The tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra is above all the tragedy of Antony

Written around 1607 and 1607 and published in 1623, Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare is a play which evokes complex and ambiguous responses. Revolving around the central theme of the love relationship between the great Mark Antony of Rome and the legendary beauty Cleopatra of Egypt, Shakespeare shows us the power politics which was predominant during the times of Antony. In Antony and Cleopatra, the chain of events is made to seem more predetermined than in most of Shakespeare's plays. Although many of the plays use expectation and prophecy and fulfillment, every event in this play is foreshadowed either by soothsayers or savvy observers like Enobarbus. Historical necessity, which would have one man alone rule Rome, seems to conspire to send Antony and Octavius head to head. And from the beginning, even someone with no prior knowledge of the story sees clearly that Octavius will win. Personal agency seems limited, and the suicides of the lovers near the end seem to be a final act of self-assertion, the only possible act left to them, in the face of historical necessity.

                        Antony and Cleopatra seems to have a special place in Shakespeare's works because it is at a crossroad between two types of play. It clearly belongs to what are generally called the 'Roman' plays, along with Coriolanus and Julius Caesar. But it is also considered a tragedy. The importance of history in the play cannot be denied, especially where it is compared to Shakespeare's 'great' tragedies such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. But one might wonder what is specifically tragic in Antony and Cleopatra, and what can be said about the tragic in a play which is so different from the other tragedies. It is clear that the notion of 'tragic' in the everyday sense is not necessarily the same as the notion of 'tragedy', which is a philosophical notion whose definition depends on which philosophic system one takes into account. In this article I shall take the term tragic in its literary and dramatic sense and try to define its main characteristics.

                        Relativity and ambiguity are prominent ideas in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, and the readers are challenged to come to conclusions about the ambivalent nature of many of the characters. The relationship between Antony and Cleopatra can easily be read as one of love or lust; their passion can be construed as being wholly destructive but also showing elements of transcendence. Cleopatra might be said to kill herself out of love for Antony, or because she has lost political power. Octavian can be seen as either a noble and good ruler, only wanting what is right for Rome, or as a cruel and ruthless politician. A major theme running through the play is opposition. Throughout the play oppositions between Rome and Egypt, love and lust, and masculinity and femininity are emphasized, subverted, and commented on. One of Shakespeare's most famous speeches, drawn almost verbatim from North's translation of Plutarch, Enobarbus's description of Cleopatra on her barge, is full of opposites resolved into a single meaning, corresponding with these wider oppositions that characterize the rest of the play. Shakespeare constantly juxtaposes the world of Egypt with the world of Rome. The leaps in space are greater here then in any Shakespearean play: we move from Egypt to Rome to Athens to other parts of the world in a matter of moments. Shakespeare uses Rome and Egypt to deal with a number of themes, organized in terms of oppositions: change versus the status quotient, martial values versus self-indulgence, masculine authority versus feminine authority, the values of an erstwhile Republic versus the values of despotism.

                        One cannot deny that Antony's love for Cleopatra is a weakness and even a fault. His passion makes him forget his duty, his honor as a soldier. He leaves the battle against Caesar because of Cleopatra, and he is an unfaithful husband to Fulvia and Octavia. On Cleopatra's advice he decides to fight at sea although his chances would be much better on land. On the other hand, his passion is not voluntary. He tries to resist it - by marrying Octavia, he tries to give politics a higher priority than love but fails. As a result, one cannot but feel compassion for him, even if he more or less 'deserved' his terrible end. Cleopatra, even if many traits of hers are unpleasant (she mistreats the unfortunate messenger who announces the marriage of Antony and Octavia, and she is particularly mean to her rival) deserves our compassion too. Shakespeare creates in her a character that is much more likely to awaken pity than the Cleopatra described in Plutarch, the main source of the play. To her, Antony was nothing more than a puppet she had to seduce for political reasons. She did not care about his person but only about his power. In Shakespeare's play, she is truly in love with Antony. When he is away, she asks for mandragora, 'That (she) might sleep out this great gap of time', while 'My Antony is away' (Act I, scene V). We do not see any reason why she should feign in the presence of Charmian. This true passion makes us sympathies with her.

                        Another characteristic feature of tragic heroes is that their personal fate is always linked to the destiny of a community. Their unhappiness is not merely a domestic catastrophe, but concerns many people. This is particularly clear when heroes have a political role, which is very often the case, especially in Greek tragedies. But even when the heroes are not sovereigns or leaders, their fates have an impact on community life. In Romeo and Juliet the two young heroes are of noble origin and their deaths is what eventually seals reconciliation between their families. In Antony and Cleopatra, this characteristic is particularly obvious: nothing less than the future of the Roman Empire - that is to say, the whole world for Romans of the time - is at stake. The rivalry between Caesar and Antony is a tragedy for Rome, since it leads to civil war. Antony's death is of great consequence for the Roman Empire: 'The death of Antony / Is not a single doom, in the name lay / A moiety of the world' (Act V, scene I) says Caesar as he hears about his rival's suicide. The fall of Cleopatra is also the fall of Egypt, which becomes eventually a part of the Roman Empire. By killing herself, Cleopatra does not only save her honor and dignity, but also the dignity of her nation.

