ABSTRACT
Much has been written about the staging of the monument scenes in Antony and Cleopatra by way of speculating on how they were physically managed on Shakespeare’s stage, presumably at the Globe Theatre. Much, too, has happened in theater history by way of experimenting with numerous possibilities. Less has been done with what the staging can mean thematically to the rest of the play and to its triumphant and tragic conclusion. My hope is to draw these worlds-the world of criticism and the world of the theatertogether by asking how various stage configurations seem suited to close readings of the script not only as implicit stage directions but also as thematic explorations of the rise and fall of reputations, the dreams and aspirations of humans caught in the crossfire of their contradictory hopes and needs, the undulating oscillations that underlie so much of history as one civilization or regime replaces its predecessor, and still more. Our context is the early modern stage, in particular the Globe, with its “heavens” above the main stage painted with zodiacal signs and its trap door leading downward to the unknowable world of death, and the main stage itself providing the locus for human action in the brief moment of time that comprises the present. This “idea of a theater,” in Francis Ferguson’s memorable phrase, seems ideally suited to plays like Hamlet and Cymbeline and The Tempest, in which characters appeal directly to the heavens and in which the gods, whether Christian or heathen, make their appearances in or from those heavens. What does this theatrical world portend in a play like Antony and Cleopatra, based on classical history and affording no certain presence of the gods other than in the verbal asseverations of various speakers?
