Ryan

"If it be love indeed..." The big lie of Antony and Cleopatra is that it is a play about love.' By exploring Shakespeare's dramatic presentation of the theme of love in Antony and Cleopatra, evaluate this view.

I would dispute whether the "big lie" of Antony and Cleopatra is that it is a play about love; it is certainly a play about love - about eternal love. In this tragedy, the audience faces a struggle; to take take either central character seriously. On the one hand, you have Antony, the "magnificent ruin", whose days of drinking horse urine among other obscene things as the "firm Roman" have seemingly left him (he is portrayed in a much more admirable light in Julius Caesar). Cleopatra, on the other hand, is shown as the perpetually , capricious and yet "enchanting Queen" of Egypt. If one cannot take the two protagonists of the play seriously, how is one able to take the treating of 'love' in Antony and Cleopatra seriously?

Well, for one, it is mentioned an abundance of times, along with other words like "world", "fortune", "melt", etc. that have all their various implications. The very two lines "If it be love indeed, tell me how much"; "There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned" denotes something very serious in this play: firstly, that it is a merely folly of Roman thought to estimate a measurement of love (even thought it is Cleopatra hat inquires into "how much" Antony loves her); and secondly, that Antony is implying much more using the word "beggary than just his eternal love. Returning to this apparent mockery of the idea that love can be measured, it is interestingly put in contrast with the very first line of the play: "Nay," - the Roman negative - "but this dotage of our general's/O'erflows the measure." This is spoken by Philo, a Roman soldier. Shakespeare's use of the word "beggary" however seems quite a strong use of language, even for Shakespeare himself. It either says to us that the two have love so strong for each other that it is like beggary; or that it literally is beggary, that there is no genuine love between the two, that they are both begging for each other's love. However, I think the former suggestion is much more plausible.

In light of Peter Hall's 1987 production of Antony and Cleopatra, a reviewer writes "What distinguishes (Anthony) Hopkins and (Judi) Dench is their self-mocking wit." This is a truly interesting consideation. Anthony Hopkins also accentuates the apparent drunkenness of Mark Antony, stressing the 'ruin'; that something of his greatness has been left behind: "'Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved,/Now leaves him." This would appear to undermine the love between the two, as we cannot seem to take either seriously. However, as Clare Kiney describes the two characters, they "speak themselves into greatness." This is the great benefit of Shakespeare's writing; though would go to a play to see it, you receive much more than just visuals. The world audience implies 'audio'; a Jacobean audience would have gone to hear a play as well as see it. I think - because of Shakespeare's brilliance, it would be more of a lie to suggest that this is not a play about love.

Although, Emma Smith does, and she speaks of the play's exteriority and interiority; of the public and the private. In the play, there is seemingly no interiority or true introspection other than when the character Enobarbus soliloquises towards his death: "I alone am the villain of the Earth." This claim of Smith's bears merit due to the fact that Antony's apparent 'anagnorisis' (dramatic self-recognition of wrongdoing or failure that defines a tragic figure) seems pitiful as he begins with "Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish" and then goes on to speak more of himself than anything else. However I counter this claim with the idea that Antony reaches apotheosis - that he is divinised - at the end of Act IV and that his love, Cleopatra, joins him in their spiritual marriage in Act V: "Nay, I take thee too" (the Jacobean marriage rites). I agree with Ralph Allen Cohen - who is more sympathetic to Shakespeare's two historical characters, made his own through language - that their love can be viewed as genuine.

Enobarbus - who Jonathan Bate argues may have been the closest Shakespeare ever got to "a portrait of his own mind" - is the vehicle of the speech depicting Cleopatra on a glorious barge; Antony, "Whistling to th' air." The language used to describe the scene is truly stunning, and the audience are made to believe and have confidence in Enobarbus's integrity and veracity due to Shakespeare's own language. The number of paradoxes: "what they undid did" (this would have been particularly raunchy and comic for an Elizabethan audience), "The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne/Burned on the water" and she would "make defect perfection" as she "Hop(ped) 30 paces through the marketplace." Paradox and hyperbole is completely the right type of language Shakespeare should have been using to describe Cleopatra. Dr Michael Delahoyde suggests that she "may have been the first 'diva'" while Harold Bloom asserts that she was the "world's first celebrity." But there is more to her paradoxical nature than her caprice and whimsy. Paradox is used to presen her beauty; and much of her beauty is stored in her love. The love of Antony and Cleopatra is beautiful.

To advance this case even further, the repeated words are of such importance. There was of course "love" and "beggary" but "world" and "fortune"; one must examine. Don't the words "world" and "love" collaborate quite nicely? This is such a huge image Shakespeare is demonstrating here. The play's settings span the world too and - though R. H. Case feels that there is just a "sense of clutter" - surely this means that their love spans the entire world? And - having mentioned "Fortune"; Cleopatra mocks the goddess: "Fortune break her wheel", an allusion to the myth that the goddess Fortune would pick a hero from her wheel at random, bring them to the pinnacle of heroism and then cause them to fall. As Maynard Mack asks: who finally is the "strumpet" of the play, "Antony's Cleopatra or Caesar's Fortune"? In terms of the historical relevance, Octavius (son to be Augustus) Caesar wins. The Jacobean audience of the time, familiar with James I's self promotion as an 'Early Modern Augustus', would have been fully aware of this. But does he - along with his Fortune - truly win?

Therefore, I conclude finally that in Antnony and Cleopatra, the theme of love is one that should be taken seriously. In he apotheosis of Antony at the end of Act IV and then of Cleopatra in Act V, we see this clearly. There is a marriage - "Nay, I take thee too" - a divine, celestial marriage; almost causing a confusion of genre (comedies usually end in marriages, not tragedies). Although, I think that the real point here is that the love of the two is to be taken seriously; it is not a "big lie"> In Plutarch's historical account of the events, he moralises them, condemning Antony's 'lewdness' among other things. He dislikes the two, and probably doubted their love. However, I think that Shakespeare - having taken some excerpts from Plutarch's (or Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's) work - did make this a play about love.

'Passion can be both liberating and destructive.' Discuss ways in which writers present passion and its potential consequences.

