Page "Antony and Cleopatra" Paragraph 81

In her article “ Roman World, Egyptian Earth ,” critic Mary Thomas Crane introduces another symbol throughout the play: The four elements.

In general, characters associated with Egypt perceive their world composed of the Aristotelian elements, which are earth, wind, fire and water.

For Aristotle these physical elements were the centre of the universe and appropriately Cleopatra heralds her coming death when she proclaims, “ I am fire and air ; my other elements / I give to baser life ,” ( 5. 2. 289-90 ).

Romans, on the other hand, seem to have left behind that system, replacing it with a subjectivity separated from and overlooking the natural world and imagining itself as able to control it.

These differing systems of thought and perception result in very different versions of nation and empire.

Shakespeare ’ s relatively positive representation of Egypt has sometimes been read as nostalgia for an heroic past.

Because the Aristotelian elements were a declining theory in Shakespeare ’ s time, it can also be read as nostalgia for a waning theory of the material world, the pre-seventeenth-century cosmos of elements and humors that rendered subject and world deeply interconnected and saturated with meaning.

Thus this reflects the difference between the Egyptians who are interconnected with the elemental earth and the Romans in their dominating the hard-surfaced, impervious world.