SOURCE: Habib, Imtiaz. “Cleopatra and the Sexualization of Race.” In Shakespeare and Race: Postcolonial Praxis in the Early Modern Period, pp. 157-205. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2000.

In the following essay, Habib suggests that in Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare contrasted noble England and the white, virginal Queen Elizabeth with the torpor of Egypt and its black and wanton ruler, Cleopatra.

Think on me That am with Phoebus's amorous pinches black And wrinkled deep in time? 

Antony and Cleopatra 1.5.27-29

I

If Titus Andronicus was a failure to construct empire, Antony and Cleopatra may be a renewed attempt using this time as the object of subjugation a black female monarch of an alternative empire. It is a renewed effort also to reify through the idea of a fabulously re-imagined Rome the idea of empire, to vindicate it by writing it on whatever lies beyond it—in this case...