illustration of Antony and Cleopatra facing each other with a snake wrapped around their necks

Antony and Cleopatra

by William Shakespeare

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  • Archer, John Michael, “Antiquity and Degeneration in Antony and Cleopatra,” in Race, Ethnicity, and Power in the Renaissance, edited by Joyce Green MacDonald, Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1997, pp. 145-64. (Examines Antony and Cleopatra and its treatment of race and sexuality in order to identify Renaissance racial and sexual constructions. The text is examined in light of historical, geographical, and travel writings that became available within the century following the publication of the play.)
  • 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, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994, pp. 105-28. (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.)
  • Berek, Peter, “Doing and Undoing: The Value of Action in Antony and Cleopatra,” Shakespeare Quarterly 32, no. 3 (Autumn 1981): 295-304. (Highlights similarities in the views of Shakespeare's Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavius regarding the limits of worldly action in Antony and Cleopatra.)
  • 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, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 131-45. (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.)
  • Brown, John Russell, ed., Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra: A Casebook, Revised Edition, Houndmills: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1991, 214 p. (Presents selected essays divided into three categories: critical reactions to the play before 1900, the play in performance, and twentieth-century criticism of the work.)
  • Burke, Kenneth, “Shakespearean Persuasion,” The Antioch Review XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 1964): 19-36. (Discusses plot and use of language in Antony and Cleopatra.)
  • Bushman, Mary Ann, “Representing Cleopatra,” in In Another Country: Feminist Perspectives on Renaissance Drama, edited by Dorothea Kehler and Susan Baker, Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1991, pp. 36-49. (Examines the rhetorical modes available to Cleopatra in the play, and contends that Cleopatra is one of the few characters in Shakespeare's plays to overcome the representation of the female as inferior and “[d]eprived of a voice.”)
  • Cantor, Paul A., “The Politics of Empire,” in Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976, pp. 127-54. (Studies the relationship between the themes of love and politics in the play, observing that Antony and Cleopatra discover an imperial form of love that corresponds to the imperial type of politics prevalent in the play.)
  • Charnes, Linda, “Spies and Whispers: Exceeding Reputation in Antony and Cleopatra,” in Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare , Harvard, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 103-47. (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 entire section contains 3786 words.)

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  • 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.)
  • Charnes, Linda, “What's Love Got to Do with It? Reading the Liberal Humanist Romance in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra,” Textual Practice 6, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 1-16. (Holds the near universal acceptance of passionate and real love between Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra up to critical scrutiny.)
  • Charney, Maurice, “Antony and Cleopatra,” in All of Shakespeare, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 289-98. (Focuses on the characterization of Cleopatra in relation to Shakespeare's use of language in Antony and Cleopatra.)
  • Charney, Maurice, “The Imagery of Antony and Cleopatra,” in Shakespeare's Roman Plays: The Function of Imagery in the Drama, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961, pp. 79-141. (Studies Antony and Cleopatra's use of the imagery related to dimension and scope, demonstrating the way such imagery expresses the hyperbole characterizing the style of the play.)
  • Cook, Carol, “The Fatal Cleopatra,” in Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender, edited by Shirley Nelson Garner and Madelon Sprengnether, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 241-67. (Studies the role Cleopatra plays as a figure threatening the Roman goal of unification and dominion. In particular, Cook demonstrates the way in which the language of the play underscores Cleopatra's subversive role.)
  • Coppedge, Walter R., “The Joy of the Worm: Dying in Antony and Cleopatra,” Renaissance Papers (1988): 41-50. (Analyzes whether there are spiritual dimensions to the suicides of Antony and Cleopatra.)
  • Curtis, Mary Ann, “The Joining of Male and Female: An Alchemical Theme of Transmutation in Antony and Cleopatra,” Upstart Crow 12 (1992): 116-26. (Probes the imagery of alchemy in Antony and Cleopatra, illuminating the drama's thematic concern with a transcendent union of opposites.)
  • Davies, H. Neville, “Jacobean Antony and Cleopatra,” in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, 17, (1985): 123-58. (Discusses Antony and Cleopatra from a historical perspective, evaluating the possible influence of the court of King James I on Shakespeare's composition of the work.)
  • Dorius, R. J., “Love, Death, and the Heroic” and “The Triumph of Imagination: Act V,” in How to Read Shakespearean Tragedy, edited by Edward Quinn, New York: Harper's College Press, 1978, pp. 295-310; 339-49. (Discusses the interaction between tragic, heroic, and romantic elements in the play, and contends that much of the divergence of opinion regarding the play's genre is rooted in the way Shakespeare's treatment of love and of Cleopatra are interpreted.)