In assessing the writers' attitudes to passion, it is important that one puts things into historical perspective. John Ford, a Devon-born Oxfordian lawyer, who's plays were written for the Queen's Men to be played at the bourgeois Phoenix Theatre; and William Blake, the radical revolutionary who's writings embodied nothing less than a pure, Romantic backlash at the oppressive regime of France, supporting the French Revolution (although expressing utter disgust at the Jacobin-dominated 'Reign of Terror'), and at the industrialisation of Britain. Ford's writings appear to express a deep melancholy (having written a book - influenced by the psychology of Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, treating melancholia as a clinical disease - called The Lovers' Melancholy) and the nihilistic, dystopian world of Parma - a city wherein an abundance of violence and corruption is rife - perhaps shows something of his own view of passion. Lust as a "physical disease" perhaps; Blake on the other hand, as J. Bronowski describes him, is "on the side of man against authority"; authority has no dictate over the extents of passion.

In his poem The Little Girl Lost, Blake illustrates the venture of a young girl, Lyca. Disturbingly, she is presented as only "seven summers old", although this is probably either a reference to a mystical number, or it is to emphasise to the reader her innocence. Lyca discovers a heard of animals - she finds a lion, tigers and leopards: "Leopards, tygers play/Around her as she lay." This poem is not about - what Robert Gleckner describes - Lyca entering the world of experience "with all its slavery and bondage" (Blake perceived the world as being divided into Contraries, and the complete title of his collection is: Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the two Contrary States of the Human Soul.) The poem is instead about the power of that moment of seuxual awakening; Young teenagers should not be subject to the repression of older figures in society, like Lyca's parents. Matthew Collings argues that Blake "experienced parental love as oppression"; they should be free to 'play'; to discover their sexual 'selves'.

Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore may represent an opposite side of the argument; although it may be argued that Ford is perhaps not for a takeover of passion but at least calls for the passions to be less regulated by repressive regime. However the former suggestion could be more plausible: Giovanni is the rather dubious 'hero' of the tragedy; an educated man who has received much "tutelage" but, according to Friar Bonaventura, has "left the school of knowledge to converse with lust and death." He has an incestuous love for his sister, Annabella. He is illustrated as someone who enjoys using his reason to vindicate himself of his otherwise 'sinful' inclinations. He makes the case for his incestuous love by reminding the Friar in Act I, Scene i, that he and his sister are both - literally and materially - of "One flesh". This biblical imagery is used in such a subversive manner; Ford, like Blake as I will go on to elucidate later, uses traditional images in order to advance their own cases. Is he sympathetic to Giovanni? "Must I not do what all men else may - love?" It is intersting to note that Ford passes no judgement over his protagonist; he instead, as Brian Morris argues, presents a morally corrupt society in contrast with an incestuous relationship capable of "deep and fragile beauty." Jacobean audiences and early Caroline audiences alike would have been deeply shocked. But do we - as Ralph Allen Cohen rightly suggests - actually sympathise more with Giovanni and Annabella in a "relativist world"?

Perhaps Ford is on the side of passion. What he thinks of its consequences, I am unsure but perhaps one can conceive of what Ford's own discernment may have been by reading over the later acts of this revenge tragedy ('revenge' provides us with unsettling implications). However, returning to Blake, would he and Ford agree? Perhaps not. As learned from the latter half of the drama, Ford does actually appear to be punitive of Giovanni and Annabella (the latter of whom, Soranzo asserts "I'll rip thy heart out/And find it there", when he inquires into her "bastard-bearing".) However, Blake is completely on the side of pasion. And its consequences, for him, are completely liberating, and imperative to the 'sickness' of society. In The Sick Rose he absolutely demonstrates this as his speaker mentions a male's "dark secret love" as the source of the Rose's sickness. Secrecy, and repression, is the sickness - and destruction of society. Passion - in all forms, not just sexual - should be free;it should be seen and heard. This is his message in The Blossom, found in Songs of Innocence: "A happy Blossom/Sees you, swift as arrow" (the arrow being a phallic image), and "A happy Blossom/Hears you, sobbing sobbing." Blake also calls for what appears to be an early form of the free love movement (though he was a monogamous lover himself). This is seen in EARTH's Answer, as Earth herself is horrified at "That free love with bondage bound"; it is found again in A Little Girl Lost, wherein the bard - speaker of the first stanza - speaks prophetically of how "Love! sweet love! was thought a crime." He certainly held agreement with Mary Wollstonecroft that marriage was "legal prostitution."

Similarly to Blake, Ford also agreed with one of his contemporaries - Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher and statesmen - that revenge was a "wild kind of justice". But perhaps - instead of revenge itself being for Ford a "Burn[ing], blood and boil[ing]" spur of passion that Hippolita - the 'mad spinster' of the tragedy, hinting out Jacobean misogyny - has; it is the repression of passion. It is surely the mark of a truly repressed society that all shout "Wonderful justice!" as a response to a woman's death. There may be some agreement to be found between Ford and Blake. To add to this, it is interesting to look further at Ford's own time, in the days when the Caroline era was still in its youthful years, and yet, close to its end. Perhaps Ford discredits a reckless authority - quite like the patriarchal one found in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (the Cardinal's final words - "Of one so young, so rich in nature's store/Who could not say, 'tis pity she's a whore?" - epitomise this authority) - and instead calls for passion.

Therefore, to conclude, there are a few agreements and disagreements with William Blake and John Ford on this subject. Another similarity, among the aforementioned few, is the way in which they use traditional images in a subversive manner: whether it be the "foe outstretched beneath the tree", like a crucifix in The Poison Tree (literally in Blake's illumination for the poem), or when Giovanni takes his sister's heart 'literally' - as Lisa Hopkins argues, this is interestingly Protestant literalism being applied to Catholic metaphor of the sacred heart. Do they agree that passion is both liberating and destructive? I would think that this is the case for Ford; as Mark Stavig argues, Giovanni is "portrayed as a talented, virtuous, noble man who is overcome by a tumultuous passion that brings about his destruction." For Blake however - as exemplified through his poems - and his adamant support of the French Revolution and American Revolutionary War - the statement would not at all have been harmonious with his beliefs; it is only liberating. Passion (Energy) is "eternal delight".

Knowledge is a force for both great evil and great good.' By comparing one drama and one poetry text you have studied, discuss ways in which writers present knowledge.

Blake certainly would have disagreed with the idea that knowledge is a force for both great evil and great good, having once said "There is no use in education." A great revolutionary writer and Romantic critic of the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution, something that is certainly arguable about Blake's attitude to knowledge is that he despised the imposition of it on children. Ford however either seems ambivalent or is just too ambiguous for one to assess his own attitudes towards knowledge. The word "know" is repeated in the play an abundance of times, hinting what Lisa Hopkins argues, that it is a "tragedy of knowledge". Ford was a Devon-born Oxfordian lawyer, knowing and having experienced the dictates of educational institutions directly; however Blake was barely educated at school and did not go to university. These two historical points will help in the elaborate analysis of how the writers approach knowledge as a theme.

