Roman World, Egyptian Earth: Cognitive Difference and Empire in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra ¹

Abstract

Critics over the years have found many ways to read the binary division of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra between the poles of Rome and Egypt.² Recently, postcolonial theory has informed readings that emphasize the “Otherness” of Egypt: as John Gillies has argued, the “‘orientalism’ of Cleopatra’s court — with its luxury, decadence, splendour, sensuality, appetite, effeminacy, and eunuchs — seems a systematic inversion of the legendary Roman values of temperance, manliness, courage, and pietas.”³ However, as these critics usually acknowledge, the contrast between the two blurs upon closer inspection, since, as Gillies again puts it, “only from the vantage point of Egypt does Rome seem Roman.”⁴