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This essay aims to honor the important contributions Paul Cantor and David Lowenthal made through their thoughtful scholarship and extraordinary teaching to the study of Shakespeare as a playwright who studied political through his nature his portrayal of human nature and the variety of regimes available to human beings, from Athens and Rome to his own England. Both Cantor and Lowenthal thought deeply about Shakespeare's Roman plays and devoted much time to how Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" fit into his "Roman Trilogy." They agree that "Antony and Cleopatra" is a love story that parallels and portrays the final dissolution of not only the Roman republic, but the civic institutions and political way of life characteristic of ancient republicanism, and the transition to the Roman "time of universal peace" under the imperial rule of a single man (4.6.5). They also agree that the play signals the incipient introduction of Christianity into the world. Starting from this essential agreement, I explore the ways in which their arguments differ more on the details, and, in particular, where those details take them in their understanding of the character and ultimate fate of Antony and Cleopatra.
Carol McNamara (Thu,) studied this question.