Antony and Cleopatra

9 Pages 2297 Words

p personalities of the main characters, relating their love story in the most compelling poetic drama. He describes Antony’s generosity and how popular he was with his men, and cuts out suggestions of Cleopatra’s disloyalty. Shakespeare even invents actions by Octavius Caesar in order to increase our sympathy for the lovers. Strangely, in his need for a fast moving plot, he neglects to mention that Antony actually stayed with his wife Octavia for four years before he returned to Cleopatra. Also, from a Senator only mentioned twice in Plutarch’s work, Shakespeare creates Enobarbus, a key figure in the play.

Diction is used effectively in the introductory scenes in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, to describe the characters, and to give the audience a feel of what the play is going to be about. Philo, the first character to speak, talks of Cleopatra’s power over Antony. He says that she has turned him from a mighty warrior into a ‘strumpet’s fool’. (I, I, 13) Bathetic and epic imagery is used many times during the course of the play, when describing both Antony and Cleopatra. Other examples of bathetic imagery in the play are the image of bellows being curbed by ‘a gypsy’s lust’, the ‘triple pillar of the world’ being reduced to a ‘strumpet’s fool’, and the image of a ‘tawny frost’ diminishing that of Mars. (I, I, 1-13) Bathos is used to reflect the main theme of the play, which is the fall of a great leader.

Antony is likened to Mars many times in the play, as he, like Mars, is seen as a great warrior and is given godlike status by many, even when near defeat.

“…Your emperor
Continues still a Jove”.
IV, vii, 29-30

It would seem that Antony and Cleopatra is a great and perfect love story. However, if we are to look more deeply into the matter, we find that perhaps it was not meant to be that, but a story centred around ageing, jealousy, betrayal, power and hu...