Customer Reviews

Antony and Cleopatra (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)

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Neither the absolute and utter despondency of sheer and impending defeat nor the the deposition of his honor and place in Roman society can deter the once-revered Marc Antony from his insatiable, yet ill-fated longing to be with the sultry and divine demigodess that is Cleopatra.

Having just read the incomparable Julius Caesar and longing for more of the same after Antony & Octavius Caesar's sound defeat of the "noble" Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, I ordered Antony & Cleopatra. Although in some respects it is similar to its predecessor, Antony & Cleopatra, having been written by Shakespeare much later in life after the tragic death of his lone son Hamnet and a turbulent relationship with his wife, brings forth a much more cynical and wily Bard than the young and idealistic one who wrote Caesar. This disillusionment can be witnessed not only in the tragic deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, but moreso subvertly in the incongruity and disingenuousness of their supposed driving impetus - their love for one another. Both Antony & Cleopatra continuously and almost purposefully betray each other throughout the play - undermining their ability to lead and therefore leading to their tragic and untimely demise.

I recommend this to those who adored Julius Caesar as well as those Shakespeare aficionados who simply cannot get enough of The Bard. Antony & Cleopatra proves a lucid, enjoyable, and easy read, although somewhat longer, but with less substance than Julius Caesar. Enjoyable nonetheless.

"Make not your thoughts your prisons." - Octavius Caesar

Shakespeare in this play shows how love is not human but surrealistic. Love does not answer reasonable questions. It is a fundamentally unreasonable attitude that brings the lovers to absurd behaviours negating all logical, political and historical values. Love has no limits even if history will prove stronger and the lovers will be destroyed. Shakespeare beefs up this theme with a language that is so rich that we are fascinated by the words, the symbols, the symbolic value of words and acts. He is particularly rich in his style that is entirely, words, poetry, actions, and even feelings, organized following some simple symbols, particularly numerical symbols. In this play Cleopatra appears as being the core of the symbolism and she carries with her the number eleven that comes from the old English runes with the meaning of fate, of fatal defeat, of a flaw that cannot be corrected or escaped. It is her destiny to bring Antony to his defeat and death, just as it is Antony's fate to be governed by this woman and led to his own destruction because of his love for her. It also shows how the Emperor is able to use this fatal situation in order to capture all powers and to impose his absolute will on the Roman Empire. He seems to be the one who plays not well but with all the assets of the game up his sleeves, and he takes them out one at a time when the situation is ripe for these assts to become the key to is ascension to absolute power by defeating those who may oppose him.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Anthony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's difficult plays, and so I suspect the ratings on the play are low because it's a more mature play than Romeo and Juliet. Here we have two middle age lovers who part of the time are foolish with lust/love and the rest of the time are tough minded heads of state. The "tragedy" is that they can't be both and survive. This is not a play for the young folks, I'm afraid. But if you want some heavy drama where the characters are spared nothing and given no slack, read Anthony and Cleopatra (hint: Cleopatra's suicide is more political statement than a crazy wish to die with Antony). Better yet see it performed by some real actors some time.

In the history of femme fatales, Cleopatra is still the queen -- she wasn't pretty, but she had charm, wit and power.

And she's the center of Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," a play that follows the tragic affair between Cleopatra and her second high-profile Roman lover. The tragedy is undermined by the fact that Cleopatra and Antony aren't very likable people, but the story does have an empire-ending grandeur.

Mark Antony has been neglecting his duties as a Roman soldier ever since he fell in love with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. But eventually Octavian calls him back to Rome, and Antony is even pressured into marrying Octavia's sister -- which unsurprisingly throws a wrench into his relationship with Cleopatra. She's only soothed by the assurances that Octavia is ugly.

In the meantime, tensions between the Romans and the increasingly Egyptophilic Antony are getting worse, until finally they break into full-out war -- despite the prophecy that Antony will lose if he fights Octavian. And the tempestuous love between Cleopatra and Antony takes a terrible turn as Egypt is about to fall...

"Antony and Cleopatra" is sort of a sequel to "Julius Caesar," and it's also half epic romance and half tragedy. On one hand, it's all about the passionate, stormy love affair between Antony and Cleopatra; on the other, it's also about the final crash of an empire that had endured for thousands of years, and its last monarch.

Shakespeare manages to fill the story with a sense of epic grandeur, and his writing really gets across that these conflicts and people are deeply important. Aside from the famous "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/her infinite variety" speech, there's a lot of powerful writing in here, particularly the climactic scene between Cleopatra and her maidservants.

The biggest drawback of the play is... well, Antony and Cleopatra are pretty nasty people. Antony is no longer the heroic Roman soldier of "Julius Caesar," and Cleopatra throws bratty tantrums and spreads false rumors to keep her boyfriend in love with her. They're a little like A-list celebrities -- they're weirdly fascinating, but you wouldn't want them as friends.

"Antony and Cleopatra" is a grand, engaging epic about how a love affair helped bring down the last remnants of an empire, and its nasty characters don't stop it from being fascinating.

Of Shakespeare's plays, this seems to be one that delves very little into the motivations of characters. The three main characters (Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra) seemingly just "ask" around about the others rather than taking any action. Antony's anger against Caesar, when he finally does take action and go against him in war, does not seem that justified because we aren't given much in the way of grounds for his anger.

Maybe my opinion is a little biased because I didn't prefer the plot of this play over the likes of such plays as "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Hamlet", or "King Lear", but I just felt as though Antony was more an unlikable individual than a tragic hero. He cheats on two wives, and, as a reader, it is hard to ever feel sorry for him. Cleopatra's character is one-dimensional also; she seems to just lay around and ponder what life is about and ask around about Antony to her many servants.

Of all the characters, I think that Enobarbus (also called Domitius) was the most compelling, because he narrates to the audience (via asides and discussions with minor characters) insight into the state of Antony's downfall. Through him much of the psychology of Antony is divulged. An instance of this is when he sucessfully predicts that Antony will not keep his faithfullness to his second wife.

Although I think this is lesser of the Shakespeare works, I certainly felt it is still a 3 simply because Shakespeare has a way of painting a picture elloquently of how society works. This play illustrates the underlying themes of politics, revenge and adultery, all issues that prevade our world today. So, in many respects, although this was written in the 1500s, it is still a piece of literature that contains modern problems.

While reading "A Reader from USA's" review, I was disappointed. It surprises me that anyone would say they learned more in their history books than in Shakespeare's plays. If Shakespeare's main goal in life was to write plays soley based on history, he would've become a historian, instead of one of the greatest playwrites in history. Please keep that in mind whenever reading ANY of Shakespeare's plays.

This is the fourth Shakespeare play that I've read. I honestly think that "Romeo and Juliet" spoiled me! "Antony and Cleopatra" was a notable account of the disputes of Octavius Caesar. One thing about this play that I found quite humorous was Cleopatra's profound promiscuity! Hehe. I do have a few complaints about this play, however. My first complaint is that, for a person who has no real understanding about the times of the triumvirate of Antony, Octavius Caesar, and Julius Caesar, the sequences of this play may be quite confusing. How it keeps going from the war to the romance, the romance to the war. My second complaint is that I couldn't really "feel" the fire between Antony and Cleopatra, as I could with Romeo and Juliet. That was an element that I had hoped to experience, of which I didn't all that much. My conclusion is that if you're looking for a romance-centered play, I wouldn't recommend it; but if a historical account with a little ill-fated love thrown in is what you're after, then you've found your prize.