Ecofeminist Reading of Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra

Ecofeminist Reading of Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra

In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra (1606–1607), Rome does not wholly conquer Egypt. This is contrary to expectation, as Rome and Anthony represent the 'masculine West' and its higher position in 'imperial hierarchies,' making them the anticipated conquerors over Cleopatra who reigns over and personifies 'the exotic and feminine East' (Heidrai, 2020). Yet, Anthony laments in 3.12 that ‘you [Cleopatra] were my conqueror’. This reading is often challenged by the play's nature as a tragedy, ending with Cleopatra's suicide in 5.2 once Egypt is gained by Caesar. However, Cleopatra’s suicide is integrous and intentional as she seeks to ‘conquer their most absurd intents’ (5.2), referring to Caesar’s pending parade of her as a human trophy. Through this final act of agency, Cleopatra’s power and chosen identity are free from the scope of physical conquest. The ecofeminist notion is that ‘women must see that there can be no liberation for them and no solution to the ecological crisis within a society whose fundamental model of relationships continues to be one of domination’ (Estévez-Saá & Lorenzo-Modia, 2018). In Anthony and Cleopatra, that model of ‘domination’ is multifaceted: patriarchal, imperial, and environmental. The likeness between Cleopatra and the natural world conveys her intrinsic strength over artificial powers, like performative masculinity and constructive social hierarchies, held by the Romans.

'O this false soul of Egypt!' 

(Anthony, 4.13)

Rome’s inability to conquer Cleopatra through her autonomous and strategic death suggests that the land and nature she represents overpowers and outlasts the empire. Her legacy will always be victorious and this can be read as an ecofeminist victory. The conflation of Cleopatra and Egypt demonstrates their mutuality. In 3.11 when Anthony laments his fallen reputation and honour as a result of his love for Cleopatra, he asks her ‘O whither hast thou led me, Egypt?’. His blame of Cleopatra and Egypt is analogous; ‘Egypt, thou knew’st too well / My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’strings’ (3.11). This analogy recurs in 4.16 when Anthony exclaims his final words to Cleopatra, ‘I am dying, Egypt, dying’. 

'I am fire and air- my other elements / I give to baser life.' 

(Cleopatra, 5.2)

Furthermore, descriptions of Cleopatra tend to be elusive, pastoral and ‘synesthesiac’ (Crane, 2009) as though she were a part of nature to be felt rather than seen. Enobarbus explains that Cleopatra ‘beggared all description’ (2.2) that was physical and yet ‘we cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears: they are greater storms and tempests than alamancs can report’ (1.2). This implies that she is volatile and that her emotions and passions are elemental, even cosmic, as though she is herself an unstoppable force of nature. This view of Cleopatra not only reflects the colonial perspective of ‘the other’ that is simultaneously exoticised and demonised, but also the charge brought up by ecofeminists, that the diction used in characterising women in a way that justifies male control is identical to that towards the environment to justify anthropocentric control. The metaphor presents Cleopatra’s temperament as ‘greater… than almanacs can report’ which indicates unpredictability, making her a threat to Rome’s pursuit of imperial expansion.

As well as Egypt, the river Nile is a recurring motif to represent Cleopatra’s interconnectedness with Egypt’s ecosphere. Anthony’s endearing name for her is ‘my serpent of old nile’ (1.5) and when she kills herself in 5.2, it is through ‘th’aspic leaves / Upon the caves of Nile’ which are disguised as figs so as to bypass the Romans’ surveillance. This implies her closeness with nature that enables her to weaponize it. The Nile is also associated with excess and inundation, which is why the surrounding land is so fertile. This explains the symbolic nexus between the Nile and Cleopatra’s mercurial character as ‘her furious and passionate outbursts of temper match the melting, gushing and swelling of the Nile waters’ (Altarriba Benítez and Escola, 2019). Cleopatra also often vacillates between displays of passionate devoted love for Anthony and cold strategic manoeuvres to protect her political sovereignty, even if that entails betraying him.

