Greetings again! My favorite Shakespearean character must be Mark Antony, as featured in the Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. Within the phantasmagorical division of this tragedy, there is a dichotomy present: austere Rome, and sensual and voluptuous Egypt. Cleopatra VII is portayed as histrionic and Mark Antony as effeminate. Mark Antony has fallen to hubristic passions from a Roman hero to one obsequious to lascivious temptations. At first, a moral reprehension occurs as both figures are found to be heavily flawed and repulsive to the taste, yet William Shakespeare has instilled Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII with tragic grandeur, with a hopeless love to the relentless onslaught of Rome's puissant arms. Mark Antony can be construed as multitudinous figures- an Aristotelian tragic hero, a Byronic hero or a proponent of a differentiating and more vibrant figure. Aristotelian theory consists of "hubris" as "hamartia" or the tragic flaw. Next comes "peripeteia" or a reversal of fortune, "anagnorisis" or the realization of the flaw , "catharsis" or an emotional purgation and an "epiphany" or a self-revelation. Furthermore, according to the Aristotelian Three Unities of the Unity of Time, Unity of Space and Unity of Action, Shakespeare's Antony is not one of an Aristotelian mold as the play does not take place within a twenty-four hour period, or within a twelve hour period as argued by Lodovico Castelvetro during Renaissance theory. John Dryden, Corneille, Racine, Moliere and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing all took the Aristotelian concept to heart. A byronic hero is one of magnificence of intellect and isolation filled with boundless turmoil and anguish of the mind that is self-inflicted to a contumelious and hubristic demeanour. Thus, Mark Antony though combining elements from Aristotle and Lord Byron, is a unique invention of William Shakespeare who like Joachim du Bellay, Dante and Desiderius Erasmus wrote in the vernacular and tried to illuminate the world through a whole new outlook. Overall, a character of vacillation and of contradictory values-lurking within the recesses of the human character.
"A World-Historical individual is devoted to the One Aim, regardless of all else. It is even possible that such men may treat other great, even sacred interests inconsiderately; conduct which is indeed obnoxious to moral reprehension. But so mighty a form must trample down many an innocent flower or crush to pieces many an object in its path."
From G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of History in Jacob Loewenberg (ed.), Hegel: Selections (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1929), pp. 376-80.
Melissa_W
