Essay - Shakespeare's 'Anthony and Cleopatra' Begins and Ends with A Banquet....

Shakespeare's "Anthony and Cleopatra" begins and ends with a banquet. The play opens with the image of ***** and Cleopatra arm in arm, talk*****g about how much they love one another in the context of revelry and feasting in Egypt. The play ends with *****, alone ***** her handmaids, being consumed by an asp. "Will it eat me?" she asks the asp-seller in the final act. (5.2.263) It is a fitting end to ***** play that uses food as a metaphor throughout its dialogue as a me*****sure of how excessive various char*****ers are in love and ***** politics.

Cleopatra in particular uses food frequently to express her love for Anthony. She not only does this physically over the course ***** ***** play, us*****g ********** and strong drink as a way of celebrating his return and whiling the hours a***** when he is in Rome. Everything ***** something to be consumed in Cleopatra's eyes, and food also functions verbally ***** metaphor for her love and ***** desire ***** possess Anthony completely ***** utterly. "Give me so***** music, moody food/Of us that trade in love." (2.5.1) However, ***** the eyes of some of the o*****r characters in the ***** Cleopatra is herself a kind of food. Enobarbus, Anthony's trusted friend states: "Other women cloy/The appetites ***** feed, but she makes hungry/Where most she satisfies." (2.2.241-244)

*****, given his love for t***** exotic 'dish,' Anthony is a hedonist ***** n*****ture, in stark contrast to his ally (eventually ***** enemy) Octavius Caesar. In the dr*****king scene with Lepidus, ***** toasts: "***** [the wine] ripens towards it. /Strike the vessels, ho! / Here's to *****! But Caesar responds:" I could well *****bear't/*****t's monstrous labor ***** I wash my brain/An it grow fouler." Even in a to*****st drunk to him in his own name, ***** is revolted by over-consumption, particularly of grape and of alco*****l. He ***** clear he is only drinking because he hopes to construct a military alliance with t***** o*****her, less d*****ciplined revelers at the party. This ascetic quality in Caesar's nature helps set up the dichotomy created between Rome and ***** ***** the play. Within the context ***** the play, Rome is sober, masculine, and lacking excess and festivity. Rome is represented ***** Octavius Caesar's temperament. "But I had rather fast from all, four days, /Than drink so much in one." (2.7.96-97) Egypt is *****, feminine, full of strange, intoxicating potions, appetites, and desires. ***** best represents the contrasts ***** Egypt. Anthony's divided *****ul provides a kind of bridge between these two divided mor*****l worlds of ***** and Egypt. ***** ***** Roman ***** a m*****nly soldier yet also full of desire for what is womanly and soft, ***** excessive.

Caesar succeeds in h***** bid ***** power, the ***** suggests, because he represents the *****-eyed Roman view of the world. When ***** s*****ging boy, at the end of the drinking bout, sings "Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne! /In ********** v*****s our cares be drowned, /With thy grapes ***** hairs ***** crowned!" Caesar states