Details

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra

Asps amidst the Figs

von: William F. Zak
97,99 €
Verlag:	Lexington Books
Format:	EPUB
Veröffentl.:	25.03.2015
ISBN/EAN:	9781498510370
Sprache:	englisch
Anzahl Seiten:	174

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Beschreibungen

Titelbeschreibung

This revaluation of Shakespeare’s most seductive tragedy, Antony and Cleopatra, allies itself with neither George Bernard Shaw and Philo’s Roman judgment of the lovers as “strumpet and fool”—premised on the idle sensuality and feckless self-regard ever evident in the regal pair—nor with the many at the opposite critical pole who have found themselves swept up, to some extent at least, in the “grand illusion” of the lovers themselves as peerless figures transcending the very deaths to which Caesar’s heartless predation drives them. Nor does it seek some middle way, settling into a comfortable agnosticism that claims the poet’s view of the pair remains too ambiguous to resolve. Instead, by mining a wealth of metaphoric cross-references and ironical, mirroring figurations provided by the tragedy’s subsidiary characterizations, this new analysis argues that Shakespeare’s assessment of the lovers is in fact unambiguous: Antony and Cleopatra unknowingly settle for functioning merely as two more of the play’s eunuchs fanning the flames of their self-destructive passions for one another when they could have realized the new heaven and new earth Antony promised his queen had their “intercourse” with one another been more vigorously complete. Not alone their deaths, but their entire experience is this play is but a search for “easy ways to die” rather than the quest is should have been to live more richly yet and generate new life beyond their respective notorieties as separate individuals to be celebrated.

Titelkurzbeschreibung

Zak argues that Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra represents the manner in which unwitting narcissism fails the genuine love that would have elevated the lovers above the tragedy they instead merely endure—both privileging “easy ways to die” to the “strenuous labor” required to deliver a birth of richer life into their passion.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents
 
Acknowledgments
 
Chapter 1. Introduction
 
Chapter 2. The Immortal Worm: Caesar Augustus
 
Chapter 3. A Wounded Chance: Marc Antony
 
Chapter 4. An Honoured Gash: Cleopatra
 
Works Cited
 
About the Author

Leserinfo

This book analyzes textual cross-references and mirroring figurations in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Zak argues that the play represents the manner in which unwitting narcissism fails the genuine love that would have elevated the lovers above the tragedy they instead merely endure—both privileging “easy ways to die” to the “strenuous labor” required to deliver a birth of richer life into their passion.

Autorenportrait

William F. Zak is emeritus professor of English at Salisbury University in Maryland and author of A Mirror for Lovers: Shake-speare’s Sonnets as Curious Perspective.