Essay about Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

(1.3.2) 'See where he is, who's with him, what he does: I did not send

Throughout the play Julius Caesar Antony, Caesar’s loyal servant, has become a bigger and bigger factor in the play. He really breaks out in Act III. In Act III, Brutus and others have killed Caesar, but yet leaves Antony unharmed because he seems harmless. Antony wants to show the public Caesar’s body and say a funeral speech. Brutus, trusting Antony, allows him to do so, but under some certain terms. Antony must speak good of the conspirators and not blame them. Antony uses logos and ethos, irony, and finally establishes ethos to turn the crowd away from Brutus.

Additionally, Shakespeare depicts Marc Antony as an overall loyal and devoted person that is always there for Caesar when needed. He is often displayed as a “suck-up” that has no backbone- someone who simply cannot stand on their own and even express their own thoughts all because of their loyalty to another. This is accurate when Antony himself says to Caesar, “When Caesar says “Do this,” it is perform’d,” ( JC 1.2.13). Antony’s full approach toward can be mostly summed up by just that one statement. By expressing this to Caesar, it is evident to readers that Antony has strong devotion toward Caesar. On the contrary, it is also evident that Antony is just as loyal to himself as he is to Caesar. If Antony has really only ever been loyal to Caesar,

In act 3 Scene 4, the relationship between Antony and Octavia is presented to us through the means of the conversation that they have about the arising conflict between Antony and Caesar. Although short, the scene manages to present to us the relationship of Antony and Octavia as a comparison to Antony’s relationship with Cleopatra and further the inversion of public and private life, as Antony only discusses public life with his wife Octavia and private with Cleopatra. This scene is significant as the relationship between Antony and Octavia is portrayed to portend the conflict and the future war between the two polar opposites, Egypt and Rome and the allowance of Antony to focus on duty and honor which was lost with Cleopatra as he was indulged

Women are often thought of as weak, powerless, and obedient, yet literary works written throughout time disprove this stereotype. Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is one such example. Hamlet follows the journey of Prince Hamlet of Denmark as he seeks revenge on his uncle Claudius who marries his mother, Gertrude, and becomes king. Though Hamlet spends most of the play delaying executing his revenge, he succeeds in killing Claudius, and the play concludes with the death of most of the characters, including Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s love interest, Ophelia, and Hamlet himself. In Hamlet, Shakespeare creates the independent, intelligent characters Ophelia and Gertrude, who present themselves as non-archetypal women, symbolizing how women in Elizabethan times assert strong personal agency in the midst of dubious actions with hidden depths and complex relationships.

Marc Antony shows early on in Shakespeare’s play of Julius Caesar, that he is a master manipulator. (Topic sentence) Antony was able to convince the crowd of commoners that Brutus, Cassius, and all of the other conspirators are evil men and killed their beloved Caesar out of pure hate. Antony’s ability to deceive others only becomes stronger as the story progresses. After civil war had broken out, Antony further proves that he is not one to be trusted by betraying a man that was thought to be his friend. Once he had driven the commoners into an act of rage against the conspirators, Antony gathered with Octavius and Lepidus in Caesar’s home to discuss their plan to avenge Caesar. The new triumvirate soon realize that they need money to carry

In Act 1 scene 1 of the play, the negative attitude that many people hold towards Cleopatra is instantly established. Philo blames Cleopatra for having an adverse influence on Antony. His love for her has ruined him; he has “become the bellows and the fan to cool a gypsy’s lust.” At the time, gypsies we’re commonly viewed as untrustworthy. People held Cleopatra in low regard and viewed her as whore. This reiterates that though Antony was once a wise leader, Philo even compares him to Mars- god of war; he has allowed his emotions to gain sway over his reason. He is a “triple pillar of the world transform’d into a strumpets fool.” Consequently, he makes bad choices. This foreshadows his foolish decision to later fight the forces of Octavius at sea. Philo also notes that that it is as if Antony is two different people, there is the strong Antony and, in contrast, there is the Antony that they see now- the love-stricken

Our modern literature holds many works from brilliant writers that challenge readers to think outside the box. Shakespeare’s play Hamlet never failed to impress scholars from all over the world because the play can be interpreted in many different ways. Hamlet is performed in all over the theater and never ceases to amaze those who read Hamlet and know the play by heart. Plays in theater can open a brand new perspective of the play Hamlet because readers can actually visualize scenes from Hamlet through the actors and have their own opinions about the play. I choose to analyze and review Hamlet because this play intrigues me due to the facts that the play contains many elements that would not normally exist in a play.