There is a ‘perceptual dichotomy’ (Crane, 2009) in the natures of Rome and Egypt that reinforces the political, patriarchal and environmental tensions between them. The ‘dichotomy’ is evident in the way Egyptian susceptibility to overwhelming emotion contrasts with Roman imperviousness and stoicism which underlies their approaches to conquest. Rome is characterised as 'logical and moral' whereas Egypt is 'rendered sensual, luxurious, corrupt and effeminate' (Heidrai, 2020). This may be an instance of Shakespeare projecting Western views of the Eastern other onto Egypt and Cleopatra. However, this trope is still subverted by Cleoaptra's evasion of conquer and Anthony's political and social demise. This implies that 'Shakespeare, rather than supporting or defending the fixed notions about the East and the West, seems to be questioning their fixed, essential nature’ (Heidrai, 2020).

In line with those tropes, Cleopatra's feelings and temperament are interwoven with the external environment. This is seen when she hears of Anthony’s marriage to Octavia and indignantly professes that she would prefer ‘half my Egypt were submerged and made / A cistern for scaled snakes’ (2.5). The grotesque image of a distorted nature with flooding and reptilian infestation suggests that nature responds violently to her emotional rupture. A similar sentiment is evoked by an exclamation in the same scene: ‘melt egypt into Nile’. These Egyptian notions about human interconnectedness and interdependence within the ecosphere reflect early Aristotelian understandings of the environment through an ‘intuitive science’ that was ‘declining’ in ancient Rome in favour of a ‘new science’ (Crane, 2009). This 'new science' entailed separating the human from the environment, establishing a dynamic in which humans are autonomous and able to gain mastery, regarding the environment as colonial space. An ecofeminist reading also recognises the early modern notions of femininity in the outdated 'intuitive science' that Cleopatra resembles since women were seen as ‘more open to environmental influence, more porous, leaky, and impressionable, than male bodies’ (Crane, 2009). This further shows how the patriarchal characterisation of women directly mirrors the imperial characterisation of the environment.

Rome’s imperial ideology entails that the true Roman is impervious to external influence, including the environment, which is to be regarded as a resource to be tamed, controlled and exploited. The triumvirs are regarded as the ‘triple pillars of the world’ (1.1) and the ‘three world sharers’ (2.7) reflecting a sense of dominion (‘sharers’) that is justified by necessity; as a pillar is essential to strengthen and stabilise architecture, such is the Roman’s role to the entire world. Caesar praises Anthony as the epitome of these Roman principles in 1.4 because he endured and was not influenced by various ecological challenges. In response to ‘famine’, Anthony drank ‘the stale of horses… which beasts would cough at’ and he ate ‘strange flesh / Which some did die to look on’. The significance of this endurance is in the way that ‘thy cheek / So much as lanked not’, proving his resistance. The Romans are expected to apply this attitude to Egypt in order to conquer it. Yet Egypt embodies a dichotomous worldview; instead of upholding stolidness and performativity, it basks in sensuality and emotional indulgence. While seen as inferior, this attitude makes Egypt- Cleopatra- unpredictable and thereby unconquerable, just like nature.

'The triple pillar of the world transformed / Into a strumpet's fool' 

(Philo, 1.1)

On a microscopic scale, Rome cannot conquer Egypt because Anthony cannot conquer Cleopatra. His Roman masculinity is significantly destabilised by his affection. Anthony’s fall can be understood through the metaphor of ecological contamination where his masculine Roman world is invaded by feminine Egyptian values. For instance, the sword is a recurring motif to represent Roman valiance, representing the strength and violence with which they seek to conquer Egypt. The alignment with masculine Roman values can shape the sword into a phallic symbol. This explains the depictions of Anthony’s emasculation in relation to his sword. In 3.11, he exclaims that ‘you [Cleopatra] were my conqueror’ because she made ‘my sword [be] weak by my affection’. He also laments in 4.15 ‘O thy vile lady / She has robbed me of my sword!’ following her second betrayal at a naval battle against Caesar. Not only has she ‘robbed’ him of his political and militant victory, but his masculinity and Roman honour which dwindled once his love for Cleopatra turned him against his Roman alliance. In this sense, ‘he had become a foreigner: he had become a kind of woman’. (Hughes-Hallet, 2006). The association of him with ‘foreign[ess]’ reiterates the idea of him being invaded, contaminated and conquered by the customs of another land. 

