Antony and Cleopatra

Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition

Marga Munkelt, Joseph Candido, Brian Vickers

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781474257008
• eBook ISBN: 9781350321441
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Shakespeare Drama
• Index: Literature

This new volume in the Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition series increases our knowledge of how Antony and Cleopatra has been received and understood by critics, editors and general readers. The volume provides, in separate sections, both critical opinions about the play across the centuries and an evaluation of their positions within and their impact on the reception of the play. The chronological arrangement of the text-excerpts engages the readers in a direct and unbiased dialogue, and the introduction offers a critical evaluation from a current stance, including modern theories and methods. This volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the play and of the traditions of Shakespearean criticism surrounding it as they have developed from century to century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• General editor’s preface
• General editors’ preface to the revised series
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Richard Brathwait, virtue destroyed by vanity, 1631
• 2 John Cleveland, Antony: lyrical and satirical, 1647
• 3 Alexander Pope (Baldassare Castiglione), Cleopatra vindicating herself, 1710
• 4 Lewis Theobald, commenting before editing, 1729–31
• 5 Samuel Johnson, defending the absence of the unities, 1765
• 6 Edward Capell, puzzles in the text solved, 1774
• 7 Elizabeth Griffith, vices and virtues combined, 1775
• 8 Francis Gentleman, a double moral inferred, 1776
• 9 Ulrich Bräker, ‘moved deeply’ by the ‘splendid pair’, c. 1780
• 10 Thomas Davies, the protagonists: ‘wild and irregular’, 1783
• 11 John Monck Mason, explaining textual obscurities, 1785
• 12 Edmond Malone, the Roman plays: chronology and grouping, 1790
• 13 Walter Whiter, art and literature: Cleopatra’s majesty, 1794
• 14 E. H. Seymour, metre and metaphor, 1805
• 15 Francis Douce, ancient customs and beliefs, 1807
• 16 Elizabeth Inchbald, kings and queens: ‘part of the human species’, 1808
• 17 August Wilhelm von Schlegel, ‘apparent artlessness’ with an ‘uncommon degree of art’, 1808
• 18 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, more ‘spiritual truth’ than ‘spectacular action’, 1815
• 19 Nathan Drake, ‘multiplicity of incidents’, 1817
• 20 William Hazlitt, ‘extreme magnificence’ and ‘extreme suffering’, 1817
• 21 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘by far the most wonderful historical play’, c. 1818
• 22 Augustine Skottowe, Cleopatra’s ‘depravity’: ‘congenial to Antony’s nature’, 1824
• 23 Hartley Coleridge, ‘detaining the action’, 1828
• 24 Anna Jameson, history ‘purified and brightened’, 1832
• 25 George Daniel, ‘lost in the absorbing interest of the action’, 1833
• 26 Heinrich Heine, Cleopatra, a ‘kept queen’, 1838
• 27 Charles Knight, Antony: loving ‘imaginatively’, 1838
• 28 Hermann Ulrici, the victory of ‘semi-virtues’, 1839
• 29 W. J. Birch, a ‘eulogy of self-slaughter’, 1848
• 30 Anon. (Fraser’s Magazine), Cleopatra’s ‘vulgarity’, 1849
• 31 G. G. Gervinus, Antony’s ‘struggle between political duty and immoral passion’, 1849–50
• 32 H. N. Hudson, the poet’s ‘invisible presence’, 1855
• 33 William Watkiss Lloyd, the spectators as ‘accomplices’, 1856
• 34 Charles Bathurst, looseness of subject matter and verse, 1857
• 35 Charles Cowden Clarke, characterization ‘in contrast’, 1863
• 36 Gustav Freytag, a defective third act, 1863
• 37 James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, ‘a wonderful drama’ transmitted in a ‘somewhat imperfect state’, 1865
