SOURCE: Simmons, J. L. “The Comic Pattern and Vision in Antony and Cleopatra.” ELH 36, no. 3 (September 1969): 493-510.

In the following essay, Simmons explores the ways in which the structure and thematic interests of Antony and Cleopatra are reflective of elements of Shakespearean comedy.

Antony and Cleopatra is in the anomalous position of being Shakespeare's delightful tragedy. Death for Cleopatra has lost its terror if not its sting. The fear of something after or simply the horror of cessation is not a part of the effect, an effect all tragedy works with to some degree. Instead, the grave offers a victory:

No grave upon the earth shall clip in it A pair so famous. 

(V.ii.362-363)¹

Throughout the play the love-death imagery has pointed to this embracing grave, to some “mettle in death” that only a saint, certainly no tragic personage, can descry. By being absolute for death...