SOURCE: Wolf, William D. “‘New Heaven, New Earth’: The Escape from Mutability in Antony and Cleopatra.” Shakespeare Quarterly 33, no. 3 (autumn 1982): 328-35.

In the following essay, Wolf claims that the central conflict of Antony and Cleopatra involves the tension between change and permanence and examines Antony and Cleopatra's efforts to escape from this mutable world.

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra has long been a controversial play, mostly because it differs so radically from the other tragedies. Its sweep is vast, but not so vast as Lear; it deals with love and politics, but not so obsessively as Coriolanus; its characters are full, but they lack Macbeth's depth. Beginning with Dr. Johnson, critics have debated the play's structure, its theme,¹ its characters, and its ending.² Perhaps the play's very ambiguity encourages disagreement among its readers, preventing any critic's triumphant quod erat demonstrandum. However, almost all the play's commentators see Egypt...