ABSTRACT
Cleopatra restored was motivated “all for love,” a love for which the world was “well lost”. Between William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Dryden’s All for Love, Cleopatra was transformed from an exotic representative of the dangers of female deception and desire to a character firmly anchored to the domestic virtues of love, honesty, and even chastity. Margaret Cavendish’s admiration of Cleopatra’s erotic self-fashioning constitutes an intervention into the Restoration flattening of the character and a pointed attempt to imagine alternative forms of femininity that could resist the reduction of woman to a simple platform upon which the drama of masculinity played itself out. Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra posed a considerable challenge to the institutions that conditioned its Renaissance theatrical production. In Charles Sedley’s Antony and Cleopatra, the entire spectrum of male characters aggressively conspire for power. Upholding Cleopatra’s “constancy,” Cavendish transforms Cleopatra’s libidinous play into a strategy to be emulated by wives to ensure successful and happy marriages.
