Antony and Cleopatra (Vol. 47) | Harold Fisch (essay date 1970)
Harold Fisch (essay date 1970)
SOURCE: "Antony and Cleopatra: The Limits of Mythology," in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearian Study and Production, Vol. 23, 1970, pp. 59-61.
[In the following essay, Fisch argues that the mythic and ritualistic elements in Antony and Cleopatra are more than just components of the dramatic structure of the play, but rather that these elements comprise the play's very subject. Some of the ideas set out in this essay are further elaborated in Harold Fisch, The Biblical Presence in Shakespeare, Milton and Blake: a Comparative Study (Oxford University Press 1999), pp. 35-65.]
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When critics speak of myth and ritual in Shakespeare they have in mind chiefly the symbolic structure of the plays. Thus The Winter's Tale which begins in winter ('a sad tale's best for winter', I, i, 25) and ends in high summer ('not yet on summer's death nor on the birth of...
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