  • Dusinberre, Juliet, “Squeaking Cleopatras: Gender and Performance in Antony and Cleopatra,” in Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance, edited by James C. Bulman, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 46-67. (Explores the relationship between the competing masculine and feminine constructions within the play, as well as the play's reception—among the audience and actors—as a text written for an exclusively male cast.)
  • Falco, Raphael, “Erotic Charisma: The Tragedies of Cleopatra,” in Charismatic Authority in Early Modern English Tragedy, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, pp. 169-99. (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.)
  • Fitch, Robert E., “No Greater Crack?” Shakespeare Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Winter 1968): 3-17. (Critiques the ideal of love usually identified in Antony and Cleopatra, focusing instead on the play's representation of a conflict between pleasure and power.)
  • Goldbert, S. L., “The Tragedy of the Imagination: A Reading of Antony and Cleopatra,” The Melbourne Critical Review 4 (1961): 41-64. (Offers an analysis of Antony and Cleopatra, with an emphasis on elements of ambiguity in the work.)
  • Hall, Joan Lord, “Themes,” in Antony and Cleopatra: A Guide to the Play, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002, pp. 129-50. (Surveys a selection of dualistic conflicts and themes in Antony and Cleopatra, including the play's representation of love in opposition to military leadership, the antagonism between artistic imagination and nature, the futility of action in the face of capricious fortune, the essential mutability of the sublunar world, and the enormous power of theatricality and role-playing to destabilize perception and reality.)
  • Hamilton, Donna B., “Antony and Cleopatra and the Tradition of Noble Lovers,” Shakespeare Quarterly 24, no. 3 (Summer 1973): 245-52. (Examines the literary tradition that views Antony and Cleopatra as truthful and faithful lovers, and suggests that Shakespeare drew on these accounts for inspiration.)
  • Harris, Duncan S., “‘Again for Cydnus’: The Dramaturgical Resolution of Antony and Cleopatra,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 XVII, No. 2 (Spring, 1977): 219-31. (Examines the conclusion of Antony and Cleopatra, maintaining that “[there] is no attempt, as there is in the earlier tragedies, to untangle the confusion of values.”)
  • Harris, Jonathan Gil, “‘Narcissus in thy Face’: Roman Desire and the Difference It Fakes in Antony and Cleopatra,” Shakespeare Quarterly 45, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 408-25. (Questions Cleopatra's status as an object of heterosexual desire in Antony and Cleopatra by comparing the drama with Elizabethan versions of the Narcissus myth.)
  • Heller, Agnes, “Antony and Cleopatra,” in The Time Is Out of Joint: Shakespeare as Philosopher of History, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002, pp. 337-65. (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.)
  • Henn, T. R., “The Images of 'Antony and Cleopatra',” in The Living Image: Shakespearean Essays, London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1972, pp. 117-36. (Examines the poetry of Antony and Cleopatra in relation to the play's ambiguous morality and the characters' changing emotions.)
  • Herbert, T. Walter, “A Study of Meaning in Antony and Cleopatra,” in All These to Teach: Essays in Honor of C. A. Robertson, edited by Robert A. Bryan, Alton C. Morris, A. A. Murphree, and Aubrey L. Williams, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965, pp. 47-66. (Offers an overview of the play's setting, action, poetry, and characters informed by an understanding of Elizabethan culture and beliefs.)
  • Hill, James L., “The Marriage of True Bodies: Myth and Metamorphosis in Antony and Cleopatra,” in Real: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, Volume 2, edited by Herbert Grabes, Hans-Jügen Diller, and Hans Bungert, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1984, pp. 211-37. (Attempts to “trace the path of change in Antony and Cleopatra, giving particular attention to the mythological resonances with which Shakespeare surrounds his tragic figures.”)
  • Hillman, Richard, “Antony, Hercules, and Cleopatra: 'the bidding of the gods' and 'the subtlest maze of all',” Shakespeare Quarterly 38, No. 4 (Winter 1987): 442-51. (Studies the implications of the remark made in IV.iii that the god Hercules “whom Antony lov'd , / Now leaves him” (11.15-16), suggesting that the comment is significant, but not in the sense that it refers to any supernatural event.)
  • Hiscock, Andrew, “‘Here Is My Space’: The Politics of Appropriation in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra,” English 47, no. 189 (Autumn 1998): 187-212. (Analyzes the interpersonal and intercultural relationships of Antony and Cleopatra in the contexts of early modern English perceptions of time and space.)
  • Jorgensen, Paul A., “Antony and Cleopatra: This Dotage of Our General's,” in William Shakespeare: The Tragedies, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985, pp. 110-25. (Offers an overview of the play's plot, themes, and characters, maintaining that the play is first and foremost a story of Antony's humiliation and downfall.)
