Caesar and Cleopatra

When Shaw wrote the play for the English stage at the end of the 19th century, Britain was expanding into what would become the largest empire in history, covering nearly a quarter of the world by 1920. Shaw inserts direct criticisms of Britain in the text, particularly in the stage directions. At the beginning of the play, he describes Cleopatra’s palace as “not so ugly as Buckingham Palace; and the officers in the courtyard are more highly civilized than modern English officers: for example, they do not dig up the corpses of their dead enemies and mutilate them, as we dug up Cromwell and the Mahdi” (5). Caesar’s imperialism in Egypt, as portrayed in the play, mirrors Britain’s imperialism in Egypt at the time that Shaw was writing, beginning in 1882 and lasting until 1956. In the post-notes after the text, Shaw criticizes the idea of measuring progress and the advancement of a society by industrialization. This in turn criticizes the imposition of society and technology by more modernized nations on ones that are less modernized, such as Rome and England’s imperialist campaigns in Egypt.

When Caesar leaves Apollodorus in charge of Egypt’s art, Apollodorus replies, “I understand, Caesar. Rome will produce no art itself; but it will buy up and take away whatever the other nations produce” (109). Caesar protests that Rome does produce art in the form of peace, war, government, and civilization. Shaw’s Caesar seems noble and honorable, but he also vastly underestimates the sophistication of the Egyptian people. He sees no significant loss when the Library of Alexandria burns, incinerating a vast, irreplaceable collection of Egypt’s historical texts and artifacts of scholarship. Caesar is essentially utilitarian, tallying risk and value in terms of quantities of human lives and refusing to give credence to concepts such as national culture and pride for which some people are willing to die. The play shows the advancement of Egyptian society, such as the impressive mechanism in the lighthouse and the glorification of the Sphinx, but it also depicts, perhaps through British eyes, Egyptians as primitive and brutal, with royals who marry their siblings and an appetite for violence.

Shaw was a member of the Fabian Society, a leftist political party, and argued that the British empire had a duty to ensure the rights and freedoms of the people within its colonies in exchange for their acceptance of Britain’s authority. In the play, Caesar attempts to use Cleopatra as a tool of empire, a malleable girl who can be shaped into the type of queen that he wants installed on the Egyptian throne before he returns to Rome. She proves to be less governable than he expected, and even surprises him with a display of mysticism that suggests that Egypt is full of depths that Caesar will never comprehend. The end of the play depicts Shaw’s utopian construction of empire. As Caesar prepares to sail back to Rome, he leaves his most trusted lieutenant as the governing representative of Rome. He has met peacefully with religious leaders and broached an understanding. Cleopatra will reign as queen, with the promise of a Roman husband at her side, and Romans and Egyptians alike cheer for him in the street. Nevertheless, the audience—and Shaw—is aware that Caesar will be assassinated after returning to Rome, which adds a note of ambiguity to this triumphant portrayal of an empire at its height. Shaw seems aware that an apex is always followed by decline.