'We are women's men' 

(Camidius, 3.7)

Furthermore, when Anthony refers to himself through the metaphor ‘As water is in water… now thy captain is / Even such a body’ (4.15), the water imagery is redolent of Egypt and Cleopatra’s destructive passions, as portrayed earlier with the imagery of floodings and the Nile river. Here, the water motif is implicit of Anthony’s sunken reputation because of his love. It is also significant that each of his betrayals take place during sea battles as opposed to battles on land. In 3.10, he loses the Battle of Actium because he follows Cleopatra who abandons him at sea. The failure is conveyed through a nautical metaphor expounding on fallenness, ‘our fortune on the sea… sinks most lamentably’. In 4.13, Cleopatra abandons Anthony again at the naval battle against Caesar; ‘Swallows have built / in Cleopatra’s sails their nests’. The fact his fall is both times engendered by her absence at sea, where water has frequently been associated with volatile femininity, invites the ecofeminist idea that patriarchal attempts to possess and control the feminine natural world result in destruction. 

This is supported by the notion that ‘the relentless action of water lies behind the culture shock the Romans experience on Egyptian soil’ (Altarriba Benítez and Escola, 2019). The ‘culture shock’ refers to what I propose is an ecofeminist victory in the way Cleopatra subverts Roman expectations of domination. The foreboding remark from one of Anthony’s soldiers reinforces this prior to the Battle of Actium: ‘we are women’s men’ (3.7). Though expressing a feeling of emasculation, his words also convey the sense of a diminishing Roman patriarchal identity while in Cleopatra’s territory. 

Therefore, the environmental motifs reveal Cleopatra’s multifaceted defiance. Her agency in death is the return to an elemental force that the Roman oppressors could never claim. Cleopatra’s power was undermined by Rome’s patriarchal imperial authority, but she symbolically reclaimed this power in the end. Through an ecofeminist lens, I determine that nature, represented by Cleopatra, is the victor as the play’s ecological symbolism reflects the power of agency that cannot be conquered by exploitative institutions. While this may be a predominantly modern interpretation, one can speculate Shaksespeare’s early interests in geo-cultural identity through his demonstration of how much a person’s identity is shaped by their environment, as in Cleopatra’s character. This view can be justified by the early modern notion of ‘geo-humoralism’ relating to ‘the pervasive early modern belief that climate and other environmental factors shaped the bodily complexion of humors and, therefore, shaped racial character' (Crane, 2009). In that sense, Shaesepare may have been just as sympathetic to Cleopatra as the ecofeminists, hence why both present her character with an air of integrity in death, shaped by her society's contemporary beliefs about nature conditioning the individual. On the other hand, the play can be read as 'a cautionary tale, a story that warns Westerners about the dangers of the East' (Heidrai, 2020) because Shakespeare writes about a Roman Republic as it transitions into an Empire and he is writing in England, a country with growing imperial ambitions (Sir Francis Drake having already been sent on his first expeditions). Thus, the moral superior view would have been in favour of conquering nature, not being conquered by it.

Reading List:

Altarriba Benítez, R. and Escola, J.C. (dirs.) (2019). "As Water is in Water": The Roman Perception of Egypt in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. pp. 1–27

Clark, T. (2011). The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp1-12.

Crane M.T. (2006).  Roman World, Egyptian Earth: Cognitive Difference and Empire in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra . Comparative Drama, Volume 43 (1). pp1-17.

Heidari, N.F. (2020). Re-visiting Orientalism in Antony and Cleopatra. International Journal of English, Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS), 5(1), pp.142–145. doi:10.22161/ijels.51.25.

Hughes-Hallett, L. (2006). About Cleopatra. Royal Shakespeare Company. [Online] Available at: https://www.rsc.org.uk/antony-and-cleopatra/about-the-play/article-about-cleopatra (Accessed: 12 April 2025).

Rashid A. (2022).  Eco Critical reading of Shakespeare. VFAST Transactions on Education and Social Sciences. Volume 10 (2). pp32-37.

Note: 

This article was originally published on ResearchGate 

Image attribution: Jean-André Rixens, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

April 2025.