  • Kahn, Coppélia, “Antony's Wound,” in Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women, London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 110-43. (Focuses on the rivalry between Octavius Caesar and Antony, and claims that Caesar campaigns against Antony not only in order to portray Cleopatra as an enemy of Rome, but also to eliminate Antony as a serious rival.)
  • Kermode, Frank, “Antony and Cleopatra,” in 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.”)
  • Lewis, Cynthia, “'The World's Great Snare': Antony, Cleopatra, and Game,” in Particular Saints: Shakespeare's Four Antonios, Their Contexts, and Their Plays, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997, pp. 116-53. (Maintains that Antony's characterization relies to some degree on the traditions associated with Saint Antony of Egypt, and that by analyzing this relationship, the play's main issues—as well as Antony's apparently comic portrayal—are clarified.)
  • Lindley, Arthur, “Enthroned in the Marketplace: The Camivalesque Antony and Cleopatra,” in Hyperion and the Hobbyhorse: Studies in Camivalesque Subversion, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996, pp. 137-56. (States that the concept of transaction is a primary element of carnival and that it, along with other camivalesque elements, pervade Antony and Cleopatra.)
  • Little, Jr., Arthur L., “(Re)Posing with Cleopatra,” in Shakespeare Jungle Fever: National-Imperial Re-Visions of Race, Rape, and Sacrifice, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000, pp. 143-76. (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.)
  • MacDonald, Joyce Green, “Sex, Race, and Empire in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra,” Literature and History 5, No. 1 (Spring 1996): 60-77. (Discusses the Renaissance view of an African Cleopatra, and attempts to separate race from gender in order to contrast readings of the play in which Cleopatra's orientalism is associated with femininity.)
  • MacMullan, Katherine Vance, “Death Imagery in Antony and Cleopatra,” Shakespeare Quarterly 14, no. 4 (Autumn 1963): 399-410. (Investigates the death imagery that Shakespeare employed in Antony and Cleopatra, focusing on the interconnectedness of the themes of love and death.)
  • 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.)
  • Mason, H. A., “Antony and Cleopatra: Angelic Strength—Organic Weakness?” The Cambridge Quarterly I, No. 3 (Summer 1966): 209-36. (Mason attempts a departure from the standard methods of critical analysis to offers a reading of Antony and Cleopatra informed by his impressions as a viewer of the play.)
  • Mason, H. A., “Antony and Cleopatra: Telling Versus Shewing,” The Cambridge Quarterly I, No. 4 (Autumn 1966): 330-54. (Focuses on language and action in Antony and Cleopatra, particularly in relation to the characterization of Antony.)
  • Miola, Robert S., “Antony and Cleopatra: Rome and the World,” in Shakespeare's Rome, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 116-63. (Explores Shakespeare's treatment of Rome and its relationship to Egypt in Antony and Cleopatra, as well as on the relationship of Shakespeare's portrayal of Rome in Antony and Cleopatra to his depiction of the empire in Julius Caesar.)
  • Morley, Sheridan, Review of Antony and Cleopatra, New Statesman 131, no. 4606 (23 September 2002): 45. (Praises the strong individual performances and the traditional directorial approach to Antony and Cleopatra undertaken by Michael Attenborough and the Royal Shakespeare Company in their 2002 staging of the drama.)
  • Nandy, Dipak, “The Realism of Antony and Cleopatra,” in Shakespeare in a Changing World, edited by Arnold Kettle, New York: International Publishers, 1964, pp. 172-94. (Interprets Antony's experience in the play as a discovery of his true relationship to Rome, personified by Octavius Caesar, and Egypt, represented by Cleopatra.)
  • Neill, Michael, ed., Introduction to Anthony and Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 1-130. (Discusses the performance history of the play and presents an overview of recent critical interpretations.)
  • 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.)
  • Rinehart, Keith, “Shakespeare's Cleopatra and England's Elizabeth,” Shakespeare Quarterly 23, no. 1 (Winter 1972): 81-6. (Demonstrates the likelihood that Shakespeare used Queen Elizabeth as a model for his portrayal of Cleopatra.)
  • Rose, Mark, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Antony and Cleopatra: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1977, 138 p. (Includes essays that focus on background analyses, including discussions of the style of the Roman plays, the place of the play in Shakespeare's development, and the play's heroic context. Also includes critical interpretations of the play and its themes, and various critical assessments.)
  • Rosen, William, “Antony and Cleopatra,” in Shakespeare: The Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Clifford Leech, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965, pp. 201-14. (Focuses on the language of Antony and Cleopatra.)
  • Royster, Francesca T., “African Dreams, Egyptian Nightmares: Cleopatra and Becoming England,” in Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon, New York: Palgrave, 2003, pp. 33-57. (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.)
