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
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