""FC ""; ""Half title""; ""Arden Student Skills: Language and Writing""; ""Title""; ""Copyright""; ""Contents""; ""Acknowledgements""; ""Series editor�s preface""; ""Preface""; ""Introduction and overview""; ""Shakespeare�s perspective art""; ""First appearance""; ""The legend""; ""Peopling Egypt and Rome""; ""Genre""; ""Writing matters""; ""1 Language in print: Reading the performance script""; ""Early modern staging""; ""Reading the Folio text""; ""Visualizing the scene""; ""�He words me, girls, he words me�""; ""Cutting the text""; ""Writing matters""
""2 Language: Forms and uses""""Feel the beat""; ""Prose""; ""Sound and sense""; ""Figurative language""; ""Mythmaking""; ""Wordplay""; ""Writing matters""; ""3 Language through time: Changing interpretations""; ""Antony and Cleopatra after Shakespeare""; ""Characterizing the characters""; ""Well-wrought urns""; ""Deconstructing the text""; ""History and politics""; ""Gender""; ""Cleopatra�s tawny front""; ""Colonizing Egypt""; ""From stage to page""; ""Intertextuality""; ""New questions""; ""Writing matters""; ""4 Writing checklist""; ""Bibliography""
Reading Antony and Cleopatra is particularly challenging because of Shakespeare's masterful embodiment of Rome and Egypt's contrasting worlds in language, structure, and characterization. Instead of seeing the interaction of Roman and Egyptian perspectives in Antony and Cleopatra as a type of double image of reality that changes as one moves from one location to another, students often find themselves compelled to pick sides. The more romantic opt for Cleopatra as the most sympathetic character, while the pragmatists dismiss her lifestyle as self-indulgent. The central challenge in reading th
