Antony and Cleopatra (Vol. 47) | Barbara C. Vincent (essay date 1982)
Barbara C. Vincent (essay date 1982)
SOURCE: "Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and the Rise of Comedy," in English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 12, No. 1, Winter, 1982, pp. 53-86.
[In the essay that follows, Vincent analyzes Antony and Cleopatra as a play first dominated by tragedy and later by comedy, maintaining that the movement of the play from tragedy to comedy parallels the movement within the play from Rome to Egypt.]
. . . yet the Alexandrians were commonly glad of this
jolity, and liked it well saying verie gallantly,
and wisely: that Antonius shewed them a comicall
face, to wit, a merie countenaunce: and the Romanes
a tragi call face, to say, a grimme looke.
—The Life of Marcus Antonius
That The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra contains many elements of comedy is increasingly noticed in criticism.1 Cleopatra has been called "the queen of...
[The entire page is 15144 words long]
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