CRITICISM

Barfoot, C. C. “News of the Roman Empire: Hearsay, Soothsay, Myth and History in Antony and Cleopatra.” In Reclamations of Shakespeare, edited by A. J. Hoenselaars, pp. 105-28. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994.

Analyzes the thematic and structural functions of the many messages, second-hand accounts, reminiscences, and self-memorializing that occur in Antony and Cleopatra. Barfoot suggests that the principal characters' reliance on other people's reports for information about each other underscores the lack of direct and trustworthy communication between them; the critic also notes that because many of these reports are distorted, the audience cannot make definitive judgments about the characters and the dramatic action.

Brown, Elizabeth A. “‘Companion Me with My Mistress’: Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, and Their Waiting Women.” In Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women's Alliances in Early Modern England, edited by Susan Frye and Karen Robertson, pp. 131-45. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Focuses on the roles that Charmian and Iras play as Cleopatra's attendants, with an emphasis on their loyalty and devotion. Brown points out that, unlike the women who provided service and companionship to England's Elizabeth I, Charmian and Iras have no political or family connections outside their queen's court, and Cleopatra's heightened dependence on them after the battle of Actium reflects her increasing isolation from the world beyond the confines of her monument.

Charnes, Linda. “Spies and Whispers: Exceeding Reputation in Antony and Cleopatra.” In Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare, pp. 103-47. Harvard, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Addresses the issue of how the central characters in Antony and Cleopatra construct identities—their own and others'—and try to control how they will be reported in history and legend. Asserting that “narrative destiny is precisely what is at stake in this play,” Charnes argues that Octavius becomes the ultimate definer of Antony and Cleopatra when he effaces their political significance and represents their story as a tragedy of love.

Falco, Raphael. “Erotic Charisma: The Tragedies of Cleopatra.” In Charismatic Authority in Early Modern English Tragedy, pp. 169-99. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Compares the way several early modern English playwrights portrayed the personal and political magnetism of Antony and Cleopatra. In his discussion of Shakespeare's play, Falco analyzes the basis of Cleopatra's charismatic appeal, especially in terms of its subversiveness, as well as the foundation of Antony's charisma in his military feats.

Heller, Agnes. “Antony and Cleopatra.” In The Time Is Out of Joint: Shakespeare as Philosopher of History, pp. 337-65. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002.

Discusses the multiple personal calamities in Antony and Cleopatra and likens it to a tragic opera. Dealing principally with issues of characterization, Heller views Antony as open and honest yet lacking foresight; Cleopatra as a woman caught between her public and private roles; Octavius as a resolute, calculating Machiavellian; and Enobarbus as a cynical yet direct speaking soldier who struggles to reconcile his loyalty to Antony with his own values and self-interest.

Hiscock, Andrew. “‘Here is my Space’: The Politics of Appropriation in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.” English 47, no. 189 (autumn 1998): 187-212.

Sets the conflict between alternative value systems in Antony and Cleopatra within the framework of Octavius Caesar's determination to impose Roman meaning on what he regards as Egypt's inscrutable cultural space. Hiscock contrasts Caesar's need for permanently established concepts of personal and political purposes with Cleopatra's creative, constantly changing images of herself and her kingdom.

Kermode, Frank. “Antony and Cleopatra.” The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed., edited by G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Provides an introduction to Antony and Cleopatra, contending that it is one of “Shakespeare's supreme achievements.”

Little, Jr., Arthur L. “(Re)Posing with Cleopatra.” In Shakespeare Jungle Fever: National-Imperial Re-Visions of Race, Rape, and Sacrifice, pp. 143-76. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Examines Rome's attempt in Antony and Cleopatra to deal with the threatening otherness of Egypt by defining its queen in racially and sexually derogatory terms. Little contends that by her suicide, Cleopatra successfully challenges Rome's characterization of her as a black whore and presents herself, instead, as synonymous with Lucrece: the chaste white woman whose self-slaughter became emblematic of female virtue. The critic also offers an extensive evaluation of Enobarbus as the principal agent of the imperialist project to define Cleopatra as sexually dangerous.

