The Tragedy of Cleopatra - 1599

The Tragedy of Cleopatra was first published in 1594 in the same edition of Delia and Rosamond, a series of sonnets. The collection is dedicated to Mary Sideny, countess of Pembroke, who had published Antonius in 1592, a translation of Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine. Daniel’s Cleopatra was then published various times with no consistent changes.[1] In 1599 The Poetical Essayes of Samuel Daniel. Newly corrected and augmented was published. This collection contained a new edition of Cleopatra with some changes, particularly significant in the first act. The 1607 edition is the one in which more changes have been introduced, and, while the previous editions are said to have influenced Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (Norman 1958, 11), this one is considered to have been influenced by Shakespeare and to have been devised to be more performable. It is part of the collection Certain Small Works. In this edition the text of the dedicatory letter to Mary Sidney is different form the previous ones, the position of the acts is different as well as their content, the choruses remain the same as those in the other editions but they are in different positions.

            Daniel’s Cleopatra deals with the events which follow Antony’s death, in particular, it highlights Cleopatra’s dilemma on her future and on the possibility to commit suicide. It also gives space to the story of the escape and death of Cesarion, the son she had with Julius Caesar. Both Cleopatra and Cesarion are a menace for Octavian, so much so that he devises a plan to kill Cesarion through the help of one of Cleopatra’s servants Rodon. The episode of Rodon’s betrayal is reported by Rodon in act 4 of the 1594 and 1599 editions, in which he tells what he has done, after Cesarion has already been killed; while act 1 of the 1607 edition opens on Cleopatra talking to Rodon and asking him to bring her son to safety. The play also deals with Cleopatra’s various machinations to save some of her riches from Octavian, and of the way in which she manages to commit suicide thanks to the asps the Nuntius disguised as a countryman delivers to her.

[1] For a precise list of the various editions of the play see : The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Samuel Daniel, Volume 3, ed by Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, 1885.

Arshad, Yasmin. 2019. Imagining Cleopatra: Performing Gender and Power in Early Modern England. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

-- 2011. The enigma of a portrait: Lady Anne Clifford and Daniel’s “Cleopatra.” The British Art Journal, 11(3), 30–36.

Braden, Gordon. 1985. Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Cadman, Daniel. 2016. Sovereigns and Subjects in Early Modern Neo-Senecan Drama: Republicanism, Stoicism and Authority. Oxon: Routledge.

Charlton, Henry Buckley. 1946. The Senecan Tradition in Renaissance Tragedy. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Cunliffe, John. 1893. The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. London: MacMillan.

Daniel, Samuel. 1885. The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Samuel Daniel. Hazell: Watson and Viney.

Hannay, Margaret P. 1990. Philip’s Phoenix. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Neil, Michael (ed.). 2000. William Shakespeare. The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. Oxford: OUP.

Norman, M. Z.. 1959. "The Tragedie of Cleopatra" and the Date of "Antony and Cleopatra", The Modern Language Review, 54.1, pp. 1-9.

-- 1958. “Daniel's The Tragedie of Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra”, Shakespeare Quarterly, 9.1, pp. 11-18

Plutarch. The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes compared together by that graue learned philosopher and historiographer, Plutarke of Chæronea translated out of Greeke into French by Iames Amyot . . .; and out of French into Englishe, by Thomas North. Imprinted at London: By Thomas Vautrouillier and John Wight, 1579.

–       Life of Antony, edited by Christopher Pelling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Sidney, Mary. 1592. A Discourse of Life and Death Written in French by Ph. Mornay and Antonius a Tragœdie Written also in French by Ro. Garnier Both done in English by the Countesse of Pembroke. London: William Ponsonby.

The 1599 edition of Cleopatra is contained in the collection of The Poeticall Essayes of Samuel Daniel. The frontispiece of the collection contains the title, followed by the subtitle “Newly corrected and augmented” followed by the Latin sentence Aetas prima canat veneres, postrema tumultus, a quotation from Propertius: ‘Let first youth sing of Venus, last of civil strife’ (Propertius, 2.10.7), which refers to the Classical ‘Cursus,’ which entailed that, in order to write tragedy, a person should first graduate from writing poetry. In Daniel’s own experience, he wrote love poetry in his youth, and it was Mary Sidney who prompted him to write tragedy. The Latin text is followed by an illustration and then by the indication of the printer and date of publication: “At London, printed by P. Short for Simon Waterson 1599”.

            The book contains: The civil wars between the two houses of Lancaster and York; Musophilus, or a defence of learning; The Epistle of Octavia to Antonius; The Tragedy of Cleopatra corrected; and The complaint of Rosamond. The Tragedy of Cleopatra which is given its own illustrated title page in the form of a frontispiece. An ornament surrounds the title and the Latin sentence Aetas prima canat veneres, postrema tumultus, followed by the name of the author, the place and publication date.

            According to the USTC there are thirty extant witnesses of this edition (USTC
513903), one in Australia, seven in the UK and twenty-two in the US. The witness used for this edition counts 412 pages, the first part on The civil wars contains signatures as well as page numbers only on the recto page. The Tragedy of Cleopatra contains signatures from A2 to K2.

   In the 1594 edition the title page is followed by a dedication “To the Right Honourable, the Lady Marie, Countesse of Pembroke.” The same dedication is present in the 1599 edition. The 1607 edition is dedicated “To the Most Noble Ladie, the Lady Marie Countesse of Pembroke” but the text of the dedication differs from that of the previous editions.