Who’s the Bigger Drama Queen, Cleopatra or … Antony?
Cover image: Detail of drawing in ink and opaque, Antony and Cleopatra, by A. M. Faulkner, 1906. Above: Detail of image depicting Act III, Scene IX, Antony and Cleopatra, from the original painting by Henry Tresham; engraved by G.S. & I.G. Facius, 1795. Both images: Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
Whatever else she may or may not be, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, of The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, is a drama queen. To give her her supreme and royal due, we might even call her the drama queen or proto–drama queen, for she has long epitomized the type—even before we knew what to call it.
Antony and Cleopatra, from a set of seven original drawings by Byam Shaw, ca. 1900. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
But what do we mean when we say “drama queen”? Wordsmith.org offers this: “noun: someone who is prone to behaving in an exaggeratedly dramatic way: creating unnecessary scenes or making a big deal of small matters.” Google provides a yet more succinct definition via Oxford Languages: “a person who habitually responds to situations in a melodramatic way.”
Cleopatra consistently fits the bill. Early in the play, left to pine for her Antony (who has returned to Rome following the death of his wife), a messenger arrives from him, for her, in Egypt. She greets the messenger, eager for happy tidings. But before the messenger can speak three words, she stirs up a scene rife with sighs and exclamations:
“Antonio’s dead! If thou say so, villain,
Thou kill’st thy mistress; but well and free,
If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss—a hand that kings
Have lipp’d, and trembled kissing.” (II, v, 25–30)
In the space of two sentences, she swings marvelously from near-death experience to an offer of abundance in gold and the faintest hint of sensual pleasure.
Having, however, at last learned the worst from the messenger—not that Antony is well or ill, but rather that he has married Cesar’s sister, Octavia—she strikes the messenger down, warning him away while hurling potent and hateful words upon him:
“…Hence,
Horrible villain, or I’ll spurn thine eyes
Like balls before me; I’ll unhair thy head,
Thou shalt be whipt with wire, and stew’d in brine,
Smarting in ling’ring pickle.”
Provoked by his continuing refusal to provide good news, she draws a knife and threatens his life. What can he do but say, don’t kill the messenger, and run? High drama. Melodrama? Wonderful. But she is not alone in displaying such tendencies. Antony has an inclination this way, too.
Antony and Cleopatra, from a set of seven original drawings by Byam Shaw, ca. 1900. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
In battle at sea against Cesar, now Antony’s enemy, Antony turns tail and sets his sails to flee, following in the wake of Cleopatra—whose sixty ships have already left the fight. The day and the future is won by Cesar. Antony, the once mighty warrior, is undone, tied as he is to Cleopatra. Disgraced and ashamed, he comes ashore in Alexandria and he laments his disgrace with eloquent extravagance:
“Hark, the land bids me tread no more upon’t
It is asham’d to bear me …
I have fled myself, and have instructed cowards
To run and show their shoulders …
…O,
I follow’d that I blush to look upon.
My very hairs do mutiny; for the white
Reprove the brown for rashness…”
Do we call a man a drama queen? Of course, we do. For fun. With a smile. It’s interesting to note that any cursory search into the origins of the term will turn up its (apparently) earliest documented usage, which happens to be in connection with a man. The expression appears in an article of November 1923, “The Chances for Father,” in House & Garden, and concerns the need of a man, as head of household, to have his own room—a place for his hobbies: “If he is thwarted in his effort to enjoy them, he may either go to the dogs or the drama queens, become short-tempered, sullen, grouchy and eventually feel that, in a way, he is a failure.”
The suggestion of failure seems to be at the heart of it. Understanding he has lost, believing Cleopatra dead, Antony calls upon his friend Eros to put him out of his misery and kill him; but Eros instead kills himself. Antony waxes magniloquent:
“Thrice-nobler than myself!
Thou teachest me, O valient Eros, what
I should, and thou coudst not….
…I will be
A bridegroom in my death, and run into’t
As to a lover’s bed…” (IV, xiv, 95–102)
…and falls on his sword. But still he doesn’t die.
Antony and Cleopatra, by Frank Howard, printmaker, 1828. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
He lives long enough to learn that Cleopatra is yet still alive; that her “death” had been an act to move him to pity, so that she might enjoy his sadness for her, but it goes too far and she is not quick enough to stop the tragic results of her game. His soldiers take him to Cleopatra, where she is locked in her monument—which will be her tomb. And it is there that they battle for the biggest-drama-queen crown:
Antony: “I am dying, Egypt, dying; only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.” (IV, xiv, 18–20)
Cleopatra: “…Die when thou has liv’d,
Quicken with kissing. Had my lips that power,
Thus would I wear them out.” (37–39)
Antony dies, leaving Cleopatra to face Cesar, who wants to take her back to Rome to parade her around, a spectacle. The queen of spectacles, this will not do, opting famously instead for the “joy of the worm,” the deadly kiss upon her breast of the asp, and immortality.
So who wins the crown? It seems clear to me. Antony’s end is dramatic and good, but, really, it can’t compare to death by self-inflicted snakebite just above the heart.
The Death of Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, Scene 2), steel engraving mid to late 19th century). Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)