Shakespeare and the Mediterranean 3 - Antony and Cleopatra
Keywords:
Shakespeare, Mediterranean, Antony and CleopatraSynopsis
In Antony and Cleopatra, the Mediterranean Sea plays a particularly vital role. Maybe more than in other works, as prominent scholars have famously noted, Shakespeare seems to have identified sea-related images – and, by extension, water-imagery – as being peculiar to this story. Changeable, slippery, and unfathomable, the Mediterranean Sea stands out as the perfect element to give shape to what has been defined as the play’s ‘sense of instability’, which dominates both its more explicitly political dimension and the intricate, personal dynamics between the two eponymous characters. This volume offers fresh insights into the Mediterranean dimension of Antony and Cleopatra, exploring issues as varied as performance and self-representation, motherhood, and statecraft, as well as the ways in which contemporary digital tools can contribute to underscoring the play’s enduring relevance.
Chapters
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Introduction
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Setting the Scene for Antony and Cleopatra
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“This Most Detestable Sin”: Antony and Cleopatra and the Performance of Adultery
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Misremembering the Classics: Self-Representation through Mythological Language in Antony and Cleopatra
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“Name Cleopatra as she is call’d in Rome”. (Un)Hiding Cleopatra’s Name in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
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“All the unlawful issue that their lust / Since then hath made between them”: Children and Absent Motherhood in Early Modern English Cleopatra plays
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Cleopatra, Motherhood, and the Mediterranean
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“The sea is mine”: Pompey the Pirate
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Did Cleopatra Squeak?
