When the great English poet W.H. Auden edited the magisterial five-volume Viking Portable Poets of the English Language, he and co-editor Norman Holmes Pearson had the unenviable task of distilling the best of Shakespeare into a corner of a pocket-sized anthology. Well, a thick pocket-sized anthology. Their deliberations are neatly summarized in the introductory pages of Volume 2 – Elizabethan and Jacobean Poets.
With some polite and preliminary trepidation between themselves, the editors approached the choice of a single poetical drama to serve as outstanding and as an example of a genre in which the Elizabethan achievement has never been equaled in the English language. The same title came immediately to each mind.
The play that inspired such instant unanimity was “the triumph of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra” – not such oft-produced titles like Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, or Midsummer Night’s Dream, so widely revered as examples of the Bard’s dramatic and poetic genius.
The conquering hero. The legendary queen. As reporters like to say: it’s a big story.
Armies and navies are arrayed against each other. Nations and factions are bloodying the battlefields on land and sea, as the action spans two continents, with the fates of the Roman Empire and history’s most famous royal lovers hanging in the balance. And Shakespeare’s poetry is up to the occasion. You might even say that it was Shakespeare’s poetry that stamped and elevated the importance of the occasion to a lofty place it has never lost since. Who else has attempted to tell such an epic story onstage?
Those are pretty decent reasons to make sure you don’t miss the Shakespeare Carolina production of Antony and Cleopatra, opening tonight at Theatre Charlotte and running Wednesday-Saturday nights through July 25. It’s as mighty an attempt for a theater company as it is for a playwright. Up in High Point, North Carolina Shakespeare Carolina has been around since 1977 – and they’ve never had the balls to give Tony & Cleo a shot. So your next shot at seeing this classic in the Carolinas doesn’t figure to be soon. Seize the moment, as one of those Romans once said.
This article appears in Jul 14-21, 2009.
