“I will send you a man,” says Cæsar, “Roman from head to heel and Roman of the noblest; not old and ripe for the knife; not lean in the arms and cold in the heart; not hiding a bald head under his conqueror’s laurels; not stooped with the weight of the world on his shoulders; but brisk and fresh, strong and young, hoping in the morning, fighting in the day and revelling in the evening. Will you take such an one in exchange for Cæsar?”
“His name? His name?” breathes the palpitating Cleopatra.
“Shall it be Mark Anthony?” says Cæsar.
And the erotic little Cleopatra, who has a vivid remembrance of Anthony’s manly charms, born of a fleeting glimpse of him, falls into her elderly friend’s arms, speechless with gratitude.
Unlike most of Shaw’s plays, “Cæsar and Cleopatra” is modelled upon sweeping and spectacular lines. In its five acts there are countless scenes that recall Sardou at his most magnificent—scenes that would make “Ben Hur” seem pale and “The Darling of the Gods” a parlor play. And so, too, there is plenty of the more exciting sort of action—stabbings, rows, bugle-calls, shouts and tumults. What opportunity it would give to the riotous, purple fancy of Klaw and Erlanger or the pomp and pageantry of David Belasco!
Shaw makes Cleopatra a much more human character than Cæsar. In the latter there appears rather too much of the icy sang froid we have grown accustomed to encounter in the heroes of the brigade commanded by “The Prisoner of Zenda.” Some of Cæsar’s witticisms are just a bit too redolent of the professional epigrammatist. Reading the play we fancy him in choker collar and silk hat, with his feet hoisted upon a club window-sill and an Havana cigar in his mouth,—the cynical man-of-the-world of the women novelists. In other words, Shaw, in attempting to bring the great conqueror down to date, has rather expatriated him. He is scarcely a Roman.
Cleopatra, on the contrary, is admirable. Shaw very frankly makes her an animal and her passion for Cæsar is the backbone of the play. She is fiery, lustful and murderous; a veritable she-devil; and all the while an impressionable, superstitious, shadow-fearing child. In his masterly gallery of women’s portraits—Mrs. Warren, Blanche Sartorius, Candida, Ann Whitefield and their company—Cleopatra is by no means the least.
The lesser characters—Brittanus, the primitive Briton (a parody of the latter-day Britisher); Apollodorus, the Sicilian dilletante; Ftatateeta, Cleopatra’s menial and mistress; Rufio, the Roman general (a sort of Tiber-bred William Dobbin); and the boy Ptolemy—all remain in the memory as personages clearly and certainly drawn.
In view of the chances that the play affords the player and the stage manager it seems curious that it was so long neglected by the Frohmans of the day. Between Shaw’s Cæsar and Shakespeare’s Cæsar there is a difference wide enough to make a choice necessary. That a great many persons, pondering the matter calmly, would cast their ballots for the former is a prophecy not altogether absurd. Just as the world has outgrown, in succession, the fairy tale, the morality play, the story in verse, the epic and the ode, so it has outgrown many ideas and ideals regarding humanity that once appeared as universal truths. Shakespeare, says Shaw, was far ahead of his time. This is shown by his Lear. But the need for earning his living made him write down to its level. As a result those of his characters that best pleased his contemporaries—Cæsar, Rosalind, Brutus, etc.—now seem obviously and somewhat painfully Elizabethan.