#antony and cleopatra

[moxyphinx]

SOPHIE OKONEDO as CLEOPATRA in ANTONY & CLEOPATRA

[jmmallory]

The 2,052 (I think?) anniversary!

[missfisherandjack]

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012-2015) ↳ 1x06 Ruddy Gore

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Antony and Cleopatra - art by J. C. Leyendecker (1910)

[unhelpfultarot]

The Empress and Seven of Cups

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.

[butchhamlet]

i said i was going to arrange a list of my favorite articles/criticism about shakespeare, so here’s my first little roundup! obligatory disclaimer that i don’t necessarily agree with or endorse every single point of view in each word of these articles, but they scratch my brain. will add to this list as i continue reading, and feel free to add your own favorites in the reblogs! :]

essays

Is Shakespeare For Everyone? by Austin Tichenor (a basic examination of that question)

Interrogating the Shakespeare System by Madeline Sayet (counterpoint/parallel to the above; on Shakespeare’s place in, and status as, imperialism)

Shakespeare in the Bush by Laura Bohannan (also a good parallel to the above; on whether Shakespeare is really culturally “universal”)

The Unified Theory of Ophelia: On Women, Writing, and Mental Illness ("I was trying to make sense of the different ways men and women related to Ophelia. Women seemed to invoke her like a patron saint; men seemed mostly interested in fetishizing her flowery, waterlogged corpse.”)

Hamlet Is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One (on teaching shakespeare plays about suicide to high schoolers)

Commuting With Shylock by Dara Horn (on listening to MoV with a ten-year-old son, as modern jewish people, to look at that eternal question of Is This Play Antisemitic?)

All That Glisters is Not Gold (NPR episode, on whether it’s possible to perform othello, taming of the shrew, & merchant to do good instead of harm)

academic articles

the Norton Shakespeare’s intro to the Merchant of Venice (apologies about the highlights here; they are not mine; i scanned this from my rented copy)

the Norton Shakespeare’s intro to Henry the Fourth part 1 (and apologies for the angled page scans on this one; see above)

Richard II: A Modern Perspective by Harry Berger Jr (this is the article that made me understand richard ii)

Hamlet’s Older Brother (“Hamlet and Prince Hal are in the same situation, the distinction resting roughly on the difference between the problem of killing a king and the problem of becoming one. ... Hamlet is literature’s Mona Lisa, and Hal is the preliminary study for it.”)

Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony & Cleopatra Criticism (about more than just reviewers; my favorite deconstruction of shakespeare’s cleopatra in general)

Strange Flesh: Antony and Cleopatra and the Story of the Dissolving Warrior (“If Troilus and Cressida is [Shakespeare’s] vision of a world in which masculinity must be enacted in order to exist, Antony and Cleopatra is his vision of a world in which masculinity not only must be enacted, but simply cannot be enacted, his vision of a world in which this particular performance has broken down.”)

misc

Elegy of Fortinbras by Zbigniew Herbert (poem that makes me fucking insane)

Dirtbag Henry IV (what it sounds like.)

Cleopatra and Antony by Linda Bamber (what if a&c... was good.)

[sictransitgloriamvndi]

[dozydawn]

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

Some people idolize generals. I idolize Mark Antony's mom.

I'm picturing this petite 60-year-old woman storming up to a big burly triumvir and his 500 armed guards, shouting, "Marcus Antonius, WHAT do you think you are doing?" and the most dangerous man in Rome just winces.

(Adrian Goldsworthy, Antony and Cleopatra, chapter 17)

[valentinovamp]

Helen Mirren as Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (1965)

[misslevel]

Didn't have room for the "another play should count as a tragedy, and that one's my favorite" option on this one, gang. So if another play is your favorite tragedy... just suffer, I guess.

Shakespeare poll tag, for all the different genres!

[missfisherandjack]

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012-2015) ↳ 2x05 Murder À La Mode

[lickthecowhappy]

Good Omens season 3 and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra

S3 speculation

This is my called shot. I see a lot of assumptions for a Persuasion plot but I don’t think we’ll get Austen again.

“Age does not wither nor custom stale his infinite variety.” - Crowley (debatable to whom he is referring) “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.” - Enobarbus (referring to Cleopatra)

For the purpose of this, I will abbreviate Antony and Cleopatra to A and C, and Egypt to E for psychological priming purposes.

A and C are living in E. They’re happy to stay there together with one another. Unfortunately, the leadership in A’s homeland recall him to sit on the ruling council. A regretfully leaves C alone on E. 

Back in his homeland, A is forced into a partnership with someone to assure his loyalty since the others in charge are concerned about his loyalty to C. C finds out and is jealous.

A and the others in charge broker an agreement with their main threat but as soon as A’s attention is elsewhere, the others in charge betray the agreement.

A is furious and leaves his homeland to go back to E and his love C. They fight for E together. 

Let Rome in Tiber Heaven above melt and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall. Here is my space. Kingdoms are clay. Our dungy earth alike Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair And such a twain can do ‘t, in which I bind, On pain of punishment, the world to weet We stand up peerless.

The plot continues, but Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy, and Good Omens is a comedy. There are other plot points I think could be incorporated (A believing C has died, C being captured, themes of self-sacrifice and no longer fitting the mold you were made from) but for the basic, general plot, this is where my bet is placed.

[evebestthinker]

My Roman Empire: Eve Best as Cleopatra

[butchhamlet]

"But there is something particular about Cleopatra and the imaginative escape she offers for white performers. She presents a fantasy of a stately queen with an erotic power that white actresses can inhabit and take pleasure in without facing any of the difficulties faced by Black women. Like white European colonial settlers, they occupy her character though only briefly. And this is nothing new. In the seventeenth century, one aristocratic woman had her portrait painted as Cleopatra—a performative act in which it was possible to pretend to be the kind of woman she could never actually be within the chaste and virtuous bounds of Renaissance white womanhood. The sitter is identified as Lady Anne Clifford. A Jacobean lady in Egyptian regalia, according to seventeenth-century orientalist notion of national costume, holds an asp above her breast, iconically invoking Cleopatra. For a long time, it seems, white women have stepped into the fantasy of the dark queen. It seems odd that Antony and Cleopatra was not always viewed as one of Shakespeare's race plays. That is changing, finally. If theatre directors continue to centralise whiteness in their readings of the play, however, it in many ways replicates Caesar's triumph over Egypt. We relive Cleopatra's defeat every time we watch a white woman play her—due respect to Dames Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Harriet Walter, and Eve Best. But we begin to see more clearly the Egyptian Queen's own prophetic vision as she chose to end her life on her own terms. She imagined herself being performed for years to come by actors who do not resemble her in any way—and that is, for the most part, what has happened."

—Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper, The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race (emphasis mine)