domenica 17 gennaio 2010

Antony and Cleopatra

Appunti sulla tragedia Antony and Cleopatra di Willliam Shakespeare, edizione di John Wilders, The Arden Shakespeare.

Shakespeare probably completed Antony and Cleopatra towards the end of 1606 or early in 1607.
The story had been told in detail by the first-century biographer Plutarch and his account translated into both French and English. Virgil had referred to it in the eight book of the Aeneid, Horace had written an ode on the courage and dignity of Cleopatra’s suicide and Chaucer had described her death in “The legend of good Women”.
Antony and Cleopatra shift rapidly from tenderness to fury and grief and the emotions of the one are largely determined by those of the other. We are willing to believe in their love because the violence of their frequent quarrels testifies to their total absorption on each other.

Antony and Cleopatra is a public as well as a private drama in which Antony and Octavius compete for mastery over the Roman Empire which, at the time, extended from Britain in the west to what is now Turkey in the east, and the battles in which this contest was fought out occupy much of the third and fourth acts. Caesar ultimately wins and Antony loses because of the kind of people they are and because of the irresistible power which Cleopatra exercises over Antony. This gives to the relationship between the lovers a sense of unusual weight and risk.

Is typical of their self- dramatization that when Antony distributes the countries of the eastern empire to Cleopatra and her children he does so in a public ceremony at which the two of them sit in “chairs of gold” on a silver platform and she is decked out in the habiliments of the goddess Isis.



The question of structure
In Antony and Cleopatra there are constant shifts of location.
Throughout the ply, Roman attitudes and principles, expressed mainly by Octavius Caesar, are placed in opposition to the Egyptian, represented chieftly by Cleopatra.
Rome and Egypt “represent crucial moral choices and they function as symbolic locales in a manner not unlike Henry James’s Europe and America” (Charney)
For the Romans the ideal is measured in masculine, political, pragmatic, military terms, the subservience of the individual to the common good of the state, of personal pleasure to public duty.
Alexandria is a predominantly female society for which the ideal is measured in terms of the intensity of emotion, the subservience of social responsibility to the demands of feeling.
Caesar regards his “great competitor” as a man who has betrayed his own ideals but Cleopatra sees him as a man who has become at one with herself.
Into the characters there are different feelings depending on the mood and circumstances in which characters find themselves.
Antony – Cleopatra: enchanting queen/triple-turned whore.
Cleopatra- Antony: horrible villain/ a proper man
Caesar-Antony: old ruffian/mate in empire, brother



Images of instability
Shakespeare seems to be creating his own vocabulary to establish the feeling of disintegration in the Roman world.
Caesar, foreseeing that his own and Antony’s temperaments are so incompatible that their friendship is unlike to last, longs for a “hoop” which will hold them “staunch” or watertight; Antony, ashamed of his lost reputation and his pitifully botched suicide, hopes that his fame as “the greatest prince o’th’world” will remain intact, and Enobarbus recognizes that a servant willing to remain loyal to a “fallen lord” will “(earn) a place i’th’story”.

sabato 2 gennaio 2010

Notable quotes in Romeo And Juliet

Qui di seguito riportiamo alcuni brani della tragedia di Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet".
Leggi e associa le frasi con il personaggio che le pronuncia. Poi prendi il testo e controlla!

- Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death

- if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight

- A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo

- Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st, A damned saint, an honorable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell, When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace!

- Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two And sleeps again.

- Upon hearing that Romeo has killed her cousin, Tybalt, Juliet both curses and blesses her husband, Romeo.

- In Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech, how a person's life experiences come back in dreams.

- The apothecary warns Romeo of the strength of the poison.

- Just before he takes the poison, takes his farewell of Juliet with a kiss.

- Prince Escalus delivers the last speech of the play

Look this video: Romeo+Juliet Soundtrack. Enjoy it!

Imperativo

Studia l'Imperativo con Cantaimpara e Englis Gratis:
l'uso dell'imperativo in Inglese può essere appreso facilmente con questa canzone tratta dal Muiscal "Jesus Christ Superstar".
Un moderno Erode, decisamente fashion-victim, mette alla prova Gesù ordinandogli dei prodigi. Trova i verbi all'imperativo e segui il link!

Ecco il testo:
Jesus, I am overjoyed to meet you face to face.
You've been getting quite a name all around the place.
Healing cripples, raising from the dead.
And now I understand you're God, At least, that's what you've said.
So, you are the Christ, you're the great Jesus Christ.
Prove to me that you're divine; change my water into wine.
That's all you need do, then I'll know it's all true.
Come on, King of the Jews.
Jesus, you just won't believe the hit you've made around here.
You are all we talk about, the wonder of the year.
oh, what a pity if it's all a lie. Still, I'm sure that you can rock the cynics if you tried.
So, you are the Christ, you're the great Jesus Christ.
Prove to me that you're no fool; walk across my swimming pool.
If you do that for me, then I'll let you go free.
Come on, King of the Jews. I only ask what I'd ask any superstar.
What is it that you have got that puts you where you are.
I am waiting, yes I'm a captive fan.
I'm dying to be shown that you are not just any man.
So, if you are the Christ, yes the great Jesus Christ Feed my household with this bread.
You can do it on your head. Or has something gone wrong. Jesus, why do you take so long?
Oh come on, King of the Jews.
Mr. Wonderful Christ? You're a joke. You're not the Lord. You are nothing but a fraud.
Take him away. He's got nothing to say!
Get out you King of the, Get out King of the, Oh get out you King of the Jews!
Get out of here! Get out of here you, get out of my life.


E qui troverai il video di Erode