 > Antony and Cleopatra
 > Hamlet
 Disintegration of warrior
 No Cleopatra to put him back together
 Martius = anti-Hamlet post-mortem
 Warrior
 Hates theatre
 Inflexible
 No father
 Soliloquy averse
 Antony in the Alps: ‘To live alone one must
be either an animal or a god’ (Aristotle)
 Punitive theatre:

Now, Iras, what think'st thou?
Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown
In Rome, as well as I. Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall
Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths,
Rank of gross diet, shall be enclouded,
And forced to drink their vapour. (5.3)
 1.1 ROME
 1.2 THE WORLD ELSEWHERE
 1.3 HOME
 1.4 WAR
Rome = small city state
experimenting with
republicanism
Will not completely
subdue its neighbours
for another century
16-year-old Martius first
fights in 499 BC, roughly
500 years before the age
of the global superpower
depicted in Antony and
Cleopatra
‘chief enemy / To the people’ (1.1.7-8)
Though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was for his country, he did it to
please his mother and to be partly proud – which he is, even to the altitude of his
virtue. (1.1.34-7)
 Go to them with this




bonnet in thy hand;
And thus far having
stretched it – here be
with them –
Thy knee bussing the
stones – for in such
business
Action is eloquence, and
the eyes of th’ignorant
More learned than the
ears (III.2.73-7)
Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turned,
Which choired with my drum, into a pipe
Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice
That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up
The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue
Make motion through my lips, and my armed knees,
Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his
That have received an alms! I will not do’t,
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth
And by my body’s action teach my mind
A most inherent baseness. (III.2.111-23)
O let me clip ye
In arms as sound as when I
wooed, in heart
As merry as when our nuptial
day was done,
And tapers burned to
bedward! (I.6.29-32)
I loved the maid I married; never man
Sighed truer breath. But that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold. (IV.5.116-121)
 I saw him run after a gilded butterfly,
and when he caught it, he let it go
again, and after it again, and over and
over he comes and up again, catched it
again; or whether his fall enraged him,
or how ’twas, he did so set his teeth
and tear it. O, I warrant, how he
mammocked it! (I.3.61-7)
I’ll never
Be such a gosling to obey
instinct, but stand
As if a man were author of
himself
And knew no other kin […]
Like a dull actor now / I
have forgot my part (5.3.346 & 40-1)
•O mother, mother,
•What have you done? Behold the
heavens do ope,
•The gods look down, and this
unnatural scene
•They laugh at. O my mother, mother,
O.