In Blake's The Tyger, he presents a speaker that describes what he perceives as a tiger of "fearful symmetry." "What the anvil?", "what the chain". It is clear though, that Blake satirises his speaker. Speak of a "furnace", of a "chain", of a "hammer"; Blake criticises the anthropomorphic language of deism - a prevalent philosophy at the time - and its rational approach to religion and God. He is an opponent of this tyranny of reason (which clearly implies his Romanticism) and calls for the imagination. In Blake's critique of educational institutions in the poem Jerusalem, he refers to universities like Oxford and Cambridge as "dark Satanic mills". Ford's approach to knowledge in the system of education that he presents in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is unusually similar. Although he - as Mark Stavig argues - presents Giovanni as the play's hero, "as a talented, virtuous, noble man who is overcome by a tumultuous passion that brings about his destruction", he also depicts the protagonist as being in danger of taking his rationalism too far. In Act I, scene i, Ford seems to have his character justify his incestuous desire by using the biblical notion of "one flesh". "Why must I not do what all men else may - love?" The use of knowledge is dangerous and I think Ford makes a huge point of this.

Returning to Blake, the fact that knowledge is a force for great evil is almost ubiquitous in his work. In The Fly, the speaker horrifyingly rationalises humans as being like flies - capable of being swatted away at any moment: "Am I not a fly like thee?" Another interpretation could be that, again, God (who could be said to be the speaker of the poem) is presented in an undesirable light. The speaker in The Tyger cannot fathom the tiger's "fearful symmetry" (even though, in Blake's illumination for the song, the tiger is presented as a benign, harmless creature) and asks in total eleven questions; answering not a single one. Arguably, te speaker in the poem wondering "who framed" the tiger (frame being an interesting word; Blake once attacked Isaac Newton for being too interested with measuring the world than appreciating it for its beauty in one of his illustrations), is making the exact same error as the people who interpret the speaker in The Fly as God are making; they perceive him as the Old Testament, vengeful God, using knowledge erroneously in an attempt to measure and reduce  God to human understanding, Blake argues. In 'Tis Pity She's a Whore howeer, Ford presents a God just like this. Gillian Woods sees God - the invisible, and yet, ever-present figure in the play - as "primary revenger". But perhaps Ford is arguing similarly to Blake again, satirising the mere concept of revenge in his play The BQroken Heart; he satirises it here too agreeing with Sir Francis Bacon that revenge is "a wild in of justice". As Hippolita dies in Act IV, all shout "Wonderful justice!" as though they are ritualising her poisoning and death. God should not be seen as a "revenger" and Ford perhaps agrees with Blake here that knowledge is being used erroneously.

Similarly to The Fly, Giovanni rationalises the killing of his sister, asserting "Revenge is mine; honour doth love command." Given the ambivalence of the Jacobeans to revenge, i would hardly be surprising that Ford does not agree with the use of knowledge - of amoral, nihilistic rationalism - justify such acts as revenge. The same is clearly seen in Blake's The Poison Tree. A reworking of the Fall allegory, Paradise Lost by John Milton, the allusion to the "apple bore bright" from the tree of knowledge being used to justify revenge, and his use of God as the speaker of the play (an 'Experience' play - experience offering much more pessimistic messages than found in Innocence) immediately reminds one of the message that Blake provides in The Tyger and in The Fly. "And glad I am to see/My foe outstretched beneath the tree": this "foe outstretched beneath the tree" is clearly in a Christ-like stance in Blake's illumination for the poem. J. Bronowski argues that Blake "was on the side of man against authority"; I concur, but I think that a particular authority Blake attacks is the authority of religion. Given the social climate of the time, where literal "drk Satanic mills" began to permeate London in the industrial revolution, I think that Blake attacks also the 'rationalism' of economic interests of expanding industry - "I made a rural pen" (Introduction to Songs of Innocence) - rather than the moral interests of benefiting human life. The reusult of this terrible use of knowledge is shown explicitly in London, as the "Chimney Sweepers cry", and the "youthful Harlots curse"; because of this excess of reason, Blake argues, it has led to child abuse.

Therefore, to conclude, I certainly agree that knowledge is both a force for great evil and great good" in Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. The violence and corruption in - which Corinne Abate refers to as the true "Whore" of the play - Parma, is caused by the rationalism and nihilism that results from the misuse of knowledge. The word "know" is repeated a substantial number of times. I think that, yes, Ford is saying that should "know", but also that we should 'know wisely'. One should not use it irresponsibly as Putana, Annabella's tutoress, does when she justifies Giovanni and Annabella' incestuous acts. And - although Blake is somewhat in agreement with Ford as regards knowledge, the essence of his argument is that knowledge - or more importantly, the imposition of knowledge on "Babes reduced to misery" (Holy Thursday, Experience) is an intrinsic evil.

'Passion can be both liberating and destructive.' Discuss ways in which writers present passion and its potential consequences.

AO1: Blake sees passion (synonymous with desire) as Energy (positive). As Blake writes in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, "Energy is eternal delight". Repression of such passion leads to corruption. e.g. corruption in the City (London); an immediate link to Ford. Corruption in Parma, the result of repression of passion? Ford's personal views are ambiguous. Characters in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore appear to be pursuing their passion through destructive revenge; or are they, as Blake suggests in his The Poison Tree suppressing the passion of 'anger', leading to their want of vengeance? Does Ford call for passion? One could argue that there is no moral imperative to be found in his drama whatsoever. Blake is more prophetic (almost literally): solution is to fight repression of passion/desire. Ford leaves no solution to the 'Whore' of Parma - perhaps why it seemed so outrageous - and the play is too pessimistic and nihilist for a solution to be found. Also found in London: the speaker is an objective commentator.

AO2: Quotes

Blake (won't use them all, will only memorise some):
"While our sports shall be seen/On the Ecchoing Green." The Ecchoing Green. 

"They laugh at our play" The Ecchoing Green.

"A happy Blossom/ Sees you swift as arrow" The Blossom.

"A happy Blossom/Hears you sobbing sobbing" The Blossom.

"Sparrow", "Robin", "sky-lark and thrush,/ The birds of the bush" The Blossom.

"No no let us play" Nurse's Song (Innocence).

"all the hills ecchoed." Nurse's Song (Innocence).

