal constant, often citing the works of William Shakespeare as evidence to this reductive platitude, a closer examination of his plays proves rather that love is infinitely varying and unique from person to person. Across his canon of tragedies, the constants that emerge are treachery, manipulation, and self-destruction, but never does love itself manifest in a universal, predictable way in Shakespeare’s plays. Perhaps one of the most intriguing factors that contributes to love’s ever-variable nature is the presence of political power in the dynamics of tenderness and passion. Being a game unto itself, love is made exponentially more complex by the added dimension of a political power structure, combining the two into a perilous game of Raumschach, though frequently the two elements are so disparate that the players lose their lives before anyone can win. In his respective works “Hamlet” and “Antony and Cleopatra”, Shakespeare explores this particular situation in two dynamically different dramatic worlds, through two very different female characters and the men that surround them. By contrasting the political realms of Egypt and Elsinore, one can examine the effect that power, or lack thereof, has on a woman in love. Love being a mixture of passion and will, it manifests in the complexities of their identities, the forms of manipulation they engage with, and finally, the manner in which each woman takes her own life.
The initial concern that must be tackled when examining how power influences the passions is the question of identity: how does power or lack thereof affect an individual’s consciousness? Cleopatra, on the one hand, is more frequently referred to by the name of the nation she rules than by her personal name. She is a triumvirate in and of herself: woman, queen, and goddess existing in one form, and much as the triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Antony make war on one another, so too do her multiplicity of identities. Her political talents intrude upon her expression of passion, and likewise, her love and longing for Antony is heavily coloured by a desire for conquest. For instance, the fifth scenes of Act I and Act II both open on her in a distracted state, unable to focus on any one occupation in Antony’s absence, calling for music, then billiards, and finally fishing, saying that as she “betrays” fishes, “I’ll think them every one an Antony / And say, ‘Ah, ha! y’are caught.” (Shakespeare, 2.5.11-15) This provides a crucial insight into the nature of her love; it is not a river that runs parallel to her political nature, untainted by her desire for power. Because she must contain both a queen and a woman within herself, the respective desires of each blend together in a way that makes her longing sound as much like a desire for conquest as an expression of love. And as much as her political identity intrudes upon her passions, so do her passions define how she conducts affairs of state; within the same scene, she abuses an official messenger from Rome for telling her of Antony’s marriage to Octavia. But despite her violent actions towards him, she is aware that her political conduct in this scene is ignoble, unbefitting a queen, saying that “These hands do lack nobility, that they strike / A meaner than myself; since I myself / Have given myself the cause.” (2.5.82-84) Cleopatra is aware of how her wills conflict and thus degrade one identity or the other, and the fact that she takes responsibility for loving Antony, and is aware of its negative effect on her regal conduct, suggests that she struggles to arbitrate between her warring identities. Her awareness of this conflict and reluctance to let it dominate her is significant when compared to Ophelia’s submissiveness to the powers around her. Her identity rarely asserts itself, and so abject is her powerlessness in Elsinore that she invariably bends to the advice or wills of her father, brother, king or prince. In response to her father’s rebuke against her judgment, she replies “I do not know, my lord, what I should think.” (1.3.104) This does not imply a vacancy of identity, but rather a girl so accustomed to being controlled, being told what to think, that she does not trust her own judgment. She may be aware of this mistrust, as Cleopatra is aware of her own conflict, and this would explain why she obeys her father with very little argument, and turns away tokens of Hamlet’s love that she once described as “honourable” and “holy”. When she reports to Polonius “… as you did command, / I did repel his letters, and denied / His access to me,” (65) it is unclear is she is gratifying his wishes in spite of her own, or if her own identity is generated by the wills of those around her. A possible insight into this question may lie in how she, in contrast to Cleopatra, describes the object of her affections, illustrating him as “the courtier’s, soldiers, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword, / The expectancy and rose of the fair state, / The glass of fashion and the mould of form,” (112). She references his accomplishments, talents, appearance and social position. Ophelia lives in a world of secret scandals, but Elsinore is a much more grounded reality than Egypt, and though she is no less loving in her description of Hamlet, she is far more literal than Cleopatra in her effusive ode to Antony in the final act of the play:
“His legs bestrid the ocean: his reared arm
Crested the world: his voice was propertied
As all the tune’d spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder.” 135
Both women are recalling men who once were and now no longer are, but the different ways they remember those that they love is highly indicative of the two respective power structures they reside in, and how it affects their identities. Sober Elsinore, a place where a mortal king holds only the transitory power of the state while he is alive, is the world in which Ophelia believes what she is told and observes only as far as she can see, mistaking what might be artifice or performance for crushing truth. By contrast, voluptuous Egypt is a world where a goddess may be embodied in the flesh and external behaviour is only varyingly indicative of inner motive; in this world, Cleopatra attests that the imagination can sometimes estimate a thing more truthfully than nature portrays it (5.2.97-99). Ophelia has little imagination, and when reality seems to contradict itself as it does when she thinks that Hamlet’s noble mind is “blasted with ecstasy” (3.1.162), her very literal world begins to crack at the edges and her reason is compromised by her emotions. But Cleopatra’s imaginative, flexible relationship to reality works to her advantage; when politics and passion conflict, she can preserve her identity, reason and integrity by understanding that men may say one thing and intend another, such as when Caesar promises her mercy but means to display her as a symbol of conquest (5.2.334-336). By contrast, Ophelia’s identity is defined and limited by her powerlessness in Elsinore, and how her very literal consciousness is confounded by a conflict between love and duty.
