Antony And Cleopatra - Their Relationship Flashcards
This dotage…
Of our general o’erflows the measure
His captain’s heart […]
Burst / the buckles on his breast […] and is become the bellows and the fan / to cool a gipsy’s lust
The triple pillar…
Of the world transformed / into a strumpet’s fool.
Let Rome…
In Tiber melt and the wide arch / of the ranges empire fall!
These strong Egyptian…
Fetters I must break, / or lose myself in dotage
[…]
I must from this enchanting queen break off.
I have seen her die/
Twenty times upon far poorer moment.
Eternity was…
In our lips and eyes, / bliss in our brows’ bent […] the greatest soldier of the world,/ art turned the greatest liar.
[their relationship is elevated, but still physical; she changes her mind constantly]
That I might sleep…
Out this great gap of time
I was/
A morsel for a monarch.
My salad days,/ when I was green in judgement
Eno to Menas: he will to his Egyptian dish again.
Antony to Cleo: I found you as a morsel could upon/dead Caesar’s trencher
The barge she sat in,
Like a burnished throne/ burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold; purple the sails, and so perfumèd that/ the winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver […] o’erpicturing that Venus
[excess of iambic pentameter beats after “silver” - the form cannot contain her power]
Maecenas: now Antony must leave her utterly.
Enobarbus: never. He will not.
Give mine angle;
We’ll to the river […] my bended hook shall pierce […] as I draw them up
Thought he be painted…
One way like a Gorgon,/ the other way’s a Mars.
Cleopatra and himself…
In chairs of gold / were publicly enthroned […] [Caesar to Maecenas:] this is in the public eye? / i’th’common show-place, where they exercice.
A doting…
Mallard
[Scarus to Eno]
I little thought/
You would have followed.
Antony: […] my heart was to thy rudder tied by th’strings
my sword, made weak..
By my affection, would / obey it on all cause. […] give me a kiss.
[they kiss]
Even this repays me.
If I be so,/
From my cold heart let heaven engender hail,/and poison it in the source, and the first stone/drop in my neck; as it determines, so/dissolve my life!
RSC version: cleo is gentle
Globe: cleo is angry
This foul Egyptian…
Hath betrayèd me. […] triple -turned whore!
Let him take thee/
An hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians!
[…]
The shirt of Nessus is upon me.
Derek Traversi
A tragedy of waste and vanity
G Wilson Knight
The play’s imagery goes from “the material and sensuous, through the grand and magnificent, to the more purely spiritual”
Through this ascent A and C discover a mutual and transcendental union - I would disagree here because A’s death is not exactly glorious or done out of love.
John Dryden
That which is wanting to work up the pity to a greater height, was not afforded me by the story […] our passions are, or ought to be, within our power.”
