Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Caesar and Cleopatra, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Romanticization of History
Vengeance vs. Mercy
Pragmatism vs. Sentimentality
Empire, Civilization, and Progress
Age, Experience, and Power
Summary
Analysis
The Egyptian god Ra stands in the doorway of his temple in Memphis, Egypt. He observes the play’s audience with a look of disgust on his face and addresses them directly. Ra commands the audience to gaze upon his hawk’s head and remember that he was once a powerful god. He belittles his audience, emphasizing their insignificance within the broader context of human civilization. While the great pyramids that Ra’s people built are still standing, the empires of Ra’s audience are fragile, short-lived, and built on the dust of generations of dead sons.
Ra breaks the fourth wall, addressing his audience directly. This technique allows Shaw to draw his audience into the play, showing them that Ra’s slights against British Victorian culture are directed toward them. Most of Shaw’s plays are socially conscious. He uses them as vehicles through which to challenge aspects about his culture and society he finds problematic. Here, Ra speaks of the insignificance of British culture to show his Victorian audience that while their British Empire might have influence and power now, this power is temporary. He implies that the pyramids of Ra’s people—the ancient Egyptians—will outlive the British Empire.
Themes
Literary Devices
Ra establishes a dichotomy between the old Rome and the new Rome. The old Rome was “poor and little, and greedy and fierce.” At the same time, its smallness and simplicity meant that it was always aware of its desires and its limits. Moreover, the gods pitied the old Rome and protected it from harm. Everything changed when old Rome decided it wanted more. The old Romans exploited their poor so vigorously that “they became great masters of that art” and learned how to make robbery appear just and sanctioned.
Ra’s dichotomy between the old Rome and the new Rome is a metaphor for imperialist expansion. The old Rome was “poor and little, and greedy and fierce,” and self-contained. The new Rome exploits its lower classes and the lower classes of its new territories to benefit the empire. The empire (whether it be Rome or the British Empire of Shaw’s era) justifies this exploitation and oppression—this robbery required to expand the reach of their civilization in the name of progress. When Shaw describes the new Romans as “great masters of that art,” he’s suggesting that it’s common for imperial regimes—like ancient Rome, or the contemporary British Empire—to disguise the exploitation involved in conquering other nations as a sign of progress or something that’s beneficial to civilization at large.
Themes
Two great men emerged during the transitional period between the old Rome and the new: Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar. Pompey, a soldier, represented the old Rome, which considered soldiers to be great, important figures. Pompey’s friend Julius Caesar, in contrast, represented the new Rome, which valorized advancement and expansion and was the Rome of the gods. In time, the gods turned on Pompey, who talked ceaselessly of “law and duty” and other dull matters. The gods embraced Caesar instead, for Caesar lived his life boldly and without constraint.
Julius Caesar represents a new kind of cultural ideal, one that values the development and expansion of civilization. In the play’s endnotes, Shaw praises Caesar for his “originality,” an attribute that comes through in Ra’s description of Caesar’s bold, unrestrained pursuit of a bigger, better world. Pompey’s focus on “law and duty,” by contrast, is nowhere near as compelling.
Themes
Pompey sought to slay Caesar, prompting Caesar to flee across the Adriatic Sea. Pompey followed Caesar and conquered him and at first, Caesar accepted the defeat of the new Rome by the old Rome. However, when he realized that he had the gods on his side and Pompey did not, he reversed his fortune and went on to defeat Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus. Pompey fled Rome to seek refuge in Egypt, where he was beheaded by Lucius Septimius, a soldier who had once served him. Mortals shuddered at Septimius’s brutality, but the gods laughed, for they recognized Septimius for what he was: a knife that Pompey had sharpened willfully. In the end, Pompey would have fared better if he had trained Septimius to be a ploughshman.
Caesar and Cleopatra takes place during Caesar’s civil war (49-45 B.C.E.), a series of battles waged between Caesar and Pompey, and one of the last conflicts in which the Roman Republic took part before it became the Roman Empire. Pompey was executed on September 28, 48 B.C.E., by Lucius Septimius, Achillas, and Savius, who ambushed the unsuspecting Pompey onboard his ship. The irony of Pompey’s death, as Ra suggests, is that Pompey enabled his killers by failing to conquer them. Historically, he is remembered as a hero of the Roman Republic, which, not long after his death, was transformed into an Empire. His equanimity and democracy were his downfall.
Themes
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Ra taunts his audience, asking if they’ve come to the play to see a scandalous story about a temptress. If so, they’re going to be disappointed, for this play’s Cleopatra is a child who is still terrified of her nurse. Ra provides additional context for the play he is introducing, which takes place after Caesar arrived in Egypt and received Pompey’s slain head, but before he returned to Rome and was slain himself. The play will show its “ignorant” audience that men 20 centuries ago were no wiser or more advanced than the ignorant masses of the modern world.
Ra further insults his audience by implying that they’ve come to the play not to learn about history or humanity, but to be titillated by the seductive Cleopatra. Shaw anticipates and subverts these base, “ignorant” expectations by portraying Cleopatra as a naïve child rather than the temptress she’s been portrayed in earlier literary or film adaptations. Ra weaponizes his audience’s ignorance and lowly taste against them, suggesting that it’s proof that they’re not as advanced or superior to earlier civilizations as they’d like to think.
Themes
At this point, Ra suspects that his audience has grown impatient with him. Moreover, Ra’s wisdom is wasted on such common, uninformed masses. From here on out, they’ll have to hear the rest of the story from those who experienced it firsthand. Ra orders the audience to be quiet so they can listen to a great man speak. He bids them a good night and forbids them from applauding him.
Ra reminds his audience of their lowly, ignorant status. The great man to whom he refers is Julius Caesar, the play’s protagonist. Ra closes his monologue by establishing where and when its action begins: after Caesar has followed Pompey to Rome following Pompey’s defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus.
Themes
