Antony and Cleopatra

As someone who has done a significant amount of professional magazine writing, I would say that this depends entirely on the audience from whom you are interviewing her. If you were doing an...

The Characterization of Cleopatra. In Shakespeare's play, Cleopatra is characterized as an enigmatic, sensual, and charismatic figure. Shakespeare's Cleopatra dominates rather than submits to...

Shakespeare offers an excellent contrast between the characters of Octavius Caesar and Mark Antony in Act 2, Scene 3 of the play. Antony asks the Soothsayer whose fortunes will rise higher in the...

So, from the other answers provided to this question, you can see that "fleshpots" has more than just a sexual meaning; in the context of the Bible, it referred literally to bowls of cooked meat,...

In broadest terms, a tragedy ends in the death of a major character or characters; in a comedy, the major characters survive. Antony and Cleopatra's suicidal deaths are main tragic elements of this...

Although Shakespeare makes use of metaphor, personification, and apostrophe in this scene, his main element of figurative language proves to be hyperbole. Antony and Cleopatra, after all, is a...

Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra revolves around these actual characters from Roman and Egyptian history. This is the second of Shakespeare's trilogy of Roman plays—the first was Julius...

Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" is one of the more historically accurate of Shakespeare's plays. His original audience would have been quite familiar with the events presented in the plot, so...

Originally, Antony and Octavius Caesar were sharing power, with Lepidus. When Lepidus was expelled for supposedly being disloyal, that left Antony and Caesar. Caesar was cunning, farsighted, and...

Nothing could be less Puritanical than the Roman Empire as depicted in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. In this play, Rome has fallen from its Republican public-spiritedness into imperial...

Cleopatra is initially attracted to Antony because he is a strong, handsome, virile man, but mainly because he has such great power. He is one of the rulers of most of the known world. Antony is...

My favorite lines in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra come at the very end of the play, in Act V, Scene 2, when Cleopatra is committing suicide by applying two poisonous snakes, or asps, to her...

Octavia is essentially caught in the middle of a political power struggle between Antony, her husband, and Caesar, her husband. She is a sympathetic character, though the audience mostly hears of...

In Act IV scene 1 Antony says the following of Lepidus: "ANTONY: Octavius, I have seen more days than you: And, though we lay these honors on this man, To ease ourselves of divers slanderous...

To distill the opinion of A.C. Bradley, one of the most influential Shakespearean scholars of the late Victorian era, on the character of Cleopatra (as revealed in his Oxford Lecture on Antony and...

Octavius does not really develop all that much as a character in Antony and Cleopatra. The main reason for this is because he has been seized by the utterly ruthless, single-minded pursuit of...

Shakespeare wrote Antony and Cleopatra around 1605–1606, and it was first performed in London in 1607. Antony and Cleopatra is written in verse and prose, and the characters of Antony and Cleopatra...

The chorus, as a dramatic device, originates with the Greek theatre. As Enotes states: The Greek chorus comments on themes, and shows how an ideal audience might react to the drama. The chorus...

If you are using eNotes and need to cite it, there is always a "Cite This Page" link atop each work you are using, for each section of the analysis: introduction, characters, themes, etc. For...

The conventions in Shakespearean tragedy are largely the same as those identified by Aristotle. In Shakespeare, as in Aristotle's Poetics, a tragedy has a sympathetic hero who is of noble birth, or...

"Emote" means which emotions the actors would display on stage when exploring the characters. There are a lot of complex things going on in this play, and it is extremely emotional. We are...

Antony is portrayed as a distracted and rash general whose strategies are unsound. At the beginning of the play, Philo describes Antony's eyes as those "that o’er the files and musters of the war /...

To begin, both men are of elevated status, Hamlet is a prince and Antony ruler of one third of the evolving Roman Empire. Each man, it would seem, would have been much happier without their...

One of the key motifs, or recurring themes or structures, in this play is dominant female sexuality and its power over men. At various points in the play, male characters speak out against the...

Antony is a hero of Rome. He stood up for Julius Caesar during his reign, and in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, he avenged Caesar and Rome against Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius. He is a hero...