"Hear the voice of the Bard!" Introduction (Experience).

"Turn away no more" Introduction (Experience).

"Break this heavy chain" EARTH'S Answer.

"Eternal bane!/That free Love with bondage bound." EARTH'S Answer.

"Leopards, tygers play,/Round her as she lay" The Little Girl Lost.

"And naked they convey'd/To caves the sleeping maid." The Little Girl Lost

"And his dark secret love/Dost thou life destroy." The Sick Rose

"Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime." A Little GIRL Lost (voice of prophet - the Bard)

Crucial poems: The Blossom, EARTH'S Answer, The Little Girl Lost, The Sick Rose and A Little Girl Lost.

Ford:
Giovanni: "Must I not do what all men else may - love?"
Hippolita: "Burn, blood, and boil in vengeance!" Alliteration; very portentous/ominous. But burning, blood and vengeance are all things associated with passion (or repression of it). There is also a hint of misogyny; Hippolita is singled out as the 'mad spinster' of the play. Jacobean misogyny (AO4): "[All] Wonderful justice!" as she is killed.
"...there is one/Above begins to work." God is - as Gillian Woods suggests - "primary revenger." Difficult to truly nail on the head what Ford thinks of passion. His dystopia is almost too nihilistic for such a conclusion to be drawn.
Soranzo: "I'll rip up thy heart/And find if there!" Soranzo anticipates Annabella's death. Imagery of the heart is peculiar: it is a Petrarchan symbol but also a religious one. The 'sacred heart of Jesus'.
Soranzo: "Revenge is all I aspire." The City is poisoned. In The Poison Tree, Blake looks at how repressing anger ("I was angry with my foe/I told it not my wrath did grow") leads to corrupt vengeance.
Giovanni: "Revenge is mine; honour doth love command."

Imagery:

Birds ("Sparrow", "Robin", "sky-lark and thrush,/The birds of the bush") represent freedom. Freedom from repression of passion. Freedom from "heavy chains"/"mind-forg'd manacles"/"bondage". Passion is liberation. Repression is destruction.
Almost an early proponent of the 'free love' movement even though he was a monogamous lover himself.

Nature - Blake was a pioneer of English Romanticism/the Romantic movement.

The lion in The Little Girl Lost/The Little Girl Found: portrayed as a benign creature. Lion occasionally a symbol in the Bible.
Soranzo: "I'll rip up thy heart/And find if there!" Soranzo anticipates Annabella's death. Imagery of the heart is peculiar: it is a Petrarchan symbol but also a religious one. The 'sacred heart of Jesus'. (Lisa Hopkins)

AO3:
Blake:
Robert Gleckner: Lyca in The Little Girl Lost enters the world of experience, "with all of its slavery and bondage...its terror, misery and horror." I disagree. I think Blake is showing the innocence of sexuality; innocence of nudity: "And naked they convey'd/To caves the sleeping maid." Also, the word "play" equates to sexuality.
James Raviro: Blake had an "apparent obsession with sex". I concur, albeit I do not think he had an unhealthy obsession. His obsession was with sexual liberation against institutional repression.
Mary Wollstonecroft: Marriage is "legal prostitution". Was Blake a feminist? "And blights with plague the marriage-hearse."
Ford:
Brian Morris: "society is shown as corrupt, and incestuous love as a relationship capable of deep and fragile beauty."
Marion Lomax: "In 'Tis Pity (She's a Whore) women associated with dangerous sexual passions are controlled through the mutilation of their bodies." Ford is almost suggesting there is a danger of nymphomania (esp. among women) within society.
I think there is more to sexual passion in Ford's drama; he portrays impassioned revenge as the "kind of wild justice" Sir Francis Bacon warned of.
Michael Pallier: Mentions the "blood lust" in Ford's Parma. Another side to 'passion'; violence.
Mark Stavig: "Instead of stressing the villainy, Ford portrays Giovanni as a talented, virtuous, and noble man who is overcome by a tumultuous passion that brings about his destruction."

AO4: Lots of Biblical relevance. The innocence of all the children in illumination 36 (of The Little Girl Found) is accentuated; they 'play' freely with the lions. Words of Jesus: "Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven."

French Revolution/American Revolutionary War. Blake appreciated the spur of passion against what he perceived as repression of passion. HOWEVER, when Reign of Terror was unleashed by the Jacobin, Blake was furious. Blake also influenced by Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man. FORD appears interested in psychology: Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy influenced Ford's The Lover's Melancholy. Passion and repression of it: both Blake and Ford are interested in psychology. Perhaps adopting Burton's doctrine of lust as a physical disease, Ford tries to make an opposite case to Blake; passion is destructive, not liberating. However, we cannot truly know (his own personal views). Plus, institutional religion was already repressive of sexual desire. Jacobean ambivalence to revenge (Francis Bacon: "a kind of wild justice). Passionate revenge = wrong? Repress passion.

'Knowledge is a force for both great evil and great good.' By comparing one drama and one poetry text you have studied, discuss ways in which writers present knowledge.

AO1: Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore may agree with this statement entirely. His own privileged knowledge is what led to him writing it. However he presents a Renaissance man, reasoning away the world and his own personal love life, leading him to insanity at the end of the drama. Blake's view of knowledge is also a negative one: "There is no use in education." He was an adamant critic of the rationalistic Enlightenment, having portrayed Isaac Newton as unable to recognise the beauty of the world; just wishing to measure it. His poems show this: Little Lamb and The Tyger may be critiques of the rationalistic thought of deists. Perhaps Ford is proposing that we 'know wisely' and do not allow endeavour to impede on morale.

AO2:
Ford
Word "know" repeated a substantial amount of times. (Lisa Hopkins)
The Friar warns Giovanni that others who used logic ‘‘to prove/There was no God.../Discover'd...the nearest way to hell.’’
Friar: "Thou hast moved a majesty above."
Friar: "far better 'tis/To bless the sun, than reason why it shines."
Friar: "Hast thou left the schools/Of knowledge, to converse with lust and death?"
Giovanni: "Revenge is mine; honour doth love command." Giovanni rationalises his killing of Annabella.
Vasquez: "What strange riddle is this?" (Catherine Belsey: "interrogative play".)
Blake
"For I dance/And drink & sing/Till some blind hand/Shall brush my wing" The Fly (relates to Giovanni - cynical in his reasoning. The rationalism of deists Blake is angry about).
"hammer", "chain", "furnace" and "anvil" The Tyger. Rationale of a deist speaker (plus various symbols of the industrial revolution). Blake satirises the speaker.
"fearful symmetry." The Tyger.
"Did he who made the lamb make thee?" The Tyger, shows implication that this is the same speaker as the one in The Lamb. Has that speaker reached experience? No longer "a child and thee a lamb". Now an adult describing a 'fierce' tiger. Blake further satirises the speaker with the illumination portraying a benign tiger.
"I wander thro' each charter'd street/Near where the charter'd Thames does flow/And mark in every face I meet/Marks of weakness, marks of woe." London, can be viewed as Blake criticising the impact that the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution has had on the City.
"mind-forg'd manacles" London.
"dark Satanic mills" Jerusalem, can be viewed as educational institutions like Oxford and Cambridge, as well as literal, industrial mills.