Though these two women live in entirely different power structures, and their respective expressions of love are accordingly unique, both women are torn between their sense of duty and their personal feelings, and both are accused of being manipulative when they honour their political duties. In an extension of this, they are charged with being responsible for the desires and actions of the men they love, as if they had complete power over the will of another. However, these forms of manipulation, or conspicuous lack thereof, are directly tied to their role within the hierarchy they belong to and therefore cannot be dismissed as simple betrayal. Cleopatra, whose political strategies often utilize what she has learned from games of love, is an expert on behaviour, and fully aware of the power holds; she gives her servants detailed instructions on how to portray her to Antony, and demands accounts of his facial expressions and tone of voice. Towards the beginning of the play, when she is trying to keep Antony near her, she commands Alexas to discover Antony’s whereabouts and, and furthermore: “If you find him sad, / Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report / That I am sudden sick.” (1.3.3-5) And yet, when she is fleeing in fear of him towards the conclusion of the play, she gives very similar instructions to Mardian, commanding “… go tell him I have slain myself: / Say the last word I spoke was ‘Antony!’ / And word it, prithee, piteously”, begging to him to relay how Antony reacts to the news (4.13.7-9) Though her objectives in both are entirely different, she still employs the same tactics that rely heavily on a personal knowledge of Antony, and men in general. When trying to entice him, she has it reported that her state contrasts Antony’s, and when trying to appease his fury, she wants him to think she died with his name on her lips. She is not just a master of how her own behaviour is portrayed, but also in interpreting that of others. These methods of manipulation are not just a woman’s tricks; they are the political tactics of a queen. Though they could be seen as insincerity and lies, her tactics prolong her life, letting her escape the danger of Antony’s anger. Because the power of Egypt is so centralized in her, Cleopatra cannot be dismissed as a stereotypical seductress whose methods of manipulation serve only personal impulses. By contrast, Ophelia has so little ability to interpret Hamlet’s behaviour that manipulation simply is not an option for her, and this ironically makes her the ideal puppet for other’s manipulative ends. For example, after Hamlet has seen the ghost of his father and encounters her, Ophelia relays his behaviour to her own father in detailed, literal terms, describing the state of his clothing, “doublet all unbrac’d, / No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d, / Ungarter’d and down-gyved to the ancle” (2.2.77-79) and a chronology of his behaviour towards her. Yet despite her remarkable attention to detail and all her powers of observation, Ophelia barely engages analytically with all the information she has gathered, going only so far as to say that his sigh was “so piteous and profound / As it did seem to shatter al his bulk, / And end his being…” (2.2.93-95). Even though she is in love with Hamlet, and pays just as close attention to every nuance of his behaviour as Cleopatra does to Antony, being so utterly powerless and so perpetually controlled by the men in Elsinore has left her without the talent to interpret these observations to her own advantage. Instead, she ascribes to her father’s interpretation that this is evidence of “the very ecstasy of love” (2.2.101) and because she believes him that Hamlet is mad, she continues to let herself be a tool of his manipulation. Had she any guile of her own, she might not be quite so abject a figure of powerlessness. By contrasting how these women in love engage with manipulation, it becomes clear that the ability to interpret independently and employ cunning is seen as reprehensible in women, and yet can provide the power to survive such ruthless political structures. By extension, the question of responsibility emerges, and how it is ascribed unfairly to women who love and are loved by powerful men. In the dramatic worlds of Egypt and Elsinore, the stakes of love are higher than they would be in reality, because they are inextricably tangled in the games of power. Therefore, when both Hamlet and Antony find that the women they desire have served a political or filial duty in favour of personal feelings, they blame them for failings that these women are not responsible for. For example, when Antony follows Cleopatra from battle and loses it in doing so, he blames her for his loss, calling her a “triple-turned whore” in the same sentence where he describes his fleet carousing with the enemy (4.12.12-13). Upon the defeat, he blames her unequivocally:
“Egypt, thou knew’st too well
My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’ strings,
And thou shouldst tow me after. O’er my spirit
Thy full supremacy thou knew’st, and that
Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command me.” (3.11.56-61)
Though it was his decision to follow her, and his fleet’s decision to change loyalties, Antony ascribes all responsibility to Cleopatra’s seductive powers. Though what power she has to seduce him while they ride on separate ships is questionable enough, not even Enobarbus agrees that Cleopatra is to blame, saying that Antony’s desire compromised his tactical abilities, saying “Why should he follow? / The itch of his affection should not then / Have nicked his captainship” (3.13.6-8). Because Cleopatra occupies not only a position of absolute power in Egypt but a similar place in Antony’s desire, he attributes his military losses to the beguiling power he feels himself under. Though she has just as much to lose from the defeat as Antony, the power she has as both queen of Egypt and an object of desire work against her, demonstrating how being loved by Antony and being powerful in her own right allow him to feel justified in blaming her for his own appalling tactical decisions. In a fashion not dissimilar to this, Ophelia is told she must be responsible for Hamlet’s desire and bear the consequences of his actions towards her, first by Laertes who warns her “what loss your honour may sustain” if she should yield unto Hamlet’s “unmaster’d importunity” (1.3.29-32), and secondly by Polonius, who tells her to “set your entreatments at a higher rate / Than a command to parley” because “with a larger tether may [Hamlet] walk / Than may be given you.” (1.3. 