A Comparison of Two of Shakespeare's Plays

William Shakespeare was christened on April 26, 1564 at Stratford-on-Avon, where he died on April 23, 1616 (Bloom, xii). In his discussion of Shakespeare's life, work, and influence, Barrett Wendell (7) states that Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, a woman who occupied a social position somewhat higher than that of her spouse. John Shakespeare held the position of High Bailiff or mayor in Stratford, but the family, which included six children, began to experience financial reversals in 1578. It is known that Shakespeare married on November 28, 1582, choosing as his wife Anne Hathaway (who was 26 at the time of marriage) and with whom he had three children (Wendell, 8).

It was not until 1587 that Shakespeare joined the London theatrical world, during which period he acted in and wrote most of his plays along with his famous sonnets (Bloom, xiii). In about 1610, Shakespeare returned to live in Stratford, but after 1613, when he composed The Two Noble Kinsmen in collaboration with John Fletcher, he gave up his career as a dramatist (Bloom, xiii). Thus, Shakespeare's most prolific period occurred during his life in London beginning with 1589's Henry VI, Part I and concluding in 1610 with The Winter's Tale. The two plays to be analyzed in this report are Romeo and Juliet (1595-1596) and Antony and Cleopatra (1606).

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thy breath, hath no power yet upon thy beauty: thou are not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, and death's pale flag is not advanced there Shakespeare, in Masefield, 60)." Bloom (87) calls Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare's first authentic tragedy. Most significantly, Bloom (88) says that what Shakespeare addressed was the death of lovers rather than the death of love. Bloom (88) contends that Shakespeare's own union with Anne 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, according to Alan Hager (58), 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 opposing political camps as is central to the story of Antony and Cleopatra. Hager (58) also links Antony and Cleopatra to the earlier story told in Julius Caesar, a play in which both Antony and Cleopatra appear as secondary characters. Basically, Antony and Cleopatra explicates Cleopatra's desire to secure power from Octavian Ca

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