Imagining Cleopatra: Performing Gender and Power in Early Modern England

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Shakespeare's characterization of Cleopatra may dominate the collective consciousness, but he was only one of several 16th-century writers fascinated by the enigmatic queen of Egypt. Early modern conceptions of Cleopatra offer a rich, complex, and variable set of models for understanding the periods responses to race, female sovereignty, and classical antiquity. This interdisciplinary study investigates images of Cleopatra in the early modern period and examines how her story was mediated and used from drawing lessons from history to being a symbol of female heroism. It draws on early historiographical works, political and philosophical treatises, coterie dramatic productions, and gender, race and performance studies, as well as evidence from material culture, to consider what was known and thought about Cleopatra in the period This book provides a new literary and cultural history of one of the worlds most contested and politically-charged iconic female figures. It combines a close reading of literary and dramatic works with historical and political contexts, paying particular attention to the three major early modern Cleopatra plays: Mary Sidneys translation of Robert Garniers Marc Antoine, Samuel Daniels The Tragedie of Cleopatra, and Shakespeares Antony and Cleopatra. By examining these conflicting historical and fictional identities, Yasmin Arshad offers a diverse and ground-breaking study of Cleopatras infinite variety.

Reviews

Informative, readable, and thought-provoking in its careful exploration of the manifold implications of rewriting Cleopatra in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama Adds considerably to our understanding of the reception of Cleopatra in early modern England and will become an inescapable reference point for all scholars interested in the reception of classical antiquity, neo-Senecan drama, and performance-based research. * Sixteenth Century Journal *
Yasmin Arshads Cleopatra makes an important contribution filling a gap her predecessors leave mostly blank. She gives us the early modern history of English Cleopatras Arshads achievements re-centering Sidney and Daniel and identifying Anne Clifford as the portraits Cleopatra are major. * Review of English Studies *
Delivers fresh perspectives on a character who lives in the imaginations of scholars, students, and audiences The book is especially compelling, moreover, when connecting between the works read and the politics of the time in both the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts. * Early Theatre *
Yasmin Arshads account of how and why Cleopatra mattered to Shakespeares contemporaries is the finest book on the subject. Arshad offers a superb guide to the ways in which Cleopatra was portrayed in the drama of Mary Sidney, Samuel Daniel and Shakespeare. And her fascinating account of a Jacobean portrait, almost surely of Lady Anne Clifford in the guise of Cleopatra, is itself a major contribution to the field. Imagining Cleopatra is an impressive study, one that will be of great value to anyone interested in Elizabethan attitudes towards race, beauty, and the performance of power. -- James Shapiro, author of The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606
A riveting account of imaginative responses to the mesmerising figure of Cleopatra in the Age of Shakespeare. Yasmin Arshad casts her net widely to encompass Cleopatras "infinite variety" and "strong toil of grace", to borrow Shakespeares words, notably in the Senecan closet dramas of Mary Sidney and Samuel Daniel. The intellectual detective work that underpins this rich study for example in its probing discussion of links between Daniels Cleopatra, Lady Anne Clifford, and a tantalising Cleopatra painting of the period constitutes research of the first order. Dr Arshads elegant prose, intellectual acuity and sound scholarship rise magnificently to the challenges of imagining the most famous queen in history In Imagining Cleopatra Yasmin Arshad writes excitingly about great literature without denting its freshness and vibrancy. -- Ren Weis, UCL, UK
Historys most compelling queen is brought to life in this ground-breaking interdisciplinary study by Yasmin Arshad. Shakespeare, the early modern theatre, art history, and gender and race studies are woven together with a spellbinding deftness which much like the allure of the books subject keeps the reader entranced till the very end. Revitalising Shakespeares Cleopatra, Arshads richly researched account changes our view of the Egyptian queen by giving us a more complete picture of the ways in which her image was refigured in discourses of women and power, appropriated for political ends, and mobilised by playwrights, artists, philosophers and historiographers as they re-imagined Englands dialogue with the classical past. Imagining Cleopatra will surely quickly acquire canonical status as one of the most important and essential works on the controversial and incomparable Queen Cleopatra. -- Chris Laoutaris, The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK, author of Shakespeare and the Countess: The Battle that Gave Birth to the Globe

Author Bio

Yasmin Arshad has a PhD in English and an MA in Shakespeare in History from University College London, UK, where she is an honorary research associate. Her research interests include Renaissance literature; early modern women and their writing; connections between Renaissance portraiture and literature; and the political and literary uses of Taciteanism. In 2013, she produced Samuel Daniels Tragedie of Cleopatra, the first such staging of the play in over four hundred years.