Antony and Cleopatra

Description

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