Marshall, Cynthia. “Man of Steel Done Got the Blues: Melancholic Subversion of Presence in Antony and Cleopatra.” Shakespeare Quarterly 44, no. 4 (winter 1993): 385-408.

Employs different psychoanalytic theories as bases for understanding Antony's fragmented identity and his profound sense of loss. Marshall devotes particular attention to Antony's repeated self-denigration and to his suicide, as well as to the issue of audiences' and readers' identification with him.

Nichols, Nina da Vinci. “At The Royal Shakespeare Company: Good Play Yields Poor Theater, Poor Plays Yield Good Theater.” Shakespeare Newsletter 52, no. 2 (summer 2002): 53-4.

Faults the 2002 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Antony and Cleopatra for what the critic views as its lack of grandeur and attention to the political significance of the dramatic action. In Nichols's estimation, neither Sinead Cusack's Cleopatra nor Stuart Wilson's Antony was a tragic figure.

Royster, Francesca T. “African Dreams, Egyptian Nightmares: Cleopatra and Becoming England.” In Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon, pp. 33-57. New York: Palgrave, 2003.

Relates Shakespeare's characterization of Cleopatra to the discourse of early modern racial theory and travel literature. Royster contends that Antony and Cleopatra's depiction of the Egyptian queen as black-skinned reflects late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English social and cultural anxieties about miscegenation.

Stanton, Kay. “The Heroic Tragedy of Cleopatra, the ‘Prostitute Queen.’” In The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama, edited by Naomi Conn Liebler, pp. 93-118. New York: Palgrave, 2002.

Provides a feminist critique of Shakespeare's characterization of Cleopatra that emphasizes her multiple associations with goddess figures in Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology. Noting that drama originated in religious festivals devoted to celebrating the cycle of fertility and renewal, Stanton links Cleopatra to these female divinities—especially Isis, who, by virtue of her mystical powers, reassembled the fragmented body pieces of her lover Osiris and provided him with a new, more potent and regenerative, phallus.

Starks, Lisa S. “‘Like the lover's pinch, which hurts and is desired’: The Narrative of Male Masochism and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.” Literature and Psychology 45, no. 4 (1999): 58-73.

Turns to psychoanalytic theories—particularly those of Freud and Gilles Deleuze—to explicate the connection between love and death in Antony and Cleopatra. Starks relates Antony's ambivalence toward Cleopatra to the concepts of Oedipal anxieties and male masochism, and comments on the many links in this play between Egypt's queen and mythological figures.

Taylor, Paul. “Mirren's Grace Fails to Save Dud.” Independent (21 October 1998): 9.

Reviews the National Theatre's 1998 production of Antony and Cleopatra, noting that the play is a major challenge for any director who attempts to stage it. Taylor praises the work of Helen Mirren as Cleopatra and disparages Alan Rickman's attempt to recreate Antony.

Thomas, Vivian. “Realities and Imaginings in Antony and Cleopatra.” In Shakespeare's Roman Worlds, pp. 93-153. London: Routledge, 1989.

Provides a detailed reading of Antony and Cleopatra that focuses on Shakespeare's departure from Plutarch and on the dramatist's rewriting of history.

Walker, Julia M. “Cleopatra: The Tain of the Mirror.” In Medusa's Mirrors: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Metamorphosis of the Female Self, pp. 117-57. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998.

Assesses Shakespeare's complex portrayal of Cleopatra, with particular reference to the way other characters—particularly Antony, Octavius, and Enobarbus—observe her and see not so much a true image of a powerful queen but a reflection of themselves. Walker also offers extended discussions of Cleopatra's association with the mythical female monster Medusa; Octavius's exploitation of Antony's and Cleopatra's suicide for his own political advantage; and the parallels between Octavius's revisionist representation of Cleopatra after her death and James I's attempts to demystify the cult of his own female predecessor, Elizabeth I, and personify himself as “the new Augustus,” a uniter, not a divider, of competing cultures.