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WHEN OCTAVIUS CAESAR receives news Antony's suicide, at end act 5, scene 1 and Cleopatra, he invites his Council War to Go with me to my Tent, where you shall see How hardly I was drawne into this Warre, How and I proceeded still In my Writings. Go with me, and see What I can shew in this. (5.1.73-77) (1) Octavius is anxious to furnish textual evidence that will support his account his calme and gentle actions toward and his reluctant entry into war against him. He is alone in valuing how he will be viewed by posterity. applauds Noblenesse in Record (4.14.100) that suicide brings, and Cleopatra famously frets lest Rome's quicke Comedians / Extemporally will stage vs, and, while still alive, she will be forced to witness Some squeaking Cleopatra Boy my greatnesse / I'th' posture Whore (5.2.215-16, 219-20). W. B. Worthen notes that Antony and Cleopatra is, course, centrally concerned with how events are written into narrative, transformed into history, literature, and myth; (2) C. C. Barfoot has suggested that the chief protagonists in and Cleopatra are above committed to fulfilling destiny their names, acutely aware of how future will regard them when are entirely in past; (3) indeed, as Garrett Sullivan sums up, and Cleopatra is a play dominated by retrospective characterization people and events. (4) In an important essay, Linda Charnes has demonstrated how, de spite their shared concern for posterity, characters' approaches to posthumous reputation--and their success in achieving it--vary widely. While noting that all 'actors' in this play are obsessed with playing to reviewers near and far, she argues that they are equally in control effects their performances since Rome is the play's 'original' center narrative imperative, incitement to discourse that drives imperialist historiography. In her reading play represents ultimate triumph Octavius, who will later sculpt himself into Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, writers who had profound influence on Renaissance readers such as Shakespeare. Not only did he have a monumental machinery language at his disposal, but [a]s Caesar, Octavius was to become chief executive massive discursive empire, productions which would be referred to again and again, from Dante to Pope, as models literary, moral, and historical 'authority.' (5) historical Octavius certainly provided for posterity, only through his patronage great writers, but also by leaving to safekeeping Vestal Virgins a catalogue his achievements which he wished to be inscribed on bronze tablets and set up in front his mausoleum; in sixteenth century, copy this text was found inscribed in temple Rome and in Ancyra in Galatia (modern Ankara), and fragments text were later found in Apollonia and Antioch in Pisidia, testifying to emperor's success in disseminating his version his life. (6) This emphasis on documentary culture chimes with portrait Octavius given in one Shakespeare's sources, Sir Thomas North's Englishing The Life Octavius Caesar Augustus by French Calvinist Simon Goulart (included in 1603 edition Plutarch's Lives). Goulart depicts Octavius as learned in liberall sciences, very eloquent, and desirous to learne, bookworm for whom reading is favorite and enthralling pursuit. Delighting in great authors, he would plunder their works for sentences teaching good maners, and having written them out word by word, he gave out copy them to his familiars: and sent them about to governours provinces, and to magistrates ROME and other cities. He was, Goulart reveals, not curious to set himselfe out, as little caring to be shauen, as to weare long haire: and in stead looking-glasse, reading in his booke, or writing, even whilest Barber was trimming him. …
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