Antony and Cleopatra

Informationen zum Autor William Shakespeare, Edited by Sylvan Barnet Klappentext The Signet Classics edition of the tragedy that features one of Shakespeare's greatest female characters. A magnificent drama of passion and war, this riveting play presents the complicated relationship between the seductive, cunning Egyptian queen Cleopatra and the Roman leader Mark Antony, a man torn between an empire and love. This revised Signet Classics edition includes unique features such as: • An overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater • A special introduction to the play by the editor, Sylvan Barnet • A selection from Plutarch's Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, the source from which Shakespeare derived Antony and Cleopatra • Dramatic criticism from Samuel Johnson, A. C. Bradley, John F. Danby, and others • A comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors, and productions • Text, notes, and commentaries printed in the clearest, most readable text • And more... Introduction Shakespeare probably wrote Antony and Cleopatra in 1606 or 1607; it was registered for publication on May 20, 1608, and apparently influenced a revision of Samuel Daniel's Cleopatra that was published newly altered in 1607. Antony and Cleopatra was thus roughly contemporary with King Lear and Macbeth . Yet the contrast between those two tragedies and Antony and Cleopatra is immense. Unlike Macbeth , with its taut focus on a murderer and his wife, Antony and Cleopatra moves back and forth across the Mediterranean in its epic survey of characters and events, bringing together the fates of Pompey, Octavius Caesar, Octavia, and Lepidus with those of the protagonists. King Lear gives proper names to fourteen characters, Macbeth to eighteen, Antony and Cleopatra to thirty-four. The Roman play requires no fewer than forty-two separate scenes, of which most occur in what modern editors label Acts 3 and 4, although no play is less suited to the classical rigors of five-act structure, and these divisions are not found in the reliable Folio text of 1623. Indeed, it is as though Shakespeare resolved at the height of his career to show that he could dispense entirely with the classical rules, which had never taken serious hold of the English popular stage in any case. The flouting of the unities is so extreme that John Dryden, in his All for Love, or The World Well Lost (1678), undertook not so much to revise Shakespeare as to start afresh on the same subject. Dryden's play is restricted to the last few hours of the protagonists' lives, at Cleopatra's tomb in Alexandria, with a severely limited cast of characters and much of the narrative revealed through recollection. Although a substantial achievement in its own right, All for Love surely demonstrates that Shakespeare knew what he was doing, for Dryden has excised a good deal of the panorama, the excitement, and the infinite variety (2.2.246). Shakespeare departs also from the somber tone of his tragedies of evil. He creates, instead, a world that bears affinities to the ambiguous conflicts of the other Roman plays, to the varying humorous perspectives of the comedies, and to the imaginative reconstructions of the late romances. As protagonists, Antony and Cleopatra lack tragic stature, or so it first appears: she is a tawny gypsy temptress and he a strumpet's fool, a once-great general now bound in strong Egyptian fetters and lost in dotage (1.1.13; 1.2.1223). Several scenes, especially those set in Egypt, are comic and delightfully bawdy: Charmian learning her fortune from the soothsayer, Cleopatra practicing her charms in vain to keep Antony from leaving Egypt or raunchily daydreaming of being Antony's horse to bear the weight of Antony (1.5.22), Cleopatra flying into a magnificent rage at the news of Antony's marria...

Auteur

William Shakespeare, Edited by Sylvan Barnet

Texte du rabat

The Signet Classics edition of the tragedy that features one of Shakespeare's greatest female characters.

A magnificent drama of passion and war, this riveting play presents the complicated relationship between the seductive, cunning Egyptian queen Cleopatra and the Roman leader Mark Antony, a man torn between an empire and love.

This revised Signet Classics edition includes unique features such as:

• An overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater
• A special introduction to the play by the editor, Sylvan Barnet
• A selection from Plutarch's Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, the source from which Shakespeare derived Antony and Cleopatra
• Dramatic criticism from Samuel Johnson, A. C. Bradley, John F. Danby, and others
• A comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors, and productions
• Text, notes, and commentaries printed in the clearest, most readable text
• And more...

Échantillon de lecture
*Introduction

Shakespeare probably wrote Antony and Cleopatra in 1606 or 1607; it was registered for publication on May 20, 1608, and apparently influenced a revision of Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra that was published “newly altered” in 1607. Antony and Cleopatra was thus roughly contemporary with King Lear and Macbeth. Yet the contrast between those two tragedies and Antony and Cleopatra is immense. Unlike Macbeth, with its taut focus on a murderer and his wife, Antony and Cleopatra moves back and forth across the Mediterranean in its epic survey of characters and events, bringing together the fates of Pompey, Octavius Caesar, Octavia, and Lepidus with those of the protagonists. King Lear gives proper names to fourteen characters, Macbeth to eighteen, Antony and Cleopatra to thirty-four. The Roman play requires no fewer than forty-two separate scenes, of which most occur in what modern editors label Acts 3 and 4, although no play is less suited to the classical rigors of five-act structure, and these divisions are not found in the reliable Folio text of 1623. Indeed, it is as though Shakespeare resolved at the height of his career to show that he could dispense entirely with the classical “rules,” which had never taken serious hold of the English popular stage in any case. The flouting of the unities is so extreme that John Dryden, in his All for Love, or The World Well Lost (1678), undertook not so much to revise Shakespeare as to start afresh on the same subject. Dryden’s play is restricted to the last few hours of the protagonists’ lives, at Cleopatra’s tomb in Alexandria, with a severely limited cast of characters and much of the narrative revealed through recollection. Although a substantial achievement in its own right, All for Love surely demonstrates that Shakespeare knew what he was doing, for Dryden has excised a good deal of the panorama, the excitement, and the “infinite variety” (2.2.246).

Shakespeare departs also from the somber tone of his tragedies of evil. He creates, instead, a world that bears affinities to the ambiguous conflicts of the other Roman plays, to the varying humorous perspectives of the comedies, and to the imaginative reconstructions of the late romances. As protagonists, Antony and Cleopatra lack tragic stature, or so it first appears: she is a tawny gypsy temptress and he a “strumpet’s fool,” a once-great general now bound in “strong Egyptian fetters” and lost in “dotage” (1.1.13; 1.2.122—3). Several scenes, especially those set in Egypt, are comic and delightfully bawdy: Charmian learning her fortune from the soothsayer, Cleopatra practicing her charms in vain to keep Antony from leaving Egypt or raunchily daydreaming of being Antony’s horse “to bear the weight of Antony” (1.5.22), Cleopatra flying into a magnificent rage at the news of Antony’s marriage to Octavia and t…