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Essay / Instances where staging was used in Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare uses staging in different ways to create dramatic effects in “Antony and Cleopatra”. The Jacobean scenes were very simple, nothing more than an empty wooden platform planted among the spectators, with no scenery to raise or lower. The emptiness of Shakespeare's stage and the absence of scenery drew the audience's attention to the actors. This creates a dramatic effect as the audience focuses on the dialogue of the play without being distracted, allowing them to concentrate entirely on the play. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'? Get an original essay The actors were presumably dressed in a combination of contemporary and 'classic' costumes, which helps the audience visualize nationality, rank and gender of the characters. Although Cleopatra's order to Charmian, "cut my lace", indicates that she wore the kind of tight bodice favored by Queen Elizabeth, there was an attempt to provide her and her entourage with "Egyptian" clothing » as well as “fans of various colors”. held by the eunuchs who accompanied him during his first entry. The exchange of clothes between Antony and Cleopatra, which she remembers with amusement during her absence in Rome, in act 2 scene 5, is, for Caesar, a sign of their degeneration. The dress conveys information while creating a spectacle and it is important that Philo and Demetrius, with whom the conversation of the tragedy begins, are identifiable as Roman soldiers commenting on the enslavement of their leader by an Egyptian queen. Although there is no visual impression created by the landscape, the play is full of expressive groups of characters on which the audience can focus without distraction, notably when Cleopatra and her ladies raise Antony in the temporarily deprived haven of his monument . Shakespeare is also quite precise in his staging, as when Pompey and Menas enter "through one door with drum and trumpet" and the triumvirs and their supporters arrive "through another... with soldiers marching", in the Act 2, scene 6. The sounds and images of war accompany this first meeting between the opposing camps. At their next and final meeting, act 2, scene 7, the representatives of the two camps, placed "hand in hand", join in the singing of a drunken song before helping each other out of Pompey's mess. This depicts the unity between the characters as they rejoice. Again, the entering direction in Act 2, Scene 3, specifically asks Antony and Caesar to come with Octavia "between them", a visual expression of divided loyalties, which must trouble her more deeply. as the action develops. Eugene M. Waith argues that Longleat's manuscript, which appears to depict a performance of Titus Andronicus, "gives us a more vivid impression of the visual impact of Elizabethan acting." The illustration shows the two Roman soldiers on the left and the two captive sons on the right of the main characters, suggesting that the stage groups were kept as symmetrical as possible. Such normally symmetrical arrangements would have highlighted occasional asymmetries, as at the end of Pompey's feast when a conference, officially begun, ended in disorder. Attending a performance of this tragedy is both an aural and visual experience created not simply by the counterpoint of the different voices but by the musical accompaniment, which Shakespeare's productions require. The initial entrance of "Antony and Cleopatra" is announced by a "Flourish" which, ironically.