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The Death Drive in Shakespeqre B Bibliography The Death Drive in Shakespeqre b Anon. The Lady Falkland: Her Life. Ed. Barry Weller and Margaret W. Ferguson. Antony and Cleopatra Berkeley: U of CaliforniaP, 1994. Charlton, Kenneth. "Women and Education." Pachecho 3-21. Lynne M. Simpson Presbyterian College Cressy, David. Birth, Maniage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. count ' pyramus and Thisby" in A Midsummer Night,s Dream, Antony and-_, Lreopatra-,]r^J:: is Shakespeare's third telting Dolan, Frances E. "Reading, Work, and Catholic Women's Biographies'" ELR (33.3): of Romeo and JurleL the story of star_ crossed lovers from feuding.worlds who.uriimatery commit suicide. Love is a..poi- 328-357. son"'one that will literally kill cleopatra in the phallic rove bite ;irh;p. I" Tuelfth Night, imagination and love must surfeit so that they wilr die (r.r.r-3). In tragedy, Gouge, William. Of Domesticall Duties. From Lay by Your Needles, Ladies, Take Antony and cleopatra themselves must die so that imagination and rove wiil be without the Pen. Eds. Suzanne Trill, Kate Chedgzoy, and Melanie Osbome. London: limit. Arnold, 1997. tragedy, . .T!i: for me, has arways most embodied the idea of Freud,s todestrieb or death.drive. pleT|ure principre, ln Beyond t\ Freud shockingry assertsihat.,r/,e Hinde, William . The Christian Life and Death of Mistris Kalherine Brettergh. aim of all life is death,'[emphasis his] and that: London, 1612. STC (2nd ed) / 12864 Our views have from the very first been dualistic, and today they are even more.definitely dualistic than to Early Modern Women's lYriting. Oxford: before, now that we describe the opposition Pachecho, Anita, ed. A Companion as Derng. not between ego-instincts and sexual instincts but between life Blackwell,2002. instincts and death instinits. (Freud 1g.53) Appropriately, the great Phillippy, Patricia. Women, Death and Literalure in Post-Refotmation England Freudian paradox ofthe death drive underscores the shake_ speare tragedy perhaps Cambridge: Cambridge UB 2002. most.characterized itself by contradiction and opposition.r In Antony and cleopatra, love is concepfualized in no terms other than death, as if the opposing drive has already been vanquished. Life Smith, Richard. The Life of the Most Honourable and Vertuotx Lady the La. itself becomes-- *-'-- -o---J''rv^! enemy to the lovers than Caesar and "g-i',n*" Magdalen l1scountesse Montague. 1627. Ed. D.M. Rogers. Menston: Scolar Rome. "r* In loving homage to death, Cleopatra conceives Press, 1970. Vol. 54 of English Recusant Literature 1558-1640. D.M. Rogers, herself as a femme .fatale: ed. 394 vols. ...Now I feed mvself With most delicibus poison. Think on me lhat Stubbes, Philip. I Christal Glas for Christian Women. London, 1592' STC am with Phoebus'amorous pinches black And wrinkled deep in time? eroiO-f.on1"i (2nd ed) I 23382 bu..u.- when thou wast here above the qround- I was* A.morsel for a monarch; and greit p;;'p.y Pachecho 22-39. W_ould Wiflen, Diane. "Religion and the Construction of the Feminine." stand and make his eyes grow in'm'v "'.-hrow: "' There would he anchor his alpec"t, and- di;' With looking on his life. (1.5'.27-35\ The Dcath Drive ln Shakespeare's Anton.t'and Cleopatra 6'7 ;, n': no- emasculation of Antony, preferring to adopt the limited view of Caesar and Roman l,"oounu rantasi zes or,'.r'",1'l ol."l'* ;": ln:"'ll';.ll:,':" condemnation: "is not more manlike Than Cleopatra, nor the of Ptolemy / "amorous pinches" have darkened her and / Queen self first as the lover of the ;un g-od, thot" caesar, More womanly than he. ."( I .4.5-7).2 Yet, Antony only claims to be emasculated in his *itt, *.lnt r.i The love of a god is not without cost. Julius damaged her skin despair and shame following the Battle of Actium. Antony, the consummate general, theRomanemperorandthereforebothdivineandhuman,hasdinedonCleopatra.But appears absolute for death before Actium, despite his assertion that he expects "victori- shehasimplicitlybeenapoisoneddish,forCaesarnolongerwalksabove..ground''or ous life / Than death and honour" (4.2.43-44).lndeed, the liebestod inAntony asserts, p".p"v, uv .making babies'with Cleopatra through exchanging eats with the living. -Burton's make love (3.13.194). The Anatomy of Melancholy'tl: "l'll death me..." lovers' gazes. also dies. Robert l:Yt'un"' portal for love than the eyes (3:64-87)' And Antony's plaintive cries for his own lost self "make his followers weep" authority, reminds us there is no more fatar love to his own mortality by joining him- (4.2.24-33); he invites them to join in his lamentation. He cries, "Haply you shall not embracing cleopatra, inlony too