Throughout the Shakespeare’s historical play, Mark Antony’s impassioned love for the Egyptian ruler, Cleopatra, conflicts with his duties to the Roman Empire. In most cases, it is this pleasure that ultimately precedes his responsibilities as one of the triumvirate. Though Antony was once “the triple pillar of the world” he has been transformed into nothing more than “a strumpet’s fool.” Antony’s passion for Cleopatra is all consuming. Though in the past he was viewed as a great man, Philo even compares him to Mars (the God of war), his attachment to Cleopatra has led him to become merely “the bellows and the fan to cool a gipsy’s lust”. He is so entranced by Cleopatra that he seemingly cares little for other affairs, “Let Rome in Tiber melt

Early scholarship on Timon of Athens often concerned itself too heavily with the question of authorship. This is an important question when confronting why some things are afforded the title of ‘Shakespearean,’ while others are not. However, with so much attention paid to who wrote the text, the play itself becomes largely ignored. Timon of Athens is about a man living in an imaginary Golden Age only to realize that the gold is gone, and subsequently so are his friends. The play calls Timon’s attention to the false friends in Act (Look Up) when they refuse to send money to help cover his debts. While Timon does not see the true nature of his fellow Athenians until the moment, Shakespeare employs many poetic devices to cue the reader in early on. Shakespeare uses shared lines and a changing meter to note syntactically which characters are close, and which have an inherent distance. Before I fully begin this thread of my argument I will discuss the problems with past publications as well as the significance of shared lines and meter in a Shakespearean Drama.

In the tragedy, Hamlet, Gertrude is seen as the innocent bystander of the entire tragedy, making her less noticeable while reading or watching the play. However, going into an in-depth analysis causes multiple hints to arise that encourage a secret withheld within the story. From the eyes of Gertrude, the tragedy becomes a cover-up for the actual plot behind the previously stated murder. As the play progresses, the horrors that she has put her son through and the guilt surrounding her causes her to have a change of heart in the end, where she sacrifices herself as to ease her own conscience. The idea that Gertrude helped Claudius conspire to kill her husband, King Hamlet, becomes a very supportive theory when the story is rewritten in her point of view with a greater emphasis on her actions. In this essay, I will use parts of the story that seem otherwise unimportant through Hamlet’s eyes to highlight just one of the many underlying stories that take place within this Hamlet.

Philo, one of Antony’s loyal friend and partner in war, has seen Antony going from one respectable soldier to then abandoning his everything about the empire upon meeting Cleopatra. He is not confident into which category Antony fits into. (5.1) Many roles are played by Antony; therefore we see different sides of the argument. Antony can claim greatness for serving the needs of his country and his empire as fighter and as a leader. He can be seen as equal as Caesar, as he commits suicide, seen as a honourable thing to do. Antony’s once loyal and heroic background all changes when he comes across Cleopatra. A once great military reader is now in decline due to her charm and bewitching nature. The first sign we see this occurring is when

The audience is privy to a private conversation in Caesar’s home between Caesar and Lepidus, who were the other two thirds of the “triple pillar of the world” – the triumvirate. The triumvirate were a powerful political and military force; they ruled the Roman Empire after the murder of Julius Caesar. During this conversation, they discuss Antony’s debauched life and his former greatness in Caesar’s home where Caesar feels free to express his opinions honestly and he declares that Antony is “a man who is abstract of all faults” and someone who would “give a kingdom for mirth.” This shows us how far he has fallen in Caesar’s eyes as his tone would be scathing and I imagine he would be pacing as he ranted about Antony

After thoroughly analysing the tragic play of Hamlet written by William Shakespeare, I have concluded that Hamlet only ever pretends to be mad. In researching various critic’s opinion on Hamlet’s madness I found that they had similar views to mine. The critics I reference are A.C. Bradley, Paul A. Jorgensen, and Alexander W. Crawfor.

Plutarch opines that Cleopatra’s ignominy of being Antony’s concubine is tolerable, “[If she] could see him and spend her life with him…. if he drove her away it would be the death of her”. Consequently, ‘melted and unmanned’ Antony returns to Alexandria fearing Cleopatra’s suicide. In doing so, Antony neglects his military duties at Parthia, ‘[With] Cleopatra’s alarms, and arts upon the occasion. He puts off his Median expedition’ (Langhorne et al., 1810, P. 58). Portraying Cleopatra as a femme fatale, Plutarch sees Antony reduced from heroic warrior to a weak-willed, giddy adolescent dishonouring Rome.