Ant + Cleo Critics

Question 1

Cleopatra never ceases to play Cleopatra, and her perception of her role demotes Antony to the status of her leading man

Answer 1

Bloom

Question 2

It is her play and never quite his. He is waning before the curtain goes up and she cannot allow herself to wane.

Answer 2

Bloom

Question 3

Shakespeare was the noblest feminist of them all

Answer 3

Shapiro

Question 4

He did not divide human nature into the masculine and feminine

Answer 4

Dusinberre

Question 5

In this play gender roles are inverted and it is Antony who is the true victim

Answer 5

Lewis

Question 6

Cleopatra is always in control of Egypt, Rome and even Caesar

Answer 6

Cameron

Question 7

Wrote for male entertainment

Answer 7

McCluskie

Question 8

Cleopatra possesses a devouring sexuality that must be contained

Answer 8

McCombe

Question 9

fate affects the welfare of a whole nation

Answer 9

Bradley

Question 10

the fundamental flaw is the world they inhabit

Answer 10

Lever

Question 11

issues of class, sexuality, race, imperialist and colonial exploitation have everything to do with Jacobean tragedy

Answer 11

Dollimore

Question 12

there is in the final moments of great tragedy…a fusion of grief and joy, of lament over the fall of man and of rejoicing the resurrection of his spirit

Answer 12

Steiner

Question 13

As they die for each other, we forgive them for having lived for each other

Answer 13

Schlegel

Question 14

She knows the power of her sensuous attractions, she knows their deep hold on Antony

Answer 14

Sinder

Question 15

Antony’s obsession with Cleopatra leads to his masculine undoing

Answer 15

Grams

Question 16

Cleopatra is nobody’s wife, nobody’s daughter, nobody’s subject. She is the master of herself.

Answer 16

Turner

Question 17

The dramatic action of the play consistently registers a discrepancy
between Antony’s power and the fact Caesar always prevails

Answer 17

Bowers

Question 18

Cleopatra is surrounded by women and emasculated men, Antony included it could be argued

Answer 18

Rosenthal

Question 19

Antony is torn between two irreconcilable but equally fundamental parts of his personality

Answer 19

Foucalt

Question 20

Antony became the pawn in a political game between Caesar and Cleopatra

Answer 20

Little

Question 21

Cleopatra and Fortune are both wanton, alluring, but wavering, changeable women of infinite variety

Answer 21

Williamson

Question 22

The magnetism of Cleopatra is shown to be disastrous politically

Answer 22

Wilders

Question 23

Anthony is hyperbolic in all that he does: his rage, his valour, his love, and his folly

Answer 23

Adelman

Question 24

sees Antony as a lovesick ‘schoolboy’

Answer 24

Cameron

Question 25

Better to be Antony and to lose that to be Caesar and to win

Answer 25

Bevington

Question 26

Octavius displays ‘a kind of temperance that wins him the field and prepares him for empire

Answer 26

Wortham

Question 27

We sympathise warmly with Antony

Answer 27

Bradley

Question 28

he makes himself, for anyone who loves him … supremely unkillable

Answer 28

Jacobson

Question 29

Antony lacks the characteristics of a tragic hero to be one “of
the noblest type”

Answer 29

Bradley

Question 30

a man whose nobility in any ordinary understanding of the term has vanished. He seems utterly without pride or stature

Answer 30

Harris

Question 31

Cleopatra seems unable to make any meaningful sacrifice for love

Answer 31

Harris

Question 32

argues that the conflict of tragedies largely comes from within the individual and their hamartia

Answer 32

Bradley

Question 33

‘The crimes of love which they both committed…were wholly voluntary’

Answer 33

Dryden

Question 34

‘the soldier broken down by debauchery and the the typical wanton in whose arms such men perish’
Goes on to describe how Cleopatra’s poetic end was a ‘trick’

Answer 34

Shaw

Question 35

‘Antony and Cleopatra want to escape from the future, from death and old age’

Answer 35

WH Auden

Question 36

Shakespeare’s play is not about “what can be possessed and governed but what can be imagined and articulated.”

Answer 36

Cook

Question 37

With Cleopatra’s death, Shakespeare ‘purges the world of all that is not Roman’

Answer 37

Tennenhouse

Question 38

‘power and greatness are an artificial pageant’

Answer 38

Kiernan

Question 39

Antony and Cleopatra speak themselves into legend

Answer 39

Kiney

Question 40

fusion of ancient history and Jacobean observations

Answer 40

Neville-Davies

Question 41

she has great and unpardonable faults, but the grandeur of her death almost redeems them

Answer 41

Hazlitt

Question 42

Male critics feel “personally threatened by Cleopatra”- “deep personal fears of aggressive or manipulative women”

Answer 42

Fitz

Question 43

The conflict of Rome and Egypt mirrors the conflicts within the two main characters “who become at war with themselves”

Answer 43

Holland

Question 44

A Machiavellian sense of political reality is the entirety of Octavius’ mentality

Answer 44

Kermode

Question 45

“ her (Cleopatra) death is less as a necessary return of power into male hands and more as a lamentable consequence of her having power in a world not ready for women to wield it”

Answer 45

Kermode

Question 46

‘Shakespeare offers a pure insight into the human condition’

Answer 46

Bevington

Question 47

‘No woman is the protagonist in a Shakespeare play’

Answer 47

Kehler