  • Simonds, Peggy Muñoz, “'To the Very Heart of Loss': Renaissance Iconography in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra,” Shakespeare Studies XXII (1994): 220-76. (Pursues a Renaissance reading of the play through an “iconographic” approach, that is, by studying the contemporary, conventional meanings attached to the images and symbols Shakespeare refers to in the play.)
  • Smith, Gordon Ross, ed., Essays on Shakespeare, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1965, 249 p. (Includes the following critical discussions of Antony and Cleopatra: J. Leeds Barroll on “The Chronology of Shakespeare's Jacobean Plays and the Dating of Antony and Cleopatra”; Paul A. Jorgensen on “Antony and the Protesting Soldiers: A Renaissance Tradition for the Structure of Antony and Cleopatra”; and Edith M. Roerecke on “Baroque Aspects of Antony and Cleopatra.”)
  • Snyder, Susan, “Patterns of Motion in 'Antony and Cleopatra',” Shakespeare Survey 33, (1980): 113-22. (Argues that “Shakespeare has set images of solid fixity or speedy directness against images of flux and of motion unpurposive but beautiful to express kinetically the opposition of Rome and Egypt and, through their incompatibility, the nature of Antony's tragic dilemma.”)
  • Stanton, Kay, “The Heroic Tragedy of Cleopatra, the ‘Prostitute Queen,’” in The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama, edited by Naomi Conn Liebler, New York: Palgrave, 2002, pp. 93-118. (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, London: Routledge, 1989, pp. 93-153. (Compares Shakespeare's portrayal of Antony, Cleopatra, and Caesar with the historical basis for the play and its characters as found in Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.)
  • Turner, John, Introduction to The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare, edited by John Turner, New York: Prentice Hall, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995, pp. 13-29. (Discusses Shakespeare's source material for the play as well as its language, characterization, and thematic issues.)
  • Vanhoutte, Jacqueline, “Antony's ‘Secret House of Death’: Suicide and Sovereignty in Antony and Cleopatra,” Philological Quarterly 79, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 153-75. (Centers on Antony's motivations for suicide as dramatized in Antony and Cleopatra by contrasting Roman and Elizabethan cultural appraisals of the subject and the thematic significance of Antony's act of “self-murder” in the play.)
  • Waddington, Raymond B., “Antony and Cleopatra: 'What Venus did with Mars',” Shakespeare Studies II (1966): 210-27. (Argues that the play is a romance that primarily evokes the myths of Mars and Venus and their cosmological affair, rather than the myths of Hercules and Isis.)
  • Walker, Julia M., “Cleopatra: The Tain of the Mirror,” in Medusa's Mirrors: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Metamorphosis of the Female Self, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998, pp. 117-57. (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.)
  • Weitz, Morris, “Literature without Philosophy: Antony and Cleopatra,” in Shakespeare, Philosophy, and Literature: Essays, edited by Margaret Collins Weitz, New York: Peter Lang, 1995, pp. 55-67. (Observes that Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra contains numerous philosophical themes—many of them associated with the cyclic process of generation and corruption—but no universal philosophical thesis or claim.)
  • Whitney, Charles, “Charmian's Laughter: Women, Gypsies, and Festive Ambivalence in Antony and Cleopatra,” Upstart Crow 14 (1994): 67-88. (Discusses Antony and Cleopatra as it displays Shakespeare's tragicomic evocation of “festive ambivalence” in the figure of Cleopatra's faithful attendant Charmian, and in Cleopatra's own gypsy-like qualities.)
  • Williamson, Marilyn, “The Political Context in Antony and Cleopatra,” Shakespeare Quarterly 21, no. 3 (Summer 1970): 241-51. (Stresses the importance of the aspects of Antony and Cleopatra that relate directly to Plutarch's historical narrative, maintaining that Shakespeare's use of his source was intended to demonstrate relevant political lessons, lessons which are taught through studying Antony and Cleopatra not just as lovers, but as rulers.)
  • Wolf, William D., “'New Heaven, New Earth': The Escape from Mutability in Antony and Cleopatra,” Shakespeare Quarterly 33, No. 3 (Autumn 1982): 328-35. (Contends that while the worlds of Rome and Egypt and the values they represent are often pitted against one another by critics, the two realms are alike in that “the only permanent fixture of either is change, the necessary adjunct of time.”)
  • Yachnin, Paul, “Shakespeare's Politics of Loyalty: Sovereignty and Subjectivity in Antony and Cleopatra,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 33, No. 2 (Spring 1993): 343-63. (Takes a new historicist approach in analyzing what the play reveals about Jacobean political culture.)
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