AO3:
Ford
Lisa Hopkins: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a "tragedy of knowledge."
Catherine Belsey calls 'Tis Pity She's a Whore an "interrogative play". Vasquez asks at the end, rhetorically: "What strange riddle is this?" Ford asks more questions than he answers. Similar to The Tyger: 11 questions and not one answer.
Mark Stavig: "Instead of stressing the villainy, Ford portrays Giovanni as a talented, virtuous, and noble man"; Ralph Allen Cohen argues that Giovanni is made into the play's hero.
Knowledge is dangerous; one must repent. Cohen also notes that in our "relativist world" we cannot help but feel sympathy with the play's protagonists.
Blake
Timothy Morton on The Fly: "[it contains] the rhythm of a child but the syntax of an adult." Cynicism is a result of knowledge.
J Bronowki: Blake was "on the side of man against authority." Authority of educational institutions. Link to Ford: the authority of the patriarchs.
Comparisons are crucial: similarities between the two authors on the matter of knowledge. Blake sees the 

AO4: Working independently, Ford wrote his major plays after 1625. He wrote for several theatrical companies, including the King's Men at the Blackfriars and the Queens' Men at the Phoenix. He wrote for a privileged class, who would have been - like him - educated at more 'prestigious' universities. However, did he write the play to ridicule his audience? Interesting question. Evidence from the text: he satirises the Friar, who asserts that it is better "to bless the sun, than reason why it shines."
[Blake] was an adamant critic of the rationalistic Enlightenment, having portrayed Isaac Newton as unable to recognise the beauty of the world; just wishing to measure it.
French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote an epic treatise on education, holding that formal education stifled the child's capacity for creativity, for imagination. Blake was more akin to Rousseau, and spoke out against Enlightenment philosopher, John Locke, an empiricist philosopher who paved the foundation of behaviourism. Tabula rasa - the mind as 'blank slate' that gains knowledge with experience. Blake opposed Locke, seeing him as an 'agent of the devil'; the imagination is one's access to the divine.
Also, as well as Enlightenment, the industrial revolution became a concern for Blake: his work shows the contrast of an idyllic Eden, with urban industrialisation and impoverishment of children.

'Society is only as sick as its secrets.' By comparing one drama and one poetry text you have studied, discuss ways in which writers present society.

AO1: "the Beast and the Whore." Reminiscent of the Whore of Babylon in Revelations. Biblical imagery once again spun on its head; the Church is the Whore of Babylon for Blake. The State is complicit in this biblical corruption.

AO2:

Blake

"And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe." London
"In every voice; in every ban,
The mind forg'd manacles I hear." London
"How the Chimney Sweepers cry
Every blackning church appals." London
"And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls." London
"How the youthful Harlots curse" London
"And blights with plague the marriage-hearse." London
"The children walking two & two in red and blue and green/Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow." Holy Thursday (Innocence). Walking in "two & two" could allude to the myth of Noah's Ark in the Bible. This is Blake's underpinning of the hypocrisy of the Church. The 'holy' men with their "wants as white as snow" are cold; desensitised to the children's suffering. This is another of Blake's polemics against the Church and against authority in society.
"multitudes of lambs" Holy Thursday (Innocence). Interesting metaphor because, not only does it convey the subservience of the innocent children, it is also biblical imagery - the 'lamb' of God. Blake is using traditional symbols in a subversive way. He is a radical.
"I hear the Father of ancient men." This is the Old Testament, and incorrect view, of God. Blake is attacking the authorities: religion, government and other institutions that repress people's desires: "That Free love with bondage bound."
"Babes reduced to misery." Children are impoverished, sexually abused ("Harlots curse") and miserable. A child should be free to "play".
"Parents were afar"
"Where are thy father and mother? say?/They are both gone up the church to pray." Shame on the parents, says Blake. They are complicit in the corruption because they allow their children to be subjugated and degraded.

Ford

Giovanni: "Must I not do what all men else may - love?" Denotes the innocence of Giovanni with a hint of pathos; is Ford sympathetic to his incestuous character?. He is still young. Youth vs age; the older patriarchs.

Cardinal: "Of one so young, so rich in nature's store/
Who could not say 'tis pity she's a whore?"

AO3:
Ford
Corinne Abate: "Parma is the real whore of the tragedy."
Michael Scott: "[The play's] modernity proves Ford's recognition." 'Tis Pity She's a Whore was removed from some editions of his collection of plays due to its contentious, controversial subject matters. However, a resurgence of interest in it spurred in the 20th century, at a time where the arts were becoming more and more liberal.
Ford (in The Broken Heart): "Revenge proves its own executioner."

Blake
J Bronowski: "Blake was on the side of man against authority."
Matthew Collings: "He experienced parental love as oppression."

William Wordsworth: "The Child is Father of the Man."

Comparisons
Blake: "Without Contraries [there] is no progression." The Marriage of Heaven and Hell... corruption and a lack of it are both imperative to our existence; BUT things can be improved. Blake is a revolutionary; he calls for huge change; he is calling for progression. In Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore he shows the 'Contraries' of an aged, violent city with its patriarchs and the 'pure' love of an incestuous, youthful couple: Giovanni and Annabella. With whom do our sympathies lie? It is questionable however that he is sympathetic to his protagonists; if anything he is punitive of the pair.
Also, youth vs age is present in both. The patriarchs of Parma (age) vs Giovanni and Annabella (youth) and the innocent "Babes reduced to misery" in London.
Both use images and symbols subversively.

AO4: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore first played between 1629-33. Crucial tensions occurring in the lead up to the English Civil War (which would occur 9-13 years later). Charles I distrusted for the absolutism he adopted from his father, James (Monarchs are like "little Gods on earth").
Blake was more akin to French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "Man is born free but everywhere is in chains." Blake also supportive of French Revolution and American Revolutionary War.

