SOURCE: “Antony and Cleopatra: A Mythological Perspective,” in Orbis Litterarum, Vol. 45, No. 3, 1990, pp. 309-29.

In the following essay, MacKenzie suggests that Shakespeare constructed parallels between the eponymous characters of Antony and Cleopatra and figures from Roman mythology, only to abandon this classical perspective later in the play in order to pursue a new mythology based upon the ideal of human love.

The tensions of divided loyalty in Antony and Cleopatra have challenged the imaginations and ingenuity of many critics. Hazlitt speaks of a duel between “Roman pride and Eastern magnificence,”¹ a century later M. W. MacCallum argues, of Mark Antony, “the life at Rome and the life at Alexandria both tug at his heart-strings,”² and Eugene Waith insists that the “central problem remains the validity of Cleopatra's, as opposed to Caesar's ideal.”³ Some commentators have further articulated the mechanism of tension by relating it to structural and verbal...