Antony and Cleopatra

ISBN-13: 9781403990419 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 200 str.

Nicholas Potter

Opis

This Reader's Guide provides a critical survey of the responses to this popular play, from the earliest published accounts to the present day. Leading the reader through the material in a chronological fashion, the book draws on a rich range of critical writings, including Dr. Johnson, Coleridge, Bradley, and Leavis. Nicholas Potter carefully relates this material to more general issues regarding Shakespearean criticism and scholarship, and the development of literary history and theory.

Spis treści

Introduction: 'Like to a Vagabond Flag Upon a Stream': The Vagaries of Opinion Concerning Antony and Cleopatra.- 'Let's Do It After the High Roman Fashion': Shakespeare's Classical World.- Shakespeare's World Well Lost? Theatre in England During the Interregnum and After.- Dryden's Re-Vision of Antony and Cleopatra.- Romantics to Victorians: 'This enchanting Queen'.- Modernists: 'No more but e'en a woman'.- The Editions: 'The varying shore o' the world'.- The Romanness of the Roman Plays (1).- The Romanness of the Roman Plays (2).- Postmodernists: Antony and Cleopatra: 'A child o' the time'?.- Conclusion: 'Infinite Variety'?.- Notes.- Select Bibliography.- Index.

O autorze

NICHOLAS POTTER is Head of the School of Humanities and Performing Arts at Swansea Institute of Higher Education, UK. His previous publications include Shakespeare: Othello, also in the Readers' Guides to Essential Criticism series.

Blurb

Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's most widely studied and popular of the 'Roman' plays. It is either the world's greatest love story or a sad tale of two middle-aged infatuated people who throw away their power over half the known world; it is about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire; it is Shakespeare's sceptical revision of Virgil; it is about soldiership, loyalty and loss, and much more besides.

This Reader's Guide provides a critical survey of the responses to Antony and Cleopatra from the earliest published accounts to the present day. Leading the reader through the material in a chronological fashion, the Guide draws on a rich range of critical writings, including Dr Johnson, Coleridge, Bradley and Leavis. Nicholas Potter carefully relates this material to more general issues regarding Shakespearean criticism and scholarship, and the development of literary history and theory. Also featuring a chapter on the different editions of the play, and a Select Bibliography to aid further study, this book is an indispensable resource for students.