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Book Description
Testo inglese a fronte
2 Reviews
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Porphydo said on Nov 29, 2011 about the Others edition | Add your feedback
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I can hardly find love in this tragedy. It's ironic, it's political (the aspect I liked the most), it's ambiguous... it doesn't seem a tragedy at all in some passage, so it proved not like I expected it.
I really don't think Antony and Cleopatra are strong and thick characters, I could hardly look ... (continue)Yankee Burga said on Nov 30, 2011 about the Others edition | Add your feedback
Book Details
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- Libri Italiani
- Paperback 249 Pages
- Publisher: Fabbri - William Shakespeare, tutte le opere
- Pub date: Jan 01, 2003
- Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Hardcover, Softcover and Others
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Antony and Cleopatra
(English Books)
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1 person find this helpful
Not the best Shakespeare's tragedy: it is muddling in a way, and it often reveals a conventional (maybe banal) picture of the male/female role: a narrow-minded conception not unusual in Shakespeare's works - that's why I can't quite appreciate them, especially when this point of view occupies the co ... (continue)
Not the best Shakespeare's tragedy: it is muddling in a way, and it often reveals a conventional (maybe banal) picture of the male/female role: a narrow-minded conception not unusual in Shakespeare's works - that's why I can't quite appreciate them, especially when this point of view occupies the core of the drama. Anyway, some passage keeps a very pregnant sound; the historical references, for instance. Many lines, on the other hand, sound too ironic, with many double meanings and puns that can't be translated in italian: I'm sorry but I must say that translation (by Salvatore Quasimodo) doesn't work.
Going on, we begin to know both Antony and Cleopatra, with their different relation with love, with their different concept of love. Antony seems so ambiguous about his passions, or rather he seems confused and overwhelmed by the events, so different from the Antony of the Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. His words sound clear: ”These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, or lose myself in dotage”.
Cleopatra, she is insane, she's mad with love, as though she were in a fever. She is afraid of losing her lover as if he were a conquest, or rather a conquered territory to garrison. Though she’s his mistress (his whore in Rome's mouth), she feels as though she were a betrayed wife, betrayed by him who’s been false to his very wife, the married woman.
“I have no power upon you; hers you are”. This seems to be the problem, for the queen of Egypt. But even when the “married woman” dies, she can’t find peace, ‘cause Antony “in swearing shake the thronèd gods”, making her “entangled with those mouth-made vows”. In the mind of Cleopatra, Antony’s behaviour (his infidelity towards his wife) is the mirror of the consideration he has for herself too. This woman, who looks disarmingly true in her expecting respect from her lover, even towards his wife (her enemy), seems to be fated to be sad. She can’t even accept the liaison he "consummates" with herself: she refuses to recognize the betrayer in her lover, and yet that betrayal allows them to “consummate” their affair. So this becomes the problem:
“I prithee turn aside and weep for her,
Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears
Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene
Of excellent dissembling, and let it look
Like perfect honour”
The tragedy is finally "exemplfied" in the Antoniad ship, that falls back before the roman enemy, following the Cleopatra's one.
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