Caesar and Cleopatra is George Bernard Shaw’s fictionalized account of the relationship between historical figures Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, who met when Caesar arrived in Alexandria in 48 B.C.E. The play reimagines this initial meeting and follows Caesar as he restores Cleopatra to power after Caesar’s rival, Pompey, deposed Cleopatra in 49 B.C.E. and granted control of the throne to Cleopatra’s younger brother, Ptolemy XIII. Caesar and Cleopatra are familiar historical figures who appear in many works of art, literature, and film, including Shakespeare’s histories, Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, which, on one level, Shaw explicitly mocks with his satirical, quirky retelling of the story. Most works that feature Cleopatra as their subject depict her as a seductress and ill-fated lover. Likewise, fictitious portrayals of Caesar often portray him as an unsubtle, ruthless tyrant whose ambition drives him to self-ruin. Shaw upends these conventional depictions, comically highlighting the flawed, ordinary aspects of Caesar’s and Cleopatra’s personalities. Shaw depicts Cleopatra as a 16-year-old girl still naive enough to believe in far-fetched myths about Romans’ taste for human flesh. Early in the play, before Caesar teaches Cleopatra how to be an effective ruler, she is too fearful of suffering the wrath of Ftatateeta, her chief nurse, to make political decisions on her own. Shaw’s Caesar, too, is a far cry from conventional depictions of the Roman politician. Caesar and Cleopatra’s Caesar is a balding, middle-aged man. His first meeting with Cleopatra is humiliating rather than romantic, with Cleopatra referring to him disparagingly as an “old gentleman.” In fact, insecurity about his age is one of Shaw’s Caesar’s defining features: he’s irked each time Cleopatra calls attention to his balding head or wrinkled face. Despite his political accomplishments, he falls victim to the ravages of time and feels pressured to prove his sustained bravery and strength despite a failing body. Shaw reimagines Caesar and Cleopatra as comically flawed, ordinary people to upend conventional depictions of them in other works and, on a broader level, criticize art’s romanticization of history.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Romanticization of History ThemeTracker
Romanticization of History Quotes in Caesar and Cleopatra
Ye poor posterity, think not that ye are the first. Other fools before ye have seen the sun rise and set, and the moon change her shape and her hour. As they were so ye are; and yet not so great; for the pyramids my people built stand to this day; whilst the dustheaps on which ye slave, and which ye call empires, scatter in the wind even as ye pile your dead sons’ bodies on them to make yet more dust.
All this ye shall see; and ye shall marvel, after your ignorant manner, that men twenty centuries ago were already just such as you, and spoke and lived as ye speak and live, no worse and no better, no wiser and no sillier.
The palace, an old, low, Syrian building of whitened mud, is 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 have dug up Cromwell and the Mahdi.
They care nothing about cowardice, these Romans: they fight to win. The pride and honor of war are nothing to them.
Cleopatra is not yet a woman: neither is she wise. But she already troubles men’s wisdom.
BELZANOR [with solemn arrogance] Ftatateeta: I am Belzanor, the captain of the Queen’s guard, descended from the gods.
FTATATEETA [retorting his arrogance with interest] Belzanor: I am Ftatateeta, the Queen’s chief nurse; and your divine ancestors were proud to be painted on the wall in the pyramids whom my fathers served.
In the little world yonder, Sphinx, my place is as high as yours in this great desert; only I wander, and you sit still; I conquer, and you endure; I work and wonder, you watch and wait; I look up and am dazzled, look down and am darkened, look round and am puzzled, whilst your eyes never turn from looking out—out of the world—to the lost region—the home from which we have strayed. Sphinx, you and I, strangers to the race of men, are no strangers to one another: have I not been conscious of you and of this place since I was born? Rome is a madman's dream: this is my Reality.
Of course not: I am the Queen; and I shall live in the palace at Alexandria when I have killed my brother, who drove me out of it. When I am old enough I shall do just what I like. I shall be able to poison the slaves and see them wriggle, and pretend to Ftatateeta that she is going to be put into the fiery furnace.
CLEOPATRA [very seriously] Oh, they would eat us if they caught us. They are barbarians. Their chief is called Julius Caesar. His father was a tiger and his mother a burning mountain; and his nose is like an elephant’s trunk [Caesar involuntarily rubs his nose]. They all have long noses, and ivory tusks, and little tails, and seven arms with a hundred arrows in each; and they live on human flesh.
