Description:
This document provides comprehensive essay plans for analyzing the key characters in William Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra." Each essay plan is meticulously crafted to delve deep into the complexities of characters, offering insightful perspectives and thematic explorations. Whe...
Cleopatra Essay Plan
1. Femininity inc. comparison to Octavia and her manipulation
- Cleo is very seductive compared to Octavia
- How this contributes to her as a powerful figure
- Uses her beauty to manipulate.
- Her theatricality and her playful banter
- Mirrors Elizabeth I in her magnificence, power, and ability to manipulate.
Audience would have connected the Battle of Actium with Elizabeth’s
masculine language during her legendary Tilbury speech.
- Her flamboyant sexuality would have been shocking as it was different
from how women were meant to behave
- ‘Male critics are threatened by Cleopatra’ – Fitz. Earlier male critics
condemned Cleo for a sort of Animal cunning’ and praised Octavia for
being submissive
2. Political tool
- Her manipulation of language and emotions is intertwined with her
political ambitions blurring the lines between personal desire and strategic
manoeuvring.
- Triumvirate a power struggle in the Roman Empire was officially split
between 3 rulers: Octavian Caesar, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus.
- Cleopatra needed Antony in order to revive the old boundaries of the
Ptolemaic Kingdom
- ‘she seems to Love Antony most when he is not there as if enraptured by
an imagined ideal’ - Billington
3. Power she has over Antony
- She uses Antony as a political tool and is very manipulative over him she
conducts his whole life, she causes him to lose his honour and therefore
himself
- Antony kills himself because he thought he had loss Cleo
- In the Merchant of Venice, Portia is another educated and powerful woman
who uses her wiles – in her case to outsmart the smartest man: Shylock
- Anthony following Cleopatra in the sea is emphasised by the influence of
Cleopatra in Plutarch but Shakespeare downplays this
- ‘The captains captain is Cleopatra’ – Williamson
- ‘The play, in fact, might have been called Cleopatra' - Simpson
, Antony Essay Plan
1. Duality of loyalty
- Originally depicted as a valiant roman general committed to ideals of
honour and empire. But he struggles to balance loyalty to Rome with
Cleopatra
- Shifting alliances throughout the okay.
- Structurally the length of Octavia and Antony’s marriage is compressed
compared to Plutarch Shakespeare does this to make us think that Antony
is so infatuated by Cleo
- Anthony following Cleopatra in the sea is emphasised by the influence of
Cleopatra in Plutarch but Shakespeare downplays this
- 'Anthony's rejection of Octavia [is] a symbol of his final break with
Rome'" – Onyett
2. Tragic arc
- Military leader to a tragic figure consumed by inner turmoil and external
pressures
- His loss of honour and reputation decrease
- Anne Hathaway (wife) gave birth to twins, Hamnet and Judith and eleven
years later Hamnet died along with Shakespeare’s father a few years later.
- Although there is no record of the effect this had on Shakespeare there is a
significant change in his writing during these years.
o Up to this point he had only written two tragedies but from 1599 to
1606 he produced a series of tragedies where grief and loss emerge
as major themes.
- Aristotelean tragedy: had the purpose to change the views if the audience.
We watch the events of a tragedy and it refines our own thinking called
‘catharsis.
- 'The tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra is, above all, the tragedy of Antony.'
– Danby
-
3. Egypt vs. Rome
- Egypt is a land of passion and luxury wheras rome is a world of futy and
discipline Antony’s leadership in pleasure and passion compare to caesar’s
pragmatism and planning
- All plays were subject to censorship by a government official called the
Master of the Revels. It was illegal to perform plays which directly
discussed political issues.
- Perhaps explains why Shakespeare’s plays were set during medieval
England or ancient Rome. He could explore questions on how a country
should be ruled without criticising his own government.
- 'Antony is torn between two irreconcilable but equally fundamental parts
of his personality, reflected in the opposing worlds of Egypt and Rome' –
Pippa Donald
- Rome is portrayed as "cold", "white", "male", "logical", and "sexless".
Egypt is portrayed as "hot", "erotic", "exotic", and "irrational". – Lennard
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