Antony Critics

Question 1

Schlegel

Answer 1

‘mixture of great qualities, weaknesses, and vices, violent ambition and ebullitions of magnanimity’
‘sunk in luxurious enjoyments and nobly ashamed of his own aberrations’

Question 2

AC Bradley

Answer 2

‘his nature tends to splendid action and lusty enjoyment’
‘neither a mere soldier nor a mere sentimentalist, or at the man of principle’
‘power for him is chiefly a means to pleasure’

Question 3

Charney

Answer 3

‘Antony resembles Hamlet in at least one respect: both have an acute awareness of their moral situation, but they are seemingly without the power to change it’
‘their tragedies do not come from a blindness or error of judgement, but from a deep seated defect of will’

Question 4

HA Mason

Answer 4

‘the Antony we were to see was never shown’
‘we are told…that he was a supreme specimen of humanity’
‘Shakespeare’s Antony, in fact, is not markedly more heroic and godlike than what we divine to have been Plutarch’s conception’

Question 5

Adelman

Answer 5

‘Antony becomes the representative of the Roman Republic…that has now decayed into decadence and complacency’
‘he is now…an ageing remnant of the golden age of the Roman Republic’

Question 6

Alderman

Answer 6

‘our sense of ancient Roman virtues comes…from the descriptions of Antony as he used to be’

Question 7

Fitch

Answer 7

‘naturally, Antony…must be disposed of by the end of Act IV, so the last act may be given to the stark confrontation…of Cleopatra and Octavius’

Question 8

Donnald

Answer 8

‘Antony is torn between two irreconcilable but equally fundamental parts of his personality, reflected in the opposing worlds of Egypt and Rome’

Question 9

Wilders

Answer 9

‘self-dramatisation’

Question 10

Gardiner

Answer 10

‘warmth and magnanimity’