The truly tragic figure in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra is Cleopatra. Discuss

Barbara Everett advancedly claims that the count ?is continually suggestively of different kinds and categories of drama.? This is not and a tragedy and no character is simply and ? au indeedtically? sad. However, Cleopatra, Antony and Enobarbus have tragical elements ? grandeur, nobility, fateful misjudgements and a decease from the high gear ? as well as lesser qualities. It would be rightful(a) to add, though, that Cleopatra is the dominating presence in the play. Even the hard-bitten Enobarbus is perpetrate by her, telling Antony he is ?blest? to have met her. In his majuscule speech in Act 2:2, she is presented as queen, ricer goddess, rival to Venus and exquisite work of art. Gold, silver, mermaids, nymphs, perfumes and the enchanting right of flutes combine to create a sensual paradise. This picture-painting is one f the chief means whereby Shakespeare establishes Cleopatra?s brilliance; not sportsmanlike or spiritual, besides into the realm of myth: ? Age cannot depress her, nor custom stale/ Her infinite variety.? Antony, ?the triple pillar of the wipe out?, is left ?whistling to th?air? and so, by sodden contrast, her commanding presence is accentuated. After Antony?s death her speeches of regret carry her into the tragic sphere since they piercingly convey her bleakness: ?The odds is gone, /And in that location is noting left remarkable/ Beneath the racing circuit moon.? Equals Macbeth?s ?Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?? as an verbal recipe of devastating loss and apprehension of meaninglessness. Her ?dream? of Antony is the ultimate expression of her love for him ? his features ?kept their course and lighted/ the miniature O, the landed estate? ? and coming, as it does, after(prenominal) his death, this expression contains not and love, but the tragic realisation of what she has lost: the whole world. barely is the last effect ? unfeignedly? or solely tragic? I A Richards claims that if a play has a compensating promised land to stick out! the tragic gun, [the effect] is fatal.? Cleopatra and Antony look forward to reunion in the elysian fields and so, how can we feel the tragic reaction of clemency? Jacobean audiences hoped in some ca-ca of after-life and so would in all probability have been carried on on the promise of the lovers? reunion; even off a modern non-believer may feel their (deluded) belief counterbalances a ?truly? tragic effect. In addition, it may be utter that Cleopatra has withal many flaws for a tragic friend. Her extreme surliness c attendes, her force play when she is thwarted, her never-explained flight from the battle of Actium, these are a some of many. Moreover, there are propagation when she appears, not great or tragic, but comical or ridiculous (for instance, when she coaches her messenger to get nigh a caricatured depiction of Octavia ? and then is childishly pleased , believe the image that she herself has suggested. Antony?s claim to the status of tragic hero may b e considered as similarly compromised. He is sometimes a fool (even if not a ?strumpet?s fool?) mocked in public by Cleopatra; he follows her arouse out of the Battle of Actium; he sends Caesar an absurd challenge to atomic number 53 combat; he bungles his death, so that a suicide ?after the high Roman fashion? descends into a tragic comedy. However, give care Cleopatra, he has at times the tough of tragic greatness round him. In defeat, he thinks not solely slightly his won loss of ? follow? but also about his followers commanding them to take his gold and divide it amongst themselves, then desert to Caesar.

Similarly, he sends En obarbus his reckon after his desertion. And after A! ctium, his forbearance for Cleopatra is swift and total: ? wane not a tear, I say; one of them place/ All that is won and lost.? Antony is, moreover, caught in the wheels of the great tragic forge that will devour him. Shakespeare causes a sense of doom to hang over him for much of the play. When he is in Caesar?s company, his prognosticator claims: ?Thy lustre thickens/ When he shines by?, and Antony notes the gods always favour Caesar in their games of chance. The sense of his being luckless by fate to jump out a tragic fall is intensified when, before the dickens battles at Alexandria, strange medicament prompts a soldier to forebode: ? Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, /Now leaves him.? tragic inevitability surrounds him. Enobarbus, too, is a great figure, staying loyal to Antony beyond reason, and, when he does desert, being overcome by guilt and dying of a broken heart. At to the lowest degree one critic (Ewan Fernie) finds him the tragic hero of the play , according to Aristotelic criteria. Certainly, his intelligence, breadth of sympathy and unity make him enormously irresistible; but he is overshadowed by the great personalities of the two lovers and the lucid bulk of great song spoken by or about them. In conclusion, no one character is the pore of the play; and the two principals cannot be seen as wholly tragic. Indeed, the play transcends generic boundaries. BibliographyBarbara Everett - The tragedy of Antony and CleopatraRex Gibson - Cambridge students execute to Antony and Cleopatra If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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