Language and Imagery Antony and Cleopatra is distinguished among Shakespeare’s plays for its lush, evocative language. Some critics have even suggested that it should be classified with Shakespeare’s long poems rather than ranked alongside his plays. Scholarly discussion has focused on Enobarbus’s vividly detailed depiction of Cleopatra on her barge and on the lovers’ continual…
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Antony and Cleopatra – Themes
Rome versus Egypt The play focuses on the personal relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, and in doing so it juxtaposes two value systems, Rome and Egypt. Rome, the West, as embodied in Octavius Caesar, is a guardian of moral restraint, personal responsibility, social order, reason, and military discipline. Further, Rome places a high value on…
Antony and Cleopatra – Characters
Agrippa Agrippa is a friend and follower of Octavius Caesar. It is Agrippa who suggests that the differences between Antony and Octavius might be resolved through marriage between Antony and Caesar’s sister, Octavia. Later, Agrippa leads Octavius Caesar’s forces against Antony. Alexas Alexas is an attendant to Cleopatra. He jokes with Cleopatra’s maids, Charmian and…
Antony and Cleopatra – Act Wise Summary
Act 1, Scene 1 Antony and Cleopatra begins in Cleopatra’s palace in Alexandria. Demetrius and Philo, two of Antony’s veteran soldiers, complain that Antony’s infatuation with Cleopatra has had a bad effect on his qualities as a general. They see him as a great warrior transformed by his passion into a harlot’s slave. Antony enters…
All’s Well That Ends Well – Themes
Critical interpretation of All’s Well That Ends Well often hinges on whether the critic believes the play lives up to its title. The widespread belief that it does not has led to its reputation as a problem play, or rather, a comedy with strings attached. Shakespeare, who was by all accounts an astute observer of…
All’s Well That Ends Well – Analysis
Marriage is a central element in the construct of Renaissance comedy. In the Shakespearean canon, a number of the comedies include marriages, placing them (or implying that they impend) close to or at the plays’ ends as a reaffirmation, restoration and promise for the continuation of society. Other comedies deal with married women as in…
My Mother Pieced Quilts – Analysis
The poem “My Mother Pieced Quilts” was published in 1976 at the beginning of a renaissance of Mexican-American (also referred to as Chicana [for female authors]) literary creativity. This renaissance did not reflect the female authors’ sudden burst of creativity, for there always were women writing, but rather it reflects the sudden willingness on the…
My Mother Pieced Quilts – Themes
Kinship/Motherhood Teresa Palomo Acosta’s poem “My Mother Pieced Quilts” stitches together pieces of memory, history, and tradition to create a poem, much as her mother once stitched together pieces of old dresses, work clothes, and nightgowns to create a quilt. In the poem “My Mother Pieced Quilts,” the speaker reflects on images of her mother,…
My Mother Pieced Quilts – Meaning – Annotation
Lines 1–4 Acosta begins the poem at the most literal level, introducing the quilts and how they were used: for warmth against winter chill. Using a metaphor, she describes the quilts as “weapons” against “pounding january winds,” perhaps the way a young child would imagine them during the coldest of winter nights. Lines 5–7 Here…
maggie and milly and molly and may – Analysis
Critics seemed unable to pigeonhole e. e. cummings. He was a man of many moods—some caustic and full of ridicule, others quiet and contemplative. The themes of his poetry were just as likely to be influenced by politics and social affairs as by sexuality and love. But one recurring theme that cummings seems to have…