Dec 22, 2009

Antony and Cleopatra | Shakespeare's Use of Solar and Lunar Imagery in Antony and Cleopatra

Essay examining how Shakespeare employs lunar and solar imagery in the play.

In the final scene of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen relates the contents of dream to Dolabella in which her deceased paramour appeared to her as the Emperor of the world. She describes her fallen consort's visage: "His face was as the heav'ns, and therein stuck/A sun and moon, which kept their course and lighted/The little O, th' earth" (V, ii, 11.79-81). Cleopatra's depiction of Antony embodying the sun and the moon is but one of the many instances in which Shakespeare uses solar and lunar imagery to underscore the play's principal thematic concerns....