Last night I had Frances, Brenda, and Charlotte over for dinner and to watch a little I, Claudius. It was a lovely evening with some of my favorite people, and some of my favorite television.
Given the company, the timing, and theme of the evening, the conversation inevitably included talk of Caesar. I mentioned (something I am only just now revealing here) how when I made suggestions to help Lenny and Jenna cast the show, my only thought that differed from their final choices was that I had Brenda and Steph switched as Antony and Cassius. This was with total respect for both as actors (seeing as neither role is exactly undesirable) but with concern that Steph would not want to play as a man, and I could more easily see Cassius as a woman than Mark Antony. I must concede my error in judgment in that case. To have cast as I had suggested would have not only deprived us of Steph's remarkable interpretation of Mark Antony, it would have also removed the advantage of the remarkable onstage chemistry of Brenda and Frances. Their version worked out fantastically, and my concerns turned out to be for nothing.
The truth is I have a difficult time holding the Shakespearean Antony as the conception of Antony in my head. I tend to see him far more (and I think this may actually be more historically accurate) as a rough-and-tumble soldier who partied too much, said whatever came to mind, and was much less of a politician and much more of a born battlefield second-in-command. That is a very masculine image, and it is from this that my inability to picture that character feminized came.
Of course my thinking on all matters of this period is influence by I, Claudius, one of my two all-time favorite novels and the fantastic BBC miniseries we watched part of last night. Antony is dead by the time that I, Claudius begins, but it still does a great deal to emphasize the cruder image of Antony I have in my head. He has been soundly dishonored and defeated many years ago by that point, and is dismissed by Marcellus as a "wine-soaked lover and his Egyptian whore." In his place remains only Augustus, and for all that I'm not sure it's accurate to history at all, I LOVE the Gravesian version of Augustus. He is expansive, emotional, forthright, friendly-tempered, in possession of a strong code of values, and perhaps even a bit boyish while still having the more typical qualities of a supreme statesmen of cunning, discernment, and political acument. I like that balance, that atypical combination. He is intensely likeable and yet respectable in his capacity.
I find myself wanting to write a play about the period where he and Antony split, clashed at Actium with Octavian emerging the victor, and the transition from triumvir Octavian to emperor Augustus. I suppose that is a time period already covered by Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, but as I said, that interpretation of Antony does not particularly strike me. And at any rate, I am significantly more interested in Augustus as a character.
With him as my central figure, I would go with my preference for the expansive, emotional Octavian. This man would mourn Caesar and despise treachery but genuinely mull over the position of Brutus; he would adore Caesar as his personal god but feel the pressure of having to live up to him; he would have a bright outlook on the Rome that the new Triumvirate was going to build together and be genuinely wounded that Antony, a man who he thought was his friend, could betray him. I would like to play with the notion that Augustus became emperor with the intention of sort of putting Rome back in order, and then returning it to a more Republic notion of government. The he liked the idea of the Republic, but it was clear that the empire couldn't support it at the time, that it needed the firm central guidance that at that time only he was in a position to provide. I would also want to show Livia as a strong driving force behind him, not so wicked as the Gravesian version of her, but with a much more cynical view of things than he had. She'd be a pragmatist who was willing to do the hard, sometimes distasteful things for the good of Rome, someone who didn't believe in the Republic at all and thought that only an emperor could run things the way they needed to be. And I'd want to contrast the two of them with portrayals of Cleopatra and Antony, more power-hungry and less civic-minded, their relationship more lustful and more tempestuous than the loving but more subdued and more intellectual one of Octavian and Livia. Though battles are tough to depict in theater, I think it would culminate in the defeat of Anthony at Actium, and the making of Octavian into the Emperor Augustus.
I don't know what I would call the piece. I like the way Shakespeare gives simple, punchy main-character-name titles to his historical and psuedo-historical pieces, so maybe I'd just go with "Octavian." I know I've got other things going on right now, but I really like this idea. I think it bears a little more exploration to see if I could viably write it.
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