'Religion is the heart of a heartless world.' By comparing one drama and one poetry text you have studied, discuss ways in which writers present religion.

AO1: Blake disagrees: institutional/organised Religion is the "Whore", whilst the State is the "Beast". Calls for the separation of Church and State (following the influence of the Founding Fathers of America). Religion is complicit in the social injustices of a 'heartless world', not the 'heart' of it; at the 'heart' of it rather. Ford on the other hand also doesn't seem so amorous of the statement; his text presents a nihilistic world, only exacerbated by institutional religion. The Cardinal is reminiscent of one of the Borgias: corrupt and bearing no real morale. Ford may be satirising Catholic religion (although Lisa Hopkins draws an opposite conclusion).

AO2:
Blake
"And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door." The Garden of Love. Institutional religion is repressive of one's desires.
"And binding with briars my joys and desires." The Garden of Love. Institutional religion is repressive of one's desires.

"The children walking two & two in red and blue and green/Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow." Holy Thursday. Walking in "two & two" could allude to the myth of Noah's Ark in the Bible. This is Blake's underpinning of the hypocrisy of the Church. The 'holy' men with their "wants as white as snow" are cold; desensitised to the children's suffering. This is another of Blake's polemics against the Church and against authority in society.

Ford
Soranzo: "I'll rip thy heart out/And find it there." Ominous of Annabella's death at the hands of her brother. Protestant literalism of the Catholic 'sacred heart'. Traditional symbol turned on its head. Similar to Blake's twisting of symbols subversively. (Lisa Hopkins thinks that this shows "Catholic sympathies however").
Giovanni: "One flesh"
Friar: "Parma, farewell; would I had never known thee." Holy man gives up on the young, "lost" Giovanni. Hypocrisy?
Friar: "thou art lost."
Cardinal: "Of one so young, so rich in nature's store/
Who could not say 'tis pity she's a whore?"

AO3:
Corinne Abate: "Parma is the real whore of the tragedy."
Nicolas Marsh: "The Songs launch an attack on...capitalism, organised religion..."
Lisa Hopkins: Ford shows "Catholic sympathies".
Ralph Allen Cohen: Language like "one flesh" denotes Ford's subversive use of symbolism. Religious/institutional language is turned on its head.

AO4: Papal family, the Borgias, were suspected of adultery, simony, incest and murder. Became prominent in 15th and 16th centuries. There is a definite correlation between their corruption and the corruption at the heart of Parma.

Antony and Cleopatra essay plan:

'"If it be love indeed..." The big lie of Antony and Cleopatra is that it is a play about love.' By exploring Shakespeare's dramatic presentation of the theme of love in Antony and Cleopatra, evaluate this view.

AO1: Love as a façade. Interiority and exteriority. Guilt and shame. The public and the private: in this play, there is no private (apart from Enobarbus' soliloquy). "If it be love indeed, tell me how much." "There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd." Quote epitomises the possible fakery of Antony and Cleopatra's love really. Antony and Cleopatra are acting Antony and Cleopatra: they struggle against mythic identities ascribed to them: Hercules and Isis; Venus and Mars. Is there any genuine love in the play? Is the love of Enobarbus for Antony a greater love - a platonic love - than Cleopatra's? Or is the love of Antony and Cleopatra genuine? He is truly changed by her (although so is Enobarbus - barge speech). She is clearly capricious and paradoxical... Is it love versus politics/love versus power? Antony and Caesar clash as two triumvirates - Octavia wedged between them - whilst Cleopatra becomes angry and jealous. Antony's marriage to Octavia: a marriage of power. Antony's spiritual, ethereal marriage to Cleopatra at the end: a marriage of love.

AO2:
Cleopatra: "If it be love indeed, tell me how much."
Antony: "There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd."
Philo: "This dotage of our general's/O'erflows the measure." Typical Roman frame of mind: rationalistic; 'measuring' love.
Caesar: "No grave on earth shall clip upon it/A pair so famous." Caesar pays homage to the 
Cleopatra: "His legs bestrid the ocean." Hyperbolic language moulds the two protagonist into their 'great' identities. Is Cleopatra providing a genuine eulogy for her husband here or is she continuing to act.
Cleopatra: "some Cleopatra boy my greatness." The Queen is aware that she will be humiliated by Caesar. Shakespeare is intentionally being metadramatic; reminding the audience that this is just a play. The characters are inevitably 'acting'.
Antony: "Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch/Of the ranged empire fall."
Antony: "Fie wrangling queen/Whom everything becomes."
Cleopatra: "Nay, I take thee too."
Imagery: "world", "fate", "fortune", "love", "melt", fluidity, antithesis, etc. "All the world's a stage". Inverse argument: does their love span the world?
Enobarbus' speech is obviously crucial: he is the confidant.
Lots of paradox/hyperbole: "The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne/Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold" We believe him because of Shakespeare's eloquent writing. He is changed by her - as is Antony. He accentuates her paradoxical nature: "what they undid did", "make defect perfection", "made a gap in nature".
Enobarbus: "O'erpicturing that Venus where we see/The fancy outwork nature." Another mythic identity; Venus. 
Charmian: "sweet Isis, I beseech thee!" Charmian hints to one of Cleopatra's mythic identities.
Hercules and Isis; Venus and Mars: mythic identities being ascribed to them.

AO3:

Dr Michael Delahoyde: "Cleopatra is maybe the first 'diva'"
James Shapiro: Shakespeare was "the greatest feminist of them all." Proto-feminist. Not happy with the "Cleopatra boy". However, this metadramatic aspect reminding us that it is just a play perhaps brings into question Antony and Cleopatra's love.
Review of Peter Hall's Antony and Cleopatra: What distinguishes [Anthony] Hopkins and [Judi] Dench is their self-mocking wit."
Dench's Cleopatra is described in another review as "part-bitch, part-sadist", and she herself says, "She [Cleopatra] could easily 'unpeople Egypt'".
R. H. Case: the structure of the play conveys a "sense of clutter".
Dolores Burton: "not about tawdry middle-aged lovers"
Claire Kiney: "Antony and Cleopatra speak themselves into legend."

Maynard Mack: "who finally is the strumpet of the play, Antony's Cleopatra or Caesar's fortune"?

AO4: "some Cleopatra boy my greatness." Female characters would be played by boy actors in the Early Modern period. Does Shakespeare satirise this? (James Shapiro). Plutarch was a moralist: he scrutinised Antony for his 'lewdness'.

