Antony and Cleopatra (Vol. 47) | Anthony S. Brennan (essay date 1978)
Anthony S. Brennan (essay date 1978)
SOURCE: "Excellent Dissembling: Antony and Cleopatra Playing at Love," in The Midwest Quarterly, Vol. XIX, No. 4, Summer, 1978, pp. 313-29.
[In the essay below, Brennan studies the way in which Antony and Cleopatra struggle to juggle multiple roles or identities in order to manipulate circumstances for their own benefit. Brennan notes that for Cleopatra in particular, role-playing is not an act of deception, but rather that it heightens her sense of self]
It is a commonplace of criticism that Shakespeare untiringly explored the implications of the idea that all the world's a stage. In a number of his works he presents a formal play within a play. In virtually all of his dramas there are examples of what can be called 'undeclared plays' in which characters put on performances for each other. One of the most significant aspects of his tragic art is the development of the self-dramatizing propensities of...
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