Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Ekphrasis in Antony and Cleopatra

Ekphrasis, the dramatic, visual description or painting of a thing, person or place is used by Shakespeare to entrance the reader as Enorarbus describes Cleopatra:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of tissue--
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did. (2.2.197-211)

Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature. (2.2.213.223)

Shakespeare paints a vivid and desirable image of the Queen of the Nile which is no longer present in the play. In many ways it teases the audience, contributing to the sense nostalgia already present in the play. The audience desires this lush, romanticized image of Cleopatra and of Egypt in both defeat and triumph, but Shakespeare only tantalizes them with this description that apeals to all senses, rather than bring the play to this desired place.
Amber Ackerman
Section 1B
Ian Hoch

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