Antony and Cleopatra | Act 1, Scene 3 | Royal Shakespeare Company
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- Опубліковано 16 лип 2017
- Watch Josette Simon as Cleopatra and Antony Byrne as Antony, in Shakespeare's great tragedy.
Antony & Cleopatra is directed by Iqbal Khan for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. It transfers to the Barbican, London this autumn, as part of our Rome season.
www.rsc.org.uk/antony-and-cle... - Розваги
It has been said that Cleopatra is Shakespeare's most complex portrait of a woman, & this production (based on this scene) gets that.
And what that says that Cleopatra might be Shakespeare's most complex woman, well that is another story.
rly enjoyed Cleopatra's characterization here, great job bringing the queen to life! (when you read too much of the plays you forget Shakespeare's supposed to be watched lol)
My God, she's brilliant!
Yes. Yes she is.
So good!
Yes, Cleopatra was historically Greek (though still debatable). But this argument is only upheld by those who clearly haven't read Shakespeare's play, who, along with his contemporaries, conceived Cleopatra as a BLACK queen - 'with Phoebus' amorous pinches BLACK' - of a BLACK culture. This characterisation is integral to his exploration of opposites, between the white/male/militaristic/Roman Antony and the black/female/political/Egyptian Cleopatra; it also allowed him to, through superficial opposites, draw veiled comparisons with Queen Elizabeth I. Historical trivia just isn't a substitute for intellect.
Kleopatra being Greek isn’t debatable.
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Shakespeare didn't perceive her as black. Look at his description of cleopatra being fanned:
The fancy outwork the nature, On each side of her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids
With Divers color'd fans whose winds
To seem to glow the delicate cheeks, which cool,
And what they did, they undid.
So, the image that he is creating is of woman with such fair skin that even a breeze is enough to make her cheeks rosy. Clearly, he is depicting a white woman.
@@fabianhale845 It is debatable because being a twelfth-generation descendent of Ptolemy, god knows what a crucible of genes she was. The fact that we still cant identify who her grandmother was makes any conclusion suggesting she is 100% Greek naive and reductive.
@@rayarena879 There are many loopholes in your argument.
1. In the play, the Roman soldier Philo specifically states that Cleopatra has 'a tawny front', so clearly she is not fairer than fair but instead dark-skinned.
2. As the play mentions, 'Egypt' was thought to be the land of the 'gipsy', hence the etymology for the name of the country, highlighting its cultural and racial exoticism as pecieved by Europe.
3. The passage you mentioned is reported speech that serves as a paean to Cleopatra's beauty. Bearing in mind that Shakespeare most likely has never seen a black woman in his life, nor his Roman characters who encounter Cleopatra, it is not surprising that any elaboration on her beauty is constructed upon a Eurocentric model. The comparison of her African servants to 'smiling Cupids' is already an indication that the point of reference here is Roman culture, for the Roman speaker can't possibly fathom any other way to describe the prettiness of the boys.
4. The same applies to Cleopatra: in order to communicate her feminine delicacy, the speech once again refers to Eurocentric tradition of portraying a woman's complexion being easily influenced by the elements. Furthermore, the word 'glow' here does not neccesarily mean 'blush', or indication of colouring.
5. Shakespeare's Cleopatra is known for being consistent in her inconsistency. She is a woman of 'infinite variety'. Once again, colour plays a part in contributing to that portrayal, because whereas 'white' was accepted to signiy purity, truth, and thus constancy, 'black' hinted towards passion, obscurity, and inconstancy, perhaps even extending to connotations with the Devil and its penchant for manipulation. Cleopatra here is a black 'femme fatale'. One can see this colour association with Shakespeare's 'Dark Lady' sonnets.
6. For further reference on the construction of black femininity in Elizabethan/Jacobean England, one can look to Ben Jonson's 'The Masque of Blackness' for points of comparison with Shakespeare's Cleopatra. Many interesting similarities to be found
Wow!! where can i watch this?
Reading the comments is a sad because then you realize the marvelous and unique sense that we are the stupendeous INFINITY OF STUPIDITY.
Is just a play writen by one of the unique genius Mr. Shakespeare, master of lunguage and probably there were foreings in England by the time he live. Read some history books.
Even here they debate racism. Psycophat.
Man... max manXDDDDDD
The director in me is in a street fight with my passion for the words. I wanted, soooo badly to love this clip but I don't. It is not a comedy. It is a power struggle of epic proportions because they have both 'given' into passion, which is derided by society, in both countries. A little nervous humour would have set up the 'confrontation' beautifully, but it makes Cleopatra 'common' when she tries to act like a silly schoolgirl. Just my opinion folks.
Valid opinion, but some minor banter with comedy never hurt
Ariana is more of a queen than Cleopatra will eve be
Cleopatra was Egyptian of greek and........ancestry.
Kleopatra didn’t have Egyptian ancestry. None of the Ptolemies did.
+Zee bishop Kleopatra didn’t have African ancestry. Learn about the Ptolemaic dynasty.