'He is the moral centre of the play.' By exploring the dramatic presentation of Enobarbus in the play, evaluate his character in the light of this comment.

Enobarbus is perhaps the one character in the tragedy that develops his moral character more so than any other character. The way that Shakespeare presents him dramatically does much to enhance this view. He could be said to be one of the few characters in the play to relate to both the higher status and lower status characters. Second, he can also be viewed as a better leader than Antony, being the voice of reason (his Roman trait) and having far better strategy in war than his leader. Thirdly - and finally - he is one of the few characters for whom we have some faith in: we believe in the veracity of his speech depicting Cleopatra on the barge (amongst other things).

Shakespeare's presentation of Enobarbus as a sort of chorus in the play is interesting; his use of staging ['aside'] supports this and his foreseeing of Antony "will[ing] to his Egyptian dish again" (in Act II, scene vi) and of Antony's marriage to Octavia having the potential to "blow the fire up in Caesar" (Act II, scene vi). These prophecies urge one to think of the chorus in the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet ("Two households both alike in dignity"). This could add to us thinking of Enobarbus as a sort of moral figure in the play; he is the arbiter of truth. Shakespeare presents language prosaically through Enobarbus to disseminate this truth to the audience.
Interestingly, he may be seen as a better leader than Antony; but because of his betrayal of his general, one becomes dubious of whether Enobarbus' integrity may be maintained - albeit, his integrity is maintained. A few scenes later he is presented with the lower status characters (like Agrippa, who calls him "Good Enobarbus") as well as the higher status characters: Antony and Cleopatra. This offers implications to his moral integrity and relatability. His betrayal of Antony however would have perhaps evoked a feeling of Christian fervor in a Jacobean audience, as they are reminded of a Judasesque betrayal. Although this is counterracted by Enobarbus' extreme guilt (although this is obviously also felt by Judas) showing the only introspection through use of soliloquy in the entire tragedy. As Emma Smith argues, "Enobarbus is more of a tragic figure" than Antony. Is this a tragedy about Enobarbus? Is he closer to the classical, Aristotelian tragic figure than the eponymous protagonist himself? More importantly, does the tragedy end with his death?
I certainly think that Shakespeare uses the character to - as Jonathan Bate suggests - create "a portrait of his own mind." This has further implications of Shakespeare offering his own moral message via the vehicle of Enobarbus. Guilt is felt only by someone with a moral conscience.
Of course, the Roman notion of loyalty and honour is still present in Enobarbus, and he takes it to a rather lengthy extent: "I alone am the villain of the earth"; "I have done ill"; I will go seek/Some ditch wherein to die". He speaks beautiful here in verse. What is truly moving is how Shakespeare almost entirely creates the character of Enobarbus; perhaps as some kind of moral mediator. Whether the tragedy ends after Enobarbus dies is also in question. He is more typical of what Aristotle calls a tragic hero: someone who has a tragic flaw (hamartia) and who evokes pity and fear (catharsis). His betrayal brings one to consider the former and his death to think of the latter, an event that certainly causes pity.
Continuing this discussion of genre, Enobarbus was more susceptible to the realisation of his wrongdoing (anagnorisis) than Antony. Contrary to what George Bernard Shaw felt - that "The play has no moral value whatsoever" - the moral value can actually be found in Enoarbus - the mere "soldier" as Antony describes him. Concerning the verse/prose dichotomy, Enobarbus appears to appeal to us when speaking in both forms but perhaps more so when he is speaking in verse rather than colloquial prose (i.e. "I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment"; 'die' being a Jacobean pun for "to have sex", or "to orgasm").
The barge speech is imperative to the antithesis of comical prose - the voice of reason/of a realist - and eloquent poetic verse. The amount of paradox he uses ("burned on the water", "what they undid did", "made defect perfection") enhances the aesthetic of the language that - though supported by the original account of Plutarch - we owe to Shakespeare and his use of imagery. He does this to increase our confidence in the integrity and honesty of Enobarbus. As Phyllis Rackin asserts: "Shakespeare had to rely upon his poetry [through Enobarbus] and his audience's imagination to evoke Cleopatra's greatness: "for vilest things/become themselves in her, that the holy priests/Bless her when she is riggish."
We know already Shakespeare's use of alternating prose/verse to advance a point about character. In The Taming of the Shrew, prose is used to portray a dim-witted, buffoonish tinker named Sly who, when tricked into thinking he is a nobleman, speaks 'eloquently' in verse form. The case with Sly is a comical one, but Shakespeare used verse to model Enobarbus into a lovable character rather than one to distrust.
Although we may find incentive to distrust Shakespeare's mostly fictional character during his betrayal of Antony, I think that Shakespeare wishes us to have faith in him. He is Antony's confidant. His dying of a 'broken heart' - "O Antony! O Antony! [He sinks down.]" - holds implications to the idea that Enobarbus holds a love far more mature and platonic than Cleopatra's; he feels guilt and conveys his introspection whereas she does not.
Therefore, to conclude, I would continue to assert that Enobarbus is the one - if not, one of the few- moral character[s] in the play. He is rather like an allusion to Benvolio from Rome and Juliet, even though this play was written after Antony and Cleopatra. He is still faithful to Antony and shows this in what seems to be an inadvertent suicide - dying of a broken heart. As Emma Smith says: Enobarbus is the tragic figure. This provokes us to feel a great deal of sympathy for him and warm to him as the "moral centre of the play."

-A

Excellent work on a tricky subject matter. Perhaps you might go into even more detail about the 'barge speech', and other quotes that endorse Cleopatra's "infinite variety" and semi-divine status and Antony's nobility; crucially, it is spoken by the normally cynical Enobarbus - he admires her I think as he does with Antony for most of the play who he understands. It is definitely right that he is a chorus figure.

Essay plan:

'For a tragedy it is not painful.' By considering the dramatic effects used in Antony and Cleopatra, evaluate this view.

Introduction: Thesis - I think that, for a tragedy, it is painful but... [speak about Emma Smith's lecture on satirical and farcical gags used in A&C]. Also, traditional Aristotelian tragedy - invokes pity and fear; character must have a fatal flaw (Antony's 'lascivious wassails') that leads to the tragic hero's fall (compare with Macbeth; suggest a stronger correlation with Macbeth and Aristotle's idea of tragedy than A&C). Was Shakespeare breaking tradition? Certainly - mention use of 'confused' gender roles. Shakespeare = proto-feminist?