makes by see me more, or if, / A mangled shadow.. ." (4.2.26-27). Later, he likens himself to a selfirrevocablytothewoman*ho.ouplesrepeatedlvwithdeath.HemakesAdam's consort with thee, Death is to me as constantly shifting cloud: "here I am Antony, / Yet cannot hold this visible shape..." according to John Mil,on,.....iiDeattr/ choice. (4.14.13-14). Linda Charnes observes, "ln Cleopatra's theatrical habitus, 'infinite va- Life" (PL 9.953-54). riety'constitutes identity as a source of flexible strength; while in Antony's narrative ToenticeAntony,this.femmefatalewantsitreportedthatsheistheopposite sad' / Say I am dancing: babitus, such variety can only represent the infirmity ofbeing unable to hold one's vis- whatever state he i, in''Gyou nnA nim of ll]-1:lnn'*-will itself ible He and "he has and has ,i.t...,'(1.3.4-6). Cleopatra;s contrarian strategy 'shape"'(128). seeks dissolution. Tired ofCleopatra what ;ilffi;;,;*lO* Both lovers act childishly petulant when not," Antony anticipates death as Stoic consolation: "0 sun, thy uprise shall I see no be repeated in deadly .u.n"* in act roui. Antonl' and,Cleopatra is in itself a magnificent more, / Fortune and Antony part here, even here" (4. I 2. I 8- I 9). separated from the l""t Perhap,s "bjt;1' in the first couple of acts is whether or Clearly, after Cleopatra's desertion it is not the loss of fortune nor even empire game of hide and seek? ril. ,.ul t.r,rion ".ry that most dismays Antony: notAntonywillretum'ff"-uVt'ia"inRorne'butnotforlong;afterallCleopatrais Ernst's reprisal on his^absent mother' .home., Freud's footnotgin Blyond, detailing ...Betrayed I am. oT solitude the child had found a method is apropos here: ".'.during mlti""gpttiod O this false soul ofEgypt! This grave charm his reflection in a tull-length mirror Whose forth my wars and called them home, of making himself disapi!* H" rru'oaircoleref eye becked that by crouching down he could make his Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end, which did not quite ,"utfl to tt't ground' so like little Ernst'srevenge when Like a right gypsy hath at fast and loose ( r s, I ii. iLipu*u gor .o..ttting mirror_image gon",, be Beguiled me to the very heart of loss. (4.12.24-28) in the third act (3.10.1-4;14-15)' only to she disastrously n.e, tn.nuttl. oie.tiurn will n: separation that he does not initiate' Antony loses everything, he fears, because he has lost Cleopatra, "the very heart of followed doggedly UV n"t"V' He !*9\ for as scarus reports, "His fretted loss." His Egyptian once again proves deadly, a"grave charm." Antony next calls out His fate is irrevocably entwined with hers, he has and has not"(4.12.9-g). He conquers for Eros (4.12.30), but it is Cleopatra who comes instead: she is, after all, love as well fortunes give him hope and fear / ofwhat and rewarding Scarus by allowing him to as death, Unable to console Antony or absolve herself, she retreats to her monument to one day retuming triurnfr'uni to Cl::pl1" his navy sunenders to cae- once again play hide and seek. She even instructs Mardian to report she has commit- his qu.Jn'i+.s.rz-t+). rne foilowing day, kiss the hand of (4.13.9) betrayed him (+'12'e-15)' Antony's catastrophic ted suicide and that her last word was Antony spoken "piteously" for effect. sar's, and Cleopatra upp"ut' to have -u"ru. death wish. He claims to fight at sea Only too late does she realize how compelling her performance might be (4.14.122- battte is a klnd of choice of a sea 29). Antony grieves over the reported loss ofCleopatra, this time to death rather than "guinr, however, cle_arly he hopes to impress th.e Queen. because caesar..dares,'[i. tl.l.zsl; / Caesar. All mourning is, in part, auto-mouming: a narcissistic wound prefiguring the on land for Cleopatra -"chance and hazard Antony willing abando;;;i;;"ptti;tity eventual, and inevitable, annihilation ofself. Once again he desires dissolution, not by have taken Cleopatra to task for her alleged From firm security"(:'iii-+gl' ctititt Thc Humanities Review The Death Drive ln Shake speare,s Anton.t,and (.leopatra 69 losing his visible shape but by being freed ofthe confines ofthe body altogether: "O, metaphorically" raised (7g). Cleopatra elevates cleave, my sides! / Hearl, once be stronger than thy continent; / Crack thy frail case!" the mutilated body ofAntony and then in her encomium resrores t i, ,.puturion (4.14.40-42). Katherine MacMullan also notes that in the final two acts "Shakespeare Uy a.ifyj"g frlrn. Cleopatra, who wears the ..habiliment, employs all the languid, luxurious connotations of sleep to portray the dying queen oi?fr" goddess lsis,,(3.6.17), presides as priestess at her lover's.
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