Ptolemy: Yes—the gods would not suffer—not suffer—[He stops; then, crestfallen] I forgot what the gods would not suffer.
THEODOTUS: Let Pothinus, the King’s guardian, speak for the King.
POTHINUS [suppressing his impatience with difficulty] The King wishes to say that the gods would not suffer the impiety of his sister to go unpunished.
CAESAR [recovering his self-possession] Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
CAESAR. Vengeance! Vengeance!! Oh, if I could stoop to vengeance, what would I not exact from you as the price of this murdered man's blood. (They shrink back, appalled and disconcerted.) Was he not my son-in-law, my ancient friend, for 20 years the master of great Rome, for 30 years the compeller of victory? Did not I, as a Roman, share his glory? Was the Fate that forced us to fight for the mastery of the world, of our making? Am I Julius Caesar, or am I a wolf, that you fling to me the grey head of the old soldier, the laurelled conqueror, the mighty Roman, treacherously struck down by this callous ruffian, and then claim my gratitude for it! (To Lucius Septimius) Begone: you fill me with horror.
CAESAR. Cleopatra: I really think I must eat you, after all.
CLEOPATRA (kneeling beside him and looking at him with eager interest, half real, half affected to show how intelligent she is). You must not talk to me now as if I were a child.
CAESAR. You have been growing up since the Sphinx introduced us the other night; and you think you know more than I do already.
CLEOPATRA (taken down, and anxious to justify herself). No: that would be very silly of me: of course I know that. But, (suddenly) are you angry with me?
CAESAR. No.
CLEOPATRA (only half believing him). Then why are you so thoughtful?
CAESAR (rising). I have work to do, Cleopatra.
CLEOPATRA (drawing back). Work! (Offended) You are tired of talking to me; and that is your excuse to get away from me.
THEODOTUS. What is burning there is the memory of mankind.
CAESAR. A shameful memory. Let it burn.
THEODOTUS (wildly). Will you destroy the past?
CAESAR. Ay, and build the future with its ruins.
CHARMIAN. He makes you so terribly prosy and serious and learned and philosophical.
CLEOPATRA: When I was foolish, I did what I liked, except when Ftatateeta beat me; and even then I cheated her and did it by stealth. Now that Caesar has made me wise, it is no use my liking or disliking; I do what must be done, and have no time to attend to myself. That is not happiness; but it is greatness. If Caesar were gone, I think I could govern the Egyptians; for what Caesar is to me, I am to the fools around me.
POTHINUS (looking hard at her). Cleopatra: this may be the vanity of youth.
CLEOPATRA: Love me! Pothinus: Caesar loves no one. Who are those we love? Only those whom we do not hate: all people are strangers and enemies to us except those we love. But it is not so with Caesar. He has no hatred in him: he makes friends with everyone as he does with dogs and children.
POTHINUS. From her own lips I have heard it. You are to be her catspaw: you are to tear the crown from her brother's head and set it on her own, delivering us all into her hand—delivering yourself also. And then Caesar can return to Rome, or depart through the gate of death, which is nearer and surer.
CAESAR (calmly). Well, my friend; and is not this very natural?
POTHINUS (astonished). Natural! Then you do not resent treachery?
CAESAR. Resent! O thou foolish Egyptian, what have I to do with resentment? Do I resent the wind when it chills me, or the night when it makes me stumble in the darkness? Shall I resent youth when it turns from age, and ambition when it turns from servitude? To tell me such a story as this is but to tell me that the sun will rise to-morrow.
CLEOPATRA (sinking back trembling on the bench and covering her face with her hands). I have not betrayed you, Caesar: I swear it.
CAESAR. I know that. I have not trusted you.
CAESAR. If one man in all the world can be found, now or forever, to know that you did wrong, that man will have either to conquer the world as I have, or be crucified by it. […] These knockers at your gate are also believers in vengeance and in stabbing. You have slain their leader: it is right that they shall slay you. […] then in the name of that right (He emphasizes the word with great scorn.) shall I not slay them for murdering their Queen, and be slain in my turn by their countrymen as the invader of their fatherland? Can Rome do less than slay these slayers too, to show the world how Rome avenges her sons and her honor? And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. […]
APOLLODORUS. I understand, Caesar. Rome will produce no art itself; but it will buy up and take away whatever the other nations produce.
CAESAR. What! Rome produces no art! Is peace not an art? Is war not an art? Is government not an art? Is civilization not an art? All these we give you in exchange for a few ornaments. You will have the best of the bargain. […]
