SOURCE: Kalmey, Robert P. “Shakespeare's Octavius and Elizabethan Roman History.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 18, no. 2 (spring 1978): 275-87.

In the following essay, Kalmey examines the Elizabethan conception of Octavius Caesar, and finds that Elizabethans praised Caesar as an ideal prince only after he was crowned emperor. Prior to this event, Kalmey maintains, Caesar was condemned by Elizabethans who saw him as a tyrant who fueled the fires of civil war to further his own ambitions.

Few readers of Antony and Cleopatra have overlooked the contempt with which Cleopatra condemns as mere hollow words the paltry machinations of Octavius Caesar to take her captive. “He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not / Be noble to myself” (V.ii.190-191: Arden Shakespeare, ed. M. R. Ridley). Nor have readers neglected the irony Cleopatra articulates that Octavius, who has conquered Brutus, Sextus Pompey, Lepidus, Lucius Antonius, and Marc...