Anthony And Cleopatra Critics Flashcards
Felperin (1977) - Structure of the Play
The play “creates an ambiguity of effect and a response unprecedented even within Shakespeare’s
work.”
Colie (1974) - Dual Setting of the Play
“the play is not so simple as a straight contest between their different values”
Gillies (1994) - The “Otherness” of Egypt - Rome vs Egypt
“the ‘orientalism’ of Cleopatra’s court — with its luxury, decadence, splendour, sensuality, appetite, effeminacy, and eunuchs — seems a (systematic inversion) of the legendary Roman values of
temperance, manliness, courage,”
Marsh (1960) - Passion vs Logic
To care about something, to love something, outside oneself, is what gives life its meaning and purpose… “
“Caesar cares for little. If he represents any strongly positive value in the play… then I have misread the play completely.”
Yachnin (1991) - Meaning of the play
The (heterogeneous audience) and the tradition of (the drama’s engagement with political and social issues) help make sense of the topical meaning of a play like Antony and Cleopatra”
Pina Polo (2013) - View of Cleopatra
The image of Cleopatra is one of a greater seducer who used seduction to achieve power”
Waddington(1966) - the plays title
he argues that the play’s title ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’, “ is a romance which is designed to evoke primarily the mythical and cosmological affair of Mars and Venus”
Wilders (1995) - Love and Power
Both Anthony and cleopatra are exceptional too in their capacity for extreme and spontaneous feeling… For this reason, Octavius, though he becomes the supreme ruler of the Roman empire, seems a lesser person”
Kremenik (2020) - Betrayal
Antony’s love for Cleopatra supersedes her betrayal of him”
Jonathan Gill Harris( 1994) Rome and masculinity
Rome had been characterised as a males world
Baker 1992
Cleopatra us not merely witch or queen, deadly or progenerative but all of these
