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Antony and Cleopatra
Wow. That's quite a project. Cleopatra led such a full life that there are many questions I would like to ask. For instance, 1. What was it like being one of the only women to be a head of state...
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Antony and Cleopatra
The elements of tragedy include a tragic hero, pathos, and suffering. The tragic hero in the play is Mark Antony. A tragic hero has a flaw, known as a tragic flaw, that leads to his destruction....
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Antony and Cleopatra
The "fleshpots of Egypt" were so called because of their loose sexuality and equally loose morals. (In the Bible, the "fleshpots of Egypt" are what the Israelites were trying to flee from due to...
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Antony and Cleopatra
In this play, Rome represents the world of the rational, the logical, the carefully practical, and the puritanical. It is the world of the strong, heroic male warrior. Egypt, on the other hand,...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
Language. Literary scholars maintain that Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra was written in 1606 or 1607 during the Renaissance era (1550-1660). On the other hand, Dryden's All For Love was written...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
You need to know a little about Egyptian history and the history of the Roman Empire. As the Roman Empire expanded throughout the world, Egypt became one of the many countries taken over by Rome....
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Antony and Cleopatra
This scene is rich with metaphors and figurative language, and they foreshadow later actions in the play and the predict the end. Cleopatra talks the entire time of Antony and how she misses him...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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,...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
By definition, the tragic hero falls due to a flaw in his or her character. Hamlet's tragic flaw is his indecision. He had ample time to get his revenge on Claudius, his uncle, who murdered...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
For textual references (inside the paragraph), do not use a footnote. Cite the title, the act, the scene, and the lines. Place them within parentheses at the end of the quotation. For example:...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
In his long preface to Saint Joan, George Bernard Shaw compares Joan to Socrates and Napoleon and later discusses her "manliness and militarism." Shaw points out that Joan could easily have gone to...
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Antony and Cleopatra
A.C. Bradley, the great Shakespearean critic, describes Cleopatra in Oxford Lectures on Poetry as a non-dramatic and non-tragic character. This is a bit of an oxymoron as it is applied to one of...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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 /...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
"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...
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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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is set in both Egypt and Rome, and the two locations take on symbolic importance. In the dichotomy between Rome and Egypt, Shakespeare is emphasizing the masculine versus the...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
Perhaps one of the reasons this has remained unanswered is that it is not clear as to what you mean by a defective tragedy. Do we have a protagonist? Yes. In this case it is both Antony and...
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Antony and Cleopatra
I don't think it's a deliberate exaggeration on the part of Enobarbus because what Enobarbus says comes pretty much directly from Plutarch. Given that in both Plutarch and Shakespeare, we have a...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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...
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Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra are complex characters. History holds that they are epitomes of rather self-serving, conceited individuals, bent on their passions for one another. However,...
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Antony and Cleopatra
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:...