What does it matter? She could be Chinese! Let her be a gifted actress!
Jesus wept.
They werent black gimme a break
You’re right, Shakespeare was a white man and Antony was Roman not British… better throw out the whole play due to historical inaccuracy 🙄
This is dreadful. Everyone is forcing their voices, and the text just runs on and on with no end stopping or any sense of normal speech. It’s amazing how few actors can do Shakespeare even at this level
A Shakespeare play, to be performed properly, is not spoken in "normal speech". It is performed in "iambic pentameter," a form of poetry. Its why so many contemporary actors who try to make the plays relevant and "accessible"to the "modern audience" do not really know what they are doing- 'cause it ain't the BARD. -You can look it up -The plays are all available in print.
You should hear some other of his plays... at the Globe & The National... if you want to hear forced voices. Bad habits die hard.
mckavitt13 I don’t and I have!
@@Frank-mm2yp You're missing the point that iambic pentameter is chosen first by Marlowe and his contemporaries then by Shakespeare due to it being the English metre which most closely resembles natural speech rhythms. Yes, the play is written in verse, but in such a way that, spoken, it should sound naturalistic.
@@jackcooper3307 It should sound natural if the actor has been trained to do so. Unfortunately its not the case and so the speeches sound wooden and/or stilted-anything BUT natural .
Cleopatra was Macedonian and the ancient egyptians have been genome sequenced and are similar to europeans and turks, they didn't come up from africa they came down. Caesar would have hardly shown cleopatra around Rome if she was a black chick lol this PC shit has got to stop before Caesar himself ends up a gay mexican
@Jamil Ebdeen They were xenophobic though.
Cleopatra plays herself here as a shouty black mama. Certainly Cleopatra was dark skinned (tawny front) more North African than sub Saharan, with finer features. But the play is not so much about ethnicity, but reason in conflict with passion. But maybe this could be interpreted as exuberance (Black) over coolness (White)
Shakespeare didn't perceive her as black. Look at his description of cleopatra being fanned:
The fancy outwork the nature, On each side of her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids
With Divers color'd fans whose winds
To seem to glow the delicate cheeks, which cool,
And what they did, they undid.
So, the image that he is creating is of woman with such fair skin that even a breeze is enough to make her cheeks rosy. Clearly, he is depicting a white woman.
Josette Simon is less shouty than others & your comment about a "Black Mama" sounds frankly racist. I find Simon's Cleopatra full of rhythmic subtlety (it is poetry, after all) w variety in volume. Which isn't easy to do onstage. Film can achieve more variation, certainly. But going from FF to PP is a rare pleasure that Josette Simon nonetheless achieves. A magnificent actress, a magnificent Cleopatra.
@@rayarena879 It doesn't matter! If she were Chinese & a great actress, I'd be happy. What I don't want to see up there is Tammy Wynette.
Josette Simon has very fine features.
Cleopatra dark skinned? WHAT, No.
For God shake men! Nobody reads history before making a film or a theatre act? I am so sorry to see an illiterate director put on the role of Cleopatra, the descendant of the Greek Ptolemy, a black actor! I have absolutely no problem with the blacks but I have a serious problem with the ignorant of history directors. They have destroyed every truth and they give to the audience anything perverse they have in their minds. This kind of vulgarity must be punished by the courts.
Cleopatra is a Greek Queen from the Macedon dynasty and her name does not deserve this manipulation. To give you an analogous fact of this perverseness, do you believe for a Greek to make a film where the role of Queen Elizabeth would given to black women? It is a blasphemy even to think it.
Nobody knows what the "historical" Cleopatra really looked like. The few images found on ancient coins are not particularly flattering or revealing. As far as historians know she WAS of the dynasty of the Macedonian PTOLEMY.
However, nothing is known about her maternal side. Was she the biological daughter of
a Greek/Macedonian aristocrat, a high born Egyptian or African woman, a concubine, a "foreign born princess" from ????. Her physical appearance will never be accurately portrayed."THE PLAYS THE THING!" The only thing that really matters is does the actress do a great character named CLEOPATRA, or not? And that is subjective to anyone who watches the play. BTW my personal "fantasy" Cleopatra would look more like IRENE PAPPAS than Claudette Colbert, Vivien Leigh or LIz Taylor.
But thats just me(lol).
'I have absolutely no problem with the blacks'. You are weird.
@@amandap2134 : That comment speaks clearly as to his racist
ideology. He has no problem with them as long as they
remember their place in history--which could not include
Cleopatra. I wonder does he see people of color being in
Egypt at all in antiquity??? Maybe Egypt is not part of the
continent of Africa? It would be interesting to hear how
he speaks of blacks in either in the country where he
lives, or in the community where he lives. Weird? No,
but insightful, yes.
Whites play Blacks all the time. Why not the opposite? The play's the thing.
In these days is not matter... in theatres now on ....Anna Karenina, Romeo, Robin Hood and etc - all black... we have not identity and we need to ignore a history....
No way near cleopatra …she is average ..
Cleopatra was not known for her beauty