I recently answered a similar question regarding the clash between Egypt and Rome, which might relate somewhat to your question (see the answer on enotes in the Antony and Cleopatra group). Antony...

A consensus with regard to the appropriate applications of Machiavelli’s The Prince to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is likely to remain elusive. As with much of Shakespeare’s work, there...

In Act III of the play, Antony and Cleopatra are fighting Octavian, now called Caesar Augustus, for control of the eastern Roman Empire. Their fleet has been destroyed, and now they face...

Octavius Caesar is self-assured and cunning, so he is able to take advantage of the weaknesses of others. Octavius Caesar lived up to his name. As the promising young heir to Julius Caesar,...

Shakespeare uses imagery and diction to reveal Antony and Cleopatra. If you look at the words and images that are used to describe Antony, or man, they are typically structured and civilized words...

In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare presents a contrast between Western civilization, represented by Rome and symbolized by Octavius Caesar, and Eastern civilization, represented by Egypt and...

In the first scene, Antony and Cleopatra are arguing about Antony’s loyalties. Is Antony loyal to her, or to Rome? Antony is having an affair with Cleopatra, but he is married to Fulvia. He is...

I would content that Cleopatra's death is not the climax of the tragedy. Rather, the climax occurs when Antony's naval forces surrender to Caesar in Act 3.10. Furious at the loss and convinced...

The first bit's reasonably easy, I think: Cleo is just imagining what Antony might be doing on the other side of the world. And, thinking that he might be on his horse, she envies the horse - as he...

It's act 1, scene 3 and Antony and Cleopatra are having another of their legendary blazing rows. Antony is about to depart for Rome and his Egyptian queen's not too happy about it. She starts...

I think that Shakespeare portrays her as a character somewhat in the middle of victim and predator. One could call her a victim in that Shakespeare's Cleopatra truly cares for Antony and believes...

I don't think either her past experiences or age has anything to do with turning Antony's romance into tragedy. Antony is a man caught between his duty, which includes marrying Octavia, and his...

I'm not sure that Egypt dominates Act I, unless by Egypt, you mean Cleopatra, since she is Pharaoh and, as such, would have been seen as "Egypt" incarnate. However, it is certainly worth examining...

One very direct example comes in Act 2 Scene 5. It begins at the opening of the scene, as Cleopatra seeks a partner in a game of pool (billiards), but momentarily changes her mind with this line:...

Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is a tale of epic proportions. It portrays numerous facets of humanity - lust, allegiance and betrayal. Then, there is love. The love of a man for a woman. The...

This question needs to be on the discussion board, because it calls for an opinion rather than a factual answer. I thoroughly disagree with the premise that Antony's qualities are preferable to...

As for Shakespeare's Antony, I would have to say yes, he is responsible for his fall. At the beginning of the play, he is ruler of one third of the fledgling Roman Empire. He is "stationed" so to...

The relevant episode for Scarus is 4.8. Antony has just achieved an unexpected victory against Caesar. He and Scarus come on stage from the scene of battle; both have fought courageously. Scarus...

Alban's main point in the article "Antony and Cleopatra; Gorgon or Mars, Whore or Goddess" is that Shakespeare presents an oxymoronic interpretation of the characters in this tragedy. Antony and...

I must admit I have to agree with #4 on this one. There does seem to be a deliberate attempt to exaggerate and this could be seen as an artistic hyperbole regarding how the wood of the oars and the...

I assume you are asking for an analysis of this character. Enotes provides a wonderful link for character explanation, which I have included below. In short, however, this character is the...

Enobarbus describes Cleopatra as an extraordinarily enchanting and alluring woman who knows how to arrange herself in luxurious settings to produce the maximum effect. This self-possessed queen...

This difference is primarily illustrated in the first two scenes of this act. Antony has been called home from Egypt, where he has become enamored with Cleopatra. Caesar is far more concerned with...

It isn't that symbolic, actually, but a set of meanings barely beneath the surface. This is Anthony talking to Cleopatra. These are famous lovers. He is Rome to her Egypt, a land related to and...

The rising dramatic action of the first scene in Act I leads the reader to see that the Triumvirs are actually going to turn into competitors rather than colleagues. Eventually, an armed conflict...