Relationships in Antony and Cleopatra Antony and Cleopatra's “love” is not really about love at all. Their interaction can only be considered a sort of immature lust-power relationship. Their relationship is shallow, self-centered, irresponsible and destructive. Their attraction for each other centers around infatuation and a sort of egoistic rush that they are more important than the world. Just as a man or woman of today may attempt to control the desires of his or her intended, Cleopatra wants…

William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is aptly named, not just because the play centers around these two characters, but also because it encompasses the play’s fixation on the lovers’ oppositional relationship. On the surface level, Antony embodies the Roman ideals of a good, noble man, while Cleopatra represents the hyper-sexualized, dangerous Eastern woman. However, upon further examination both Antony and Cleopatra display complicated internal conflicts…

Story of Antony and Cleopatra The tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra can be said to have an overall effect of comical lightness. In this way, it is altogether different from the preceding tragedies, although the tragedy that leads to the death and destruction of Antony and Cleopatra is definitely a matter of choice rather than of circumstances that engulf the hero. Yet, ultimately their tragic ending differs greatly from the ominous feeling of those that preceded it. Antony and Cleopatra concerns…

William Shakespeare's Presentation of Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra The presentation of Cleopatra in Act three Scene thirteen is quite ambiguous. Her presentation in the rest of the play is also very contrasting and distinct. I believe Shakespeare concentrated on demonstrating Cleopatra's personality and ambiguity to emphasise that, being the only central female in the play, it is even more surprising that she manages to act the way she does, with such an alarming range…

Opposites Attract in Antony and Cleopatra William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra is a play that is centred around a pair of historical lovers from two distinct cultures, Mark Antony from Rome and Queen Cleopatra from Egypt. The Roman and Egyptian cultures have vastly different norms and social ideas that are almost complete polar opposites in nature. These conflicting views are instrumental in the way that Cleopatra and Antony act. These two characters are so great in their respective…

The tragic in Antony and Cleopatra His captain's heart, Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper And is become the bellows and the fan To cool a gipsy's lust. Antony and Cleopatra seems to have a special place in Shakespeare's works because it is at a crossroad between two types of play. It clearly belongs to what are generally called the 'Roman' plays, along with Coriolanus and Julius Caesar. But it is also considered a tragedy. The…

morals that symbolise more Egyptian ideals, leads him to betray his general and friend, Antony. Enobarbus then goes onto to die of the guilt and broken heartedness he experiences as a result of his treachery towards Antony and his own moral compass. It is however arguable that Enobarbus traitorous nature is only an outcome and reflection of Antony’s own crumbling roman beliefs. If we take the exchange between Cleopatra and Enobarbus in Act 3, scene 12 lines 2- 12 we can see that Enobarbus lays absolutely…

Throughout Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, readers are constantly thrown in the middle of a battle between Roman and Egyptian values. Antony, a noble warrior for the Romans, is the character that seems to have the most trouble between this dichotomy. He is constantly caught between reason (Rome) and passion (Egypt) and has a difficult time making the transitions. Cleopatra is the character that stays most true to her roots, but begins adopting the other side’s values toward the end of the story…

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra is a play in which the balance of power swings interestingly between two lovers. It is set in the First Century BC between Rome and Egypt. Antony is one of the three members of the second triumvirate who jointly rule the Roman Empire. Antony is the eponymous tragic hero, who allows his love for Cleopatra to cloud his judgement. According to Aristotle this is hamartia, an error of judgment caused by fate…

present the sense of opposites or polarities And what is the importance of these to the play? William Shakespeare wrote Antony and Cleopatra around 1606, during the reign of King James ². The play is a history, set in the time of the Roman Empire many centuries before it was written and based on the well-documented history of Octavius Caesar, Marc Antony and Cleopatra. These characters and their lives were contained in primarily one document: Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans…