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5

Habitat, Race, and Culture


in Antony and Cleopatra
[Egyptian] women in old tyme, had all the trade of occupying,
and brokage abrode, and revelled at the Taverne, and kepte Ius tie
chiere: And the men satte at home spinnyng
Joannes Boemus, The Fardle of Facions (1555).

Although Antony and Cleopatra was entered in The Stationer's Register


on 20 May 1608, it did not appear in print until the 1623 folio. 1
Scholars conjecture that the play was written and produced some-
time between late 1606 and 1608, a period which, I will demonstrate,
coincides with a heightened interest in Egyptian ecology? By this
time, Shakespeare had already represented cross-cultural conflicts
involving historical, mythological, and fictional figures: biracial cou-
ples in Titus Andronicus and Othello; a clash between Amazons and
Athenians in A Midsummer Night's Dream; the conflict between Jews
and Christians in The Merchant of Venice; and political and ideological
confrontations between French and English societies in the first
tetralogy. In this chapter, I will argue that in Antony and Cleopatra,
Shakespeare seizes the uniquely Elizabethan construct of the Egyp-
tian identity as a composite of ancient Egyptian culture and habitat,
gypsies, and English vagabonds in order to interrogate his own
culture's understanding of Egyptians and Romans.
He does not, however, merely confront the matter of identity: he
reconstructs an Egyptian ecology and suggests that the gypsy iden-
tity is intertwined with an Egyptian/gypsy habitat. When the
Romans interact with the Egyptian/gypsy culture and habitat, they
themselves undergo a transformation, most noticeable in Antony,
whereby the Roman soldier becomes a self-indulgent guest of the
Egyptians and a gypsy vagabond. Cross-cultural negotiation, based
on a system of binary oppositions, inevitably precipitates an identity
exchange: the Egyptians/gypsies not only invert Roman values, they
also subvert them. By defining the Egyptians as gypsies, the Romans

129
G. U. de Sousa, Shakespeare’s Cross-Cultural Encounters
© Geraldo U. de Sousa 1999
130 Shakespeare's Cross-Cultural Encounters

also redefine themselves. In the process, Shakespeare shakes the


foundations of any ideological certainty based upon notions of
cultural superiority.
For the purposes of discussion, I have divided my analysis into
three segments: Egyptians, gypsies, and Romans, suggesting that in
Antony and Cleopatra all three groups simultaneously engage in
various cross-cultural encounters. The Egyptian identity subsumes
a dynamic interplay between habitat and hospitality, in which
human habitation turns into a wild habitat. The gypsies, with
whom the Egyptians were confused, add the notions of the idle,
lascivious, and foul vagabond to Egyptian hospitality. Both Egyp-
tians and gypsies undercut and subvert the identity of the Romans,
who view themselves as the opposite of both Egyptians and gypsies.
The cross-cultural encounter in Antony and Cleopatra rests in an
Egyptian habitat, both as a physical environment and as an ideolo-
gical construct transformed by Egyptian hospitality. Entrance into
this wondrous and yet alien ecology predicates the Roman under-
standing of the Egyptian cultural identity. According to both ancient
and Elizabethan formulations, which I will proceed to review, hab-
itat, a physical space, joins with hospitality, a cultural practice, in
order to shape and differentiate the Egyptians.
Early Egyptology and ecology overlap in fascinating ways.
Although as a modern science Egyptology did not develop until
the nineteenth century, Egyptian studies date back to Herodotus,
who saw Egypt as a wondrous ecology regulated by the annual
floods of the River Nile, without which Egyptian life and civilization
would not have been possible. 3 Ecology, a branch of modern bio-
logy, studies the mutual relations of organisms to their habitats,
habits, and modes of life. 'Habitat,' from third person singular,
present tense of Latin habitare, literally meaning 'it inhabits,' was
originally a term used in books of flora and fauna written in Latin to
designate the natural place of growth or occurrence of a species,
especially where a living organism finds shelter, water, and food. 4
Human ecology focuses on the complex and dynamic relations of
humans and of culture to habitat. From the earliest period, Egyptian
civilization could not be understood without reference to the ecolo-
gical system created by the Nile.
An English translation of The Famous History oj Herodotus appeared
in 1584 and served to reinforce a confusion between pharaonic and
contemporary Egypt. 5 Herodotus, ironically known as both the
father of history and a master of lies, created the myth of Egypt as

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