“Take up her bed”: Cleopatra’s bed in Antony and Cleopatra

Abstract

In the fifth act of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, the titular queen places asps to her breast and arm, ending her life. Upon discovering the poisoned body of Cleopatra, along with her women Iras and Charmian, Caesar commands his train, Take up her bed, And bear her women from the monument. She shall be buried by her Antony. (V.ii.355-7) 1 Despite what seems like a clear directive -that Cleopatra is on a bed and Caesar's men are to remove it -since at least the seventeenth century productions and adaptations have replaced the bed while editors have questioned it. Literally, they have taken up Cleopatra's bed before it has even had the chance to appear onstage. In Michael Scott's commentary on V.ii in Antony and Cleopatra Text and Performance, he writes, "The dramatist concludes with an epilogue in which Caesar enters the room where the dead Queen of Love sits 'marble constant' on her throne." 2 In the Cambridge Shakespeare in Production series, Richard Madelaine notes, "Whether Cleopatra should die on a throne or a bed remains a controversial question" and adds,The Folio text does not make it clear where or in what position Cleopatra dies: whilst Caesar's 'Take up her bed' indicates Cleopatra's body is to be removed on a 'bed' of some kind serving as a bier ... it does not necessarily imply that she dies on it. 3 This essay investigates the "bed" in the final scene of Antony and Cleopatra. Why do playwrights, directors, and editors of the play feel compelled to excise the bed from Cleopatra's suicide? If a bed is present in the scene, what sort of a bed is it and how does it function in the mise-en-scène that speaks to the overall dramaturgy of the tragedy? In other words, how is the bed emblematic as both a literary trope and stage property?We have no way of knowing how Cleopatra's death scene was presented on the Jacobean stage. In Charles Sedley's 1677 Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra dies kneeling by "Take up her bed": Cleopatra's bed in Antony and Cleopatra Arrêt sur scène / Scene Focus, 8 | 2019