                        If the conflict between the two leaders is inevitable, so is the decline of a country, and a civilization The independence of Egypt is doomed from the beginning of the play. Cleopatra tries to preserve it but she has no chance. The love between Antony and the queen of Egypt may seem to offer some hope, but the submission of one nation to another is as inevitable as the victory of one of the two competitors. When Antony leads the battle by sea, it is because of his passion for Cleopatra; she makes him defend her country: 'I made these wars for Egypt', he says, believing himself betrayed by the queen (Act IV, scene XIV). As soon as Antony has lost, Cleopatra has no political power and has to submit herself to the master of Rome. The ambassador explains to Caesar, even before Antony's death.

                        We can say that the tragic takes a prominent place in Antony and Cleopatra and has various aspects. The play is tragic in the greatness of the main characters, but also in the situation that leaves no possibility of compromise or a happy ending. Eventually, even if it is hard and probably hazardous to want to see a transcendence working through the play, there are in Antony and Cleopatra many features that show a determinism which constrains the freedom of the characters, making their free will fail. In fact, we can conclude that the tragic in this play is for the most part of a 'Classical' type, since several features of it can be compared with classical Greek or French tragedies. In fact the tragic might be more prominent in this hybrid play (both historical play and tragedy)Antony and Cleopatra, than it is in some of Shakespeare's 'great tragedies' such as Othello. Antony is betrayed both by his friends and his fellow countrymen, his lover Cleopatra is nowhere to be found and eventually he dies. This was to happen to the great Mark Antony of Rome, the Triumvir. So we can say that the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra is above all the tragedy of Antony.

                                                                                                                             G.K

'The Modern Prometheus’ with reference to the character of Viktor Frankenstein in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

The idea of man’s attaining God like power, challenging the authority of the divine and having a homocentric world was the interest of the nineteenth century scientists, physician and other natural philosophers. They dissected and experimented on many living things including humans in order to gain the knowledge of the insides of the human body and explored every possible way to create life. The idea of a ‘mad scientist’ in Viktor and the concept of creating life in a laboratory originated with Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (1818). Authors such as Poe, R. L. Stevenson, H. G. Wells and many more followed Shelley’s lead and incorporated science fiction as a genre in their works.

                     Shelly’s Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus is Man’s challenge to the authority of creation which is limited only to God and constantly seeking to define his place in the universe. Viktor, born into a wealthy family in Geneva, is encouraged to seek a greater understanding around him through science and he becomes so obsessed that he plans to reanimate life and hence works very hard in his mission. Frankenstein reflects the interest of early nineteenth-century world in biology and experiments on animals to revive the drowned and the newly dead, and reanimating dead tissue using electricity. These researchers sought to benefit humankind and to end death and disease through their investigations into “the secrets of nature.” Both parts of the title of Shelley's book refer to the main character of the story; they refer to the scientist Victor Frankenstein whom she termed as the ‘Modern Prometheus’. While the first part of the title mentions that the book could be taken as a biography of Viktor Frankenstein, the second part of the title brings up a question of interpretation.

 To understand the Promethean theme in Shelley's book, it is very important to know the story of Prometheus: In subtitling her novel The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley drew upon the mythological figure of the Greek Titan, Prometheus, who was punished by Zeus for giving fire, a symbol of knowledge, to humankind. Prometheus wanted to create a being which was able to absorb spirit, took clay and water and shaped human beings according to the image of the gods. Athene gave the creatures divine breath and shortly after the creation a great number of men lived in the world. Now Zeus and his fellows became aware of them and wanted to be adored by the human beings. The gods promised to take care of the human beings if they adore the gods and said what exactly they had to do in order to be protected. Prometheus went to Zeus as a lawyer of humanity to see to it that the conditions would not be too hard and stole a piece of the sun in order to provide fire to the humans. As a result Zeus got very angry and had Prometheus tied up to a rock of the Kaukasus to be tortured every day. For Shelley and her contemporaries, Prometheus represented the human desire to comprehend the universe. In her transformation of the Promethean myth, Mary Shelley created a new and dangerous story about discovery that is carried out for private gain and personal ambition, rather than for the enlightenment of all.

                    

                     The protagonist, Victor Frankenstein initially sees his actions as bringing wisdom and enlightenment to humanity much as Prometheus brought light and warmth to mankind, jumpstarting civilization.  As time goes on, Frankenstein begins to see himself as a twisted version of Prometheus who has brought not enlightenment, but destruction and terror to the world. The being he creates turns against him due to his neglect and despise towards his creation. He can also be viewed as a reflection of the aristocracy of the time, who themselves created one of their biggest problems: the middle class and forgot to take care of them in turn, he gets himself and the whole world into trouble..  Members of the aristocracy and upper class, such as Rousseau and Burke, advocated for the education of all citizens, but it was this education that allowed the underprivileged to gain wealth and influence to the point where they threatened the supremacy of the aristocracy.  This allows us to view Frankenstein almost as an amalgam of Zeus and Prometheus, as he wishes to come to humanity’s aid like Prometheus, but instead finds himself creating problems for them such as Zeus often did.

                                                                                                         G.K