A Comparative Study Between Antony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet
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A comparative study between Antony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet
The essay attempts to compare and contrast two representative plays of the greatest dramatist of the English language, William Shakespeare. Both plays are integral to the Shakespearian canon and has tremendously influenced the works followed. Romeo and Juliet is the quintessential tragic love story while Antony and Cleopatra has a complicated plot of Antony’s obsession with her and the woman eventually calling the shots. In Romeo and Juliet we also find families at war, their children victims of an argument which is meaningless and irrelevant in the face of a mutual attraction. It is the best tragic comedy written by Shakespeare. The play explores the enchanting element of love at the peak.
In Antony and Cleopatra the wars of nations, political intrigue trap the lovers in a net from which death is the only escape. Both the pairs of lovers are dead at the end of the play. Shakespeare’s plays Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra shares some common themes and attitudes among them love, war and the notion that love between two people can conquer even death.
Thy breath hath no power: yet upon thy beauty thou are not conquered; beauty’s ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, and death’s pale flag is not advanced there Shakespeare, n Masefield. Many intellectuals’ calls Romeo and Juliet was the first authentic tragedy of Shakespeare. Shakespeare addressed the death of lovers rather than the death of love.
Blooms contends that Shakespeare’s own union Anny Hathaway was empty of passion and that in describing the idyllic and then tragic romance of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare was envisioning the kind of love that he himself wanted but did not have
Antony and Cleopatra is far more overtly a truly political play than Romeo and Juliet. The rivalry between the Capulets and Montagues in Romeo and Juliet is really only a family feud and not a struggle between the opposing...
The essay attempts to compare and contrast two representative plays of the greatest dramatist of the English language, William Shakespeare. Both plays are integral to the Shakespearian canon and has tremendously influenced the works followed. Romeo and Juliet is the quintessential tragic love story while Antony and Cleopatra has a complicated plot of Antony’s obsession with her and the woman eventually calling the shots. In Romeo and Juliet we also find families at war, their children victims of an argument which is meaningless and irrelevant in the face of a mutual attraction. It is the best tragic comedy written by Shakespeare. The play explores the enchanting element of love at the peak.
In Antony and Cleopatra the wars of nations, political intrigue trap the lovers in a net from which death is the only escape. Both the pairs of lovers are dead at the end of the play. Shakespeare’s plays Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra shares some common themes and attitudes among them love, war and the notion that love between two people can conquer even death.
Thy breath hath no power: yet upon thy beauty thou are not conquered; beauty’s ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, and death’s pale flag is not advanced there Shakespeare, n Masefield. Many intellectuals’ calls Romeo and Juliet was the first authentic tragedy of Shakespeare. Shakespeare addressed the death of lovers rather than the death of love.
Blooms contends that Shakespeare’s own union Anny Hathaway was empty of passion and that in describing the idyllic and then tragic romance of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare was envisioning the kind of love that he himself wanted but did not have
Antony and Cleopatra is far more overtly a truly political play than Romeo and Juliet. The rivalry between the Capulets and Montagues in Romeo and Juliet is really only a family feud and not a struggle between the opposing...