http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/antony-and-cleopatra-audio
What I'd like is for you to get a detailed essay plan together using anything you gained from her lecture, plus ideas from the A03/4 pages on this site. You might want to listen to the lecture again. The essay question uses a quote by A.C.Bradley and is really asking you both about your personal response to the play (is it 'painful?'; remember too that for some critics its 'painful' quality is its length or unstageability!) and questions of genre (Emma Smith talks about how it has elements of satire/farce but also discusses how it's been viewed as a comedy/history play/problem play/romance):
‘For a tragedy it is not painful.’ By considering the dramatic effects of Antony and Cleopatra, evaluate this view.
I've put my plan in my section...
ReplyDeletehttp://year13shakey.blogspot.co.uk/p/daniel.html
Open to comments and criticism!!
I would agree with this statement and I think the lecture notes from Emma Smith really help too. For me, as much as I enjoy the play, I also think it's a quite a pathetic scenario where the characters are constantly passing blame to each other and do not take any responsibility for their actions, except for of course Enobarbus. Everything is performed in the public eye, every body has know and see what is going on and this is significant because Antony and Cleo do not even realise just how ridiculous they have become. I personally think that if anyone is a victim of this tragedy then it is Octavia because she is compared to a whore, who is Cleo and is almost stuck in the middle of the chaos that is Rome, Egypt and Greece.
ReplyDeleteI would use this critical quote to support the points I have just made above:
ReplyDeleteGeorge Bernard Shaw (1898): “You can’t feel any sympathy with Antony after he runs away disgracefully from the battle of Actium because Cleopatra did…If you knew anyone who did that you’d spit in his face.” You can find modern equivalents for these immoral characters “in every public house.”
“The play has no moral value whatever.”