SOURCE: “Mark Antony and the Tournament of Life,” in Shakespearean Tragedy: Genre, Tradition, and Change in Antony and Cleopatra, Folger Books, 1984, pp. 83-129.

In the following essay, Barroll examines the way in which desire and its “strangeness” inform the characterization of Antony.

I

Mark Antony is one of Shakespeare's most complexly imagined tragic heroes. For this we thank, of course, Shakespeare's human empathy and genius. But the compelling quality of Antony's humanity owes as much to strategy as to genius. And if, in the end, these are perhaps the same thing, then the strategy by which genius brings Antony to life, makes him a tragic “character,” is Shakespeare's emphasis on desire. For this in us is a complicated and deeply implicated phenomenon whose entangled state is much more specifically human than is grief, anger, or fear. These responses animals share with us. But our humanity is delineated by...