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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

Shakespeare's plays Antony and Cleopatra and Pericles, Prince of Tyre both tackle the theme of love as central to their stories. In Antony and Cleopatra, this unfolds in the form of the romance...

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...

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...

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,...

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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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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Pericles, Prince of Tyre can certainly be analyzed using the theme of decisions made in the pursuit of love. Both plays, however, approach the theme in very...

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...

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...

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:...

The most general theme in Antony and Cleopatra is certainly love. However, Antony, unlike Shakespeare's Romeo, is a great public figure, "the triple pillar of the world," as he is described in...

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...

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 /...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

The tragic story of Antony and Cleopatra is well known, and Shakespeare's version of the tale warns against overzealous love. In the first scene of the play, Philo speaks to Demetrius about...

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...