• 38 John A. Heraud, ‘infinity’ of love: pathetic and sublime, 1865
• 39 H. T. Hall, settling for failures in the theatre, 1873
• 40 Edward Dowden, ‘the deeper intoxication of middle age’, 1875
• 41 N. Delius, epic elements, 1875–6
• 42 Algernon Charles Swinburne, ‘the perfect and the everlasting woman’, 1876
• 43 Paul Stapfer, the most humorous scene in all of Shakespeare, 1879
• 44 M. Leigh-Noel Elliott, Charmian and Iras: ‘quick-witted’ and ‘true to the last’, 1885
• 45 Hiram Corson, showing and telling: directing the audience’s sympathies, 1889
• 46 Martin Wright Sampson, metrical irregularities as ‘virtues’, 1889
• 47 Anon. (Punch), Cleopatra’s death: the only scene worth seeing, 1890
• 48 S. E. Peart, understanding Antony’s dotage, 1892
• 49 George Brandes, Shakespeare’s life reflected, 1895–6
• 50 Frederick S. Boas, not love, but ‘amorous rivalry’, 1896
• 51 Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare for the ear or comedy and tragedy confused, 1897
• 52 Gamaliel Bradford, Jr., Cleopatra: ‘impenetrable’ and without competition, 1898
• 53 Bernard Shaw, not the stuff for tragedy, 1900
• 54 Richard G. Moulton, ‘antithesis of the world without and the world within’, 1903
• 55 J. J. Jusserand, the ‘horror’ of a fall, 1904
• 56 Herbert Beerbohm Tree, preparing the text for the stage, 1906
• 57 R. H. Case, Cleopatra’s motives reconsidered, 1906
• 58 A. C. Bradley, an untypical tragedy, 1906
• 59 Sidney Lee, ‘adding dramatic variety’: Octavius, Octavia, Lepidus, Enobarbus, 1907
• 60 E. K. Chambers, from ‘gallant adventures’ to ‘magnificent dirge’, 1907
• 61 Anon. (The New York Times), ‘a play that defies adequate translation to the theatre’, 1909
• 62 Rosa Grindon, Antony’s three women, 1909
• 63 Frank Harris, Shakespeare’s revenge, 1909
• 64 August Strindberg, an ‘infernal or hellish love’, 1909
• 65 M. W. MacCallum, Shakespeare’s ‘story of Enobarbus’, 1910
• 66 Henry David Gray, amending Antony’s triple falseness: a textual transposition, 1917
• 67 Levin L. Schücking, signs of ‘careless workmanship’, 1919
• 68 C. T. Winchester, ‘coming under the fascination of Cleopatra’, 1920
• 69 Benedetto Croce, a ‘tragedy of the will’, 1920
• 70 Arthur Quiller-Couch, description transformed: ‘men and women in action’, 1922
• 71 Agnes Mure Mackenzie, Octavia vs Cleopatra, 1924
• 72 Albert H. Tolman, Dolabella: Cleopatra’s last conquest, 1925
• 73 Lucie Simpson, Cleopatra, ‘the most human of women’, 1928
• 74 Harley Granville-Barker, Shakespeare’s stagecraft: turning ‘limitations to account’, 1930
• 75 G. Wilson Knight, ‘the divine and the satanic’, 1931
• 76 John W. Draper, Roman and Egyptian realism, 1933
• 77 Arthur Colby Sprague, the ‘running commentary’ of Enobarbus, 1935
• 78 Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, ‘so vast a scale’, 1935
• 79 F. R. Leavis, ‘making language create and enact’, 1936
• 80 John Middleton Murry, royalty and loyalty created by the ‘magic of poetry’, 1936
• 81 Kenneth Muir and Sean O’Loughlin, ‘synthesis of the desires and the affections’, 1937
• 82 Edgar I. Fripp, Cleopatra’s (biblical) ‘Egyptian-ness’, 1938
• 83 James Emerson Phillips, Jr., illustrations of Renaissance political theory, 1940
• 84 Elkin Calhoun Wilson, Enobarbus, ‘between pure comedy and high tragedy’, 1948
• 85 W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., ‘bad subject’ and ‘good literature’, 1948
• 86 John F. Danby, ‘cinematic movement’ and ‘rapid impressionism’, 1949
• 87 Donald A. Stauffer, a ‘marriage of true minds’, 1949
• 88 John Dover Wilson, Cleopatra: converting legend and history, 1950
• 89 Harold C. Goddard, experiential analogies with Othello and King Lear, 1951
• Notes
• A select bibliography
• Permissions
• Index
• Copyright