SOURCE: Kaula, David. “The Time Sense of Antony and Cleopatra.” Shakespeare Quarterly 15, no. 3 (Summer 1964): 211-23.

In the following essay, Kaula compares the various senses of time held by the protagonists of Antony and Cleopatra—Caesar is focused on the future and views time as an instrument that progresses linearly, Antony clings to the past and continually strains against the pressures of time, and Cleopatra regards time as a pliant, continuous present.

Antony and Cleopatra opens with one Roman commenting to another on what is, to them, the deplorable change that has come over their general: the Mars-like warrior of the past has become the “strumpet's fool” of the present. A little later, Antony, after refusing to hear the latest news from Rome, insists to Cleopatra that nothing matters but the immediate “now”:

Now for the love of Love and her soft hours, Let's not confound the time with...