22-26). In Elsinore, a prince’s desire is seen as a natural disaster that a woman of lower birth must guard against, rather like carrying an umbrella when the sky appears heavy with rain. While Cleopatra’s power attracts more responsibility than she is due, Ophelia powerlessness seems to do just the same in her own political structure; because of the disparity of their ranks, Hamlet’s actions cannot be directly curbed by Polonius and instead, he makes his daughter responsible for the actions of the man she loves. Furthermore, when she tries to honour her filial duty to her father, she is blamed by Hamlet for disloyalty unto him; for the wills of others working through her, saying that false women make monsters of men, even saying she has made him mad (3.1. 140-148). Though it is arguable that he does this in the knowledge of Claudius and Polonius watching, and blames her so that they will not try to use her again, Ophelia’s utter powerlessness in Elsinore has much the same effect that Cleopatra’s concentration of power has. This is a disturbing commonality, suggesting that women in political arenas will unvaryingly be blamed for the desires and failings of men no matter how much power they hold, and that their love for these men will only incur greater blame.
Though an examination of identity and manipulation methods illuminates how Shakespeare’s women in love are defined by the political structures they exist in, the manner in which each ends her own life says volumes about their respective relationships to power. Ophelia’s death, on the one hand, is a very literal expression of her powerlessness; whether she fell into the pond and was too “incapable of her own distress” to save herself, or made a decision in madness, without reason, to jump (4.7.179), her death was a direct result of her lack of power in Elsinore. The conflict between her sense of duty and love for Hamlet might not have been enough to unhinge her by itself, but this conflict was personified in physical form through Hamlet killing Polonius. Furthermore, it has already been seen how Ophelia’s identity has been quashed down to accommodate the wills of others, and how her own mental faculties have been left undeveloped by her father and brother constantly telling her what to thing; it should not then be surprising when her mind bends to madness once every man who ever controlled her is suddenly gone from Elsinore in one night. Gertrude describes how Ophelia’s garments “bore her up” at first before betraying her, and “heavy with their drink, / Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay / To muddy death.” (4.7.176-184) In striking similarity, Ophelia’s powerlessness, and willingness to be controlled by those around her allows her to survive for a while in the political structure of Elsinore, but can not protect her indefinitely once those who control her come into conflict with one another, and subsequently abandon her to her complete lack of devices. Ophelia’s death is a seamless expression of how her powerlessness in life caused her powerless death. Cleopatra, on the one hand, takes her own life in sober, noble resolve, both as a tribute to Antony, and to be her own conqueror as befits the woman who embodies Egypt, saying that once he is buried, she and hers with “do’t after the high Roman fashion, / And make death proud to take us.” (4.15.86-87) Both her love for Antony and her duty to Egypt are honoured by this act. The death of the one she loves focuses Cleopatra for the first time in the play; until this moment, her love for Antony drove her to distraction and was the primary factor that separated her identity as a woman from her identity as a nation and a goddess. With the object of her love beyond any earthly pleasure she might have of him, she is no longer distracted by any earthly diversion, saying “I have / Immortal longings in me. Now no more / The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.” (5.2.280-282) This is not to say that Antony’s death dissolves her sensuality, or causes the human in her to die; rather, his death reconciles the woman with the goddess. Until this moment, her love and her sense of duty were at odds, and now they both serve the same ends: “My resolution’s placed, and I having nothing / Of woman in me: now from head to foot / I am marble constant” (5.2.238-240) This constancy is seen in how by taking her own life, she is honouring both sides of her identity which have until now been destructively disparate, able to be both a noble queen and a loyal lover in the same act.
The commonalities that emerge between these two dissimilar women seem to relate more to the challenges that women face in political structures, while their respective expressions of their love attests to how the manifestation of love is always unique to the individual and circumstance. Cleopatra, so inundated by power that she is often crippled by it, and Ophelia, whose only skill is her utter powerlessness, represent two polarities of how political structures define and are defined by the passions of those who exist within them. The presiding moral that links them is a grisly warning of how power and passion react to one another rather like a tempestuous force of nature encountering an ambitious man-made structure built in pride and opposition to the chaos of man’s natural state: political structures can be toppled, but storms of passion recur as inevitably as the passing of seasons.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra. New York: Signet Classic, 1998. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Toronto: Longmans Canada Limited, 1963. Print.