Para 1: Restate thesis mildly; immediately provide evidence, e.g. pain involved when Antony is betrayed by Cleopatra twice (esp. second time). To stick to key qualifier in thesis - but - immediately mention; after Antony's tragic downfall (i.e. Cleopatra has abandoned him) he asks Eros to kill him; Eros fails on doing so and instead kills himself; Antony stabs himself but doesn't die instantly. Smith - satirical and farcical. Is this a negative? Is this showing what Shakespeare thinks of the two protagonist (remember they are historical figures as well as literary).

Para 2: Differently... [mention how A&C proves thesis in another way). Is the real pain in the tragedy the failure of love amidst a geopolitical power struggle? Is the real pain in the tragedy found in the meaningless of it all? Arguably, Antony and Cleopatra's feelings for each other may not even be genuine. Quotes: "His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm Crested the world; his voice was propertied But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder..." etc etc etc. Hyperbolic language: like in metaphysical poetry; is it genuine or does it lack true feeling; does it lack real love?
Para 3: Criticism of the play as 'well-nigh unstageable' (The Rough Guide of Shakespeare, Andrew Dickson, Joe Staines); is the pain of the play its length and alternation between settings (Rome, Egypt, Algeria, Actium, Sardinia...)? For R.H.Case there is "a sense of clutter" in the play's structure. Imagine real strain of actors in the staged version. Is it - as previously questioned - even stageable? Are the actions of actors in the play just futile? Actors are even mocked at a point by Cleopatra (ironic because she would have been played by an actor - a boy, to exacerbate that irony): "Thou an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown...Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness I'the posture of a whore". Don't forget to mention 'Cleopatra boy'...
Para 4: Historical context - misogyny in Jacobean era - in contrast with empowerment of Cleopatra. In Early Modern era, "women's sexuality, once let off the leash, [was] seen as potentially catastrophic for the social infrastructure." Cleopatra - like other women in Shakespeare's plays - "marries [sic] down", argues Harold Bloom. Perhaps there is quite a bit of pain in the sudden 'confusion' of gender roles. Antony is ambivalent at times: "These strong Egyptian fetters I must break Or lose myself in dotage." However, does Cleopatra owe some of her power in the play to model of Queen Lizzy I? Apotheosis = divine glorification. Nostalgia for Elizabeth I.
Para 5: Private/public and lack of it in A&C represents celebrity 'glam' lifestyle - always in the public eye. On the one hand, it is like - as Smith suggests - Antony and Cleopatra are performing a show (which essentially, they are); whilst, on the other, they are unable to be truly intimate due to how 'public' everything all is. Romans' [and Egyptians'] lust for "ostentation". Otherwise it returns to aforementioned idea that Antony and Cleopatra's love for each other is not genuine.
Conclusion: Restate thesis; reiterate evidence to back it up; add something extra; a question maybe? i.e. Is love just a power struggle? etc.

Enobarbus: A Funny Old Bloke

Enobarbus - sometimes his discourse with other characters displays the cold voice of reason, and others, the epitome of crude sexual gags - but in Enobarbus' speech regarding the scene of Cleopatra on an exotic barge, he becomes a poet. Quite literally, he becomes a poet. Enobarbus usually speaks in prose in the play, but here he is speaking in verse. This is a common theme in the work of Shakespeare: playing around with the two writing styles to convey an idea about a person. In The Taming of the Shrew for instance, prose is used to portray a dim-witted, buffoonish tinker named Sly who, when tricked into thinking he is a nobleman, speaks eloquently in verse form:

"Am I lord? and have I such a lady?

Or do I dream? or have I dream'd till now?

I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak;

I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things:-

Upon my life, I am a lord indeed;

And not a tinker, nor Christophero Sly.-

Well, bring our lady hither to our sight;

And once again, a pot o' the smallest ale."

What is peculiar about this clearly comic speech is the irony within it's content: though Sly is speaking now in verse, there is still a hint of irony at the end of his speech when he wishes for "a pot o' the smallest ale", illustrating that he is actually unchanged and still, in essence, a drunkard. Could the same be said for Enorbarbus? Is there any hint of the character of the Roman soldier seeping through this beautiful speech describing the barge scene? Or did his experience of Cleopatra actually truly change the soldier? Such questions could be raised; I would say that he has been changed by his experience of Cleopatra, as Antony has been changed, and that he is sincere in what he says.

In terms of the speech itself, it is known that Shakespeare plagiarised Plutarch's description of Cleopatra on the barge to some extent. The entire play is based loosely on the events described by Plutarch and particularly Thomas North's translation of Plutarch. The question lingers: why didn't Shakespeare just copy the whole thing down?

How does Shakespeare's version of the speech differ from Plutarch's?

Well, obviously Shakespeare didn't copy Thomas North's translation completely. But why didn't he? Here's why:

Shakespeare's version differs from Plutarch's in that it is not merely a stating of the obvious. Plutarch's description is largely objective and void of much emotional analysis. Shakespeare's sensualises the whole scene. We "see" it; it "glows"; it's "silken"; it's "flower-soft"; and all of it becomes the woman that the description is centred around.

What does this tell us about Shakespeare's Cleopatra - and Antony?

Shakespeare's Cleopatra is the wonderful scenery that Enobarbus envisages, recollecting from memory. She was more beautiful than "that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature." In other words, she was more beautiful than the painting of Venus which is more beautiful than nature itself - this is hyperbolic stuff here.

Antony on the other hand is passed in a breath, described as "enthroned i'th'marketplace," sitting "alone, Whistling to th'air; which, but for vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too". This speech is hardly about Antony; it is about Cleopatra. She is the figure of power and, controversially for the other characters in the play, is more powerful than Antony.

Does it make any different that Enobarbus is talking?

I think that it does. It shows that even this Roman soldier (along with Antony himself of course) can be swayed in a transforming way by Cleopatra's sheer beauty.

Does this description match our experience of Cleopatra on stage?

I wouldn't say that it does. Our experience of Cleopatra on stage is one of a stubborn, capricious, manipulative woman that, although represents beauty and power, conveys the sense of disorder and mayhem.

What is learnt from Norman Holland's article comparing the two versions?

That Shakespeare's is much more sensual and indeed sexual than Plutarch's. The paradox of the fans that 'do' and 'undo' ("what they undid did") Cleopatra's glowing cheeks had much more sexual connotation to an Elizabethan audience than to us. To Holland, 'the most sexual image is, "the silken tackle Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands." This is R-rated stuff, soft porn.'