"The Failing Messengers of Antony and Cleopatra." 
https://www.worldshakesbib.org/entry/bbbp2/
Author:
	Hartmann, Anna-Maria.
Type:
	Journal Article
Year:
	2025
Publication Information:
	Review of English Studies 76, no. 326 (2025): 380–95.
DOI:
	10.1093/res/hgaf052
Annotation:
	Contends that series of failed messengers across Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra are fundamental to how Shakespeare engages with the play’s genre by negotiating its relationship with classical and neoclassical tragedy. Asserts that Shakespeare employs the nuntius as an aspect of his dramaturgy to imply a larger imagined world beyond what is shown in a staged performance. Concludes with a close reading of the messenger missing from Antony’s death scene, modelled on a messenger missing from Sophocles’s Ajax, whose erasure allows Shakespeare to achieve the generically complicated representation of Antony’s performed death. English summary, 380.
Language:
	English
Persons:
	Sophocles
Tags:
	Antony and Cleopatra, Scholarship, Criticism, History of Criticism, Shakespeare's Sources and Influences on Shakespeare
WSB Update:
	Winter 2025
WSB Record Number:
	bbbp2